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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Alaric
She was uncomfortable at first. Clearly used to living alone, she seemed to struggle with the idea of being perceived while in a domestic setting, constantly looking over at me, gauging my reaction.
I wondered if it was as obvious to her as it felt to me just how fucking adorable I thought she was.
Making a home seemed like something that came natural to her, so she set to clearing off my makeshift dining table, organizing my piles of supplies by task or space they’d be used for, and placing them in said locations.
Then she set the table. Even though all I had in the house were flimsy paper plates, a couple coffee cups, and mismatched flatware. Hell, the woman actually went out back with Frida, and while she walked her, gathered up some random flowers growing in the yard, and stuck them in a plastic cup at the center of the table.
By the time we had to leave to go pick up the food, the place looked more homey in just an hour than it had since I’d moved in.
As I’d promised, I made her tag along to the convenience store, where I followed behind her, grabbing everything she paused to look at because she seemed determined not to actually pick anything up save for some iced tea.
“All this, too,” I said, coming up behind her at the counter where she thought she could check out without me paying.
I put the basket up on the counter, boxing Siana in with my body, seeing the way she tensed, then relaxed, her body almost brushing into mine. So I went ahead and moved the slightest bit closer, my whole front pressing into her back.
“Wait… that’s…” she started to object as the clerk pulled out and scanned items before slipping them into a bag.
“Yep,” I said, reaching for my wallet, and sliding out a card.
“Wait, no,” Siana objected, trying to reach for her own card.
I wrapped my free arm around her arms, holding them down.
“I got it,” I said as the clerk smirked and took my card.
“Alaric…”
“Hush,” I said, voice low, and the sound made a little shiver course through her.
And, fuck, if I didn’t like the hell out of that.
I couldn’t imagine how she would tremble and squirm and flush when I said other things. Dirtier things. Close to her ear. While on top of her. With her on top of me.
Christ.
I had to stop before my cock got ideas. Up close and personal like this.
“You’re being too generous,” she insisted after I tucked my card away, then reached for the bag.
“It’s a couple snacks and drinks, baby, not a Ferrari,” I told her, wrapping an arm across her shoulders as I led her back out of the convenience store.
By the time we made it back home, Frida had climbed up on the couch, and was watching for us out of the front window, her whole body wagging as she saw us climb out of the SUV.
“So, have you always lived in Miami?” I asked as we started to eat, realizing I’d told her more about my past than she had told me about hers.
“Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head like that was crazy. “I was raised in Connecticut.”
That actually seemed to suit her more than Miami, in a way. Long, colder winters for snuggling up and reading, no one really expecting you to leave home from November to March.
“Did you move down here for college?”
“No. Just… to start over,” she said, folding her pizza, then letting it fall open again, and looking at me. “Actually, I moved to get some distance between me and my mother,” she admitted.
If there was anyone who knew about strained mother-child relationships, it was me.
