“Yes. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I have shocked you and disappointed you and hurt you badly so many times over the centuries. I have kept too many secrets from you that have come out anyway. Never have I seen that look on your face that you had before when you said you can’t live here.”
I just stand there with the water pounding down on me as I look at him. I, too, have never seen this look on his face before. He looks like he is going to cry if I tell him anything other than what he wants to hear. I’m sure that he wouldn’t, but it still frightens me, that depth of emotion coming from him.
“We are perfect,” I say to him. “And I have waited a thousand and one years to be given the opportunity to legally share this castle with you. If you think that I am about to give that up you can go and fuck yourself, right now,” I say, trying to make light so he will get that look off his face.
He smiles then and I breathe in, relieved. “I would much rather fuck you,” he says as he picks me up and pushes me against the wall and proceeds to do exactly that.
Several intense orgasms later, we stumble out of the shower and he wraps me up in a fluffy black towel. Wait, this is my fluffy black towel. He hands me another smaller one with a swirling motion to turban my hair up. I look around the bathroom, turning in a big circle. All of my things from New York are in here. I cast a glance back at him and he shrugs. “You said nothing of yours was in here. I said I’d fix that.”
I back out into the bedroom and it is nothing like it was when I walked out of it last night. It is no longer his bedroom, but ours. He has brought everything from my New York bedroom (except the bed) and placed it carefully around this room. Even the bedding has been changed from his black silk sheets to my preference of red silk ones.
“I figured you wouldn’t miss any of it there as we aren’t going back,” he says to prompt a verbal response from me.
“Holy crap! How, when?” I ask him.
“When you went off on your reading slash conquering adventure. Marguerite came with me and helped bring everything back. She worked quickly to get it ready for you.”
Wow. That woman is amazing.
“It’s perfect,” I say, pulling him to me for a kiss. “It is ours.”
“I do like the sound of that,” he says, smiling his made-for-me smile. I pull away and spin around again. I notice something on the bed and go over to investigate. It looks very much like a property transfer document from where I am standing, being familiar with such things due to the nature of my job. Well, ex-job now. Yes, it is, I note, as I pick it up and stare at it like it might suddenly disappear, taking my dreams along with it.
“I had Sebastian just throw it together. It’s fairly standard,” he says.
I look at him in amazement. “You really did this? You really, really did this?”
“You thought that I wouldn’t?” He purses his lips.
“I thought I would have to work a lot harder to get you to really, really do this. And you got my name right!” I exclaim as I notice “Liv O’Dell.”
“Humph,” he frowns, “as much as it pains me, it has to be official.”
I snicker at him but then sober at the word official. “But I won’t have this name for much longer. Once we move
on, I will have to change it.”
“There is a clause for that. Several, in fact.” He takes the document from me and flicks through, his eyes scanning the pages quickly. There are several of them, in fact, it is more like a book than a document. If Sebastian “just threw this together” then I am a monkey’s uncle. He folds the pages over and shows me. I take it from him with a knowing look and glance down. My eyes widen as I read. It fills nearly a whole page with legalese, heretofore’s and notwithstanding’s, but basically it says that the property will be mine officially under every name that I take between now and when CK and I get married, at which point we will sign an amendment under the name Aefre Allington nee Coortan Aquila. Right, so this document has been hanging around for a while now I would say, and yet we only decided on our future surname yesterday. He must have called Sebastian straight away after I fell asleep to add that in.
“You want me to revert officially to Aefre once we are married?”
“Yes,” he says shortly. He takes the document off me and again scans through the pages until he finds what he is looking for.
I take it from him with suspicion now and with good cause. “Terms & Conditions for the marriage of Aefre & Constantine” jumps out at me. I struggle to keep the smile off my face.
“Really?” I ask him sarcastically.
“It was your idea,” he says huffily.
“And you ran with it,” I say, flicking through the many pages of T & C’s.
He takes it off me and points to number one, where it states that I shall revert to my original name. I raise my eyebrow. Interesting. I read on and a lot of it is easy to comply with, but I stop halfway down the second page and frown. My eyes flick to his and he is staring at me innocently.
“You want me to cease sexual relations with Lincoln?” I ask in disbelief. I had thought we were over this snit but apparently not. “Explain,” I snap at him.
He steels himself and says as mildly as he can, although I can tell he is reining it in, “I will not be a stepfather to a litter of Shifter pups.”