Chapter 39
“Keep your eyes closed.”
“They are!” Kira laughed, because it had been minutes since Jayden stopped covering them with his own hands and began to clatter around the house.
Although she could already smell the burning of candles and hear the rustling of paper that suggested Jayden was setting up something elaborate, she kept her eyes firmly shut.
She wants this to be perfect for her. Jayden tried so hard, even sending Noel out to the city with a shopping list while he was laid up in bed.
Kira knows because Noel blabbed to her as soon as she asked.
“Okay.” Jayden swoops back to her side. The house was silent now that everyone had gone home.
Through her closed lids, she could see the rays of moonlight, a white glow that the sun didn’t have but something she is familiar now with at night.
She jumps when Jayden rests his hands on her shoulders, leaning close to press a kiss on the sensitive spot below her ear.
“You can open your eyes now.”
When Kira opens her eyes, despite having an idea of what she was going to see, she still lays back into Jayden’s chest and shakes her head.
“You did all this?”
“I wanted it to be perfect,” he replied.
Kira has a sneaking suspicion that he studied movies for this, or maybe he asked around for someone’s recommendations from romance novels, but either way, her heart bursts not at the cliche little touches but at the gesture.
It is evident in every detail that Jayden wanted this to be just right.
“We said we’d experiment with romance,” Jayden adds nervously.
“I remember,” she whispered.
Jayden had switched off the lights but thrown open the windows so that moonlight could spill inside.
There were candles everywhere, and Kira grows nervous when she remembers that half of Jayden’s house is made of wood, but all of her favorite scents fill the room.
The flowers she once mentioned to Jayden that were her favorite; the earthy scents of the forest that she had fallen in love with; a sweet scent in the air like candied fruits.
“You did all this?”
“Do you like it?”
“I love it,” she whispers, as if speaking any louder would disturb the atmosphere.
Jayden takes her hands and pulls her towards the bedroom, a smile creeping over his face.
“Now, I want you to know that I’m feeling much better and that you don’t have to worry about my physical state.”
“Why?” Kira narrows her eyes at him.
To answer her, Jayden sweeps her off her feet literally and into his arms in a motion so rapid that Kira did not have a second to stop him.
She tucks into his chest and grabs his shirt to have something to hold onto, laughing against his neck because this is so Jayden.
Her boyfriend carried her across the threshold of their bedroom, one arm beneath her legs and the other wrapped tight around her back, and she didn’t have the strength to scold him.
His stitches were out, after all.
Jayden had scattered rose petals on the bed and Kira had to bite back a laugh because Jayden is just so sweet. Adorable, in the way that only he can be.
“You know this is cute, even for you?” She sighs.
Jayden grins as he lays her down on the bed and crawls over her to cover her with kisses for at least a minute.
She had never made out like this with anyone before. This type of closeness with anyone else would’ve made her anxious, but having Jayden’s warm presence all around her is comforting.
It pleases both her human and her wolf. She strokes every part of him that she can reach before pulling at his shirt.
She had always loved to admire Jayden’s body.
Jayden helps her by sitting back on his heels where he straddled her body.
He pulls his tee over her head, Kira’s eyes trace the new scars and the old, a map of a lifetime spent in the woods.
“You’re like a superhero,” she giggles, because what were deep gashes after the fight are only white scars.
“Please, I haven’t worked out in two weeks,” Jayden groans.
“I wasn’t commenting on your body,” she laughs.
“Though now you mention it...”
With an excuse to touch him, Kira runs her fingers over every line of muscle. She starts from his broad shoulders and trails down to the angular pectorals, daring to brush his nipples just a moment to watch the way his breathing tightens, and then she follows the path between his abdominals and strokes each one out, like she’s counting them.
Kira has never considered herself to be a girl of simple pleasures and with Jayden shirtless in front of her like this, she likes to indulge herself.
“May I?” Jayden asks, toying with her shirt. “If you don’t, I’ll tear it off myself.”
Jayden cocks his head to the side, like he’s considering which he’d prefer, but he settles on undressing her.
Just as Jayden had always been, he was so gentle in spite of his large frame.
He unbuttons her shirt and stops at her jeans, like he’s anxious about moving too fast.
Instead, he strokes over her stomach, to her chest, the dips between her chest and back to her face to hold her cheeks for more kisses.
“Have you done this before?” he whispers, brushing his lips over the shell of her ear. “Not with anyone I cared about the way I care about you.”
“Me neither,” Jayden murmurs. “It feels different, right?”
She nods. Getting to her mid-twenties without any great love wasn’t something that ever bothered her.
Watching her parents as a child was enough to scare her off relationships for life, and the clinical part of her that studied law found it difficult to believe that love like that could exist, not least when she read some of the cases lovers embroiled themselves in.
She never felt that she was starved of anything.
Yet now she feels like she’s been fed in abundance.
It wasn’t clinical anymore.