“Yeah.”
“It’s fine. Finding the killer is more important than my comfort. It would be better for both of us if things go back to normal after this, anyway. You can run around solving the murder with your ex, and I can finish getting the company compliant again.” I gestured between us.
Maverick buttoned his jeans while I spoke. He grabbed his t-shirt off the floor, tossing it over his shoulder as he unzipped the backpack he’d brought and pulled out a hoodie.
“Hello? You didn’t respond to me.” I waved at him.
“I was trying to come up with a polite way to tell you that I will chain you to my side before I let you break up with me, but there isn’t one. We’re soulmates, Bloom. Not coworkers. This doesn’t go away if my ex shows up.” He gestured between us too, far more violently than I had.
“You have to be dating to break up.”
He stormed over to me and tugged his t-shirt over my head, pulling my arms through the sleeves. “We’re dating.”
“You don’t just get to decide that for both of us. What are you doing?”
“Putting you in my clothes to sell our relationship,” he growled. “And if you say we don’t have a relationship, I swear, I will bite you and lock you in my apartment until the fucking cows come home.” He pulled the hoodie over my head next. “I was supposed to wear this on the drive here.”
“So it would smell more like you?” I asked, slightly cautious.
I didn’t think he’d ever been so pissed with me before.
“Yes.”
“You could lick it a couple times, I guess.”
He snorted. The tension in his shoulders eased slightly. “The rest of you smells enough like me that it should be fine.”
“Maverick?” I put my hands on his chest, smoothing them over the soft fabric.
“Yeah?”
“I’d prefer we have a conversation rather than you deciding what labels apply to our relationship. This thing between us is weird, but it’s real to me too. My opinions should matter.”
He relaxed further. “Alright. We can talk about it on the way home.”
I nodded. “Are you really going to wear my pink sweater into a challenge?”
“Yes. It’ll tell them that I’m serious about you. And by the time I take it off, it’ll be stretched out enough that I might even get to see a strip of your shoulder when you wear it again.”
“Too bad I only wear your clothes in the office these days. You won’t get to see it, since we don’t live together.”
“I’ll convince you to live with me.” Maverick straightened, rubbing my head to make my hair even more of a mess before he grabbed both of our bags.
He had the audacity to steal my shoes off the floor and wink at me, too.
I padded to the bathroom to clean up and finish getting dressed before meeting him at the door, just as barefoot as he was for once.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
maverick
My arm was wrappedlow around Bloom’s waist as we strode out to meet my challengers on the Erren pack’s lawn. My gaze was sharp as I scanned the gathered crowd.
There had been six female challengers and four male when I spoke with them earlier. Cassidy had let me know on the phone that I was up to twenty-two females and ten males.
It had been a damn long time since I fought that many challenges back-to-back. It wasn’t ideal by any definition of the term, but I’d be fine.
I hadn’t expected the number to be that high, but it wasn’t a surprise given Cassidy’s pack’s problems with vampires.
