“I feel like you’re telling me something important, but…I’m a little bit on information overload lately, so…”

I let the words trail off. I’m gonna need more than the gist. I need a spoon in my mouth with the simplified version of whatever he wants to say.

“If you want a direct answer when you ask a complicated question, I’ve got to be able to trust you’re not going to fall apart in my arms when you hear the truth. I don’t want to outright lie to you. Hence the reason it ends up going in circles before a collision finally happens. Stop expecting that much trust so suddenly. Trust is earned. Over time,” he says, brushing the hair away from my cheek, as his gaze roams over my face.

“Says the guy proposing to the girl he apparently doesn’t trust,” I point out.

His lips turn up at one edge in a smile, and his eyes almost seem to be laughing at me. “When you live as long as we have, you accumulate severe trust issues, Violet. It’s going to take quite some time for me to push past all those barriers.”

He tips my chin up, eyes on mine.

“I ask questions to give you a chance to explain yourself. You can’t expect me to be okay with everything you’ve done, but I’m open to hearing what it was really like when you made such decisions. I’m sheltered,” I remind him. “It’s easy for me to judge. It takes effort not to, but I put forth that effort the best I can, and run sanctuary to do away with all the things I can’t deal with, while giving you a viable alternative for this crazy law or that one. I am compromising.”

He laughs under his breath, his hands cupping my cheeks, as he presses in closer.

“I do trust you, Violet,” he says in a tone that makes my vagina forget there’s any lingering aches.

“I trust you to look after Damien,” he says…randomly. “This sanctuary taught you something important.”

For whatever reason, I know what he’s hinting at.

“Damien isn’t running much of anything, and he seriously needs to start taking care of all his rogue betas who are doing all that work with no alpha looking after them,” I say in agreement and a nod.

“You recruited him a top name in the rogue world. He’s actually a good representative for Damien. But you made Damien take a beta, something I gave up hope on centuries ago.”

I’m not sure where he’s going with this.

“Talbot Lane wanted an alpha. It’s not hard to see when you pay attention. Damien needs a beta. It’s only natural,” I explain. “And Talbot, so far, hasn’t done anything so seedy that the omegas fear him. He has a bigger reputation among them than among you guys.”

He tugs at his tie, his first indication of a tic.

“Arion is fighting me when he’s angry, instead of taking out his aggression on unhandled matters in Emit’s territory. He’s a weird fucking vampire these days, but far less trouble for me,” he says.

“You’ve done this before. Given me too much credit for things that I’m not to credit for,” I tell him, leaning back when it feels like his intense gaze is going to stare straight through me.

“Emit brought in five of his finest betas this morning and is implementing new laws to his packs,” he continues. “My days are getting less daunting with each new improvement.”

“That genuinely had nothing to do with me. I don’t have any right to comment on how Houses are run. If it wasn’t for Shera, the Simpletons, and the omegas, this Sanctuary would be a big mess—metaphorically and physically. I’ve worked hard, but they’ve done more work and made it look a hell of a lot easier. Enough so that I hate them right now.”

“I hate them too. They don’t seem like the type to loan out their vaginas to the ghostly,” Anna chimes in.

“Not now, Anna,” I gripe.

“Damien put Dorian in his place for the first time in too many ages,” Vance goes on, his voice almost quiet.

I sling some salt in Anna’s direction, and devote all my attention to Vance again.

“You really do make my job so much easier, simply by existing. I trust you in all the ways that matter most to me,” he adds as though it’s a difficult thing to confess so liberally.

It feels like we’re back in proposal territory, or maybe that’s what he’s been leading up to.

“You had to compromise on a ring because you know I’d pick something gaudy, tacky, and not at all classy. And you’re the kind of man who would hate himself for having to claim you bought such a thing. A ring, Vance. What sort of eternity does that look like to you if we have to start compromising on just the ring?”

I’m not sure why he smiles.

“One full of my smart mouth, your smart mouth, and sex that will shake the floors every time we collide about our differences,” he says in a tone that definitely makes me forget this is marriage we’re discussing.

His lips find mine in that instant, stealing a kiss I wasn’t expecting, and I end up gripping the collar of his shirt to pull him as close as possible.

It’s clear what my body’s up to when it arches against him without my consent, and his arms close around me, drawing my hips firmly against his. My legs wrap around his waist, and he groans against my lips, while shoving the sheet up on my hips.

“I sometimes let the hair on the hairbrush gather until someone asks to borrow it and I feel like the world’s grossest person,” I feel the need to confess against his incredibly demanding mouth. “I also feel like a hairbrush is deeply personal and can’t understand why people want to borrow it.”

He chokes on a sound that sounds dangerously akin to laughter, his lips breaking from mine in the process.

“You can have your own bathroom at my place. One is already under construction,” he murmurs, smiling when I tense.

“That’s probably smart, but also really presumptuous,” I admit, unsure how I feel about something so big happening.

What happened to the baby-steps? Usually people live together for a while before marrying.

It dawns on me that it actually wouldn’t be that way with them. They were born in a time when first came love, second came marriage, and then came someone with a baby carriage.

They’re conveniently traditional about this sort of thing.

“In compromise to letting me oversee the wedding plans, you can wear a sheet on our wedding day, if you please. So long as that sheet is from my bed,” he says against my lips, surprising me so much that I almost laugh.

That’s one hell of a rabbit hole I’m not ready to dive into right away.

He grins against my lips, before breaking the kiss. I’m leaning forward to chase his lips before I can stop myself, and he smirks down at me.

“I’m giving you the ring to let you know I’m ready when you are. Take your time, Violet. You’ve been rushed into some big decisions, and it seems it’ll only happen more and more. You make life easier on me. I want to return the favor,” he says too seriously.

Obviously I end up kissing him again, mostly because he’s proposing and I’m sucking at being proposed to. I-I just can’t process everything going on all at once.

That snowball needs a small recess between cliffs.

“When can you get out of here?” he asks me, twining his fingers with mine, as he gives me those stupid butterflies only he evokes.