Chapter 9
Kit
“Do you like sunflowers?”
I was halfway to dozing when Penny’s voice brought me back to full wakefulness.
I blinked against the firelight to see him propped up on one elbow beside me, bare-chested and damp from our shared bath.
His left hand followed the shapes of the muscles of my torso, fingertips skimming over my skin and chasing sleep further and further away.
My breath caught when he leaned in, sparking memories of an hour before when he’d had more than his hands all over me.
He’d worn me out, but he was clearly still wide awake.
Not that I minded the attention; I relished it and, when his lips traced up the side of my neck, I tipped my head aside to give him better access.
“What?” I asked, already distracted.
“Sunflowers,” he murmured against the shell of my ear. The fingers of his right hand curled under the back of my neck to hold me in place as his kisses trailed across my cheek. A lock of hair slipped from behind his ear and brushed across the tip of my nose.
I reached up to rub away the sneeze that threatened, then tucked the offending strands back. “What about them?”
“We grow them on the farm. Mostly for looks, but Mother also sells the seeds to the local weaver to make dyes. Every summer they come up, taller than you are. A whole wall of them.”
“Mm.” My eyes slid closed as his lips met mine in a soft, savoring kiss.
After a moment, he pulled back. “When we get married,” he said, his tone wistful, “that’s where I want to do it. Surrounded by sunflowers.”
Warmth swelled in my chest and choked off any immediate response I might have given.
It still caught me off guard how freely and readily Penny thought about our future together.
For so long, I hadn’t had a future worth imagining, so I was out of practice.
I’d been alone and had expected to remain so.
Now, it wasn’t hard to picture the day I’d make Penny my husband: in the presence of family, against a backdrop of sunflowers that could never compare to the brightness of the man who cherished me as much as I cherished him.
“I would like that,” I said softly.
He smiled and rubbed his nose against mine. “I bet their reflection will turn your eyes gold like the sunlight always does.”
I grinned through his next kiss and cupped the nape of his neck with my palm.
“You’re precious, Pen. I’ll never understand why no other man got to you before I did.”
Blush tinted Penny’s cheeks, and he ducked his head. “I was still practicing how to properly ensnare a man. Think I’ve got it now, though.” He looked up at me through his lashes. “Rosie says you’re enchanted with me.”
I stroked the back of his head with my thumb. “Probably because I am.”
It was his turn to grin, and he sank down so he could drape himself over me and nuzzle along my jaw. “Lucky me.”
The gesture was familiar by now. I could always count on Penny chasing the smell of my shave oil after a bath. I enjoyed it enough that I considered shaving twice a day just to encourage him to do it more often.
“This must be what Thoma was talking about.”
“What do you mean?” Penny didn’t pause in his attentions, instead graduating from nuzzles to tiny kisses.
It was an effort to focus on conversation with his weight pressing me into the mattress and his fingers trailing down my sides, leaving little fires in their wake.
“He caught me when I was finishing up my deliveries,” I said as I dragged my attention away from where Penny's hands were headed.
“Wanted to apologize for running out on dinner. He said it was hard to watch us together.”
Penny paused and pushed up to meet my eyes. “I spent the whole time whining about Merrick. You even told me so. Multiple times.”
I slid my arm around his waist to keep him close.
I didn’t want to make him feel bad, so I didn’t tell him that Thoma also said the mention of Anders made him think about the day in the square.
He avoided seeing most of the skinning, but he couldn’t get the image of Anders holding Reimond’s disembodied heart out of his mind.
It was all he dreamed about for weeks. Considering I still had nightmares about Penny dying during the third Oath, I knew how he felt.
“I imagine it’s even easy to miss the bickering when someone’s gone,” I said.
Penny’s lips pressed a grim line, and he nodded.
“He wanted me to pass the apology on to you,” I added.
“He feels awful about it, but he hasn’t been up to stopping by the forge to talk and wanted to make sure you knew.
” I brushed the damp hair back from Penny’s face.
“He reiterated that the third Oath was all wrong, and it never should have been allowed to happen. It’s strange to hear other people talk about the Bone Men like that.
There was a time when no one would have even dared whisper such things in Ashpoint. ”
Penny shifted, restless and buzzing despite the late hour and our long day. I could tell there was something on his mind. Judging by the way he avoided my eyes, he was working up the nerve to say it.
He finally settled with his head tucked beneath my chin and drew a deep breath.
“Thoma’s not the only one who thinks that way,” he said. “Rosie does too. Apparently, so do a lot of other people.”
“How do you know that?”
He traced down the grid of my abdomen with his fingertip. “Rosie told me about the night she talked to you in the orchard when she said that we should all leave. I told her we couldn’t. And then I…”
I strained to look down and watch his throat bob with a hard swallow.
“I told her the truth about why we’re here. Why we have to stay.”
My arm tensed around his waist as anger flared in my chest. Of all the times he could have told someone the truth of our intentions, now had to be the worst. Merrick was actively out for blood.
Anyone else who knew the details of what Penny and I were planning was at as great a risk as we were.
Telling Rosie may well have made her a target, too.
I took a measured breath and kept quiet as Penny continued.
“She said we can’t do it alone. That we need help. And she knows who to ask.”
My anger abruptly sputtered out because there was no denying Rosie’s logic. Even if it meant more people to look after, more allies also meant more people to do the looking after. It would give Penny back some of the freedom he’d enjoyed here before we found out Merrick was trying to kill us.
If there were others I could trust to keep him safe in town, we could go about our lives at least giving the impression that nothing had changed.
It had been just Penny and me against the Bone Men for months but, with more help, maybe we could find some relative safety in numbers.
With enough allies, we could be a force too big to crush.
When Penny first showed up at my door, I never would have imagined there would be more than a handful of people in Ashpoint who would be on our side, but I was grateful for whatever help we could get.
Scooting back toward the head of the bed pulled me away from Penny and gave me a fuller view of his face.
“I wish you’d talked to me before telling Rosie all of this,” I said, and Penny's brows pinched. “It wasn’t just your secret to tell, but it may also be the best turn of events we could have asked for. If we can get enough people together, it’ll be harder to silence us.
It will make it riskier to come after us if there are more people around and more eyes on us. ”
Another comfort was the knowledge that our mission wasn’t over if the two of us failed. The pressure of being the only ones standing in the way of widespread suffering was crushing, and I could feel some of it lifting already.
Penny leaned up on his arm again and met my eyes. “Are you mad at me?”
I smiled softly and shook my head. “I’m learning to trust that sometimes your intuition is better than mine, especially where the people here are concerned. I think this is one of those moments.”
I tugged him back down so we were laying chest to chest and I could rest my forehead against his. “Honestly, I’m tired of this burden just being mine. Being ours. I’m looking forward to sharing the load for once.”
Penny exhaled relief and relaxed against me. “You should talk to Thoma. Tell him everything, too. Get him on board. I think he’d be eager to help.”
I nodded. “I will, just not yet. He’s been through a lot. He might still need some time.”
Penny hummed acknowledgement and pushed onto all fours. Creeping forward, he worked a knee between my legs in a move that was not as casual as he tried to make it. Nor was it nearly enough contact after all the touches and kisses he’d been lavishing me with for the last ten minutes.
If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought it had all been an attempt to put me in a better mood for this conversation. But Penny wasn’t that devious.
Curling my other arm around him, I rolled us so I could pin him beneath me. His eyes flashed in the firelight.
“Now,” I murmured against his lips, “are you ever going to go to sleep, or do you plan on teasing me the rest of the night?”
His swallow was audible. “Not tired,” he rasped.
I freed a hand to slide between us and cup his groin. The hitch in his breath fueled my desire, and suddenly even trousers seemed like too much clothing for us to both be wearing.
“Guess I should have worked harder to wear you out then.” I sealed my mouth to his in the kind of kiss that always made me hungry for more. My heart pounded, and heat pooled in my gut, rapidly spreading.
With a bit of further finagling, I worked my hand under Penny's waistband to curl my fingers around him.
“Kit,” he breathed, then stuttered a gasp when I ground my own erection against his thigh. “Kit, we already took a bath.” There was no conviction in his protest, and he pushed my trousers off my hips before I could respond.
It was a poor attempt at playing hard to get. He was too transparent for that.
I trailed slow kisses along his jaw and kept up a lazy rhythm with my hand. Penny whimpered and squirmed beneath me when I puffed a hot breath over his ear.
“Two baths in one night never hurt anyone.” I smirked against his neck. “Now, are you going to have me, or do I have to do it myself?”
Penny growled and rolled us back over. His eyes were dark with lust when they met mine.
“Darling, I’ll never leave you wanting.”