Xan's Pov
It had been a long day. At almost midnight, I go to find my mate. We'll deal with the rest of this later. Lorelei has fallen asleep on the room center couch in the kings office. Oddly enough, all the plans I made and orders I sent came from here.
This reminds me, I'll need to get someone to plan the funeral. Not my problem for now. I'll deal with that tomorrow.
I pick Lorelei up cradling her in my arms, she's much smaller than me, most people are. She stirs awake, and immediately tries to leave me, I hate this reaction. " It's alright, you're alright. Go back to sleep, I got you.", I say quietly through a mind link. She stills, but doesn't fall back to sleep.
I carried her all the way out of the palace, a small part of me surprised she actually stopped fighting, while the rest of me was trying to send a message. The woman in my arms was mine. Then I transported us to my house on the outskirts of Jaguar. This is my smallest most comfortable home, I come here a lot. We walk in, I take her Jacket, and as I throw it in the garbage, she gapes at me.
"Why would you do that", she half yells getting defensive. "It's wrecked, and you obviously don't have any emotional ties to it…", I replied, looking at the garbage, before fixing my gaze on her shoes.
"How do you know that?...", she says.
"Take off your shoes… just take off everything.", I reply.
No one has ever been inside my home, at least this one, and most people don't even know the locations of most of them. I live a very private life for three reasons; I like to be left alone, I don't need people coming over asking me for favors every minute, and I love everything clean. Like really really really clean. Myself and my mate need baths right now.
She proceeded to gape at me. Not one to waste time, I started to take her clothes off for her, and what I find it a bit odd though, is that she didn't fight me or give a retort. I could sense she was a shifter, and shifters don't care much about nudity, but this was different.
Lorelei wore a high-waisted long black pleated skirt, and a plain white long sleeved shirt that was now ripped in a few places. She also wore black slip on sneakers and the fitted purple jacket I just threw away. I start with the skirt. I put both hands around her waist, trying to find the button or zipper, it was on her right side. I felt her.
Most people didn't understand my powers but the basics were; with physical touch I could feel her heartbeat, pulse rate, thoughts, past, some future, but the most important was her reaction to me. For the first time in my life I was happy for my curses.
The skirt dropped to the ground, and I moved on to her shirt. Gently removing the shirt off her, she was now mostly naked. I hadn't made a show of appreciating her body for fear of making her more self conscious. I moved behind her and began unbraiding her hair. In no time her thick black hair was loose and everywhere. She tried to make it at least go behind her, it goes everywhere.
"I don't—", she says then pauses, slightly embarrassed.
I put her hands down, combed my fingers through the beautiful hair, and transported us to my bathroom, where I manually started a bath. With the right temperature and right mix of scents and bath soaps, I tell her to get in. I don't usually have bubble baths, this is more for her, so I am a bit confused when she makes a comment about it under her breath.
"Maybe next time love", I tell her before sitting on the edge of the bathtub, with my feet in the water.
I've touched her, therefore I know most things about her, but we have to start somewhere, so I say, "tell me about yourself Lorelei".
We talk for thirty minutes, not about her mother, or her dark past, just things like her favourite colour, favourite time of the year and favourite things to do. Her favourite colour was light green, but now grey, her favourite time of the year is winter, and she loves art in her human form, but playing in snow in her wolf form.
Okay, time to get into the shower", I say.
"The water is still warm and I don't want a shower", she says.
" I know you are hungry, we can't move on to that if you aren't completely clean", she gets up, shielding her breasts and walks too quickly in the direction of the shower, clearly not seeing the glass before it. I move quickly, wrap one hand around the side of her waist, and open the glass door.
When she's inside, I show her a bench in the shower, "sit for a second". I start taking off my own clothes, transporting all the clothes to a garbage dump far away.
I walk into the shower and turn on the water, and begin to wash her with a bathing sponge, and my vanilla scented body wash. She was surprisingly calm, and I guess this had to do with the mating bond. When I finished washing her, I did myself, then we rinsed off. I transported us to my closet, where I found a new shirt she could wear for now. I could create one from thin air in a second, but I wanted to see her in my clothes.
"Thank you", she says blushing at the length, and takes a sniff. She realizes what she is doing and stops abruptly. I try not to read her thoughts but the word 'dimwit' loudly floats into my head.
"I found that very cute, just so you know".
I pull out leftover chocolate cake for dessert, and start on a steak dinner with vegetable stir fry. Lorelei watches me for a few minutes before I convince her to talk more about herself. When the food is ready I decide eating on the counter is probably best and slide a plate to her. I get a bottle of white wine. The problem is she doesn't eat the food. I can sense she is hungry, but she just doesn't have an appetite.
Everything must be catching up to her. I move my counter stool closer until we are less than feet away from each other, then take her fork from her.
"Let me feed you okay, and this time I'll do the talking, you just listen. Alright", I say, to which she gives two adorable affirmative nods.
She doesn't speak a lot, but I can tell she is relaxed, and stuffed. We both were, as we finished three plates of steak and vegetable stir fry. I put our dishes away and moved us to my bedroom with the desert. Yes, by teleportation again, why walk anywhere if you can teleport yourself, and yes there is always room for dessert.
"Pick any movie.", I say, to which she replies, "this is like a date, isn't it?... I'll watch Paddington 2". Then she hops onto my bed. My goodness she looks perfect there.
I had never heard of the movie, but my mate's wish was my command, she just didn't know the full extent of the sentiment yet. We sat a good feet away from each other, and I wanted to close the gap, but I could feel her own indecision. I decided to let her try to move to me. When the movie and dessert was over, I took the dishes away, and told her good night.
"You're leaving?...", Lorelei says.
"'You want me to stay the night?... Because I really want to"
"Don't leave me here, there's enough room for both of us".
I'll be right back, I teleport to the kitchen, and wash the dishes. When I come back, she is half asleep with a line created through pillows, and it's adorable. I use magic to rearrange our bed, and pull her to my side, all in the same second. she releases a squeal. With her head on my left shoulder, I continue combing my fingers through her hair, and my other hand goes around her waist. Nothing overly sexual, just soothing, just enough to try and make her feel safe.
All the people who hurt her are already dead, because I don't need anyone's permission for that, but I can't tell her yet.
For now however, "Go to sleep love, I've got you".