Chapter 2 #3
He frowned, looking a little confused. “It’s mid-afternoon, I don’t need to lie down for quite a while.
Anyway, the point is, you have nowhere to stay.
I have a cottage. It has a guest room.” He paused.
“And it would be culturally appropriate for you to stay with me. Expected. Demanded, even, by the ancient customs of my people.”
“Demanded by the ancient customs of your people,” I repeated, trying to hide my smile. This was a whole new level of rationalization if he was trying to get laid, and I was here for it.
“Yes.”
“So I’d be, what, rude if I said no?”
“Deeply rude. Offensively rude. A slight upon my honor and the honor of my ancestors and the entire Mossren line going back—” He stopped, and I wondered if he’d noticed he was getting carried away, or if he simply ran out of ideas. “It would be bad.”
He was sweating, a faint sheen across his forehead, and the blue blush had crept up past his collar. Man, I was gonna get fucked so good. Once he figured out how to actually ask for it without making bizarre excuses.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?”
“Yeah. Ancient troll tradition. Cultural exchange. I’m in.” I grinned at him. “But only a few days, until I figure out what to do. Thank you. For real. I was having a pretty terrible day and you made it a lot less terrible.”
His jaw eased a little and his shoulders dropped a fraction. “You were tied up on a road. The minimum decent response was to untie you.”
“And carry me to town and buy me a magic necklace and feed me the best pie I’ve ever eaten.”
“The pie is adequate. You have low standards.”
“I have incredibly high standards.” I meant it as a joke, mostly, but the way I said it made his ears twitch and the blue flush surge back, and he looked away again with the rigid discipline of a man working hard at not reacting.
“We should go,” he said, standing up so fast the bench scraped stone. “Before — before it gets dark.”
“It’s like two in the afternoon.”
“Troll days are structured differently.” He was already pulling coins from his pocket, setting them on the table.
“Could you explain that structure?” I asked, almost certain he couldn’t. He was weird. Grumpy and weird and generous and hot and weird. I liked him immediately, the way you like a thunderstorm, not because it’s comfortable, but because it’s interesting.
“It’d be confusing to a human. Besides, we have to discuss finding your friend.”
“I do need to find Pip. You wouldn’t happen to be itching for a quest, would you?” I said as I stood and folded up my bundle of clothes, then wrapped the two leftover pies up in a handkerchief Moerrven produced from his pocket, and added it to the bundle.
He looked like he regretted bringing Pip up. “I’m not much of a quest person,” he hedged as he turned and started to walk.
I jogged after him. “Think of the experience. For your books!”
“For my books?”
“Yes. Do you not have quests in your books?”
He frowned at me. “I suppose I do.”
“Well then. See, helping me would help you! It’s perfect.”
He sighed. “Come, let’s go to my cottage, and we can discuss this more. Perhaps I have something in my personal library that would aid you in understanding this portal of yours.”
He strode out of the square in the direction we’d come from, and there was an immediate problem. Moerrven walked fast, so fast that I had to jog to keep up with him.
“Uppies?” I said, holding up my arms as I trotted beside him.
He stopped and looked down at me. “What?”
“Uppies. Pick me up. Carry me. You did it before.”
“I carried you before because you couldn’t communicate with anyone and I needed to move quickly. And you bit my ear.”
“Sorry about the ear. And the pinching. I thought you were going to eat me, so it was all self-defense, remember?”
“Still happened.”
“I promise I’ll be gentle. Now I know better.” I held my arms up higher. “Uppies.”
“Yoo hoo! Moerrven!” A cheerful voice came from behind us.
He looked at my outstretched arms. He looked at my face, which I had arranged into an expression of maximum adorability. Big eyes, slight pout, head tilt. I was excellent at this. It had gotten me free drinks, backstage passes, and one memorable ride in a stranger’s Ferrari.
“Absolutely not,” he said, and started walking again.
I jumped on his back.
He caught me. His hands came up under my thighs without breaking stride, automatic, like his body had been expecting it even though his brain had said no.
I settled against him, legs around his waist, arms around his shoulders, my bundle mashed between my chest and his back, chin resting on the thick muscle of a shoulder.
This time it was a proper piggyback, not the feral shoulder-mount from earlier.
Much more civilized. He was warm. Warmer than a human, like a sun-heated stone, and he smelled like cedar, earth, and books.
“I didn’t say yes.”
“You want to get away from the troll ladies who are chasing us, don’t you? Beggars can’t be choosers!”
He made a low rumble in his chest that vibrated against my own and kept walking. I adjusted my grip, wrapping my arms around him and settling in for a pleasant ride.