Heart's Price (MxM)

Chapter 31

[A/N: ~ a few explicit bits ahead 😘🤐]

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That afternoon, Ambrose helps me move my things out of my room and into his.

I've only called the little space my own for a few weeks, but it already feels like home, and I don't like the thought of someone else sitting in 'my' comfortable chair by the window, or sleeping in 'my' bed.

Ambrose's bed, on the other hand, looms in my mind like some leviathan, waiting to rise from the deep and swallow me whole.

I've slept in it once already—slept with Ambrose once already (a fact it seems he treats as common knowledge)—but that had happened almost unexpectedly, and I hadn't had a whole day to work my nerves into an anxious tangle beforehand. Now, the thought that he might want—might expect—something like that again, has me jumping out of my skin every time he speaks.

He notices, of course, and after the fourth time I drop something at the sound of his voice, he makes me face the issue head on.

"Now see here, little wolf," he says, forcing me to stop collecting the pile of books that I'd just dropped and helping me to my feet. "You're wound up tighter 'n a spring again, and I can guess why, but you needn't fear. Mate or not, I won't force anything on you that you don't want."

We're standing in the hall, halfway between his room and mine, near the top of the wide flight of stairs. It's late afternoon by this time. Slanting light filters in from the windows below and golden motes of dust float in the air.

"Or even that you do want, but won't admit," he adds as I straighten my glasses and attempt to conceal the nervous tremble in my hands. "I know I've been a bit forward so far—a bit impatient, maybe—but I've no wish to cause distress. If you'd rather, I'll make do with the couch."

"N-no," I stammer, "I d-don't want you to sleep on the c-couch. I j-just—" I stop myself and swallow. "I just have a hard time trusting... this." I gesture between us, and he frowns.

"You don't trust that I love you?" he asks, a hint of sadness in his voice. "Because I am in love with you, little wolf. I haven't said it yet, but I'm saying it now, and I'll keep saying it until you believe me, if that's what it takes."

My face heats and my heart brightens at his words, but I shake my head. "It's not... It's not that I don't trust you," I say slowly. "It's my own feelings that I don't... that I can't trust, yet."

His frown deepens at the corners of his mouth. "I know you don't want to talk of the past, Noah, but tell me something," he says. "Not everything, just something. Help me understand."

I stare up at him a moment as I realize that, for the all the secrets he may have, at this point I know more about him than he knows about me.

"Alright," I say. "Not now, though. Let's finish this first."

He nods, looking a bit surprised that I've agreed, and we move the last of my few belongings in companionable silence.

~ ☾ ~

That evening, we take Dougal for a walk by the lake. He's excited to be back on his favorite trail, where I haven't taken him since the night when I had the feeling of being watched and had my close call with a car. In the deepening gloom beneath the trees I get an inkling of the same feeling again, but with Ambrose at my side, I feel safe and secure, and find I enjoy being out in the air almost as much as Dougal does.

We reach the lake's far end before I decide how, exactly, to tell Ambrose what he needs to know. I halt at a spot where the path is very near the shore, and stare up at the purple-gold sky, lit with the last reflected light of the vanished sun, and take a deep breath of cool, water-scented air.