Page 72

GUNNAR

Iwoke up with my face buried in warm, soft flesh and a mouthful of dark hair.

I inhaled deeply, my lungs filling with the sweet, lingering trace of my wife on my lips from the woods last night. Rosalind was pressed flush against me, her naked body curled tightly to my side. My rough hands moved on instinct, sliding up from her narrow waist to caress the soft flesh of her breasts.

Admittedly, I was a breast man. My wife had my favorite kind of breasts. I could fit most of her mounds in the palm of my hand, with enough spilling over for me to nip at.

Her nipples hardened against my calluses. Down below, my hairy legs were completely entwined with her smooth ones. My dick was semi-hard as it lay nuzzled between her ass cheeks.

Oh, that ass. It was lush and heart-shaped. Definitely more than a handful. Enough to make me question if I was truly a breast man, or if my wife was changing my status.

I lay there in the quiet room. One hand palming my wife's breast, the other cupping her ass. I stared at the ceiling, feeling a stillness settle in my chest. I had never felt this at peace in my entire life.

Rosalind shifted in her sleep, wiggling her lush ass back against my hips. My dick went hard as iron, pressing thick and heavy against the cleft of her cheeks. Yeah, I was definitely converting from breast to ass.

"We can't, sweetheart," I grumbled low against her ear, my voice thick with sleep as I forced myself to tighten my grip on her waist to hold her still. "You're too sore after last night."

Rosalind stirred, her clouded, unseeing eyes opening slowly. She didn't pull away. Instead, she tilted her chin up, her lips curving into that bratty smirk that I adored.

"Since you made me sore, the least you could do is lick me better."

A low chuckle broke from my throat. The sheer audacity of my pink princess never failed to amaze me. I leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to her temple, then her cheek, before trailing my lips down the sensitive line of her throat.

"Is that so?" I rumbled against her skin, my hand sliding down her belly toward her thighs. "I suppose I could⁠—"

A sharp, harsh ring shattered all my good intentions.

My phone was vibrating violently against the nightstand, the loud chime cutting straight through the sexual heat in the room. I cursed under my breath, pausing mid-kiss against her collarbone. I reached blindly for the bedside table, grabbing the phone and sliding it to my ear.

"The fuck?"

"We've got a massive problem," one of our lead Blackwood enforcers barked over the line, his voice tight and breathless with panic. "The state troopers just pulled over and detained our entire northern freight run at the state line."

All the lazy heat in my body evaporated in a single second. A detained shipment meant federal eyes, lost inventory, and a direct threat to pack operations.

"Why the fuck are you calling me with this instead of Magnus?" I growled, pushing myself up onto one elbow, my jaw clenching as I looked down at Rosalind, who was watching me silently. "Magnus handles transit logistics."

"Your brothers are in a meeting, and you're the only one I can reach. It this might pertain to you more than it does them."

"Go on."

"It makes no goddamn sense," the enforcer stammered, his voice cracking over the receiver. "The Lobos were running right alongside us. Sorsha’s cold-chain pharmaceutical trucks were on the exact same highway using those federal immunity transponders. The troopers waved every single one of her Lobo vehicles through without even checking a manifest. Only Blackwood trucks got flagged. They had an exact tip-off for our license plates, our crate serial numbers, everything. Sorsha’s shipments got through completely untouched, while we just got served up to the state police on a silver platter."

Sorsha Lobo was a ruthless, brilliant strategist who had been quietly looking to expand her power. Targeting our freight lines while keeping her own routes pristine was a direct, calculated attack on Blackwood infrastructure—a deliberate play to squeeze our operations while keeping her hands looking clean to the authorities.

I hung up the phone, setting it back on the nightstand, bypassing the charger even though it flashed the yellow less than twenty percent warning.

My eyes dropped back down to the bed. The saucy, bratty grin had completely vanished from Rosalind’s face. She’d heard the entire conversation with her wolf’s hearing. Not that I would’ve hidden it from her anyway; she was my wife now. Part of this family.

I’d been watching her closely for days—the subtle shifts in her posture, the micro-movements of her mouth, the way her shoulders held tension. Rosalind didn't look surprised at the information divulged in that conversation. She didn't look shocked, panicked, or even mildly thrown off. She looked like someone who had already possessed this information before my phone ever rang.

A cold knot tightened in my gut where heated desire had existed only seconds ago. What hand did she have in this? My family had discussed our shipping routes and northern logistics right in front of her while she sat silently. Had she taken that intelligence and fed it directly to Sorsha? Was my wife a mole sitting in my own house?

Rosalind let out a long sigh, as though she could feel the burning weight of my eyes locked onto her.

"I know how to fix this," she said softly, her voice steady and unbothered. There was a long pause. She shifted slightly, her pale, milky eyes turning toward my shadow. "But you're going to have to trust me, Gunnar."

I realized I didn't. I didn't trust her. Not entirely. But I didn't doubt her words from last night. I knew she wouldn't do anything to hurt me. I believed that. I just had to hope that extended to my family.