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"No. I'm okay." I was actually thrilled, but I didn't have the words to explain it to him right then.
"Good."
At the end of a narrow walkway, he took some steps up to an unmarked green door. He pulled us inside, and the noise from the parade muffled as he closed it behind us. We climbed the stairs to a desk with an old woman curled forward watching TV. She turned to him, and they shared brief words with thick Southern accents. He gave her a wad of cash, and she handed him a key. "Don't trash the room."
Chapter 28 Fallen Soul
Wren
Magnum took my hand and guided me up more stairs to a door with a number twenty-two on it. He used the key to let us inside a small room with a simple double bed covered in a quilt. For a second, I imagined the old lady at the desk downstairs sewing that quilt especially for this room many years ago.
Yellow stains dappled the wallpaper and twisted wrought iron bars covered the windows. I loved it. It was so New Orleans, so much a part of who he was, part of the culture here. I could spend a year in New Orleans exploring every corner of every room like this.
He shut the cute but very old curtains and turned to me, nostrils flaring, eyes blazing. "Someone takes your bag, you do not pursue. Got it?"
Excuse me? "Why not?" I snapped back.
"Because I'm telling you that's how it is." His shoulders were high, arms back, fists clenching.
Now he was making me mad. He sure took a lot of liberties ordering me around when he had no claim to me except "sometimes fake wife." "Oh, you won't allow it? I can't show my boobs, can't kill Tommy, can't defend myself against a pickpocket?"
He charged me and blocked me until my back was against the door. "I won't allow you to do stupid shit that will get you hurt." He braced his forearms on the door over my head, and my vision filled with his naked chest and tattooedarms. His jeans were hanging low on his muscled hips, and the top band of his black briefs peeked out.
His spicy scent hit my nose, his big body closing me in, and I had to struggle to keep my anger hot. "You have no say over me."
"Oh really?" The mocking undercurrent in his tone pissed me off even more.
"I spent my life doing what my grandfather wanted. Even after he died, I still ran that bakery because, on his deathbed, he asked me to keep it open. I owed it to him for all he'd sacrificed for me. Well, here I am." I raised my arms to the sides as high as possible with him caging me in. "In New Orleans—thanks to you, by the way, very nice of you, I'm not ungrateful—but you brought me here to have fun, and if my idea of that is showing my boobs and chasing down a bad guy, then I'm gonna do it, and you can't stop me."
His lips quirked, and his hand came down to cradle my cheek. "Is that so?"
He was cooling off, but I wasn't done being angry yet because underneath all this was an ugly truth I didn't want to face. I felt rejected by him. Since Valentine's Day, Mag had mostly avoided me. He'd cuddled with me in bed, he'd discussed the plans for the trip with me, but what he did not do was kiss me. Even tonight, with all the touching on the float, not one kiss. "And what's with all these people warning me about you?" I continued.
His brow furrowed. "Who?"
"Stella, the girls at the parade. Seems like a lot of women have opinions about you and feel the need towarn me."
"Stella is Helix's sister. I did not fuck her. She's projecting shit onto me."
"But you did sleep with those other girls? All three of them?"
He sighed and rolled his neck. "Two of them. The third, no."
"Why not the third?"
"I'm not talking about this with you." His hands left the door, and he walked away from me. It felt like a cold wall of ice dropped closed between us.
"Why not the third?" I repeated with a firm tone.
"Despite what you might think, I don't fuck every woman I see," he threw out over his shoulder.
I stepped away from the door and moved closer to him. "Okay, so what are the criteria? You told me no virgins or married women. Why not her? She was pretty enough. All of them were a lot prettier than me."
"Hey now." He raised his index finger and scowled at me. Even angry, he was beautiful.
"Why didn't you fuck the third girl, Mag?" He flinched when I used the f word, which I rarely did. "I want to know who makes it into the fuckable list and why because I'm clearly stuck in the not fuckable group with girl number three, but she was nothing like me, so help me understand."
He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up at me like I was asking some huge favor of him. I wasn't asking him to make promises, but not too long ago he'd told me he was obsessed with me and showered me in roses while saying he wanted to have sex with me. Then he spent three days pushing me away, and tonight he'd flipped again and was actinglike he controlled me. "Tell me, Mag. You owe me at least that."
