Page 26 of Blood and Magic
“Who’s Lennon?” he snarled.
I finally grabbed it and yanked it away from him. “Just some guy.”
“Some guy?” He didn’t sound pleased about that, and I wondered what else he’d seen when he’d been nonconsensually fingering my data. “Why does he think it’s okay to ask you to send him nudes?”
I scoffed and locked my phone, placing it face down. “What’s it matter to you?”
“I don’t like the thought of random men traipsing through here,” he said. “If you’re going to have company, you need to let me know.”
I balked like he’d slapped me, opening my mouth in shock. “That’s none of your?—”
“Your safety is my business,” he said. “Do you plan to have company anytime soon?”
I hadn’t seen Lennon in almost a year, and his incessant request for nudes said more about him as a fuckboy than it did about whether I’d actually sent him any. I was Maeve Vanderbilt. All it would take was one doxxing accident for those photos to be plastered all over the internet. I wasn’t an idiot.
“No,” I said, crossing my arms. Ellen chose that moment to return to the dining room with my breakfast, setting it down on the table in front of me. She glanced at Vermillion before looking back at me with a questioning glance, perhaps silently asking if I needed help. I shook my head and waved her away.
My confirmation that random men didn’t just come traipsing through my house seemed to please him, and his features softened.
“I’ve already moved my things into the guest room next to your bedroom,” he said. “Per Guin’s insistence.”
That astounded me, a surge of both exhilaration and frustration rattling through my nerves. “What?”
“We agree that you need protection,” he said. “She can’t make it up here for a while, and we can’t have you alone in the house.”
“Don’t I get a say in this?” I didn’t like that my sister had decided the best course of action for me without my agreement or involvement.
He tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. “Is there a problem?”
I shifted my shoulders, ignoring the anticipation brewing in my gut. Part of me relished having him so close, all to myself, for the foreseeable future. The other part of me, the side very aware that he didn’t like me the way I’d once adored him, revolted. When I couldn’t sleep, I liked to relieve my anxiety in ways that would be very audible to someone in the next room.
I should have taken more time to argue with him. Instead, I wanted to show him up, to prove that I didn’t care for him or any of this business, that it didn’t impact me in the slightest. I was above it all.
“No,” I said. “Fine.”
“Fine,” he agreed. “For now, you stay by my side. Or rather, I stay by yours.”
“Don’t you have work to do?” I gestured to the field out behind the house. “Aren’t you supposed to be Orion’s replacement?”
“Precisely. But Sol and Orion work side by side all the time.” He nodded, stood, and put his hand on his head. “If you have business, I suggest you bring your laptop to the barn.”
“The barn?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How did he expect me to get anything done out there? “I’m running an empire here. I can’t have the sounds of bleating sheep and whining horses in the background of my meetings.”
He licked his lips and grinned, a rare sight for someone normally so withdrawn and angry. “You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure it out, won’t you?”
Mill rounded the table and headed toward the front door.
“Eat your breakfast,” he said. “If you want to ride, I’ll meet you in the stables in thirty minutes.”
When the door shut behind him, I tried to ascertain if it was his audacity or his commands that bothered me more.
You’re a smart girl.
You’ve been a naughty girl.
Baby girl, you deserve to be punished.
The versions of him bled together and, as I choked back my eggs and nursed my headache with caffeine, I told myself my subconscious was playing tricks on me. It was only because of the proximity that this sudden fascination with him had reemerged. I’d known him for nearly two decades, but he was a relative stranger now.
