"I really do have to go to the orchard."
"No time to throw my stuff out? Bummer."
I rolled my eyes at him. "I wasn't going to do that. We have things to figure out. Like the fact that I'm the reason youlost basically everything that mattered to youtwo years ago?"
He let me slide off his fingers and slip away from him. His gaze tracked me into the bathroom.
It was impossible not to notice his shampoo in my shower.
The lotion he preferred, on my bathroom countertop.
His clothes and shoes, in my closet.
I hadn't realized it, but I'd left the spaces his things used to occupy empty, as if I'd been waiting for him to come back.
Maybe in some ways, I had.
Niall met me in the closet as I pulled the bottom hem of my sports bra into place.
"If you don't want Jonah to know what we've been up to, you should probably shower," he said, tugging my hair out from beneath the strap of my sports bra.
"You keep saying his name like that."
"Like I want to kill him?"
"Mmhm."
"Probably because I do."
"He's not my mate, and I'm really glad about it. There's no need to kill him now."
"He still fucked you, Livvy."
That, I had no way to change. "I'll try to run into him while I smell like you."
He leaned his head over my neck and flicked his tongue against my tattoo while I tugged my shorts up my thighs. "That won't change the fact that he knows the way you taste, and that he has a massive mark on your skin now."
"I can't fix that."
"There is one way."
"You want me to help you kill him? Sounds fun."
"I think I can handle taking out a little werewolf, Livvy."
Fair point.
"How about we make a deal?" I asked. "Not a bargain. A good ole' deal between whatever we are. We're not exes or just friends anymore, if you moved your stuff in here while I was gone. You do realize that you basically abducted my house, right?"
"You think abduction is romantic, and I'm listening."
I turned to face him, and put a hand on his bare chest. "If you agree not to kill Jonah for fucking me in the past—very poorly, I have to add—I agree to release him from the bargain as soon as I've fulfilled my side of it, so his mark is no longer on my leg."
He studied me. "You would do that?"
"For mywhatever you are right now, yes. It's clearly important to you. You keep glaring at my leg. I like it better when you look at me like you want to eat me."
He bit back a grimace. "I didn't think I was that obvious."
