Page 27

“The penthouse is where I work.” I turn through the gates at the top of the road. “This is where I live.”

The house comes into view at the end of the drive, and she goes completely silent. It’s three stories of black glass and dark stone built into the side of the hill, the whole back of it looking out over the bay, the bridge, and the entire city. There are gardens, a pool lit from underneath, and more windows than I bothered to count when I built it. I’ve lived here alone for a hundred years.

Not anymore.

This is his house. His actual house. I was eating Top Ramen three weeks ago, and now I’m about to live in a house with a bridge view?

“Two weeks ago,” I correct.

She doesn’t even yell at me this time. She just stares.

I take her inside. She stops in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the marble, the windows, and the bridge glowing out over the water.

“You don’t cook,” she says. “Tell me you don’t cook in a kitchen like this.”

“Never.” I steer her down the hall. “You can, if you want. Or the chef can.”

“There’s a chef?!”

I don’t answer that. I open the doors to the library. It’s two stories of dark wood shelves with a rolling ladder and a fireplace big enough to stand in. I had every one of those shelves emptied and refilled last week. She walks in slow and runs her fingers along the spines. Then she stops.

“Nik.” She pulls a book off the shelf, a shirtless orc on the cover. Then another, then another. “Nik, these are all…”

“Monster romance.” I lean in the doorway. “Every single one ever printed. I’ve been in your head for two weeks, Red. I know exactly what you like.”

She turns around with three books clutched to her chest and her mouth hanging open.

He bought me a library. He bought me a whole fucking library of smut.

“Research,” I tell her. “I need to know what I’m competing with.”

She throws one at me. I catch it. Then I take her upstairs to our bedroom.

The bed is big enough for me in my true form, all black sheets and black pillows. But that’s not what she’s looking at. She’s looking at the floor of the walk-in closet, where her nest is laid out exactly the way she built it in the penthouse: every one of my shirts, every hoodie, the duvet, the pillows, my cashmere sweater right in the middle. My people moved it piece by piece and put every fold back where she left it.

She doesn’t say anything. Her chin wobbles.

He moved my nest. He actually moved my nest.

“Don’t,” I warn her. “Don’t you cry in my closet.”

She cries in my closet. I pick her up and set her down in the middle of her nest and let her cry into my chest until she’s done. Then I wipe her face with my thumbs.

“It’s yours,” I tell her. “The nest. The house. All of it. You’re never sleeping anywhere else.”

Then I take her to the second closet, the one next to mine. It’s as big as her entire dorm room, lined with empty shelves, empty racks, and empty drawers.

She turns around and looks at me. “Why is it empty?”

I pull a black card out of my wallet and hold it out to her. “Because we’re filling it today, baby.”

The boutique is on Union Square, all white marble and gold mirrors, and it’s closed. It’s closed because I closed it. Every other customer was sent away this morning. Every sales associate is waiting out front with champagne and the kind of smiles you get when somebody’s about to buy the whole damn store.

Kisha stands in the middle of it in her leggings and my hoodie, looking around like she’s scared to touch anything. “Nik, this place is like, a thousand dollars for a T-shirt.”

“Twelve hundred,” the manager says helpfully.

Kisha looks like she’s about to pass out.