I wasn’t worried about the surprise being spoiled by workers and delivery folks coming in and out yesterday. The wife set up the security, and my contractors have the codes, plus I’ve been adding to the place since the cat and I moved in. None of the family even pays attention to the stream of folks coming in through the service entrance anymore. But there’s no one here, and I open the door, prepared to be furious.
Instead, I blink in awe.
The gits have outdone themselves this time—I might even have to give that jackass Benton a bloody bonus.
The room is filled with light, and it dances off the glass. There are five separate stations with easels and supply cabinets for everything from painting to pastels. I look at the big comfy couch and chairs for sitting and sketching and then at the kitchen area with a work sink for cleaning up. Tucked in the corner, there’s an area for spinning at the potter’s wheel with its own cabinets. On the wall perpendicular to the door, there are corkboards lined up and underneath, sliding drawer cabinets for storage. Shelves line the back walls, some with easels and some bare for displaying finished pieces.
They set every sodding thing up to make an artist feel at home with everything they need to create. It’s bloody fucking perfect, and I’ll have to buy Benton another sodding motorcycle. I don’t know who he got to consult on the design and supplies, but they knew what they were doing.
Grinning, I give a tug to the connection I have with my primary, asking her if she minds having a night with her wife tonight. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, so I don’t tell her, but like usual, she knows anyway. The pictures she sends back are of the eye-rolling variety, but she agrees. She takes that moment to remindme I’m over half an hour late for a de-brief and that sod who runs us is storming about asking why I can’t be as good an agent as my wife.
He’s trying to get a rise out of me with that one. I’m not saying the wife isn’t a natural who took to the job like she was sliding on a pair of shoes, but I know for a fact that he’s not sending her on Beta-level missions yet.
Hell, is he? Christ, I’ll kill him.
I’ll wring his bloody bookworm neck. With a growl of impatience, I disapparate to his office, ready to attend my de-brief and rip Mikhail a new one.
Syria. I should have sodding known!
When I get home,I head to the master bedroom, wanting to change before I go find the stoat. I’ve got this complete surprise worked out in my head, and I want it to be perfect.
I’m a bloody mess right now.
Stepping into the closet, I throw my silk in the ‘not salvageable’ basket. I had a run-in with a few ne’er-do-wells, and while they’re little more than a stain in the dirt, one of them had the nerve to ruin one of my best shirts. I didn’t dress for a desert mission when I left this morning, and I only ended up there after having a row that shook the walls with the idiot in charge of the agents. The sod confirmed my wife was on a beta-levelextraction and ex-fill mission in the middle of a war-zone run by a megalomaniac that gasses his own people.
We didn’t resolve a bloody thing to my satisfaction, but he ended the meeting telling me to go be a cave dweller somewhere else. His parting shot was that if I didn’t believe my wife had the skills or ability to do the job I asked him to give her, I should say so.
To add salt to the wound, he added snark about how angry she’d be if she knew I was meddling in her assignments. I followed his advice and went to be a caveman—his words, not mine—in Syria. I tracked her down, staying in the shadows to watch as she worked.
That’s where the walking corpses who destroyed my shirts found me and made the final error of their unimportant lives by trying to mug me. If you’re wondering, the wife got her target and left without so much as a scratch despite half the city garrison chasing her out the door of the prison. I watched her decimate a compact unit, grab the raggedy journalists, and pop out before they could even get reinforcements.
I’ve never seen her fight like that before. She looked like one of us—the clones—moving with minimum effort and maximum effect. My minx brandished a familiar-looking blade, and I’ll bet I know where that came from. Hopefully, she did whatever hoodoo necessary to keep it from injuring her again.
I finish changing, smiling to myself. I didn’t realize how far she’d come in that short time. I’d be sending her on beta missions, too. She did all of it without her magick, except for travel. It was impressive.
Like most things she does, it was impressive. Now that I’ve finished my grumbling about the ruination of my favorite shirtand the humiliation of having to admit that Mikhail might know how to do his job, I’m ready for something much less irritating.
I close my eyes and pop into the guest house where my primary and the stoat have taken up residence. I don’t see anyone in the living room, so I poke around the house. I find him when I reach the bedroom.
He’s napping, his long hair spilling over the scars that tragically mar his back as he wraps around a pillow. I do not understand how he survived the months after he sent the idiots packing. I don’t think I’ve met anyone who loves to be curled up with someone more than he does. I walk up to the bed, smiling a bit as I reach over to stroke his hair. It’s nice to watch him for a few minutes. He shifts and mutters something in his sleep, and a purr vibrates under my hand.
This whole situation is hard for me. I’m new to the experience, and I hate feeling like the dunce in the classroom. I’ve got a lot of practical information, but that’s nothing compared to his experience—which we’ll not be talking about, thanks very much. I never imagined myself in a place where I’d get involved with one of my own kind. I’m still working on wrapping my mind around that.
But Sampson...
I wasn’t lying about the craving. He makes me burn and hunger, both physically and in terms of the demon. I think it’s important to mention that I’ve never felt this nit inside me as keenly as I do since my wife and her mate. It’s like they woke him up. Everything’s sharper and more pronounced now. Impatient, I reach out and poke his side. “Come on, Sampson. You’ve napped enough for today, you lazy git.”
He cracks an eye open. “Who says I have to?”
“Me. As I’m the one awake and waiting for your not-so-fair self, you can bloody well wake up.”
“Demanding tonight, aren’t we?” He yawns and stretches, rolling over. Every muscle in his body tightens and releases, and it feels like my eyes are glazing over.
Shit. I have to stop this. I have a plan.
I nudge his side again, eliciting a yelp. “Get up and throw on something. We’ve got a place to be.”
He blinks up at me. “We’re going somewhere? In public?”
