Ken smiled back. “They must smell that this is a predator’s territory.”
“They sure do,” Lynn said, with casual confidence.
That was sexy. Ken hadn’t ever quite realized it before, but there was something about a woman who was also an apex predator, just like him. Who was sure of her ability to protect her home and her family.
Yep. Very, very sexy.
“Okay, upstairs,” Lynn was saying, so Ken followed her up the stairs.
Appreciating the view as he did, of course. He kept his hands to himself, because he was certain that Lynn was not a woman who’d appreciate a surprise grope on the staircase. But he was tempted.
“Mostly bedrooms up here,” Lynn said. “My grandmother’s sewing room is back there. Except she never really sewed.” She smiled. “She said that she called it her sewing room so that she’d have somewhere to go where people would think she was doing something useful and serious, when really she just wanted to read a trashy novel without anyone seeing.”
Ken laughed. He liked Lynn’s grandmother more and more every time Lynn mentioned her.
“Otherwise, it’s bedrooms.” Lynn pointed them out. “That was Grandmother’s.” She opened the door, and Ken saw a beautiful old four-poster bed with a floral blanket on it, and windows looking out over the mountains.
“And that’s Stella’s, and that’s my niece Eva’s, and…this is mine.” Lynn led him down the hall to a back corner, and opened the door.
It was immediately clear to Ken that this room, alone of the rooms he’d seen so far, had a person living and breathing within it. Lynn’s things were spread all around—jackets and shirts in a pile on a chair, papers on the dresser, random little bits of outdoor-survival equipment scattered around. A pile of loose change on the nightstand. The bed was only half-made, the comforter in a soft-looking pile on top of the sheets.
Ken wanted to soak it all in. Learn what sorts of things Lynn left lying around. What she carried in her pockets and dropped absentmindedly onto an end table when she undressed. What she forgot she was carrying and set down in the first place that came to hand. What she was always meaning to clean up, and never quite got around to.
When he looked over at her, though, she was blushing. Ken tried to remember if he’d seen her blush before. It was endearing as all hell.
“Sorry it’s such a mess,” she said. “I’d claim that it’s cleaner most of the time, but, well, I’d be lying.”
Ken smiled at her, feeling strangely tender in the face of normal life detritus. “I don’t mind,” he said. “I usually keep a tight camp, but when I’m at home, I leave stuff lying around all the time.” He’d probably do it more often if he had more stuff. Being in the Marines had taught him to make do with whatever he had, only have what he needed, and that had carried over into the rest of his life pretty thoroughly.
It didn’t help that he’d lived mostly in tiny studio apartments, moving around for school and then for his job, and now he spent weeks or months at a time away on research trips. He’d never had the opportunity to sit down and acquire a normal person’s amount of stuff.
And now, he might be—
Shit. The implications of Lynn showing him around this place suddenly hit him. Hard.
They were still holding hands, which he was glad of, all of a sudden. He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it, a soft kiss, and watched her shiver in response. “Have you lived here your whole life, then?”
Lynn nodded. “Born and raised in these four walls, never lived anywhere else.”
“It’s a beautiful home,” he said softly.
Lynn nodded. “Gorgeous. My great-grandfather really knew what he was doing. He built a lot of the homes in this area.” She shrugged. “But it’s too big of a house just for me. I rattle around in it like a penny in a can, sometimes. Hardly use most of the rooms—some of them have been shut up for years. I love it, but…I wish my sister Stella hadn’t left, sometimes, even though we fight all the time when she’s here.”
“So,” Ken started, “this is one of those moments where I’m going to say something scary. Maybe we could just stand here after I say it and be freaking terrified, okay?”
Lynn stood up straighter. He saw a challenging spark in her eyes, just before she said, “Say what you gotta say, mister. I’m not scared.”
He couldn’t help but grin. “Fine, if you put it like that.” He took a deep breath. “Do you want me to come live in this house with you?”
She met his eyes. Despite her words, he could see the tremulous fear in them. But her answer was a brave, “Yes.”
Ken let out his breath, and somewhere in the process it turned into a laugh. “Oh, good.”
She hesitated for a long minute—and then copied what he’d done to her: she lifted their joined hands, and pressed a kiss to the back of his.
On the one hand, it was a strange thing: women didn’t kiss men’s hands, not like that. But the soft press of her lips against his hand, and the way she held his eyes when she did it, unblinking, made a warmth rise in Ken’s chest, a feeling of safety, of homecoming.
This was his mate, and she wanted him to come live in her home, cook food for her in her kitchen, curl up in front of her fire and stretch out in front of her sunlit windows. Leave things lying around in her room.