Her breath hitches.
“You’ll be walking soon,” I continue, applying the ointment with more focus than strictly necessary. “Short distances at first. Maybe by this weekend.”
“Really?” Her face lights up. “I can’t wait to stop being carried everywhere.”
I can wait a very long time.
I don’t say this out loud. Instead I wrap her feet in fresh bandages, lingering on the task longer than needed because I’m a selfish male who likes having her soft skin under my hands. She watches me work, quiet, her cheeks slightly flushed.
After wound care, I carry her to the bathroom so she can get ready for the day. Then I go out to the main room while she gets ready. I start on breakfast for her. Sometimes I can get her some of what everyone else is eating, or some days I cook food just for Sloane. Today I get out a fresh pan and make her favorite—scrambled eggs, toast and bacon. I’ll get her coffee for her when we come out here. I know exactly how she likes it, which is mostly cream and sugar with some coffee as an afterthought.
I enjoy learning my female’s likes and dislikes. She hates the crusts on toast and likes an unusual amount of salt on her eggs.
These are the things that loathsome human, Ryan Krychek, never learned in however many months of being her fiancé. And yet I learned them in four days. I keep this observation to myself because it makes me feel smug and I’m trying very hard not to be smug.
I return to the bathroom and find her ready. I carry my sexy future bride out to the kitchen. She enjoys being out here early enough to catch Garlen, Ellie and Zoe before they all leave for the day. All of us, including Aldar, are eating and talking.
Afterwards, Sloane settles onto the couch, and I place her second cup of coffee on the side table within reach. Loki immediately hops up beside her, pressing his ridiculous fluffy body against her thigh.
“Thank you,” she says, picking up her coffee. “You don’t have to make me breakfast and get my coffee every morning, you know.”
“I know.”
“But you’re going to keep doing it.”
“Yes.”
She smiles into her mug.
I smile into mine.
This is what our days look like now and I am obsessed. We work side by side on the couch, laptops open, Loki between us. She writes her article—the Aldridge exposé that’s going to blow the roof off everything—and I coordinate the release strategy with the human media, lining up contacts at three major outlets for simultaneous publication. The same approach we used for Anna’s evidence, but bigger.
We make a good team. She’s the hunter. I’m the strategist. She finds the truth and I figure out how to make the world pay attention to it.
At one point she reads me a paragraph about the shell company structure and asks for my take. I suggest reframing it around the human impact—the communities affected by the money laundering, the people hurt—rather than leading with the financial mechanics.
She stares at me. “That’s brilliant.”
I shrug. “I’m more than a pretty face.”
Sloane laughs and goes back to typing, but I catch her glancing at me a few times after that.
Sometimes her foot ends up on my thigh while she works. Sometimes my hand rests on her knee. Small touches that neither of us acknowledges but neither of us stops. I’m playing the long game here and I know it. Every casual touch is a brick in the foundation of something permanent. She doesn’t know this yet, but I do. That’s fine. I can be patient when it matters.
By mid-morning, Aldar appears with his tablet. He’s been out coordinating with law enforcement contacts and doing whatever else Aldar does when he disappears for hours.
“FBI update,” he announces, settling into the armchair. “They’re very interested in Sloane’s evidence. They’re building an international case against Aldridge. Her testimony connecting the domestic fraud to the cartel money laundering could be the linchpin.”
Sloane looks up from her laptop. “Good. I want that asshole in prison.”
“They will want you in DC for a deposition at some point.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
Aldar nods and glances at his tablet.
“How’s Lucy?” I ask casually.
