“Maybe.”
He snakes his arms around my waist, crushing me to him. Some girls might shrink away from all that sweat, but not me. I revel in it. I lean into him and I breathe him in. He returns the favor, and for a moment we just stand there, wrapped around one another.
“You’ve ruined my plans,” Zeth whispers lightly into my ear.
“And what plans might those be?”
“You’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?”
“Tell me.”
He shakes his head, pulling back to grin down at me. “Oh. There she is. My angry girl. Been a while,” he laughs. I’m getting used to this now—having a boyfriend who laughs sometimes. It’s the most delicious feeling.
“No more surprises, Zeth,” I grumble, though I can’t even pretend to be pissed for long.
He is immoveable, as ever. “I’m not telling. How about I show you instead?”
“Now? I thought I was early?”
Zeth shrugs. “Fuck it.” He pulls on his T-shirt—more muscles moving and shifting, sending warm spirals of want through my body—and then he’s taking me by the hand and guiding us to the Camaro he has parked two streets away. The Camaro. I never thought he’d get it back, and yet somehow he did. He just came home with it one day and I didn’t ask questions.
I have plenty of questions as Zeth drives us out of the city, though. Once we’ve left Seattle’s limits, he pulls over onto the side of the road and pulls a length of silk out of the glove box. It’s the same length of silk he used to blindfold me when he introduced me to the cane.
“Oh?” I ask.
“Uhuh.” He reaches across and ties the strip of material around my head, and I let him.
“Am I going to need to grade my pain in a moment?” My breath catches in my throat.
Zeth’s laugh is a deep rumble in his chest. “Wait and see.”
We drive for no more than ten minutes, the road swinging from left to right as we head down what can only be mountainside roads, before Zeth pulls the car over again and kills the engine. I know better than to remove the blindfold without being told it’s okay, so I sit there, my blood buzzing through my veins in anticipation, while Zeth gets out of the car and comes to open my door.
“Careful. Watch your step,” he whispers into my ear, his mouth dangerously close to my skin. With my hand in his, we walk about twenty paces before he stops us and carefully unties my blindfold. His face is the first thing I see, and he’s excited. I can see the light of it in his eyes. I don’t avert my gaze to see where he’s brought me—I’m far too fascinated by the look he’s wearing. He cups my face in his hands and he kisses me, carefully placing his lips against mine—a feather-light touch.
“So,” he says. His smile fades a little, replaced by…nerves? Is he nervous? “We can’t stay at The Regency Rooms forever. And I know how you feel about the warehouse. So…I thought…” He steps to the side, and I see it:
My house.
My beautiful house that I spent so long making my own. Except now it looks a little different. The window frames have all been repainted. I have a new front door that looks positively impregnable, and there are security lights every few feet, dark now but promising to light up the entire hillside as soon as the sun goes down.
“What’s this?”
“I figured…I figured you should move back up here. And…so should I.”
I turn away from the house, fixing my gaze on Zeth. “You moved yourself into my house while I was gone?”
“Don’t pretend like you’re not ecstatically happy about it, angry girl,” he says, pulling me to him. He buries his face into my neck and nips me with his teeth, and I can’t help but laugh.
“Oh, I’m happy about it. All right, all right, I’m happy about it!” I can barely breathe with how tight he’s holding me. He quits biting me and leans up to brush the tip of his nose against my ear. “On a scale of one to ten, Sloane?”
I close my eyes and let my body go limp against him. “Ten,” I tell him. “Definitely a ten.”
Zeth doesn’t say anything, but his smile broadens. Then, for the first time, I see a little Lacey in him. They were always polar opposites, but in the space of a heartbeat—there one second, gone the next—I see the faintest flash of his sister in his smile. “I’m going to carry you inside now and I’m going to fuck you in our bed, Sloane. But first…”
“First?” I feel like I’m on the verge of passing out.
“First…I heard you say something once, Sloane. Something you didn’t mean for me to hear.”
The world suddenly whips back into focus with the force of a snapped elastic band. Oh god. Why the hell is he bringing that up? My stomach feels like it’s about to fall through the floor. “Uhh, yeah. Well, that’s not impor—”
“It is important. I need…I want you to say it again.” Heat blossoms in my cheeks, no doubt turning them bright crimson. I try to back away, but Zeth won’t let me. His hands tighten on my hips, and he brings his mouth down so it’s almost touching mine. “I want to hear you say it, Sloane. I want you to tell me.”
Some people might say they hear nothing but the sound of their heartbeat hammering in their own ears at a moment like this, but not me. I hear so much more. I hear the promise in Zeth’s voice. I hear the skip in his heartbeat. I hear the stir of the mountain and the slow hum of the city in the distance—the place where Zeth and I met and our lives became forever entwined—while he waits for me to speak. And then I hear myself saying the words he wants to hear, and they sound perfect and so right.