Page 22 of Unhallowed Murder
“I’m going home for my repose. I’ll awaken between four and five. Will you come to me when you can get away from work?”
“I don’t know where the case will take me, and I don’t know that I’ll be able to stay awake.”
She said it as a warning, but that was okay. “I’ll text you the address. Bring clothes so you can sleep until morning. I’ll assure you are well rested,Bellula.”
* * * *
Ronnie didn’t expect to find the Amakhosi’s car in her driveway when she arrived home well before six in the morning. Nor did she expect to find the King of the Lions asleep in her bed.
He didn’t sit up. Just watched her from under the covers, his head on her pillow, hair mussed, eyes sharp. Stalking her. Like prey.
“Your Majesty.” She didn’t often use terms of respect around him, but his power saturated the room.
“Josef? What are you thinking?” He breathed in, parsing her smells. “I find that I think of you as more pride than tiger. Moremine.”
“You’re saying he should request your permission to see me, Your Highness?”
So far as she knew, Nathan had fucked every adult female cat in the county except her. He’d found other ways to exert his dominance over her — he’d known it would destroy her to be forced to submit to him sexually.
He had, however, slept in her bed on occasion — usually when her life had been falling apart and she’d needed help holding everything together. In recent years, he’d done so when she wasn’t home a few times, scent marking her place, probably. She hadn’t asked.
“I think so. Yes.” He sat, and the blanket fell to his waist. The Amakhosi was shirtless but in boxers.
Ronnie took a few steps to her left, sat on her bench, and began unlacing her boots. “He gave me a foot massage. I fell asleep.”
“And he held you while you slept?”
She nodded without looking up.
“Josef doesn’t date the short-lived, or even the long-lived until they’re at least five hundred years old.”
“He helped me with a case. He says there’s a spark, and it’s up to us what we do with it.”
“Do you feel the spark?” He asked so softly, she was almost afraid to answer, but she couldn’t lie to her liege.
“Yes, my King.”
“Josef isn’t going to submit to you, sweetheart.”
“He kneeled before me, to wash my feet.”
“Do you want me to talk to him? Explain?”
“NO!”
Nathan lifted a brow, and she corrected herself. “Please don’t. I mean, do whatever you need to do so the supernatural ownership and permission thing is handled, butpleasedon’t tell him I’m broken.”
“You aren’t broken, my dear Veronica. You’re one of the strongest cats I know, male or female. You just never got back on the horse. You were too young, at the time, and by the time you were old enough, it’d been too long.”
She grinned. “No, I’ve ridden the horse, I just don’t seem to be able to…” She rolled her eyes. “Let the horse ride medoesn’t work.”
He chuckled. “No, the analogy falls apart, but I take your meaning, as I’m sure you understood mine.”
“I do. Thank you for watching out for me, but please let me share my secrets with him in my own time.”
“Come to bed. You have another two hours to sleep, yes?”
“I do.”
