Chapter 274: Much Better
After what felt like forever, I had finally reached the point where I was warm, comfortable, and annoyingly content. All that happiness should have warned me that the universe was preparing to ruin it.
Yuche had trapped me beneath a blanket on the couch and apparently decided that sleeping with me gave him the right to monitor every movement I made afterward. It wasn’t like he wasn’t doing it before the whole sex thing, but it ratcheted up like a thousand percent after.
It had been two days since everyone left, and I didn’t know if I loved being smothered by the man beside me or hated it.
I was going to pretend that I hated it in front of everyone simply because I had a reputation to uphold.
When I pulled one leg free because the heat underneath the blanket was becoming unbearable, his eyes immediately dropped to it. "Does it hurt?" he asked, his brows furrowing in genuine concern.
"No," I replied, shaking my head. Frigging hell he was making me turn too soft. If you had told me in my past life that a man who looked like a Greek God was going to treat me like a precious treasure, I would have either laughed my ass off or tried to stab you. But here we were.
"It’s too hot," I continued, narrowing my eyes at him.
He reached for the blanket anyway, and I caught his wrist before he could cover me again. "If you put that back over my leg, I am going to assume you are trying to cook me," I said through gritted teeth. "I am not a piece of meat for you to try and smoke to death."
Yuche gave me a crooked smile, his eyes flashing with lust and love. "But you are," he purred, and I felt myself shuddering under his voice and eyes. I was really going to have to find some duck tape. It wasn’t fair.
Then it hit me what I had said and what he agreed to. I could feel my face turning red even as I smacked him in the arm. "You know what I mean," I grumbled, my face getting hotter and hotter the longer he stared at me.
"No," he replied, shaking his head. "I have no idea what you meant. You were cold earlier."
"And I’m not cold now." It was true. I was anything but cold at the moment, the fact that I wanted to pull the blankets up over my head had nothing to do with whether I was hot or cold and everything to do with what I was remembering....
And wanting to do again.
"You could become cold," he reasoned. But the man knew me well enough to know that I wasn’t thinking about our conversation any more.
"I could also become violent," I growled. Frigging hell. What did he do to me? It’s like I hate the idea of him not having his hands on me. And it was entirely his fault. "Honestly, it’s a coin flip at this moment," I continued, not willing to back down.
That made him pause as a confident smirk appeared on his face. The fucker knew that I wouldn’t actually hurt him. The man had become far too confident in his not so wrong belief that I was more than half in love with him. Mind you, the satisfied look in his eyes made me seriously consider proving him wrong.
You know, just to keep things interesting.
I was still deciding how much force would be required to shove him off the couch without accidentally destroying my comfort levels when the sound of diesel engines rolled into the house like an annoying alarm I didn’t know I had set.
And honestly, there were way too many of them for me to be anything more than pissed at whatever would come next.
"That’s the SUV," assured Yuche as he used the distraction to tuck my leg back under the heavy blanket.
I wasn’t about to argue with him. After all, he wasn’t wrong.
It wasn’t until they got a lot closer to the house that I could actually make out the sounds. The SUV had a distinct sound that I had learned to recognize, but, in my defense, it was almost buried beneath the heavier engines following behind it.
I pushed the blanket away and stood before Yuche could begin another argument about whether I needed rest.
"They’re back," I said, my eyes going bright. I had actually missed them a lot while they were gone. I just hoped that they got everything done that they needed to. I was expecting them to take a week or more before getting everything sorted out.
I could only hope that them coming home wasn’t because they had bad news.
Yuche rose to his feet beside me and wrapped an arm around my waist. He pulled me into his side and kissed the top of my head. Then he glanced toward the front windows and gave me one last squeeze before letting go. "Stay here. I’ll go check it out."
I turned my head slowly enough that he caught himself before finishing the thought.
"Or come with me," he corrected.
Much better.
The baby vine had already lifted itself from the pot near the window, its leaves trembling as unfamiliar vehicles moved onto the property. I could feel its unease through our connection, along with a sharp irritation that matched my own. There were too many engines, too many voices, and too many people entering a place that had only recently become ours again.
Even if the main entrance was mostly destroyed.
Taking a deep breath, I reassured both myself and the baby staring out the window. This was part of the plan. Getting people to fix what they had broken would actually require people to come here and fix things.
But the more I tried to convince myself that everything was going to be hunky dory dandy, there was still an unease in the pit of my stomach like the universe couldn’t give me more than a few days of happiness before it fucked my life up again.
