Chapter 241: Chapter 241: Domestic
It was hours later when the quiet knock came, not the tentative kind that suggested someone feared interrupting, but the precise, measured rhythm of someone who knew they wouldn’t be turned away.
Trevor didn’t look up immediately. His fingers finished the last clean stroke of a sentence on the unregistered file before he closed the window and let the screen go dark, reflecting only his own faint smile back at him.
"Come in," he said, the words low, unhurried, and almost lazy.
Lucas stepped inside, a thin folder tucked under one arm, the faintest trace of cool air following him in from the corridor. His eyes swept the room once, lingering just long enough on Trevor’s rolled sleeves and the way his jacket was draped over the back of the chair to confirm that whatever Trevor had been doing, it hadn’t been routine office work.
"You didn’t come back," Lucas said.
"I was working," Trevor replied, deceptively mild, leaning back in his chair like a man enjoying an idle afternoon.
Lucas’s gaze slid to the desk, to the absence of open files, to the faint glow of the monitor still cooling down. "That’s one word for it."
Trevor’s mouth curved slowly, enjoying every movement with his mate. "Careful, darling. You’ll make me think you’ve been keeping track of my schedule."
Lucas didn’t rise to the bait, though his brows lifted a fraction. "Windstone says the couch is gone."
"Gone is a generous way of putting it," Trevor said, his tone almost conversational, as though they were discussing the weather and not the aftermath of a pheromone-heavy, politically questionable afternoon. "It was a mercy. No piece of furniture deserves that fate."
Lucas’s lips twitched, but the expression didn’t quite become a smile. "And in exchange for your mercy, what did you take?"
Trevor let the question hang in the air, the faintest glint in his eyes betraying that he was enjoying this more than he should. "Nothing you’ll have to sign for. Yet."
Lucas crossed the room, setting the folder down in front of him, close enough that Trevor’s fingers could have reached for it if he wanted to. "You’re not going to tell me, are you?"
Trevor tipped his head, studying him for a moment, but whatever game he thought he might play fell flat against Lucas’s quiet, unreadable calm.
"It’s a rhetorical question," Lucas said simply, setting the folder down in front of him without a soft thud.
Trevor’s mouth curved faintly, the kind of smile that could mean anything or nothing at all. "Then I won’t waste my breath pretending to answer."
Lucas didn’t answer. He eased into the chair opposite, leaning back with the kind of deliberate comfort that said he wasn’t here to dig into Trevor’s secrets. His gaze drifted over the desk, then to the clock on the wall, and back to Trevor with the faintest tilt of his head.
"You’ve been at this for hours," Lucas said, his tone almost lazy. "Come eat before you forget how."
Trevor’s brows lifted, amusement flickering like a shadow across his face. "Only if you are on the menu."
Lucas let out a slow, theatrical sigh, the kind reserved for situations where patience had long since given up the fight. "You were never this bad before the wedding," he said, voice rich with mock despair. "Now you can’t go three hours without finding me, leaning on me, or making some scandalous comment that Windstone has to pretend he didn’t hear."
Trevor, entirely unbothered, leaned back in his chair with the ease of a man who knew he was guilty and saw no reason to deny it. "Marriage vows, darling. They changed the rules."
"They’ve changed your personality," Lucas countered, deadpan, though the faint curve of his mouth betrayed his amusement. "I married a man with a deceptively easy nature. Now I have a barnacle in cufflinks."
"A very devoted barnacle," Trevor corrected smoothly, his smirk deepening. "One who enjoys his new domestic life immensely."
Lucas blinked, the words hanging in the air like a stray spark. "Domestic?"
Trevor nodded, deadly serious. "I plan to be home for dinner most nights. Attend fewer galas. Read in bed with you. Possibly learn how to make coffee."
Lucas’s brows arched slowly. "Are we talking about Trevor Ariston Fitzgeralt, the Grand Duke of the North and ten other titles, the man known for military strategy and the only one Dax considers an equal?"
Trevor’s mouth curved, slow and deliberate. "The very same. And now, apparently, also your personal source of stability and caffeine."
Lucas huffed out a laugh, leaning back in his chair. "That’s it then. The world is ending. I’ll send Windstone a warning before he walks in here and thinks you’ve been replaced by a body double."
"Windstone," Trevor said with mock gravity, "will survive. Barely. After the initial fainting spell."
Lucas tilted his head, studying him with the faintest glimmer of amusement. "And what brought this on? You didn’t wake up this morning thinking, ’Ah yes, time to become a domestic husband.’"
Trevor’s eyes softened just enough to be dangerous. "No, I woke up thinking I’d like more time to watch you pretending not to care where I am."
Lucas hummed, as though weighing the words in his head, gaze drifting lazily over Trevor’s face before settling on the faint tension in his jaw. He let the silence stretch just long enough to feel intentional, then leaned back in his chair like a man making an idle observation.
"I suppose that means you’ll need to work harder, then," he said mildly.
It wasn’t the words so much as the way he said them, light, unbothered, just shy of a smirk, that landed exactly where he meant them to. A neat little provocation dropped right into the center of the room.
Trevor stilled in the way a predator does when it realizes its prey just wandered a little too close. The faintest shift of air carried the warm edge of his pheromones across the desk.
Lucas’s lips curved into the kind of smile that was equal parts invitation and challenge. "What? You didn’t think this domesticity experiment would be easy, did you?"
Trevor leaned forward, elbows on the desk, the glint in his eyes sharp enough to cut. "Darling, if you want me to work harder, I’ll be thorough about it. And we both know what that means for you."