Though Silver was more advanced than any pack in the world, they had not advanced so far beyond the custom of a male wolf having authority over his female, and given that she had caused a fight between cousins and brought chaos into a public hallway full of guests, she did not expect to be let off lightly. She found herself quietly wishing he would simply stay in his wolf form forever so she would never have to face his human one, but that was as close to impossible as a wish could get.
She got back onto his back and the journey back to the city was nothing like the trip out. The lightness was gone. She was dreading whatever confrontation awaited her about her actions today and the punishnt that would co with it, because there was always a punishnt for interfering in a matter between mates.
She might have told herself she would be an exception given that she was the Luna, but her Luna position carried no real weight without a wolf behind it, and she knew it. She didn’t have the authority that position was supposed to co with, and everyone, including Javier, had already made that abundantly clear.
He took her into the building through the back entrance, his Alpha aura and presence suppressed and drawn inward so that they moved through the floors undetected, and they made it all the way to his floor without a single person seeing them.
When they got there she climbed down, and without so much as a warning, Sebastian shifted back into his human form.
Viola gasped and spun around imdiately, heat rushing to her cheeks even though she hadn’t actually seen anything. There was always that brief, cloud-like smoke that wrapped around the body in the split second after a transformation, covering the nudity before it cleared, and she had already turned away before that happened.
Sebastian pressed a button on the wall and a blanket dispensed from a panel there, and he wrapped it around his waist as he looked at his wife’s rigid back. She was standing stiff and straight in front of the door to his penthouse as though she had been planted there.
"Don’t tell you have never seen a man without his clothes before, wife?" He said, unable to help himself.
Viola bit the inside of her cheek and lied without blinking. "I have seen plenty."
The thought of her seeing another man without his clothes sent a hot rush of jealousy and sothing uncomfortably close to anger churning through him, but he reined it in and arched a brow instead, the corner of his mouth doing a small, involuntary thing. "If you have seen plenty, then why did you spin around so fast? Like you were afraid your eyes would catch fire if you looked at your husband’s nudity."
"I didn’t spin." She lied, keeping her back firmly to him and her arms crossed tight over her chest. "I was being respectful. Not everyone wants to stand there staring at a naked man the second he shifts."
Though a treacherous and thoroughly unwelco part of her was extrely curious about what he looked like without his clothes, she pushed that thought down firmly and gave it absolutely no opportunity to make her turn around.
If she was being completely honest with herself, she had never actually seen a naked man, not fully. She had always kept a respectful distance and averted her eyes, even though nakedness was entirely normal among shifters who transford regularly and saw each other without clothes as a matter of course. She simply had never gotten a wolf of her own and had therefore never shifted among them and been exposed to it the way everyone else had. But she would rather swallow her own tongue than let him know that.
Sebastian let out a soft, low chuckle and walked closer until he was standing directly behind her, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off his body.
"Respectful. Right." He said, his voice carrying that quiet amusent that she found particularly infuriating at tis. "So all those n you have apparently seen bare, they just walked around in front of you without their clothes and you didn’t so much as blink? Where exactly does the being respectful co in if you have already seen all of them bare? Or do you ask for their permission before looking, out of respect?"
Viola’s face burned several degrees hotter. She squeezed her arms tighter around herself and tried very hard to ignore the strange, inconvenient flutter that had taken up residence sowhere low in her stomach.
"Yes. Pretty much. I have seen enough to know it is nothing special."
"Then turn around and look at , Viola." He said simply. "If it is truly nothing special, it shouldn’t bother you in the slightest."
Viola did not move. She stayed exactly where she was, frozen in place, her heart hamring against her ribs with an urgency it had absolutely no business having at the re thought of seeing him naked.
"I am not turning around just because you tell to. Unlock your door, or I will go back to my own place. You brought here for a reason, didn’t you?" she asked, steering the conversation sowhere else entirely and keeping her back to him with iron determination. Nothing was going to make her look at sothing that would haunt her days and nights and stir her up in places she wanted to avoid being stirred.
There was sothing about Sebastian that unnerved her even without his mark sitting on her skin, sothing she had no desire to examine too closely.
Whenever her mind drifted to what had happened between them the night before, heat would rise through her body without permission and settle low in her belly, and her thighs would press together on their own and her nipples would beco inexplicably, astonishingly sensitive in a way she had never once experienced before him.
He affected her in ways that even Evan’s mark couldn’t seem to suppress anymore, and that terrified her more than she wanted to admit.
Sebastian leaned in towards her, his breath grazing the back of her neck as he whispered, "V. I. O. L. A." He spelled her na out slowly, one letter at a ti, and she frowned in confusion. "Pardon?"
"The door’s password. Now you have it, type it in. And you are free to go and co as you please." He whispered, close to her ear, and then straightened up.
He would have kept teasing her, would have very much enjoyed pressing her until she admitted she had never seen a man without his clothes in her life, but there was a genuinely serious matter he had brought her here to discuss, and it could not wait much longer.
Viola was taken aback that he would use her na as a passcode, but just to confirm it, she moved forward and typed it in, and was even more shocked when the door clicked open and the ho system welcod the Alpha back.
He had used her na? Why would he use her na?
As if reading her thought, Sebastian said, "Nobody would guess that V. I. O. L. A. is my passcode, especially when I am trying to keep certain pests out of my space now that I am married."
Viola felt his arm co around her waist as he led her into the living room, and her mind went montarily blank when she ca into contact with his bare torso. She stiffened slightly and quickly stepped away from him as he closed the door, moving to stand to the side.
When the door locked, Viola made the mistake of turning to look at him as he turned away from the door, and her breath hitched. The ripple of raw, hard muscle across his tattooed chest caught her spellbound, even though she had seen it once before in his quarters. But this ti, it was even more fascinating than before, for he wore only a cloth around his waist.
A set of perfect abs tapered downward into the deep V shape of his hips where the blanket rested dangerously low, low enough that her eyes instinctively widened before she caught herself. She had never seen skin so bronzed and smooth, not a single blemish on it, nor a body so ripped and hard that even standing still it looked like it was barely containing the strength coiled inside it.
Her eyes made the further mistake of drifting downward and she caught sight of a distinct bulge pressing against the fabric. She stared for a mont out of pure, unguarded curiosity, until his deep, slightly husky voice ca.
"Like what you see, love?"
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