Chapter 8
Moerrven
Sky climbed onto the wagon with a cherry turnover in one hand and Poppy tucked under his other arm.
“These are incredible. You should have one,” he said, and held the pastry toward me.
I took the turnover, not because I was hungry, but because it gave me something to do with my mouth.
It wasn’t polite to speak while chewing on a turnover. And I was a coward.
The morning was cool, the sky clear, and Clover plodded out of Sorrend with her usual indifference to urgency. Sky settled onto his blanket, arranged Poppy on his lap, and ate a second turnover, licking sugar off his thumb, which I tried not to watch.
He made such a slow, erotic production of it that I was certain it was intentional.
He did not mention the conversation. He did not mention the morning. He talked about Poppy’s ears and the color of the sky and a place he had once been that had mountains like this, sort of.
“You’re quiet,” he said, after a while.
“I’m driving.”
“You were driving yesterday, too, and you managed to point out a creek where you once stopped for a snack of grapes and cheese.”
“I’m concentrating.”
“On what? I don’t think Clover would turn off the road if you asked her to.
” He stretched his legs out, crossing his ankles, and tipped his face up to the sun.
The light caught the lines of his throat, the sharp cut of his jaw.
I redirected my attention to Clover’s ears, which were large and uncontroversial.
“The road becomes more difficult past Sorrend,” I said. “The switchbacks along Stonedeep Lake require—”
He sat up. “There’s a lake?”
“Stonedeep Lake. The largest body of water in the northern counties. We will be following its western shore for most of the day.”
“Is it pretty?”
“It is considered one of the most beautiful landscapes in Qoksmere.”
The switchbacks descended through pine forest, the trees thinned, and then the lake appeared below us like something I might have written if I’d had the talent to render it properly.
Stonedeep Lake stretched to the far mountains, vast and glass-still, reflecting the peaks in water so clear you could see the stone formations beneath its surface.
The morning light turned everything gold and blue and sharp.
Sky went quiet.
I glanced at him. He was staring at the lake with his lips parted, one hand still resting on Poppy.
“Oh,” he said softly.
I looked away before he could catch me watching. The ache behind my ribs was inconvenient and I assigned it to the altitude.
“Okay, that’s gorgeous.” He let out a breath. “That is Lake Tahoe times a thousand. We didn’t have anything like this in San Jose.”
I did not know what Lake Tahoe was, or San Jose, but I chose not to press him on details that might remind him of what he had lost.
We descended toward the lakeshore. The road leveled out and ran along the western bank, close enough to hear the water lapping against the stones.
The air smelled of pine and wet rock. The day made me want to stop the wagon, sit on the shore, and exist in the world for a while, which was not something I had wanted in a long time.
Sky pulled a book from under the bench. Not The Stonewall Bride. A different book, one I did not recognize, with a blue leather cover and silver lettering.
“What is that?”
“Found it in the trade library at the inn. The innkeeper asked me if I had any of your books to donate, so I gave her one, and she gave me this in exchange. Shit, I hope that’s okay? I would have asked, but a certain person was avoiding me.”
“It’s fine. I do that often,” I said.
He held his book up. The title read The Frozen Hearth. “It’s about an ice dragon and a troll baker. Two guys.” He grinned at me. “Found one where two men fuck. Because I know you wanted to get our imaginations going.”
I opened my mouth and closed it. “I do not remember saying that.”
“Hmm. My mistake. Have you heard of it?”
“I have, but I have not read it.” Ellemere Ashwood had written it a decade ago, and it was, by all accounts, quite lovely.
“Oh! That’s perfect! I can read to you.”
“That is entirely unnecessary.”
“You’ve been driving for hours with nothing to listen to except Clover’s hooves and your own inner monologue.
You need entertainment.” He opened the book to chapter four.
“I started it this morning while you were tacking up Clover and insisting that you didn’t need help.
It’s really good. The dragon is gorgeous. Have you met an ice dragon?”
“I have not. They are quite rare. The only one I know of is a member of the royal court.”
“Are there other types of dragons?”
“Fire and water.”
“Well, the ice dragons sound positively dreamy in human form, with their silver hair and pale skin. Do you think their cocks are more dragon than human?”
I chose that moment to take a long drink of water from my canteen, letting him yammer on about the proportions of dragon cock as if he was speaking about something that was sensible to talk about on a public wagon road. Not that there was anyone around.
He began reading aloud, his tone warm, rich, and full of the same charm he had when he spoke. He read with instinct, giving the dragon his clipped reserve and Joku, the troll, his rough warmth, and somewhere in the first page I stopped thinking about protesting and started listening.
By the sixth chapter, Sky was lying on the bench with his head on my thigh.
It had all happened gradually. He’d sort of listed over, leaning a little at first, then twisted as he went down, landing on me as if I was a pillow and not a person.
Poppy had migrated to his chest, and he was idly playing with her fur as he read.
I diligently kept both hands on the reins, even if, in my imagination, my right hand was playing with his hair.
He smelled of the cedar soap he’d used at the inn and, beneath it, a deeper, more masculine musk.
His mouth was approximately four inches from my cock, which had been in a state of persistent interest since the conversation at dawn and was now making its opinions known with renewed enthusiasm.
I adjusted the reins. I did not move my leg.
“‘Joku’s hands were enormous,’” Sky read, “‘and dusted with flour, and when he set the loaf on the counter his fingers brushed Hoareyn’s wrist, and the troll-warm, bread-warm heat of that touch spread up Hoareyn’s arm like something thawing.
’” He paused. “Troll-warm. Is that a real thing? Are you guys actually warmer than other species?”
“I believe trolls run somewhat warmer than humans, yes. We’re adapted for mountains and caves.”
Sky pressed his cheek more firmly against my thigh and made a happy sound. “Mm, that’s why it was so nice to sleep next to you. I’m always cold.”
I kept my eyes on the road.
Stonedeep Lake glittered to our right. A hawk circled above the water. Everything in Qoksmere was beautiful and unhurried and none of it was helping.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked.
“No.”
He kept reading. He shifted and his head pressed more firmly against my thigh and I thought about the question he had asked me in the gray morning light, his body warm against mine, those dark eyes daring me to answer.
Do you want to fuck me?
Instead of giving him the dignified refusal of a widower only five years into his mourning, I had invoked pastries. Of all the possible responses, I had chosen baked goods. Because I knew he was easily distracted by food.
He’d made it sound so uncomplicated, when my answer was a complicated thing, with a dead wife’s name woven through it. I could not separate what I wanted from what I had lost, and the wanting itself felt like a betrayal of something I was not ready to release.
But deep down, I knew the answer was yes.
I did want him. And I had no idea what to do with that answer because I was a middle-aged troll novelist who had buried the love of his life.
I had promised myself I’d never feel that pain again, even if I lived for another three hundred years, which was likely for a troll.
“‘Joku set a hand on Hoareyn’s shoulder,’” Sky read, “‘and Hoareyn flinched, not from pain, but from the shock of warmth. Nobody touched him. He was too cold, too sharp, too other. And this troll, this enormous, gentle man with flour on his apron, touched him like it was nothing. Like he was just a person who needed feeding.’” Sky stopped reading. He was quiet for a moment.
I moved the reins into one hand and the other slid into his hair.
My fingers wove through the dark strands in an automatic sort of way, the way I pet Poppy when she wanders by.
And by the time I registered what I was doing, I was already carding through the soft weight of it as if this were something I did every afternoon.
Sky’s voice faltered on the next line. A small catch, there and gone, before he recovered and kept reading. But his throat moved in a swallow, and the hand holding the book trembled for a moment.
The strands were fine and dark, and they slid through my fingers with a silkiness you didn’t find in troll hair. His scalp was warm under my fingertips. When my thumb traced the edge of his ear, he exhaled, a slow, controlled breath that told me he was working hard at being calm.
“You’re petting me,” he said, not looking up from the book.
“I’m removing a leaf from your hair.”
“What leaf?”
“It’s gone now.”
“Then why are your fingers still in my hair?”
Because I am an idiot and I cannot make myself stop. Because you feel good. “Wind,” I said.
He laughed, a real laugh, warm and close, and the vibration of it traveled through my thigh. “Wind. Right. Old troll tradition. Subsection: hair petting because of wind.”
“Why do you keep acting like I’m inventing traditions?”
“Because you use them to explain everything you want to do, Moerrven. When you could just tell me you want to do it.”
I grunted, not sure what to say, but sure I should protest.
“Repeat after me. ‘Sky, I’m touching your hair because I wanted to touch your hair. Because it feels nice.’”