Page 17 of The Devil on my Chest

Rocky looked down at his mate. “You always worry about me. I wonder if there’s ever been a time when you haven’t.”

“Worrying is my natural state and at the moment I’m worrying about you making a mess in this pristine space.” Mal had half turned, looking around the apartment. “Why is everything in this place silver gray?”

“Perhaps it’s because Cyrus is a shark?” Rocky suggested, turning away from the outside view. “Look, there are a couple of pops of color. He’s got a couple of little yellow cushions. I wonder what they’re for? They’re not big enough for a pillow. And there’s a huge red rug on the floor. I bet that’s to hide the gangster-made bloodstains,” he whispered to Mal, who started giggling.

“This place smells so clean, there’s no way Cyrus does anything untoward in here. Now stop it. You want to go and have a look around?”

“I actually just want to hold you.” Rocky swung Mal back toward the wall of windows again. “Look. Look at this view. Look at the opportunities.”

“Look at all that glass, all that concrete, and the cars,” Mal said. “Where on earth would anybody run around here? On the rooftops?”

“I’m sure they’ve got grass somewhere in New York,” Rocky said. “Don’t worry, I’m not thinking about moving here, it’s just...”

He took a deep breath. “I’m missing our home back in Arrowtown. I’m missing our friends. I’m missing my job. But just for a moment, isn’t it awesome to just stand here and look at what might have been? What we could have had?”

“From the little I’ve heard, I wouldn’t wish Cyrus’s life on anybody,” Mal said, but he did snuggle close. “Cyrus apparently had a difficult upbringing, and his relationship with Blade is not that good. Him and Ness, all they do is travel. I mean, would we really want that? We went through that phase when we were riding with Ra. I thought that got the travel bug out of your system. You seemed as keen to settle down as I was.”

“True, and it’s not like I want to leave Arrowtown,” Rocky said as he thought about it. “I mean, our work is important, and we don’t have mega millions behind us, although…I mean, I could probably afford us a cozy cottage somewhere that we could live in together, just the two of us. Maybe spend our days tending the garden? Do things like that.”

The shock on Mal’s face as he pulled away from him was delicious. “I’ve never seen you so much as pick up a spade. You are not the gardening type.”

“No, but I’m the perfect type to relax on a lounger, drink a beer and watch you do it though.” Mal was such fun to tease.

“I think the life we’ve got is pretty good, don’t you?”

Rocky nodded. “This place is a little weird, if you think about it,” he said, turning away from the window. “I mean, is that couch comfortable or just big, and I still can’t get over the cushions. They’re a definite afterthought. The big screen television – I’d love one of them, but yeah, this place is pretty sterile. Our place won’t be like this. I wonder…” Rocky snapped his mouth shut. But of course, Mal picked up on what he was thinking.

“You want to check out the bed don’t you? You want to see how big a bed a shark will have. Remember Cyrus is a great white."

“Yeah, you told me,” Rocky said. “But it’s not like he’s going to shift in his bedroom like you and I might be inclined to do.”

“I’m not sure Cyrus would approve if we started bouncing all over the furniture in our wolf forms.”

Arm in arm they made their way through the vast apartment. The illusion of space and minimalism was everywhere. The kitchen was beautiful, immaculately clean, but Rocky couldn’t help but think of the clutter in the house back in Arrowtown. There was always somebody in the kitchen cooking, music blaring from someone’s phone, kids running in and out. They checked in on a utility room and another pantry and then made their way down a long hallway where the bedrooms and bathrooms seemed to be.

Rocky stopped at the door of the guest bathroom, peering in. “My gods, check out the size of that bath. It’s like a swimming pool in the house.”

“That’s not a swimming pool.” Mal laughed. “It would only probably hold about…I don’t know…six people without everybody getting tangled up with each other.”

“Which means there’s more than enough room for you and me.” Rocky was determined to persuade Mal to hop in with him later.

Moving on, they found another two bedrooms that seemed functional enough. The beds were in both were very big, but at the end of the hallway was a massive set of doors leading through into the master suite. “I don’t even know if we should be in this one,” Mal said as Rocky opened the door and went into the room. “Look at how opulent this is.”

“Do you notice there are no personal possessions here at all? Do you think he had it cleaned out before he offered it to us?”

Mal shook his head. “From what I heard, when Nessie loaned us the plane, they were about to leave for Europe on Cyrus’s plane. They were making a few stops there, I think, visiting Cyrus’s casinos. Looking at this” - he waved at the clean tops on the dressers and the lack of shoes in the shoe rack - “I think Cyrus pretty much carries everything of any importance with him or maybe he keeps his personal items at his house in Las Vegas. I really wouldn’t know.”

“It all seems very weird to me.” Rocky thought about his own cluttered dresser top. “But yeah, okay. This is a huge bed. We should definitely get one like this.”

Dropping Mal’s arm, Rocky prowled around the huge wide circle. But Mal was shaking his head. “Why on earth would anybody want to sleep on a circular bed? I swear this thing” - Mal bounced his fingers on the covers – “this thing has barely been used. Look at it. The mattress barely moves when you press down on it.

“And look at how much actual sleeping space you’ve got. Barely the room of a queen size bed by the time you’ve cut off the rounded edges that wouldn’t fit even a man of my size. I’m not sleeping on the edge or curling around the edge just so you can sprawl out like a starfish.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you anyway,” Rocky said, prowling closer. “But now we’re here...”

“Yes, now we’re here.” Mal’s Adam’s apple bounced up and down.

The way he was looking at him – Rocky could see a mix of hope and anxiety and a whole heap of other emotions in Mal’s beautifully expressive eyes.

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