THE ENEMY KING'S CONTRACT LUNA

5: NO INTENTION OF DECLINING

LORELAI.

Almost two days had passed and the only thought I could present at the moment was that the bedroom I’d been allocated at Roth’s mansion in Russia was bigger than my entire wing at Madox's estate.

That was the first thing I noticed when Roth's staff showed me to it, thirty six hours ago now, and I was still noticing it because there were still people moving things into it.

Maids and attendants coming and going in a steady stream, carrying armfuls of clothing and boxes of things I had never owned, setting them down and disappearing and coming back with more. Everything was new. Everything was mine, apparently, because Roth had taken the two days between my agreement and our arrival in Russia to acquire what seemed like the entire contents of several luxury houses and redistribute them into this room.

I hadn't seen him since he brought me here.

I knew our wedding was in twelve days. I knew that information had moved through werewolf society at a speed that genuinely impressed me, the way significant and scandalous things always did. Roth Blackthorne had taken the wife of one of the seven. That was what they were saying. I had turned off every device I owned after the third hour of notifications and had not turned them back on.

Tonight I was having dinner with my future husband for the first time since I agreed to marry him.

I was nervous, which annoyed me, because I had already agreed. The decision was made. There was nothing left to be nervous about except the man himself, which was admittedly not nothing.

Dinner was in a private room off the main hall, a long table set for two at one end, candlelight, wine already poured. Roth was already seated when I arrived, jacket on, completely at ease in the way he seemed to be everywhere, and he stood when I entered, which caught me off guard enough that I stopped walking for half a second.

Madox had not stood for me in two years.

We ate and we talked, and it was strange how easy he made it, filling the practical details of our arrangement over the first glass of wine. What would be expected of me publicly, what events I would attend, how we would present ourselves to the other seven and to the elders. He was thorough and clear and spoke to me like someone whose understanding mattered, which was its own kind of disorienting after three years of the alternative.

By the second glass I had started to relax.

By the third I had started to think about what he said in the alcove.

I plan to f**k my wife.

He had said it so evenly. Like it was simply a fact he was making me aware of, practical information, here is what to expect. And I had been so caught off guard by everything else that I hadn't properly sat with it until now, slightly warm from the wine, watching him across the candlelit table and thinking about it with considerably more attention than I had managed in the alcove.

"Can I ask you something," I said.

He looked up from his glass. "Yes."

"When you said." I paused, deciding how to approach this. "About consummating the marriage."

"Yes."

"I want to understand what that means to you. Within the context of a contract." I kept my eyes on his. "Is that something you'd expect on a schedule or is it—"

"It isn't a transaction," he said. "If that's what you're asking."

"Then what is it."

He set his glass down and looked at me properly, the full weight of his attention settling over the table in a way that made the room feel smaller. "It means that you will be my wife in every sense of the word, for as long as our arrangement holds. What happens between us will not be scheduled or obligated." His eyes held mine steady. "But I won't pretend I don't want you. I told you that already."

The wine was doing something unhelpful to my ability to think clearly.

"You told me you planned to sleep with your wife," I said. "That's not quite the same thing."

"Isn't it."

I looked at him for a long moment. The candles were doing something very unfair to his face.

"What if I told you I didn't want to wait," I said.

The words came out steadier than I felt, which I was grateful for. Roth went still across the table, not uncomfortably, just completely, the way he went still when something had his full attention.

He looked at me for a long time.

"Then I would tell you," he said slowly, "that I have no intention of declining."

I stood up from the table.

He watched me do it, dark eyes tracking every movement, and he stood too without being asked, the way he had when I arrived, and there was something about the consistency of that small thing that moved through me in a way I wasn't prepared for.

We left the dining room.

We went to my bedroom.

And for the first time in three years I walked through a door at night without dreading what waited on the other side of it.