30
MADDOX
The world smelled dusty after the rain. I’d been told several times by Addie that it was the petrichor, but I still didn’t quite know what petrichor even was. Still, I watched her explain it with avid enthusiasm from the front porch of our rental treehouse.
This wasn’t a fancy honeymoon on a sunny island or in the streets of some romantic city, but it was what Addie wanted. She took in the luscious greenery all around and smiled wider than I’d ever seen before. This was where she thrived, and I was more than happy to give it to her.
We’d been here, in the wooded depths of the mountains, for a week. Addie spent much of that time climbing peaks. If she wasn’t on the highest point, then she was in our bed, beneath me. I’d spent quite a bit of time savoring her so far. Every inch of her brought forth new wonderful flavors that I wanted more than food.
“You need to eat,” Addie said as she bopped the tip of my nose with her finger.
I grinned. “Are you offering yourself?”
Her cheeks turned red, but she didn’t shy away. Instead, Addie leaned into me and, much to my surprise, bit my cheek.
“I could say the same about you. You always look so delectable.” She gingerly kissed the spot that she bit a moment ago. “But you need real sustenance before we go for another round.”
My heart sped up. The beast lurched towards the surface. The happy wolf’s tongue lolled out of his mouth as he looked to Addie with eager anticipation. The beast had never been so happy before, and I was more than glad to indulge it’s needs so long as Addie wanted to.
While we worked in the kitchen, making sandwiches layered with several kinds of meats and cheeses and an olive spread that Addie claimed would be amazing, I thought of all that had changed. I wasn’t human anymore. My every movement reminded me of what I’d become. I had to be careful when I grabbed things or else I would break them—or dissolve them.
This wasn’t a cursed existence, though. Addie’s presence kept me sated. My wolf lounged in her shadow. So long as I had her, I would have peace. I would do anything to give that back to her, which is why I let her smother my sandwich with tapenade even when I didn’t particularly like olives.
To my surprise, the sandwich was delicious. I told her as much while we ate them on the treehouse’s front porch because she needed to hear it. She wiped a bit of sauce away from the corner of her mouth with her thumb. I took her hand in mine and sucked the sauce from her skin. Her lips parted and the sandwich nearly fell from her hand.
I caught it at the last second and took a bite out of it before handing it back.
Addie pouted. “You know you’re going to have to pay me back for that bite, right?”
“How would you like me to pay you back?” I asked, voice low.
Addie
I madeMaddox eat me out on the front porch. It wasn’t like there were ghosts around to see us. We were free to do whatever we wanted out here. And all I wanted to do was him.
Maddox made my body languid. I never quite realized how much tension I was holding until now, until he teased it all out of me. I leaned back in my chair and let out a soft sigh of happiness. Maddox growled while he looked up from between my legs.
The sound immediately made me tense up again. Maddox’s fingers pressed into my thighs as his gaze slid over to his cellphone—right before it rang. Could his super hearing pick up incoming calls before the rest of us?
Maddox groaned and reached for his phone, but he never left the nest between my legs. The smell of sex wafted in the air between us. My face turned red-hot when I heard his boss’s voice on the other end. I covered my face with both hands, but Maddox still made no move to leave, as if this were the only place in the world that he wanted to be.
“Work is waiting,” his boss said. “You have a new case on your desk. The rookie can’t find any leads, so we’re calling you back home. Bring that ooky-spooky wife of yours along. We might need her help.”
Though my arcana had diminished since we placed that leaf, and its world, back onto Yggdrasil, I wasn’t completely powerless. Hel had been right. I still had far more power than most Reapers. It’s just that my radius for raising the dead didn’t sweep over a whole city anymore. I’d never really needed that much power anyway.
“I need to shower before we go,” I whispered, hoping and praying that Maddox’s boss couldn’t hear me.
Maddox nodded. To his boss, he said, “We’ll see you at the station tomorrow morning. I’m going to make the most of my honeymoon until then.”
His boss chuckled. It was a hearty sound, reminiscent of a fist bump in the locker rooms. The man knew exactly what Maddox meant, which made my face even hotter. I could have given Vi’s fire a run for her money at this point.
Maddox hung up. “We should probably go home soon anyway. We’ve been away so long, your cat probably ripped something up in protest.”
I missed Potato. We permanently relocated her to Maddox’s house after Fenrir destroyed mine. While I kept my family home in the hope that I could fix it up and rent it out, it was going to take a very long time and a lot of money to get it back into living condition.
Honestly, I didn’t mind. I loved living in Maddox’s sleepy mountain town where the ghosts left me alone for the most part. The only ones who showed up were ones that Hel sent with dumb updates.
The goddess had taken a human guise and tried out speed dating for the first time. Getting that information by ghost had been…an interesting experience.