Chapter 31

CHAPTER 31

P aige drifted awake to a faint, delicious aroma, an even more delicious feeling of satisfied languor, and a vague sense of something missing.

She rolled, reaching out. “Conleth?”

Her searching hand encountered nothing but rumpled sheets. She propped herself up on one elbow, blinking sleep out of her eyes.

From the golden light slanting through the window blinds, she’d slept well into the morning. There was no sign of Conleth, but an insulated French press now sat on the bedside table, next to a coffee mug, a plate covered with a linen napkin, and a note:

I’m in the office downstairs. If you need anything, just call.

It wasn’t signed, but there was no mistaking Conleth’s meticulous handwriting. Peeking underneath the napkin, she discovered two perfect, freshly baked croissants, along with butter and a tiny pot of strawberry jam.

The coffee in the French press was still warm, and infinitely superior to anything she’d had at camp. Or anywhere. When she tried a bite of croissant, that was perfect too; layers of buttery, flaky pastry that practically melted on her tongue.

She was halfway through the second croissant before it occurred to her that even Conleth couldn’t have made a quick trip to France to fetch breakfast before she woke up. Maybe he just kept a stock of store-bought pastries ready in his freezer, but that didn’t seem quite his style.

Huh. Guess he really can make French pastries from scratch.

Licking the last flaky crumbs from her fingers, she went in search of the bathroom. The first door she tried led to an enormous walk-in closet, mostly filled with dozens of identical suits and immaculately pressed shirts. The second led to…well, she assumed it had to be the ensuite, but only because it seemed unlikely Conleth would be running a luxury spa in his own home.

“Okay,” she said, surveying a shower with six different angled heads and a gleaming touch panel offering options like Tropical Rain or Ocean Mist. “I could get used to this.”

Some experimentation produced hot, pulsing jets of water that massaged her body from every angle. She gave up trying to decipher Conleth’s shampoo bottles—apparently whatever he did to his hair involved six different steps, and possibly a chemistry degree—and settled for washing herself from top to toe with foaming shower gel that turned into a rich, creamy lather in her palm and was no doubt ruinously expensive. She couldn’t identify the subtle fragrance it left on her skin, but it reminded her of Conleth himself—complex, sophisticated, with an unexpected note of sweetness.

I could definitely get used to this.

A stack of fresh towels waited on a heated rack. Wrapping herself in one—it was big enough to cover her from shoulder to ankle, and soft as spun clouds—she padded back into the bedroom. She’d expected to have to hunt for her clothes, but she found them neatly folded on a leather armchair in the corner. And not just folded, as she discovered when she dressed. Each item was freshly laundered, so spotlessly clean they looked like new. He’d even ironed her camp t-shirt.

What time did he get up?

Even for a self-professed insomniac with speed powers and ADHD, this was starting to seem a little over the top. Especially when she made her way downstairs and confirmed that yes, he really had made breakfast from scratch, judging from the mixing bowls and flour-dusted rolling pin next to the kitchen sink.

“Conleth?” she called hesitantly.

“Through here.”

She followed the sound of his voice down a corridor that led to an open door. When she slipped inside, she couldn’t help a startled intake of breath.

“Yes, I know,” Conleth said, not looking around. He had his back to her, attention fixed on three large computer monitors arrayed in an arc on his desk. “Sorry. Try not to knock anything over.”

That was easier said than done. In stark contrast to the rest of the house, the office was—and there was no polite way to put it—an absolute disaster. Every shelf and surface overflowed with a jumble of books, files, and notes, apparently in no order whatsoever. There were even piles of paper scattered across the floor. The overall effect was of stepping into a nest made by a very literate hamster.

She picked her way cautiously across the room, having to hop in a few places. “What happened here?”

“Me.” Conleth’s fingers danced across his keyboard. “It always looks like this, I’m afraid. I have a cleaning service that keeps the rest of the house in order, but they don’t touch this room. I can’t have people interfering with my system.”

She eyed the chaos dubiously. “There’s a system?”

“Yes,” Conleth said, tone dry. “It’s a complex organizational scheme of my own devising. I call it ‘keep everything out in the open so I don’t forget it exists the moment it’s out of sight.’ It’s an ADHD thing.”

She was starting to get some inkling of how much that affected his life. “Your office at camp doesn’t look like this.”

“That’s because I have to share it with Zephyr. I’ve tried to explain the clear merits of my method, but he remains somewhat unconvinced.” Conleth shrugged, still typing. “Plus, of course, it tends to alarm parents if the camp office looks like the secret lair of a serial killer with a fetish for Post-It notes.”

The sides of his monitors were festooned with dozens of sticky notes, overlapping in a riot of colors. She leaned against the back of his chair, trying to decipher the jumble of windows filling his screens. He seemed to be looking at…recruitment websites?

“You were up early,” she said. “What are you working on?”

“Potential candidates.” He added a row to his spreadsheet, rapidly entering a name and contact details, along with a cryptic stream of abbreviated notes. “For camp manager.”

“I thought you already had someone in mind.”

“Turns out he’s not likely to be available.” With a few quick keystrokes, he closed his windows, revealing a desktop covered in jumbled icons. “Zephyr’s going to need more than one person to replace me. I haven’t been giving the matter enough thought.”

She rested her chin on his shoulder. “Well, you’ve been kind of distracted lately.”

“Mm.” Catching her wrist, he spun his chair around, pulling her into his lap. “I’m feeling somewhat distracted right now.”

She wound her arms around his neck, returning the kiss. It still felt unreal to be able to touch him like this, whenever she wanted. She couldn’t help feeling a tiny flicker of irrational guilt.

As if sensing that inner conflict, Conleth pulled back. “Having second thoughts?”

“Not about you.” To prove it, she kissed him again, more boldly. Then she sighed, resting her forehead against his. “But I can’t help worrying about Archie. And my mom.”

Conleth nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that, too.”

Of course he had. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

The somewhat evasive flick of his eyes suggested the answer was no. “I tried to make a plan. Something I could show you, so that you wouldn’t have to worry about your family. But I kept getting stuck. It’s not that I couldn’t come up with ideas. If anything, I had too many ideas. Setting up an ADHD assessment for Archie, finding a specialist shifter doctor, a more understanding school, help for your mother…there are a lot of things I could do. But no matter how I tried to put them together into a complete strategy, it didn’t seem quite right. I keep feeling there’s something I’m missing.”

“It’s all right. I wasn’t expecting you to come up with a miraculous solution overnight.”

“I’m your mate. That’s what I’m supposed to do.” He ran a hand through his hair, frustration tightening his jaw. “What good am I if I can’t solve all your problems?”

“We’ll figure it out. One step at a time.” She kissed the side of his mouth. “Together, all right?”

He let out his breath. “I should have just asked you in the first place. Whatever you need, I’m here for you. What do you want me to do?”

She had to think about that one for a moment. She knew Conleth would work tirelessly to help her family, but they hadn’t even begun to think about how their lives would fit together. Her mom was expecting her to come home at the end of the summer as though nothing had changed. But everything was going to change.

“I’m going to have to talk about all this with my mom,” she said. Crap, where was she even going to start? “And I think that’s something I have to do in person.”

From the way Conleth nodded, she could tell he’d already followed the same of thought. “And you won’t be able to do that until the end of the summer.”

“I know you want to help my family. And that we’ve got a ton of practical stuff to figure out.” She remembered the moment she’d first seen the camp; that sense of stepping into a private haven, away from the problems of daily life. “But could we maybe…worry about all that later? Just enjoy the rest of the summer with the campers, before we have to go back to real life?”

Conleth looked a little pained. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I am extremely bad at doing nothing.”

She ran her palms down his chest, relishing the way his muscles tightened. “Oh, I can think of a few things you can do.”

“In that case…” He drew her closer, mouth leaving hers to trail down her neck. “You need to decide what you want.”

She rocked against him, pleasure already building. “What are my options?”

“Well.” His hands slid under her t-shirt. “I could strip you naked and bend you over this desk, and we could see how many times I can make you come before you make me lose all control. Or…”

It was getting hard to form words. “Or?”

He let out a sigh, his breath warm against her skin. “Or we could be on time for work.”

“All right.” Paige ran her hands over her windswept hair, smoothing down the flyaway wisps that had escaped her ponytail. “How do I look?”

Like you came hard across a desk and then clung to a pegasus going at absolute top speed.

Since no campers were in eyeshot, he bent to steal a kiss. “You look perfect.”

She gave him an unconvinced look. “Perfect as in, ‘perfectly professional camp counselor,’ or perfect as in ‘I think your breasts are perfect?’”

“They are perfect.”

Paige snapped her fingers. “Eyes up here, Conleth.”

With an effort, he returned his attention to her face. In terms of maintaining his own professional appearance, this did not actually help much. While Paige was neat enough to pass casual inspection, her eyes were still a little hazy with pleasure, her lower lip plump and rosy. His jeans were starting to get rather uncomfortable.

He muttered a curse, trying to picture anything other than Paige on her back, spread out before him like a banquet. “This is going to be harder than I thought.”

Paige sounded distinctly amused. “It looks like it already is.”

“Give me a second.” Setting his jaw, he drew on his power, speeding until his body lost hope and settled down. “There. Please try not to do anything sexy. Like bend over. Or breathe.”

“Remember, we have to be discreet in front of the kids.” Paige put a hand on the dining hall door. “This is just another day at work.”

She pushed open the door.

“SURPRISE!”

Conleth lunged, instinctively shielding Paige from what turned out to be a deadly shower of confetti. A storm of applause and wolf-whistles filled the hall, kids from every pack whooping and hollering from their tables. Their own campers converged on them in a riot of beaming smiles and overlapping voices:

“What took you so long? We’ve been waiting forever! ”

“Are you really truly mated now?”

“Are you gonna have a wedding, too? Can I carry the rings?”

“Congratulations!”

Shaking heart-shaped confetti out of his hair, Conleth looked around. The entire hall had been decorated with strings of handmade paper hearts, dangling from the rafters. The table where their pack usually sat was covered in a pink tablecloth, with two chairs set side-by-side at one end. Above them, a construction paper banner proudly proclaimed in crooked, slightly dripping poster-paint letters:

JUST MATED - CONLETH & PAIGE

Paige was clearly lost for words. She looked up at him, expression torn between horror and hilarity.

“So much for discretion,” he murmured into her ear. “I think we just have to go with it. They’ve worked hard on this.”

“We got Buck and Honey to bring us back early so we could get everything ready,” Beth said, beaming ear-to-ear. “We wanted to surprise you.”

Paige cleared her throat. “Well, we’re…certainly surprised.”

“We made you a card!” Estelle thrust an oversized envelope made from folded construction paper into Paige’s hands. “Ig drew the picture, but we all helped to color it in. It’s you riding Conleth on your mating night!”

“Bareback,” Nancy supplied helpfully.

Paige, who had been halfway through pulling the card out of the envelope, froze.

“ On his back,” Ignatius said. “With Conleth in, and I cannot stress this enough, his pegasus form.”

Conleth contemplated the illustration. Ignatius had really captured his wings, though someone had been rather too enthusiastic with the glitter.

“I shall treasure this forever,” he said solemnly. “I may have to get it framed.”

Ignatius gave him a suspicious look before turning to Rufus. “Is he being sarcastic?”

Grinning, Rufus shook his head.

“Come and sit down.” Beth seized their hands, dragging them toward the pack table. “We got the kitchen staff to make special pink sugar cookies with your initials iced on the top. And all the other campers and counselors helped with the decorations. The entire camp pitched in!”

He suspected this was not entirely true. One member of their pack had not rushed to greet them at the door. Archie hunched on a bench in bear form, fur bristling from the stretched collar of his camp t-shirt.

Paige hurried over to her brother. Conleth didn’t catch what she murmured to him, but Archie flicked an ear in the bear equivalent of a shrug. He didn’t look at Conleth.

Best to give them some space for now, Conleth decided . He was all too aware that Archie’s tolerance of him was grudging at best. He could only hope he’d be able to change that with time.

The other kids more than made up for Archie’s lack of enthusiasm. They were full of pride, falling over each other to show off their hard work. Conleth duly admired every detail, from the jam jar full of wilting daisies to the paper napkins folded into what were apparently meant to be doves (they looked more like rabid pterodactyls to his eye, but it was the thought that counted).

“You put a lot of thought into this,” he said, genuinely touched. “I hope you haven’t tired yourselves out setting it all up. We still have a full day of activities on the schedule.”

Nancy surveyed him with a critical eye. “Are you sure you’re gonna be up for that? You look kind of exhausted yourself.”

“Yeah, you do,” Estelle agreed, her innocent tone at odds with her all-too-knowing smirk. “Didn’t you get any sleep last night, Conleth?”

“Oh my gold.” Ignatius put his hands over his ears. “I am not listening to this. As far as I’m concerned, he was up all night filling in spreadsheets.”

“Did you like Uncle Conleth’s house, Paige?” Beth said loudly, sweeping the other kids with a cut-it-out-right-now kind of glare. “That’s where you went, right?”

Paige went pink to the ears. “Um, yes. It’s very beautiful.”

“My house is further down the same road. And Rufus’ and Estelle’s families live nearby too.” Beth clapped her hands. “Oh! After camp ends and you move in with Uncle Conleth, we can have a big neighborhood welcoming party!”

Archie, who’d only just managed to return to human form, turned straight back into a bear.

“There’s no need to speculate about what might happen after the end of camp,” Conleth said hastily. “Right now, it’s more important to focus on the rest of this summer.”

“We’re still your counselors, before anything else,” Paige said. “It’s our job to make sure you all have a good time here. So let’s all focus on making the most of camp, okay?”

“Hey, that’s right!” Estelle brightened. “Now that you two are together, we can stop being on our best behavior!”

Conleth felt all the blood drain from his face.

Paige had also gone rather white. “You’ve all been…on your best behavior?”

“Well, yeah,” Nancy said, as though this should have been obvious. “Beth made it clear she’d kill anyone who’d put a foot out of line.”

Estelle sighed happily. “Now we can finally have some fun .”