Closing the distance between us, I cup the nape of her neck and pull her in for a swift, bruising kiss. “Welcome home. I take it you had a good time?”
Bags are looped over both of her arms, and she drops them in a heap at our feet, shaking out her limbs with a relieved sigh. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to sleep for the next three days; Carina’s exhausting.”
Dramatically gasping, Carina tosses a few more bags onto the pile. “It’s pronounced ‘exciting,’ and you can’t pretend you didn’t have fun.” Leaning in, she kisses my mate’s cheek. “I’ll let you be the one to break the news about how many dicks we played with together today.” Ignoring the warning sound rumbling in my throat, she skips out the door without a care in the world. “Blame yourself, Stone. You know better than to leave me unsupervised with such a pretty little thing like her.” Blowing Amara a kiss, she adds, “Call me when you’re ready to go for another round,” and snaps the door shut.
Groaning, Amara thumps her forehead on my chest. “See? Exhausting.”
“She certainly has a gift for pushing people’s buttons, I’ll give her that.”
Taking a step back, Amara begins collecting her bags with a sigh. “To be fair, she isn’ttechnicallywrong.”
I’d reached down to help her, but freeze before managing to grab a single one. “Come again?”
She turns one of the bags to show the logo, and I shake my head with a smile, everything making sense now. Helping her gather everything, that amusement is slowly burned away, and I have to clear my suddenly dry throat. Apparently their shopping trip was done exclusively at Carina’s, and there are at least fifteen bags here.
“Big plans for this evening?”
Her cheeks heat, using the excuse of picking things up to avoid looking at me. “Depending on how things go, we might be stuck in this place for a while. And until you and Kodi accept I actually meant what I said, I needsomethingto do. Figured I was there anyway, so may as well stock up so I didn’t have to make another trip.”
It’s impossible not to glance at a few of the items peeking out of the tops of several of the bags. Craning my neck for a better angle to read a package, my eyebrows creep up to my hairline. Not only is she prepared for any group activities that may occur, it looks like she’s planning on running down the list of kinks until she’s tried them all out.
A bucket list of debauchery, and it has my previous conviction wavering.
“It’s not that we don’t believe you’re all in,” I begin, but she starts walking toward the staircase and cuts me off.
“It’s that you’re worried I’m all in because of the scare with Malcolm, and I'm latching onto you guys as a trauma response for the security, or that the bloodstone is also amplifying my libido. Yes, we’ve been through this already. Hence my comment about until you two accept that you’re wrong.” She doesn’t sound upset, simply stating facts. “Speaking of Kodi, where is he?”
Knowing she’s going to find out sooner or later anyway, I sheepishly admit, “He was keeping an eye on you two by tapping into security feeds remotely, but the gym only has one in the lobby, and he was about to storm down there. So I... put him to sleep.”
She stops mid-step and turns to me in disbelief. “You knocked him out cold overthat?”
Grimacing, I hold out my hand to show the residual amethyst dust still clinging to my palm no matter how many times I’ve scrubbed my hands. “I didn’t hit him.”
She stares at me for a long moment, then bursts into laughter, and fuck, I don't think I've ever heard a sweeter sound.
“You pulled a Sandman on him?” Still chuckling, she finishes climbing the stairs and moves down the hall to the next set.
“To be fair, he deserved it. I’m all for keeping you safe, but after the things you’ve suffered, it was dangerously encroaching on the unacceptable level of stalking.”
She hums a contented sound I’m going to take as confirmation I made the right call. “He's going to bepissedwhen he wakes up.”
“Exactly why I'm gluing myself to your side for the foreseeable future. He can't bitch me out without also outting himself and looking bad in front of you.”
“But I already know the reason,” she counters.
I raise a finger to my lips, and she devolves into another fit of laughter that warms my heart. Dropping off her haul in her bedroom, I take her hand and guide her toward the last door in my wing of rooms, her mood contagious and easing my nerves.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“You and Kodiak read the same books, and you and Raiden have your late night bonding sessions between your mutual insomnia. I’d like the two of us to have something more than me patching you up every time you get injured. I don’t have a particular hobby that I enjoy; I’ve tended to shy away from things that made me happy for obvious self-deprecating reasons, but Raiden mentioned that you hadn’t had the opportunity to find your niche yet. So I thought maybethatcould be our thing. Exploring different hobbies until we each found one that called to us.”
"I absolutely love that idea. What are we trying first?"
I’d never had a need to utilize all of my given rooms, so the worst I had to do was commandeer a couch, television, and coffee table from the second floor to pull this off before she returned. Everything’s already hooked up, so I guide her through the nearly-empty room to her seat. Tapping the power button on the gaming console, I pass her a controller, settling in next to her.
“I grabbed a few options, so feel free to let me know if this one’s boring, and we’ll swap it out for a different game.”
“Deal,” she agrees easily, “but only if you do the same.”
