Chapter 75: The Unexpected Visitor
The dive bar’s neon glow bled into the wet pavement outside, painting everything in streaks of red and blue. Rina had hugged them both, a little too tight, her eyes glittering with happy tears before she’d stumbled into her own Uber. “I’m planning the shower!” she’d yelled as the car pulled away, leaving Aurora pressed into Rhys’s side, his arm a solid bar across her back.
He smelled like cheap beer and the lingering warmth of the bar, but underneath was all him—alpha, safe, hers. The ring on her finger felt alien and perfect, a cold, heavy circle she kept twisting.
“You keep fiddling with it,” Rhys said, his voice a low rumble close to her ear as he hailed a taxi.
“It feels strange,” she admitted.“Good strange. Like… it shouldn’t be there, but it absolutely should.”
A cab slid to the curb, throwing up a fine mist. Rhys guided her in, his hand settling on her thigh once they were moving, his thumb stroking absently over the denim. The city lights slid across his profile, illuminating the sharp line of his jaw, the dark fan of his lashes.He was quiet.
“You’re quiet,” she whispered, leaning her head against his shoulder.“Just thinking.” His thumb stopped moving. “About that fuckin’ ring. About you saying yes.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
He let out a short breath, almost a laugh.“I didn’t let myself think. I just did it.Bought the ring yesterday, sent the flowers this morning.It was… an impulse. But not a bad one.”
“Not a bad one,” she echoed, threading her fingers through his. “The best one.”
Back at her apartment, the silence was different. The celebratory buzz from the bar faded, replaced by the intimate hum of the refrigerator, the soft click of the lock turning. They were alone again.Just them and the new fact of the ring.
Aurora kicked off her shoes, the chill of the floorboards seeping into her soles. She headed for the kitchen, needing to do something, to move. “I could make tea?”
“Don’t.” His voice was gentle but firm. He came up behind her, not touching, just crowding her space with his heat. His hands came down on the counter on either side of her, caging her in. He bent, his nose nuzzling the bond mark on her neck, and she went limp against him, a soft sigh escaping her lips.
“All night,” he muttered against her skin, his breath hot. “All fuckin’ night, watching other people look at you. Talking to you. Laughing with you.” His lips brushed the sensitive scar tissue. “I wanted to drag you under the table. Keep you there.”
The possessiveness in his voice should have scared her. It didn’t.It lit a low, steady flame in her belly. She tilted her head, giving him better access. “I’m yours.”
“Yeah.” He said it like it was a painful relief. “You are.” He turned her around then, his hands rough on her hips.His eyes searched hers, the usual confidence shadowed by something else.Something raw. “You know what I was doing a month ago?”
She shook her head, her hands coming up to rest on his chest, feeling the steady, strong beat of his heart.
“I was tearing the headlights out of my ex’s BMW with a crowbar. She’d left it at the shop. A final ‘fuck you.’ I put the lights on her fuckin’ doorstep.” He gave a short, humorless shake of his head.“I was so angry, Aurora. All the time.Like a live wire. I got on that site because I wanted to find someone to be angry with. Someone who wanted a fight.”
He cupped her face, his touch contradicting the harshness of his words.“And then I saw you.Your profile. It was… quiet.You talked about liking rainy days and that old movie about the bookstore. You said you wanted to feel safe.” His thumb stroked her cheekbone.“It disarmed me. I didn’t know what to do with it. So I messaged you.”
Tears welled in her eyes, not from sadness, but from the sheer, terrifying honesty of it.
“This,” he said, glancing down at the ring on her finger, then back at her eyes. “This isn’t what I was looking for.You weren’t what I was looking for. You’re the opposite of everything I thought I wanted.”
She swallowed. “And now?”
A slow, real smile touched his lips. “Now I can’t remember why I ever wanted anything else.” He kissed her, a deep, soul-searching kiss that melted her bones. When he pulled back, his forehead rested against hers. “Move in with me.”
The question hung in the air, a solid thing.It wasn’t poetic.It was a logistical, massive next step.
“What?” she breathed. “My place. It’s bigger. A garage. Real windows. You could make a nest in the actual bedroom, not just a corner of this studio. You could… be there.” He said it like a plea wrapped in a command. “I want to wake up and you’re there. I want to come home from the shop and you’re there. I want your smell in my sheets, your books on my shelf, your silly little lavender soap in my shower.”
Her mind raced.It was fast.So fast. But their entire relationship had been a freefall from the first moment he’d walked through her door.The bond was permanent.The ring was permanent. This was just geography.“Yes,” she said, the word leaving her in a rush. “Yes, I’ll move in.”
He gathered her up then, lifting her clear off her feet, his arms crushing her to him.He didn’t spin her around or whoop. He just held her, his face buried in the curve of her neck, breathing her in like he was starved for it.When he set her down, his eyes were bright.“Okay.Okay, good. We’ll do it this weekend. I’ll get the guys from the shop to help with your big stuff.” He was already planning, alpha-mode engaging, a satisfied gleam in his eye. “You can bring whatever you want.The whole nest. Everything.”
She looked around the tiny apartment that had been her entire world.It felt like a shell already, a skin she was ready to shed. Her home wasn’t a place anymore.It was the man standing in front of her.
“Just one condition,” she said, a boldness she didn’t know she had coloring her voice.
He raised an eyebrow, a smile playing on his lips.“Yeah? What’s that?”
“The first night in your bed,” she said, tracing the line of his collarbone through his shirt.“You have to knot me again.Properly. In our new home.”
His expression darkened, a pure, primal heat flashing in his eyes. He leaned down, his voice a gravelly promise against her mouth.“Baby, that’s not a condition. That’s a given.”