“Just a to-do list,” he replied, tapping his pen against the open pad.
I called fucking bullshit on that. But what did I care if he were scribbling down items he needed from the grocery store or writing a list of what needed to happen next with the Widowmakers after they’d been defeated?
Sage bounded back up and dropped the chewed tennis ball at my feet. I kicked it. This time I aimed for the couch. The ball bounced off the rolled armrest, struck a thin-legged side table, and knocked it over. It fell with athunkonto the carpet. Sage, barking loudly, was after the ball in an instant, crashing into thetable, setting it spinning across the floor and slamming into the wall with a thunderous crack.
“Do you mind?” Graysen gritted out without turning around.
“You’re the one trapping a fully grown wraith-wolf here with the both of us,” I shot back, flipping him off behind his back. Seriously, he was the one who bought those toys for Sage.Idiot.Then I stabbed my middle finger into the air behind him once more because it felt fucking good doing it.
He slapped his pen down on the notebook. “You do realize I know you’re flipping me off?”
I straightened, wondering if he’d sensed what I had been doing. “Eyes in the back of your head, dickface? Those Crowther superpower senses of yours felt the displacement of air?” I crooned, rapidly flipping him off with both hands—kept flipping him off.
He didn’t bother turning around to address me. “Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p’ and stabbing a forefinger at his drink sitting on his desk.
Leaning forward, I tried to see what he meant and then saw my reflection on the curved surface of the glass.Gods-fucking-dammit!
Scowling, I rolled my eyes and pulled a face.
“Saw that too.”
“Then free me,”I chant-sang.“Set me free!”And I kept chant-singing it between mouthfuls of croissant and strawberry jam as I stamped about the room. Until finally he spun around in his chair. I think he was about to say something else to me, probably to shut the hells up. But as soon as his gaze took in the pastry-crumbed carpet, it went straight out of his head. His eyes rounded, blazing with a strange mixture of ire and utter disbelief.
“I just…fucking…what is this?!” he yelled, rising to his full height, glaring down at me like I was some kind of feral child that had been forced upon him.
I simply grinned back and licked my fingers clean of the sticky-sweet jam.
Stomping over to the utility closet, he opened the door and pulled the vacuum cleaner out. Yanking the cord free, he stalked over to the wall socket, jammed the plug in and switched the machine on.
A low humming sound filled the room as he vacuumed up all the crumbs off the carpet, shooting me dark looks every so often. I simply returned a cocky smile. He then followed me around, sometimes knocking into the backs of my heels as he sucked up all the flakes of pastry I kept dropping on purpose as I breezed about the sun-drenched space.
Oh my gods, this man was ridiculous!
He turned off the vacuum cleaner and rested a foot on top of it. “See this?” He scowled, pointing a finger at the machine. “How about you use it or sit down like any other well-mannered child at the table with a godsdamned plate and eat your breakfast off it!”
Holding his gaze, I tore a flaky strip off the bite-sized remainder of the croissant and dropped it down beside my bare feet
“I can’t fucking take this anymore!” he bellowed, throwing his hands up in the air.
“Then let me go!” I roared, flinging the last of my breakfast at him. He struck out at it, batting it away, and the morsel fell to the floor, whereupon Sage snapped it up and devoured it quickly.
Graysen bared his teeth at me and snarled. Infuriated, he tore off the to-do list from his notepad and shoved it into his back pocket. Striding to one of the tall sets of drawers, he yanked open a drawer and snatched out a pair of socks, tugging themonto his feet before grabbing a leather jacket from his makeshift wardrobe.
I followed, sticking close, as Graysen stormed up to the linen cupboard to dig around on the top shelf behind the blankets for his one and only pair of boots he had left after Sage had chewed all his other shoes to bits last night.
I knew the moment his fingers had latched onto the boots because his mouth fell open and his eyes grew impossibly wide as he stared with incredulity.
A heartbeat later, his nostrils flared, and the stress lines in his face creased even deeper. He rounded on me, fury staining his stubbled cheeks, and shoved the boots at my face. “What the…whatthe fuck is this?”
I canted forward, squinting, and made aHmmmingsound as if I was thinking. “It says”—as I drew my finger over the words I’d written with a gold gel pen in big fat letters across the leather of each boot— “Property of Mr. Dickface.”
“I can read,” he hissed at me. “I know what it fucking says!”
He manically shook the boots in front of my face, and glitter loosened from the furious motion fell to the floor in a stream of pinks, reds, and gold. “YOU. SPARKLED-UP. MY. FUCKING. BOOTS?!”
“So pretty,” I grinned, shimmying my shoulders. “You’ll be the envy of all your brothers.”
I had a lot of fun while he’d been showering, bedazzling his boots with glitter and sequins and studding them all over with pretty fake gems.
