Chapter 6
Moerrven
I was still pulling Clover to a stop when Sky hopped down from the bench, landing with the light-footed grace of a dancer.
“Is that a bakery?” He was pointing across the square at a shop with a flour-dusted awning and the warm, yeasty smell of fresh bread drifting from its open door. “It smells incredible. Can I get pastries? I’m getting pastries. Enough of your pickled whatever. Do you have cookies in Qoksmere?”
“Sky, we need to—”
“Oh, come on. You can have some, too.” He held out his hand, palm up, with the absolute confidence of a person who had never once been told no. “I’ll be right back.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted two trolls who were pointing at me and Sky, whispering something and giggling. So instead of arguing, I dumped a generous stack of coins into Sky’s hand, realizing the soulmate news had already reached Sorrend and the damage wanted containing.
Sky grabbed the coins and took off across the square at a trot, and I eyed the giggling, whispering trolls warily.
The innkeeper’s name was Hoalla and she had clearly been gossiping about me.
“Moerrven Mossren!” Hoalla bustled out from behind the front desk the moment I stepped through the door.
She was broad, sturdy, with arms that could have wrestled an ox.
“We heard! The whole county heard! Jodvara sent word via pigeon. What a lucky man, to find another soulmate after such tragedy! Where is he? Let me see him!”
My stomach dropped. Of course the gossip had traveled faster than Clover. “He’s acquiring pastries. Hoalla, I would appreciate some discretion—”
“Oh, he’s shy about it? How sweet.” She clasped her hands together. “I’ve put you in our finest room! Best bed in Sorrend. Biggest, too. You’ll need the space!” She winked. “For the pair of you. I read your books, I know the kinds of things you enjoy with your lovers.”
“We would prefer two rooms.”
Her face fell. “Two rooms? But you’re soulmates! Has there been a quarrel?”
“There has not been a quarrel. We simply—”
“Oh, I understand.” She tapped the side of her nose. “Taking things slow. Very romantic. Very traditional. But unfortunately, because you only sent word that you needed one room—”
“—the note on the carrier pigeon specifically requested two!”
“—I have given our last free room away. So alas, we must place you together. In our finest room.” She winked.
I looked around the empty inn. “You gave your last free room to whom?”
“A very tired group of travelers. Went straight to sleep, no time for the tavern or anything! I couldn’t say no, you see.”
The empty inn around us said otherwise. “You have no other—”
The front door banged open. Sky appeared, flushed and triumphant, holding a large paper-wrapped package aloft like a trophy.
“I found pastries. The baker gave me this sample because I’m, and I quote, ‘pocket-sized and darling.’” He showed us his prize, a sticky cinnamon square already leaking glaze over his fingers.
Hoalla’s eyes went wide and her hands flew to her cheeks. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, he’s so cute and small. A human?”
“I’m not small, I’m perfectly proportioned. And average-sized for a Chinese-American guy.” Sky bit into his cinnamon square and his eyes widened. “Holy shit. Why does everything in this town taste so good?”
Hoalla clapped her hands. “Oh, is that from Bonnie’s across the street? I hope you got one of her cherry turnovers. Those are my favorites.”
Sky waved his package. “I did! Hi, I’m Sky, by the way.”
“I’m Hoalla, the innkeeper, and you are precious. If you’d both like to get settled in, your room is upstairs. It’s quite cozy.”
Sky held out his hand for a handshake, then pulled it back. “Oh, wait. I’m sticky from this cinnamon thing. Don’t want to risk getting sugar on your beautiful dress. We’ll just wave.” He waved.
She laughed, clearly delighted, and handed me a key.
“The room is on the second floor. It’s the first door on the left.
I fear there’s only one bed.” That was delivered with an exaggerated wink that made me regret every time I’d ever written a book where the couple found themselves in an inn with only one bed.
Sky popped the last bite of his cinnamon square into his mouth and snatched the key out of my hand, jogging up the stairs ahead of me.
I followed him at a more sensible pace, lifting the satchel I’d packed for both of us in one hand and cradling Poppy’s basket in the other.
The stairs were narrow and steep and put Sky’s cute rear end at eye level.
Sky fawned over the “old timey” key and unlocked the room, gasping at the big bed.
He set his packet of pastries down and launched himself at the mattress, groaning as he sank in.
“I didn’t know wagon rides made you so tired. This mattress is almost as good as memory foam.”
“I don’t know what that is.” My fingers itched to reach out and settle his fidgety energy, but I resisted. Something had happened while he was reading The Stonewall Bride, but I wasn’t sure what.
Perhaps he’d hated the book. Perhaps the sex scenes had been too much.
He’d already told me he had no interest in women’s bodies, and The Stonewall Bride was explicit about Kethara’s.
I should have steered him toward The Greymere Widow instead, which had no romance at all, only grief and rain and a lighthouse keeper who talked to seabirds.
Although that might have been worse, given his current predicament.
I busied myself with Poppy, going down to the wagon to bring up the clean sandbox I used for travel and prepare a small bowl of water. Then she required her evening fish treat and a specific arrangement of blankets before she would consent to sleep in an unfamiliar room.
Poppy ate her fish, circled twice, and settled into her blankets with a satisfied chirp. At least one of us had our evening sorted.
“You spoil that cat,” Sky said from the bed. He’d pulled off his sneakers and was sitting cross-legged, watching me.
“She has expectations. I meet them.”
“You exceed them.”
“Well, I don’t see why I shouldn’t spoil her. She is good to me. Keeps me company.” I stood, brushed my hands on my trousers, and faced the bed. Sky had already claimed the left side, which was closer to the fire.
“Because Bryndala can’t?” he asked quietly.
“No, I did this even before—” I caught myself and shot him a look. “Where did you hear that name?”
He shrugged. “You said it once, I think.
You don't have to talk about her if you don't want to.” The big troll bed dwarfed him.
The quilt pooled around him, his borrowed shirt hung off one shoulder, his dark hair was messy from the wind, and I needed to stop cataloguing details like a man taking notes for a novel.
I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off my boots and removed my coat. I tugged my shirt over my head, because I could not sleep in it, and Sky went quiet behind me.
I kept my trousers on and loosened the laces. I got under the quilt and lay on my back, rigid as a plank, arms at my sides, staring at the ceiling.
Sky blew out the candles. The room went dark except for the low glow of the fire. The mattress was absurdly comfortable. I would never admit this.
“Moerrven?”
“Mm.”
“You’re lying there like someone’s laid you out for a funeral.”
“I’m resting.”
“Every muscle in your body is clenched.”
“You can’t know that.” It was true, though, and I tried to force myself to relax. The mattress was wide. There was ample space between us. There was no reason for any part of me to be this tense.
Beside me, Sky shifted, rolled toward me, and laid a hand on my bare shoulder. His touch sparked at the point of contact and surged along my skin, down to my cock and up to the trolgar gland by my horns. Well, that was new.
“Very stiff.” He squeezed my shoulder.
“Mildly stiff.”
He was quiet for a long moment, and when he spoke, it wasn’t about my stiffness at all.
“I might never see my family again,” he said.
“My brother Connor. My mom and dad, and my sisters. I have three sisters, did you know that? All younger. The only one of all of them who ever really seemed to get me was my grandfather, and he’s passed on now.
And Pip is out there somewhere and I don’t know if he’s okay.
And I keep, I keep acting like everything is fine, like this is an adventure, because if I stop acting like it’s fine I’m going to—”
His voice cracked. He pressed his lips together and looked at the ceiling.
“Could you maybe just give me a hug?”
I did not think about it. I turned onto my side and pulled him against me, one arm around his shoulders, the other hand cradling the back of his head. I held him the way I would hold something precious and breakable that had been placed in my care.
He made a ragged, hitching sound and buried his face against my chest, slipping his arms around my waist. He was shaking, small tremors running through his compact frame, and I tightened my arms and let him shake.
“We will find Pip,” I said into his hair. “We will find answers at the Archive. And I will not let anything happen to you while you are in my care.”
“All because of the ancient troll tradition?”
“Yes. Because of that.”
“Does this tradition happen to include extended comforting cuddles that help your guest fall asleep?” He pressed closer.
I started to say no. I should have said no. “It just so happens it does.”
He let out a shaky sigh and dropped his forehead onto the soft spot just below my collarbone. His heartbeat drummed against my chest, rapid, gradually slowing. His shaking eased. His grip on me loosened, and his hand flattened against my stomach, palm warm against my bare skin.
It had been five years since I had held someone like this.
Five years since Bryndala. Five years of my sisters’ hugs endured, of Tedaar’s shoulder-claps tolerated, of the baker’s kindness accepted from a safe distance.
Five years of nobody pressing their face against my chest and trusting me to keep them steady.
The ache that opened in me was so vast I could not find the edges of it.
Sky’s breathing slowed. I thought he was falling asleep, and something in me mourned and was grateful in equal measure.
Then he spoke.
“That scene in your book.” His voice was low and unhurried, his lips pressed against my skin. “Chapter twenty-two. Where she tells him she’s going to take him apart.”
My hand stilled on his back.
“The way you wrote her hands on him.” Sky’s thumb moved a slow circle on my stomach, and I was not certain he knew he was doing it. “The way she described his cock. The weight of it. The way he tasted.”
I could not breathe.
“I could put myself there, imagine that I was the one who brought him to the edge four times. That I had a big, beautiful man beneath me, and maybe he had gray skin and horns instead of, well, whatever color fae are.”
I said nothing and listened.
“I want to know what you look like when you finally break.” He smiled against my skin. “I liked that line.”
Those were my words. I had written them three years ago, alone in my study, thinking of no one, and now they were in Sky’s mouth, pressed against my chest, and they sounded nothing like they had on the page.
On the page they had been Kethara’s, controlled, precise, a general’s strategy. Sky said them like a dare.
My body had responded before my mind could intervene. Heat pooled low in my belly. My fingers had curled into the fabric of his shirt, my pulse was hammering in my throat, and I was hard, unmistakably. He was pressed close enough to know it.
“I’m glad you enjoyed the story, but it’s just a story,” I said. “I add the elements of sensuality because the readers enjoy them.”
He sighed, huffing out a breath. “I was afraid you’d say that.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to say anything inappropriate, I just really enjoy stories of powerful, strong, muscular men who willingly submit and give up their power to please the one they love.
That was the second time I’ve read that theme in your books. ”
Inside, my thoughts were a wild tangle of questions and want, as I tried to sort back through the relationships I’d portrayed in my stories and calculate whether or not he was right.
“You should get some rest,” I said, gently shifting away from him. My voice sounded like it had been dragged over gravel.
A long silence, his gaze a weight on me in the dark.
“Did I—”
“You did nothing wrong.” I swallowed. “I am gratified that the book moved you.” I paused and chose my next words the way one chooses a path through ice. “But there are things I am not able to offer. As a widower.” That was the first time I’d admitted that to him.
Sky gasped softly, then reached across and squeezed my hand.
“I’m sorry for your loss. And goodnight, Moerrven. Thanks for the hug. Troll hospitality is truly like no other.”
He didn’t let go of my hand, and I couldn’t make myself release that one last point of contact. Within minutes his breathing had evened out.