Page 97 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

“Normal.”

“Sometimes.” Her mouth curves. “I’m already halfway in love with you, so I don’t think it’s going to be hard.”

I could tell her the truth, tell her that the only way to push the elders back is to have my mark on her neck. But the words die in my throat when she kisses me again, shorter this time, before pulling away, her eyes sparkling.

“I just want it all.”

I look down at a woman negotiating terms with an alpha on his own roof.

“So I have to prove myself,” I conclude with a small smile. “Prove myself to be worthy of you.”

“Yes, you do.” She grins up at me, and her arms are around my neck. “I want you to work for it a little bit. Put some effort into it.”

There is nothing in the world I want more than that.

I get one arm under her knees and the other behind her back and lift her clean off the concrete. Her arms lock around my neck, and she shrieks and then laughs at herself for it.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to spend tonight proving it in bed,” I inform her, already at the door.

She’s still laughing against my throat when I carry her down the stairs.

Chapter 19

Ariela

I’ve walked into seventeen buildings, but this one feels just right.

Number four had a support pillar coming up through the middle of the floor. In number eleven, something had died in the ventilation, and the agent swore to me it was seasonal.

“The ceilings are eighteen feet at the apex.” The real estate agent is still working down his list behind me. “There’s three-phase power, the roof was replaced four years ago, and the loading door at the back gives you—”

“What’s under the floor?”

He stops. “I’m sorry?”

“Under the boards.” I’m down on my knees with my palm flat against them, and I knock once with a knuckle. The sound that comes back isn’t dull.

“There’s a joist system.” He crosses to me at last, tablet forgotten against his ribs. “It’s timber over an air gap. The previous tenant printed here for forty years, so the floor was built to hold machine weight.”

Three windows run down the long side, and the light comes through them in panels that lie across the boards. The barres go under those windows because a six-year-old learns her own spine in daylight or she doesn’t learn it at all. Mirrors face them from the opposite wall. There’s a back room with pegs already driven in at child height, since whoever printed here needed somewhere to hang a coat, and I can see thirty pairs of small shoes lined up underneath them.

“How soon can I rent it?”

“It will be available from next week. You just have to clear the paperwork.”

I look at Zara, who’s watching me with bated breath. “Well?”

I bite my lower lip. “I want this.”

Zara’s mouth curves into a broad smile. “We’re saying yes.”

I nod with barely concealed excitement. “Yes.”

She throws her arms around my neck, and she’s laughing into my shoulder. I hold on to her. Somewhere behind us, the agent is saying he’ll email the paperwork this afternoon, and neither of us is listening.

“We have a studio,” Zara breathes. “Ariela. We have a studio.”