"I'll sleep down here," Nico said.
"Don't be ridiculous." The refutation was out of her mouth before she could think better.
Damn right he should sleep on the floor. He had kidnapped her.
What was she doing trying to give him his bed back and be all polite?
"It's not a big deal," he said. "I've slept in worse places."
"And there's room for four people in this bed," she said, because now that she had made the decision, she wasn't going to back down. She needed some kind of win, even if this was the strangest win she had ever gone for. "I'm not a Victorian lady. My reputation will not be damaged. We can just put a line of pillows down the center. It's basically two beds anyway. Though you do deserve to sleep on the floor for kidnapping me. So. Remember that I'm being nice to you." She almost stuck out her tongue, which was ridiculous. She was twenty-four, not twelve.
He looked like he was trying to suppress a smile.
Then his gaze turned even more intent, and his eyes raked her up and down.
"They're a little big for you," he said. "I'll get you properly fitting clothes in the morning," he promised.
Elise just nodded.
Nico scooped the blanket up from the floor and placed it down the center of the bed to give her the barrier she'd asked for. Then he added a line of pillows, and all they needed were a few soldiers and they could call it the DMZ.
Elise crawled into her side and curled up under the covers. The bed dipped as Nico got in opposite from her, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
She couldn't think about sharing a bed with her gorgeous kidnapper.
She couldn't think of the weird ways her body was responding to him.
She had liked guys before. She had had boyfriends before.
But this felt different.
And she couldnotafford to feel anything. Her mind struggled for some time, but eventually exhaustion overcame her, and she surrendered to sleep.
Chapter
Eight
Elise was still sleepingin his bed when Nico got up. He had shit to do. He shouldn't be wasting time looking at the way a beam of sunlight, that was peeking through the crack in the curtains, landed across Elise's nose and highlighted the variations of blondes and darker strands in her hair.
And hecertainlyshouldn't have had to force himself to stay in place, to not stalk across the room and lay down next to her on her side of the ridiculous boundary down the middle of the bed, gather her in his arms, and hold her close until he could wake her up with kisses and more.
Damn it.
He had hoped last night was a fluke, that the insanity of his actions and the pressure of Cole's injury was making him a little crazy. But if that was true, the craziness had persisted.
He had even put her in his own clothes, which was the kind of thing a shifter woman would have never let him get away with.
It was proprietary, possessive. Not something he would do to a stranger, but she didn't feel like a stranger.
Nico forced all those thoughts out of his mind. The pack wasn't going to take care of itself, and it was probably best tolet the woman sleep. He didn't want exhaustion to cause her to make mistakes when it came to treating his alpha.
He checked his phone and saw a text from Javi, telling him to get his ass downstairs. The others wanted to talk.
Of course they did.
Nico spared one glance back at Elise before forcing himself away. But before he went all the way downstairs, he detoured down the hall to one of the common sitting areas where he saw one of his pack members, a woman named Aubrey, eating a muffin and playing some sort of game on her phone.
"Hey," he said, "can you do me a favor?"
