by Sylvia Frost
14.) And erase items 9-14 because they have nothing to do with traits required of a good boyfriend and are just your own insecurities.
15.) Pull it together, Cynthia.
Cynthia would’ve never guessed that her stomach would be the one cockblocking round two of the best sex of her life. Let alone that it’d be doing it in an office so fancy it could qualify as porn for a corporate interior decorator. Yet here she was, sprawled out on the scratchy carpet, looking and feeling like she had gotten flattened by a runaway sex train. Her stomach pooched out, vocally grumbling.
Rex looked worse than she felt. The sleek, blue pinstriped suit he had changed into after leaving her office was now so wrinkled it’d give a dry cleaner nightmares. His hair seemed more like an explosion of sandy locks than any kind of coherent style, and then, of course, there was his mouth. His normally thin, sensuous lips were swollen from licking her, and they kept opening and closing, as if he wasn’t just lost for words, but had forgotten what language was all together.
Only the room had escaped semi-unscathed. Despite their vigorous activities, the very expensive teleconference table remained unbroken, and other than a few scattered pieces of clothing, the rest of the room seemed to be still in one piece. Her paper bag of takeout had remained upright underneath one of the leather overly ergonomic chairs.
Cynthia’s stomach groused another melodic gurgle. “Food does sound like a good idea,” she said finally, unsure of where to start in the clean-up process. She settled for patting down her own hair first before gathering her pants, bra, and underwear from around the room.
Rex said nothing, just watched from the corner of the office in a way that made her wonder if she’d have to lock him in the conference room if she wanted a chance to eat in peace before round two.
Thankfully, Rex still seemed to be in shock from the force of their coupling. As she finished dressing by slipping on her flats, he stayed put, breathing heavily. Cynthia guessed it wasn’t from physical exertion, because Rex’s face was pale, not red. Plus, the man had a six-pack for goodness sakes.
Clothes on and some semblance of order restored, Cynthia gave a long, considering look to the glass conference table. There were no smears from their juices on it. None that she could see. “Rex, do you have any cleaning supplies?”
“Eat. You can clean later,” Rex grunted.
“I’m not going to eat on top of a table I was just having sex on.” Cynthia fumbled in her pockets, searching for a hair-tie for at least thirty seconds before remembering that she had chosen to go without one today. She relented and settled for grooming her hair back behind her ears. “No matter how good it was.”
The thought of sex clearly resonated with Rex, if the suddenly predatory hunch of his shoulders was anything to go by.
“You should put on your pants.” Cynthia gestured at his boxers still around his ankles.
He looked down, back up, down again, and only then decided to listen to her, hoisting up his underwear over his still-hard member. Clothing his cock must’ve returned some blood flow to his brain because he said, “We can eat outside in the reception area. I’ll have the janitor clean this up tomorrow.”
“Rex—”
As he buttoned his pants, he gave her steely stare. “Cynthia, I understand your need for order and cleanliness, but, if I stay in this room with you, I can promise you we’ll only make more of a mess, not clean it up.”
Every instinct in Cynthia wanted to argue. One didn’t just leave sex residue, no matter how invisible, on a public space. And yet, what choice did she have? It wasn’t like she had her caddy of cleaning products with her, and even if she did, couldn’t cleaning at least wait until she took care of her own needs? After not eating all day, her stomach was running out of patience.
She gave a sigh that sounded surprisingly good-natured and said, “Fine.” Grabbing the bag, she swung it behind her enticingly as she pranced outside to the reception area. “Come on then!”
Funny, after having sex with Rex in his penthouse suite, she had been left hollow and empty, but after being bent over an office desk and pounded with primal rigor, Cynthia felt like she was the most powerful woman on the planet.
***
There is something off about the reception area for Rex’s office, Cynthia thought as she took out the black, plastic boxes of carryout and set them on the low, circular table surrounded by egg-shaped swiveling chairs that, much like the teleconference table, seemed to belong more to the idea of someone’s vision of a high-tech office than the reality of it. It wasn’t that the furniture choices were impractical exactly; they just didn’t fit the picture she was beginning to assemble of who Rex West was.
His house with its dark masculine wood and art-gallery amount of paintings made sense. With his wine knowledge and penchant for throwing actual masquerade balls, Rex was clearly a man who appreciated culture. Crazy animal sex was a little harder to explain, except that she had always sensed something lurking underneath Rex’s debonair dance skills and quick comebacks.
But this sort of space-age modernism? It didn’t fit.
It was too… artsy? No. New? No, that wasn’t right either.
As she arranged the boxes so that the fifth container of teriyaki chicken could fit on the table—gotten just in case Rex wasn’t a sushi kind of guy—Rex emerged from the conference room. He didn’t so much walk toward her as prowl. Looking at the way he moved, Cynthia was amazed she hadn’t made the connection between Rex and the boy in the woods earlier. When Rex reached the cluster of egg-shaped chairs, he glanced between the takeout and Cynthia, as if deciding which to eat first. It was then that she realized what it was exactly about the office that didn’t fit.
It all seemed too human for Rex. If werebeasts weren’t most definitely extinct, she would’ve said that Rex was acting exactly like one of the princes in the old movies Bel loved, royal and sophisticated in his own way, but uncomfortable with some of the stranger trappings of humanity. With their tribal, pack-like customs centered on strong family bonds, usually werebeasts scorned civilization all together. Only a rare few integrated into human society, and they usually lagged behind the rest of the human race’s taste in pop culture.
And what about that patch of hair on her leg? Weren’t werebeast’s mates supposed to have some special mark? That was what Naomi, the character in Bel’s book, Mates of Darkness, had. Cynthia had never really considered it before because the whole thing was, after all, impossible, but…
No.
Cynthia grabbed the chopsticks and unwrapped them with a neat tear. She was acting crazy. Just because Rex screwed like a beast didn’t mean he was one. What would she guess next—that he was a literal dinosaur? The thought was equally plausible. Anyway, the mark on her leg had stopped hurting so if it was some kind of sign, what did that mean then?
Cynthia pinched a roll of sushi between her chopsticks and offered it up to the still-standing Rex. “Here’s food, as promised!”
Rex peered over the array of containers, like a little boy looking into an aquarium, wary that the fish might jump out and nip his nose. “Sushi.”
He was trying to sound enthusiastic, but instead of finding Rex’s obvious disinterest in her meal annoying, Cynthia found herself choking back a breathy laugh. “Jesus, you’re looking at it like you’ve never seen sushi before. Don’t you have a branch in Tokyo?”
Rex spun around an egg chair with his foot and slipped into it, not taking his eyes off the fish. “I’m sure it will be delicious.” His voice almost cracked from the effort of sounding excited as he picked up a roll with his hand, forgoing chopsticks.
Cynthia pushed her lips together to keep from smirking. “Not only does it look delicious, but it’s also compact and organized by flavor, see. Here’s the crab, avocado—” Cynthia stopped, unable to keep from smiling. “It’s okay if you’re not a sushi person, Rex. I got teriyaki chicken, too, if you’d rather have that.” Cynthia pushed the third box toward him. The bottom of the pla
stic takeout container left a tiny trail of condensation in its wake, and she snatched a napkin to wipe it up.
“Thank you,” Rex said, placing the sushi roll back among its fellow pieces. “Usually, I have a much broader pallet, but tonight, I’m in a very singular mood.” He still hadn’t picked out the chicken, only gazed ravenously at her.
“No problem.” Cynthia shrugged and delicately bit into the sushi roll in her mouth before even a single grain of rice fell from it. “More for me.” As she chewed—with her mouth closed, of course—she felt Rex’s eyes once again running over her body.
“So, what did you think about my note?” he pressed.
Cynthia stopped chewing, the fresh, spicy flavors of the crab and ginger tasting suddenly stale. After she had received the text messages, she was so sure she would be the one to bring up his cryptic way of telling her they had met before.
And yet, somehow, during their discussion of how to fix her business, her brain had stopped trying to poke holes in the plausibility of them working as a team and started trying to fill them. If she was completely honest, she had totally forgotten about anything except for Boxes & Broom for the past hour. Well, that and sex.
Cynthia covered her mouth, finished chewing, and swallowed.
“It seems like a funny coincidence,” she carefully said. “But what really freaked me out was the shoe. I threw that into Central Park. How did you get it? Did you sleep there last night or something? Is that why you…?”
She trailed off, not wanting to state the obvious about the hot mess he had been when he interrupted her meeting. Rex finished cutting a large square of the chicken surprisingly quickly with only the use of the flimsy plastic fork. Spearing it, he gobbled it all up in one bite. He even swallowed it in a couple of seconds and answered. “Do you know Bane Stilskin?”
“Yes… Big money angel investor, owns Spinning Wheels ride-sharing company, among other things.”
Rex wiped a streak of sauce from the corner of his mouth. He must not have shaved that morning because the beginning prickles of stubble had begun to sprout on his chin. “Angel is not a word I would use where Stilskin is concerned. But yes. Apparently you had a conversation with him?”
“I did?” Cynthia’s brow furrowed as she chewed the inside of her mouth. “When?” But just as she asked the question, she smacked her thigh with her hand. “Oh my God, don’t tell me he sometimes likes to drive his own car to answer ride-share requests like some kind of undercover boss.”
“I won’t tell you, as you already seem to know.”
“That is absolutely insane.” Cynthia laughed. “And he’s how you got my shoe? You know he was right—billionaires play some seriously strange games.”
“You don’t know the half of it, darling.” Miraculously, Rex had devoured the entire dish of chicken in only minutes, and he snapped the top back onto the empty container. “But if you don’t have any more questions, I think we have a more pressing problem to deal with than Stilskin’s meddling.”
Cynthia looked down at her still-full box of sushi, lips scrunching to the side. She was still hungry. “We do?”
“It’s almost nine o’clock and you need a place to stay.”
Suddenly, the remaining sushi didn’t look so appetizing. “Oh, right.” Her shoulders tensed, blades almost touching, waiting for him to order her to come live with him at the Plaza again, using the late hour as an excuse, but he just waited expectantly, still, but not rigid like he had been when she first met him.
“Well,” she offered finally, “my stepsister said she was going to move out, too. I suppose we could find a place to sublet not too far from my office. The only problem is that will shrink the window I have to fix Boxes & Broom because it will mean paying myself a salary to cover rent.” Cynthia's nostrils flared. The thought of raising her own salary while the company was in trouble made her want to slap herself straight. “But I guess I can spring for a hotel room somewhere tonight.”
The restraint Rex was exercising in not offering her a chance to stay with him was so palpable Cynthia could taste it. Although he was hardly a burly guy, his presence pushed out against the constraining cocoon of the egg chair. He scooted forward, leaning into the space between them. “Cynthia?”
“Yes?” The sleeves of his button-down shirt were undone, Cynthia wanted to reach out and fix them. She also wanted to reach out and smooth his unruly hair. There was so much she wanted to do for Rex. With Rex.
“Would you stay with me?” he asked, low. “Just for tonight.”
Although his posture, spread legs and gleaming eyes, was all masculine dominance, there was no mistaking his question for anything other than the request of a lonely man. One who had been lonely a long time without even realizing it.
Just like her.
Some people said falling in love was like being swept away in a flood, and sex with Rex definitely fulfilled the natural-disaster levels of passion, but there was also another sensation that crept through her as she gazed warmly at him. Because if love could be a tsunami, it could also be a trickle, eddying through the constraints and challenges of reality instead of tearing them down. That trickle could be damned up with enough force of will, or dry up in the scorching heat of anger and misunderstanding. That kind of love wasn’t fate or destiny. It was a fragile kind of forever. It was a choice.
And at that moment, just for that moment, Cynthia chose it.
“Yes.” She nodded and took Rex’s hands, buttoning up his cufflink with a pat on his wrist. “I’ll spend the night with you, Rex West.”
Chapter 27
Before Rex had changed for the first time. Before his father’s death. Before he had taken up the mantle of his company. Before his brother had found his mate. Before he had found his. Before he had lost her. Before all of that, Rex had been eighteen and had learned the toughest lesson of all. There was no such thing as forever. While it was his father who taught him about numbers and humans, it was his mother who taught him that truth.
She was a willowy woman who kept her long, sandy-grey hair in a single loose braid. Rex’s mother didn’t work like his father, but she spent half of her time looking after her three boys, Samson, Rex, and Luther, and the other half caring for her other children—her many exotic plants in the greenhouse. The rambunctious brothers weren’t allowed inside the conservatory for fear of them trampling over the exotic plants. Luther, who had started changing the earliest of them all at only thirteen, was especially forbidden from entering, but a day after Rex had taken over the company officially and was about to leave for New York, his mother had invited him to take a look at a new rosebush she had purchased from a secretive English breeder. She opened the glass doors and let him inside the humid, fragile house. She did so casually with a simple crook of her finger, not looking back to see if he followed.
His mother never looked back. Rex wasn’t sure what had happened to her before she bonded to his father, but from the little he knew, it hadn’t been good. Werewolf bonds usually had to be formed before the age of twenty-five at the latest, although they could be consummated at any time after the initial bond without damage. Unfortunately, his mother hadn’t met his father until her early thirties. Only something causing great emotional distress could forge a bond between two people who were already settled in themselves.
His mother always kept a shard of that sadness inside of her, and it splintered even the soul-consuming happiness she had with his father and the love she had for her sons. That day, for the first time, she shared that pain with Rex.
She sat him down on the little bench at the center of the greenhouse, right next to her rosebush, and patted him on the knee. She mumbled a while about how she had spent far too much on a silly old plant, and how handsome he looked in his suit, before she finally sighed and told him the reason she had brought him in.
It was time that he learned the truth about the bond between his father and her.
“There are a lot of beautiful stories about werebeasts, m
y darling,” she had said in that dreamy storyteller’s cadence of hers. “And you know lots of them. About the werewolf emperors who used to rule Rome and the lions who protected Queen Elizabeth, and of course, the princes who fought so valiantly to keep their territory in Europe. But they’re not all grand. Some of them don’t have happy endings, sweetheart.”
“I know that,” he said. “I’m not a child.”
“I’m not sure you do.”
“I know that we were slaughtered like dogs in the streets of London and Paris, and in the country side of Bavaria. I know the wolves were supposed to be divided up into four clans—the Wests, Norths, Souths, and the Easts, but we don’t even know if there are any other Wests out there, let alone Norths, Easts, or Souths because the risk of revealing our true identities is too high to seek out even our distant family. I know that we will never be free, except living here on the goddamn fringes of civilization, because if humans ever found us, they’d murder us all, still. Even after a century,” he recited, the words tumbling out faster and faster, hoping that if he told all their kind’s unhappy endings before she did, he could erase the glassiness in her eyes. He couldn’t.
“Oh sweetheart, that’s not the kind of sad story I’m talking about.” She shook her head. Then she smiled, a very old, very sad smile, and scooted off the bench to kneel at the foot of the rosebush. She parted the branches with a tender mastery before pulling out a single rose and joining him on the bench once more. Her warm, dirt-dusted hands folded over Rex’s own and she looked him straight in the eye. “Your father has cancer, Rex.”
“Oh,” Rex said.
He wished he felt shock, but instead, all Rex could think was how much sense it made. Terrible, messed-up sense. His father giving him the company at such a young age, guiding Luther through his shifting, instead of encouraging his younger brother to wait until he was older as was custom, the long walks he took with their eldest brother, Samson, from which he always came back looking as if he had trekked for miles instead of only a few acres.