Chapter 10: Questions, Answers, and...

Half an hour later I turned off the water, aware it was a shocking waste and that bills didn’t pay themselves. Stepping onto the tiles and glancing at the hook, I discovered two rather unfortunate things at once. First, my own towel was still hanging on the airer from yesterday, and nobody had thought to bring it back. Second, Lexa’s towel had been used by me to dry off Grey — in his wolf form, at the time — and had since been consigned, quite thoroughly, to the laundry basket. Left forlornly on the hook was one small towel, the sort meant for one’s face, or for wrapping round wet hair after a shower.

“Of course,” I muttered under my breath, winding it round my dripping head in a hastily improvised turban. “Brilliant planning, Sasha.”

There was nothing for it but to go out with nothing else on. Small mercies — it was my flat, and the only other soul in it had already seen me in rather more compromising circumstances than this.

Down the corridor drifted the most heavenly smell of freshly brewed coffee, and I padded barefoot along the floor — nobody had thought to bring my slippers either — following my nose towards the kitchen, where I stopped dead in the doorway.

Grey stood with his back to me at the stove, just as naked as I was, quietly swearing his way through a battle with my ancient copper cezve. A moment later, muttering something about a “bloody Rick” as the foam nearly boiled over the rim, he snatched the pot off the heat with a sharp flick of his wrist.

I, meanwhile, stayed rooted to the spot.

The thing was, over the past twenty-four hours — mad, breathless, utterly life-upending hours — I simply hadn’t had a single moment to do this: to properly, unhurriedly look at the man I was now sharing a flat with. Everything that had happened between us had unfolded either in pitch darkness, or in some half-delirious fog, or far too quickly to hold onto anything beyond scattered flashes of sensation.

Now, though, in the light of a proper morning, I could finally allow myself the luxury — no rush, no fog. And, if I’m honest, I made the absolute most of it.

I started at his shoulders — broad, sloping, with that faintly predatory hunch some people develop from a lifetime of prowling rather than simply walking. From there my gaze slid downward of its own accord, tracing his spine, where two long ridges of muscle shifted beneath his tanned skin with every movement — symmetrical as if some sculptor with a particular fondness for anatomy had carved them by hand. I lingered rather too long at the small of his back, where it narrowed into slim, almost boyish hips, before my eyes dropped further still, to a backside that was firm and taut, without a trace of the sort of hair that crept halfway up, the way it had on my second-to-last boyfriend — who used to get quite offended when I called him “furry bum.” Grey’s tensed slightly each time he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, stirring the coffee.

If my mother could see me now, I thought, straightening the turban that had gone lopsided on my head. A lecture on propriety and the moral decline of society would follow immediately. How could anyone possibly stand about like this, dressed like — well, if a towel even counted as being dressed at all.

From the doorway I couldn’t see the front of him — the counter hid his whole torso — but my imagination didn’t need any visual confirmation, thank you very much: memory obligingly, without so much as asking permission, supplied a rather detailed picture from the very recent past. Something low in my stomach gave a traitorous little pull, and my thoughts, as if in conspiracy, drifted well away from the list of questions I’d spent the last half hour so diligently composing over the sound of running water.

Stop. Right. Pull yourself together, Alexandra Vance.

I made myself run through the prepared questions, one by one, like worry beads — name, age, shifting, full moon — anything to keep my mind from sliding straight back to where I’d just, with such effort, dragged it from. It was, admittedly, only a middling success.

By the time I’d counted to three, still not entirely restored to composure, I finally stepped over the threshold.

At exactly that moment Grey turned round, a steaming cup in hand, and held it out to me.

“Here. Black, no sugar. Did I guess right?”

I didn’t rush to take it.

Because now that Gray was standing directly in front of me, he was on full display — and there was simply no room for questions, for coffee, or, heaven knows, for politeness.

I started where I’d started in the hallway — with his shoulders, the sculpted planes of his chest, scored with several scars, then trailed lower, down his flat, lean stomach, where oblique muscles stood out sharply beneath his tan skin, also marked with a few scars. And then lower still, to where any decent sort of looking usually stops — but my gaze, the treacherous thing, was pulled inexorably in that direction, living a life entirely separate from my conscious brain, and was quite calmly taking in what was currently, shall we say, at ease. Uncovered. Hanging between his legs. Impressive. Utterly unashamed. And — let’s be honest — unmistakable.