Chapter 228: The Wrong Man Got the Kiss

ASH’S POV

Ash heard Dove laugh before he reached her street. He knew the sound now, knew how quickly it could turn his head, and resented every man close enough to hear it without having to cross a road.

He stopped beside the repair trench with a metal fitting in his hand.

Dove stood behind her ordinary counter, touching a mark on Edrik’s knuckles. The bear said something too low for Ash to catch. She rolled her eyes, lifted his hand, and kissed it.

The fitting folded across Ash’s palm.

The worker beside him stared. "That was the replacement."

Ash opened his hand. A bent edge had cut the skin. He handed it back without looking away from the shop.

"Bring me the original."

Copying the fitting took care that crushing it had not. He made himself attend to its shape, set the finished copy beside the pipe, and waited until the worker checked it. The effort pulled at his temples. His body could break the whole stretch of pipe more easily than his new skill could make one small piece correctly.

Across the street, Edrik brushed his thumb over Dove’s lower lip.

Ash wanted to break something considerably larger.

He had returned from the road in time to resume his duty. There were other streets, other broken pipes, other guards who would have traded places without argument. He had chosen this one because he could see her door.

He was not going to pretend otherwise all morning. He was too hot, too tired, and too sick of watching her turn toward someone else.

A customer stepped out carrying a small bottle. Ash recognized the care with which Dove had handled it, and remembered water closing a wound at the Warren. He had never learned where it came from.

"Did that help?" he asked.

The buyer held up his palm. A shallow cut was already closing. "More than the last three things I tried. She says she found a crate on the road."

"Which road?"

"She didn’t say." The man’s gaze drifted back toward the shop. "Didn’t ask much, to be honest. Hard to remember questions when she’s standing there looking like that."

Ash caught his upper arm.

The bottle rattled against its owner’s rings. Men beside the trench stopped working.

"Look at me when you speak."

The buyer did. Ash felt muscle tighten beneath his hand, felt the man discover that pulling away did nothing. A slight increase in pressure would have broken the arm. The ease of it steadied him in a way the repair work had not.

Then Dove came to the doorway.

Ash released him.

The customer hurried off without finishing his thought. Ash watched him go until Dove’s voice drew him back.

"Is the walkway clear?"

He moved the spare fittings out of the way. "Now it is."

She nodded at the worker and went inside. Ash stood with his answer still in his mouth, feeling as though he had been struck somewhere nobody else could see.

She had not even asked why he had grabbed the man.

Perhaps she assumed he was being an ass. He had given her plenty of practice.

Dove returned with her hair tied up. White roots showed at the base of the loose blonde tail. Her cotton skirt moved around her knees when she turned, and the cropped shirt left a strip of skin above its waistband. Ash remembered that skin beneath cold, wet clothes, remembered carrying her when she had been barely conscious.

He remembered giving orders while she shivered, certain that keeping her alive meant he knew what she needed. She was laughing now, bare-legged in the heat, and he had no part in the life around her.

The generator hummed behind the building. A fan moved the curtain inside her room. She had come home with coffee, equipment, new things she wanted, and the men she trusted to help her keep them. He had followed her through every mile of it like a starving animal outside a kitchen.

His hand went toward the bracelet in his coat.

He stopped before touching it. She had refused it. Making another would only give her another thing to refuse.

Thorne came through the curtain and put a drink beside her elbow. She took it without interrupting her conversation, her free hand settling briefly against his stomach. The panther leaned down to hear something she said. Whatever it was, it made him grin.

Ash could have put him through the wall.

The thought came with no difficulty at all. Neither did the knowledge that Dove would go straight to Thorne afterward. She would put those small hands on his face, fuss over him, and look at Ash with hatred sharp enough to last for years.

Strength could get him through her doorway. It could not make her glad he was there.

He hated that enough to taste it.

The older worker arrived carrying an envelope. Thorne opened it, read, and stopped moving. Dove’s expression changed at once. She left the counter to touch his chest, asking something Ash could not hear.

He knew that attention too. He had seen her give it to Edrik over a split knuckle, to a tired child, to people who had done far less than follow her across the country.

He looked at the blood drying across his palm. She had not seen the cut. He could cross the road and show her, make her notice that he bled too. His fingers closed before he could do something that pathetic.

A repair worker cleared his throat. "We’re done here."

Ash had not noticed them packing.

"Then go."

The man went without asking whether Ash meant the tools too. That was easier. Fear was simple. He could make a street clear, a voice stop, a grown man think twice before looking at him.

Dove could dismiss him without raising hers.

Edrik crossed from the shop, smiling as though he had been looking forward to this. Ash straightened. The bear was powerful enough that most men would have stepped aside, but Ash had no intention of moving.

"You’ve watched the door long enough," Edrik said.

"Move."

"Make me."

Ash caught the front of his shirt and pulled him close enough that their shoulders struck. Edrik’s hand closed around his wrist, hard and steady. Neither man looked away.

From the shop, Dove called Edrik’s name.

The bear’s smile deepened. "That’s my wife calling."

Ash let go before she could come outside.

Edrik smoothed his shirt and walked back to her. Ash watched her reach for him, watched him bend willingly beneath her hand, and understood exactly what the bastard had meant him to see.

He could have broken the bear’s wrist.

The bear was the one going home to her.