Objectively, I’d probably put on a little padding. Not an extreme amount, but I hadn’t exactly denied myself any of the cuisine in any of the countries I’d been to. And I didn’t work out quite as often as I used to at Lo’s gym.
I’d lost a little of that plumpness in the face that all girls lose in their twenties, too. And while I thought that the sharper edges were sexy, I had no idea what anyone else would think of them.
Whathewould think of them.
I mean, not that it mattered.
The last thing I wanted was to care what he thought of me. I just wanted him to think I was at least as attractive as I had been when we were younger. Especially because he was still hot. It would imbalance the power if he thought I’d lost my appeal.
His shock and immediate freak-out, I will admit, warmed my cold, dead heart a little bit.
Him not wanting me there made me aware that he at least knew that, all those years ago, he’d been in the wrong.
It would have been harder to teach him a lesson if he thought he hadn’t done anything, that he’d been perfectly justified in leaving like he had.
But he clearly didn’t want to have to be stuck with me, which said he was fully aware of who’d been the bad guy in our clusterfuck of a relationship.
In the end, it had been Fallon who saved my plan.
I’d actually lucked out with that, because if the president had still been his father Reign, I likely would have been nudged out of the clubhouse already.
But Fallon? I knew from the second I saw him walk in that I could count on him. Not because I knew him, per se. He’d been a little ahead of me in school, the hot, dangerous fuckboy that everyone wanted. But he’d also always been a little bit of an asshole, someone who liked to push buttons, who liked to see how shit played out.
Of course he was going to get a kick out of watching one of his prospects squirm.
In fact, it was Fallon who clearly said something to Valen in private that had his shoulders slumping a bit as he took a deep breath, then turned back to face me.
Everything about him looked resigned right then.
“I’m supposed to show you around,” he told me as he moved back toward the group I was standing in. “Voss, you coming?” he added, drawing my attention to someone behind me.
Turning, I saw who he was speaking to. He was tall and strong, maybe even a little on the burly side, with a full blond beard and a bunch of ink as well. He had both sides of his head shaved, but had long blond hair down the center that totally gave him a sexy, broody, Viking look. He had a prominent brow which made his eyes fall a bit in shadow, but the light was good inside the clubhouse, and I could see they were blue as he pushed off the wall and made his way toward us.
Voss.
Another prospect.
Which meant he was another man I would be sharing a room with.
I probably should have been freaked out about that prospect. But I’d been sharing hostels and all sorts of other accommodations with various unknown, totally sketchy, dudes for years.
Not much scared me in the way of menfolk anymore.
What Lo and her team of teachers hadn’t trained out of me, life had beaten out of me.
In fact, my biggest concern was that I would be stuck on a lower bunk, because I was a light as hell sleeper, and one of them climbing down at night to go pee, or coming in late to go to sleep, was going to wake me.
And me without sleep… yeah… that wasn’t pretty.
“Louana, Voss. Voss, Louana,” Valen said, and maybe a part of me was expecting butterflies when he said my name again, like there had been—though I’d desperately been trying to deny it—when he’d first breathed it out when he’d walked into the clubhouse.
There were none, though.
And, really, there was no reason for there to be.
Valen had never even called me Louana unless he was trying to be pretend-stern with me.
“Voss,” I said, giving him a nod.