Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I closed Wald’s bedroom door behind me and leaned against it, my heart thumping with the anticipation of what lay ahead.
I’d spent the last hour triple-locked in the spare bedroom preening.
Victoria had dropped off a bathrobe and some of Britannia’s things.
I was clean but smelled like a vanilla cupcake and looked closer to a sex worker asking a buck fifty, which for me was as close to traditionally gorgeous as I was going to get.
Wald stood in prime form at the foot of the massive four-poster bed, miraculously healed and with no finger paint.
He’d showered, and damp strands of his hair clung to his cheek.
I itched to brush them away and run my fingers through the silkiness.
I intended to do way more than that, but baby steps.
He dipped his head, raking his gaze from my stilettos to where the balconette bra lifted my breasts above the low-cut bodice.
I couldn’t see his eyes with his sunglasses on, but he licked his lips and rubbed a hand over his freshly shaved jaw .
I’d done well.
He nodded at the door. “Lock it.” The simple direction lingered like an order, with an open-ended take. I smiled. I liked a man who knew what he wanted.
I turned, giving him a solid view of the dress’s corset back as I locked the door. I was nervous as hell.
“Mason will use the wall entrance,” he said softly, as if noticing my pause.
“Is there a room in this place that doesn’t have a wall entrance?
” Having a could-open-any-minute secret door wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for a secluded romantic spot.
Sleeping with him while his family was downstairs, or wherever they were in the house, was goddamn creepy.
Still, I was willing to make the sacrifice. God, he looked good without a shirt.
“The house was built with many secrets. It suits our lifestyle and our visitors. How are you feeling? You look gorgeous.” His voice dropped, as if the last parts were a whisper between us. My heart fluttered.
“I’m okay, but I have some questions. I mean, rules,” I said. The wall door opened, and Mason shuffled through with a tray large enough to hold a suckling pig. On it was a baguette, a basket, a plate of cold cuts, a bowl of reddish chunks, a bottle of wine, and two glasses.
Mason looked at me but talked to Wald. His eyes didn’t focus. I hadn’t noticed it before—as if he were blind and looking through me. “Will there be anything else, sir? Shall I open the wine?”
“No, I have it, Mason, thank you,” Wald said, walking over to the bottle.
Mason gave an almost imperceptible shrug, then disappeared through the wall again.
Wald picked up the wine and pulled the cork like an expert.
It would have taken me five minutes of cursing to get that cork out.
He poured out a small taste into a glass, swirled it, and then sipped it. Holy crap it was sexy.
At this point, everything he did was reading sex to me. Because I knew what I wanted, and I intended to get it. Filling both glasses a third of the way, he handed me one. His fingers dusted mine, the effect like he’d run a hand up my inner thigh.
“You were about to say?” he asked.
I took a sip. Dark cherries exploded in my mouth, wiping out all conscious thought. “Wow,” I sputtered. “This is good wine.”
“Everything will taste different now your senses have been awakened by Agatha’s gift.”
“What… oh you mean, oh. So, like…”
“Yes, Tails,” he said. The hissing of the S’s got me. I lifted the glass to my chest, as if it might stop me from launching at him. I was all-throttles ready, but I wanted to know exactly what I was in for, first.
“Okay, so I have some rules.” I wanted him, but man, the giant-thing element scared the crap out of me.
“You do? Great, what are they?” He raised the glass to his lips. I wondered if he tasted the same thing I did.
“First, safe-sex, and that is non-negotiable—and the glasses come off.”
“Not yet. Tell me your other rules, first.” The rolled R tremored deep inside me as he sat on the edge of the bed and took a sip of wine.
The angles of his face. His long neck, inky hair, and dexterous fingers.
There was an elegance about him that I’d never seen in anyone else.
He finished the wine and scooted back to the headboard, propping himself up on the pillows.
The bed frame was elaborately carved with beasts that were a cross between a gargoyle and a lion.
Patience was a virtue I didn’t have, but he was waiting for my rules.
My heart pounded. What exactly were my questions?
That was the problem. I wasn’t about to have sex with a human, and maybe I wasn’t even human.
Wald’s eyes followed me as I paced the room, deciding what level of insanity I was entering.
“If we—” I nodded at the bed, “Then will it hurt you? I mean you can’t die or me again, and you’re still cursed, right?”
He tipped the sunglasses down and glowing gold gave the answer.
“But what about the touching part? Won’t it escalate if we do stuff?
” My chest was as tight as a new wire on a guitar.
It was hard to breathe with the drop-dead sexy bastard lying on the burgundy coverlet with his muscled chest gleaming at me.
All I could think of was sex, and I needed to have his answer first. The leather pants hugged his lean stomach like some vampire rock star.
Smooth and waxy skin beckoning in its paleness.
“You’ve changed. I don’t know why, but I’m not questioning whatever Agatha has done or who you are, but you are different somehow. When we kiss now, I feel no drain, so I’m certain that when we fuck I will not die. But I don’t really care. It will be worth it.”
I inhaled and stopped pacing at the foot of the bed.
He patted the mattress, beckoning.
“But you could still be hurt by us being together?”
“No. I don’t think so, and as I said, that is my risk to manage, not yours.”
“Uh, no. That is our choice together, or this is not happening.” I waved my hand as if drawing a line between us.
“If there are any issues, I will tell you. You can have anything and any way you like.” His voice was low and plush as the rub of a cat. He smiled with wide tight lips, the sunglasses obscuring his real expression .
“First, the sunglasses come off.”
“Fine,” he said, removing the mirrored shades with a fluid sweep of his hand. He folded them and set them on the antique night table beside him. “There. Now, come over here.” He patted the pillow.
I swallowed. “First, show me your true form.”
He sat up. “No.” His yellow eyes narrowed. That commanding essence of him turned the massive room into a closet. His cologne or musk scented the air with leather and cloves.
I leaned against the bedpost. “I can use the door anytime.”
He made a sound. I guess you could call it a growl, but it turned my insides to jelly.
This was going well. He plucked the sunglasses off the night table, putting them back on with a calculated slowness.
It was my turn to growl. “Goddamn it. I said I want those off.”
“All deals are off. I do not agree to your last term.”
“Really? You’re going to be prudish?”
“My true form is daunting even to those of our kind. In my true form, we could not make love. It would not be physically possible.”
“What?” I yelled, not even able to fully wrap my head around what he was saying.
“I am large, giant-like you would say, in my true form. I would be physically incapable with your natural smallness, your humanness.” The S’s extended in their hiss of an accent. The effect heated parts of me that didn’t make my thinking clearer.
“Oh,” I replied, my eyes widening. Somehow him being impossibly big was sexier than anything a man had ever said to me. It terrified and disgusted me equal parts and enticed me to explore it further. I’m unhinged. What can I say?
“You know what you said makes no sense. If you can’t show me your true form, then we couldn’t do the deed in the first place, right? Or can you have sex in your altered form? And now that I’m not human, if that’s true, then don’t things change anyways?”
“What did you think? That it worked like the movies? That I would turn into some creature when I climaxed or something?”
“Well, actually…”
His golden eyes narrowed again. “I have far more control over my needs than you can comprehend.” The air chilled, and his neck corded. He pressed his lips together in a hard line.
I gripped the bedpost. Making him mad was not what I had in mind, and it reminded me how dangerous he really was.
So damned sexy. “Look, I’m sorry. I mean I don’t know, didn’t know…
Fuck this. This is your fault, and I’m not apologizing, you bastard.
You haven’t told me the whole truth or part of the truth.
What you conceal from me affects me. This is a great example.
Why don’t you show me first? Then I can decide what to do with you?
” I straightened up, cocked my head, and crossed my arms, defining the challenge.
“Are you saying you want to see my real form, now?”
“I think I was pretty clear on that? Yes.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because it will change how you feel to be with me. Have sex with me first, and then I will change for you.”
“Nope. You said I get to call the shots here, and I’m calling them. ”
“Call all the shots you like. I think you know how much I want you, but I don’t need to do this,” he said, sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed in a blur of motion.
“Wow, you’re actually shy about it.”
He whipped around. “Don’t bother with coercion. It won’t work. I have made my counteroffer. It stands. Let me know what you decide,” he said, picking up his shirt where he’d dropped it on the chair.
Damn him.
I launched myself at his back, my hands circling around to his chest. He stiffened at my touch and turned to face me.