Page 35 of Blood and Trouble

He turned to face me, raking his gray eyes down my body and up again, before he grinned and held a hand out to me. I took it, and he pulled me closer, tugging me down onto his lap. I tried to protest and scoot away, but he wrapped an arm around my hip to hold me in place.

“Stay,” he said. “Please. Aftercare is as much for me as it is for you.”

I narrowed my eyes. “We didn’t…that wasn’t… From what I understand, that was a biological imperative, not for funsies.”

“That’s the story you’re going with? Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess.” He leaned forward to pick a strawberry off the plate he’d already prepared, holding it out to my lips. I took a bite and moaned at the decadent fruit. Everything tasted better, the juice sweeter, the skin crisper, the flesh softer. And the smell sank into my molecules like ecstasy.

“You told your sisters you didn’t want our marriage annulled?”

“I don’t,” I admitted. “Or at least, I didn’t. Not until I talked to you. Is that what you want?”

Lycan hummed and reached for pieces of sausage and cheese to place on my tongue next. “I could certainly do worse than being married to a Vanderbilt, but I’ll admit, Trouble, I never planned to marry anyone.”

“Wasn’t that part of the appeal? We knew what this was when we went into it.”

“We were drunk,” he explained. “Everything sounds like a good idea when you’re loaded.”

“Of course.”

You weren’t a choice. You were convenient.

Just there while he was drunk.

Who would want the frigid Vanderbilt bitch?

Fix it. Make yourself useful.

“Hey, none of that.” He grabbed my chin and forced me to face him. “I told you to stop talking to yourself like that, and I expect to be obeyed, or you’ll be punished.”

I attempted a half-hearted laugh, knowing he was teasing me. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken my self-deprecation out loud.

“My magic’s still inside you,” he said. “For the next few days, you might hear my thoughts. I might hear yours. It’ll fade.”

I tried not to overreact to all of the implications, all of the filthy things I’d thought about him. Did I not have any privacy anymore? What did it mean to have him read my thoughts, to be able to read his?

“I’m not always in your head.” Lycan brushed a finger down the side of my cheek. “It’s sort of like a broadcast. I think it to you, and you hear it. You happen to be a loud thinker.”

I mulled that over. It didn’t seem so bad. “But it’ll fade?”

“It will,” he said. “With time. As for our marriage, we have thirty days until we have to do something,” he continued. “Let’s just see where this goes, how it feels. Who knows? We might like it.”

Then it hit me. We’d spent the last few days in bed together. I hadn’t been on birth control in ages, not since I was with Scott. Panic flared in my lungs. I didn’t know if I wanted kids. I’d never had a reason to think about it.

“Lycan,” I started, “I’m not on the pill. We didn’t⁠—”

“You can’t get pregnant unless you go into heat,” he said.

“Heat?” I scrunched my nose. “Like a dog?”

“Kind of,” he said. “Besides, transition magic is powerful. There’s no chance of it happening then. So until you go into your first heat, you’re fine.”

“How will I know?”

He chuckled softly to himself. “You’ll get a fever. You’ll get chills, and your magic will call out for a willing partner.” Lycan fed me another piece of fruit. “You’re okay, Trouble. I’ve got you until then.”

Some of the pressure lifted from my chest, and I smiled, reaching for a piece of pineapple to hold to his mouth. He opened his lips and accepted the fruit, his storm-gray eyes never leaving mine.

“Now, tell me about shifter magic. Maeve said something about silver and iron, but she was talking really fast,” I said. “And what’s a knot?”