“Let’s go to the hotel,” he said tiredly after saying goodbye to Alexei.
“Yeah, let’s do that,” Ben agreed.
“I’m gonna call the car to the side door just in case,” Luca muttered in the elevator.
Somehow, none of the people with mics and cameras were waiting for him in the lobby. We snuck past the reception and through some corridors to the side door.
In no time, we were back in the backseat of the Audi, heading to the hotel.
The hotel wasn’t far, like Rian had promised, but it was… a lot.
“What did Riando?” Ben asked as he looked around in the lobby.
Somehow, the staff was expecting us. A man hustled from around the reception desk, beaming at Luca.
“Mr. Moretti, we’re so glad to have you!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands together.
Something about that movement made a bellboy materialize and he carefully gathered our luggage, such as it was. Luca had a nicer suitcase. Ben and I had our own separate bags that were from a big box store. It wasn’t as if we needed regular suitcases anyway.
The switch in Luca was imminent. He put his public facade back on. It was startling, and I didn’t like it, but I thought we’d probably see it again before we left the city.
Ben and I followed Luca and the receptionist guy—whoever he actually was—to the elevators, where the guy handed all of us a key card and explained that it worked for the elevator to get us to the correct floor and into our suite.
I glanced at my brother, who raised his brows at me. Yeah. It was fancy as fuck. Wesodidn’t belong there, but we took our cues from Luca and eventually we, and our luggage, were inside the room.
“I feel outright scruffy,” Ben stated as we looked at everything, our eyes a bit wide.
Even Luca seemed a tiny bit out of place, but it was still a more familiar environment for him.
We took a quick look at everything the suite held. It wasn’t super grand, but it had a very large room with a massive bed that for some reason faced the couch, and another, smaller bedroom to one side. There were large windows, a fancy bathroom that had a tub Luca was immediately drawn to, and a room service menu that was in a thick as fuck folder.
It all made my mind spin a little, but that was fine. I was here with Ben and Luca and we’d all be okay.
This trip was about setting Luca free from his record label. And visiting his grandma tomorrow afternoon. We also had another thing we had organized with slight help from Rian, if Luca wanted it, but that was the day after tomorrow.
To have this hotel room for two nights? It did seem like a lot, but I was grateful, too.
Luca headed to the bathroom for a bath, while Ben and I started to figure out what we wanted to eat.
After that, I hoped for some quality time with them both, because we definitely needed it more than ever before.
Chapter Twelve
Ben
Iwoke up in a tangle of limbs and smiled, then my cheeks heated when the previous evening’s events came back to me.
Things had changed, because Luca gave us the freedom to change them. His unwavering respect and love for my relationship with Max was everything to me. He’d told us our connection wasn’t a fetish to him, that it wassacred, and we believed him. How could we not, when he looked at us like we were the best thing he’d ever seen and told us our happiness was the most important thing to him.
I was somehow in the middle, so when my bladder decided I had to get up, it was an ordeal to extricate myself from them. I managed, though, and headed into the bathroom. I brushed my teeth while I was there and stared at myself in the mirror, wondering about how I still looked exactly the same. Just maybe… more settled?
There wasn’t a separation of the wolf and the man in me, I was one and the same like all born werewolves, but when I closed my eyes and dug around my psyche, I felt better, somehow.
When I made my way out of the bathroom, I grinned at the sight on the bed. In my absence, Luca and Max had gravitated toward each other, and they were touching from head to toe while still asleep.
It was early still, so I quietly made myself a cup of coffee with the pod machine, and went to sit by the window where I could look down at New York City.
I’d thought I’d be more overwhelmed, but it wasn’t too bad. It was different and harsher on the senses than home, of course, but I could compartmentalize a lot. Now that I thought about it, I’d been a master of that since I was a child.
