Page 77 of The Girl in the Forest

We’d become a beautiful and broken destruction—if his craving for me was as strong as mine was for him.

He brushed at the hair drifting across my forehead, then turned away to finish his pizza creation. I stood mute, watching as he slid the thick dough, cheese, and sauce onto a wooden paddle, then into the personal, wood-fired pizza oven, an oriental ceramic design that reminded me of an open-mouthed fish, sitting on its own counter.

“A pizza oven is the last thing I expected to see,” I said.

“Fee’s idea. He likes all the newest gadgets, wanders through shopping malls for days on end. The human world fascinates him. I don’t know how he does it, but things show up unexpectedly.”

I had a hard time picturing Fee in my mind. To me, he’d first appeared as a face in the ivy-covered trees, the Green Man, a garden ornament who yanked me through a magic barrier. Aine’s version was a man who became distracted, forgetting where he was. Fee’s magic made me wonder if Metis was correct, and Fee was as batty as Aine. Then, this new version of him I couldn’t wrap my mind around. The King of the Forest, enjoying Grayson’s soap, wearing bear slippers. Needing a hideout from Aine. The delightfully carved staff had looked like something out of a fantasy movie. And now… gadgets.

“One year,” Grayson said, “Fee got into the Christmas spirit. He rented a Santa suit and when to a shopping mall, sat himself down in an enormous chair and nearly caused a riot by giving away game consoles. Security intervened. He couldn’t prove he’d paid for everything, although no stores reported a loss of inventory. They’d only lost sales, which mattered to them but not to Fee, so he showered dollar bills all over the place to cover his escape.”

I giggled.

Grayson pointed to a silvered tub of crushed ice. “Open a beer for me, would you?”

“One fated mate bond, and now I’m the maid?” Teasing him brought a rush of intimate pleasure. He was cooking, and it made sense for me to contribute. But when I plucked a bottle from the ice, I realized it was the same beer Fee had given me months ago, in Leo’s vet clinic. When we’d put on a show for my stepfather.

I remembered the weight of Grayson’s arm around my waist, his fingers brushing beneath my breast, and I deliberately sampled the beer before handing it to him.

“I’m still struggling with this house,” I said, licking the alcohol from my lips.

“Don’t try to understand Fee’s magic in human terms.” Grayson held the bottle to his mouth, swallowed, while I stared at the powerful movement of his throat. “If he decides to protect you, things appear when you need them.”

In human terms, Fee’s magic was like walking from one room to another—from the old house belonging to Grayson’s parents, and into a new house without the memories. There was more to it, though. Something precious that I already treasured.

“This wrinkle is private,” Grayson said. “Only you, me, and Felix know it’s here. No one else senses the magic. When I meet with other pack members, or Fallon and Mace, I do it in my parents’ old house. No one questions it if I stay for a few days. They allow me the privacy.”

He bent to the pizza oven to check the progress, his back moving sleekly.

“You can stay here as long as you want,” he added.

“Hide here?” I thought of another wrinkle where he’d wanted me to hide. To stay until life moved on. “Does time move the same way here as it did with Aine?”

“No. Fee knew I couldn’t function effectively if it did.” He straightened. “While you were sleeping, I contacted Mace. He’s looking into the girl Adriel talked about.”

The girl the vampires had taken. “We should talk about that,” I said. “And everything else that happened.”

“But first, we’ll eat.” No room for argument with that tone, although it wasn’t determined as much as it was disrupting. I moistened my lips. Grayson slid the bubbling pizza from the oven, deftly sliced, then held one piece as if he would feed me again.

“Open,” he said.

Anticipation zipped along my nerves.

“It’s too hot,” I protested.

“Is it?”

He slid the pizza tip into his mouth, bit down, and when he pulled the slice away, cheese oozed, stringing until it broke and stuck to his chin. Laughing, I wiped the cheese with my fingers. He caught my hand, pulled my fingers into his mouth. As his lips closed, the stroking of his tongue had me dragging in a breath.

“You’re still wearing my reeking shirt,” he murmured.

I pulled my hand free. “Do you want it back?”

And was that the mating bond kicking my ass? Opening my mouth, letting words tumble out without thought of the consequences?

He inhaled deeply, steadily, while his eyes glinted. “You’re not bound by it,” he said—because, of course, he’d been listening to every thought I had about the mate bond, knew the insecurities that kept me on edge. “It’s up to you if you stay out here with me, or walk back into the house. But if you walk, Noa… I won’t follow you unless you ask.”

How easily he said that.

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