Chapter 50: The Mall Had Excellent Lap Space

The loading bay smelled of old cardboard, cold metal, and somebody else’s lunch. Thorne moved slowly with Dove still on his back, stopping beside a concrete pillar while she looked over his head. Daylight reached them through the open door. Beyond the bay, a short staff passage ended at a second door with a narrow glass pane.

A loose chain knocked against the loading door. The sled marks continued through a side entrance, past fresh wrappers and a deep pawprint. Someone had used this place recently. Thorne checked the passage before carrying her farther inside.

Thorne set his pack down. "This is behind the stores. The shopping floor is through that passage. The staff room’s on the left before it."

"So we’re staying in the employee area," Dove said. "I died and still couldn’t escape the fucking break room."

He carried her to the staff-room door and pushed it open with his shoulder. The little room held a long bench, a table bolted to the floor, two dented lockers, and a sink with dry taps. No windows opened directly outside. The walls and ceiling were sound, and the inner latch worked when Dove tested it from his back.

Only then did he lower himself and let her slide onto the bench. Her boots touched concrete instead of snow. She wanted to cry about that and found it deeply offensive that concrete had become an emotional event.

Thorne shifted beside his pack and dressed, all six feet five of him nearly brushing the low pipe overhead. His human skin was bare of fur, his broad shoulders marked with old scars. Short silver hair curled slightly above his black ears, and his tail moved behind him as he knelt. Those golden eyes stayed on her hands until she let him warm them between his own. Apparently she had left the Warren with a very large, very handsome heating system.

"I packed the stock," she said. "The blankets too. I left the shelves."

"Good. We’ll use what you brought."

"That’s it? No questions about why I didn’t fight eight people and carry a wall?"

His eyes lifted to hers. "You got out with yourself. That was the part I needed."

She stared at his hands until he stopped rubbing hers. There were things she could joke away, but that sentence landed somewhere she had been holding shut since the gate closed. He did not ask her to explain why she had gone quiet.

He checked the passage from the doorway, then stayed beside her while she fetched their blankets. Before going into the space, she told him she would be quiet for a moment. He waited until she looked at him again before taking the bundle.

"Sprout handles the supplies," she said. "It’s a system in my head, with a shop and a space I can use. My mind goes in. The rest of me sits here looking unemployed."

She explained the daily sales tasks and two balances. Normal coins came from selling the required stock; Favor came from strong men’s reactions. The pool belonged to that space, and its water had helped her tolerate the cold. He listened without reaching for the blankets as though they might prove something dangerous.

"Can you hear it?" she asked, suddenly worried. He said no, only her replies when she spoke aloud.

"Good. One of us enduring its opinions is plenty. It doesn’t control feelings, before you ask. It just charges rent on having them."

His mouth curved, but his next question was practical. "When your mind goes in, can you see this room?"

She shook her head. He moved his pack beside the bench and told her to warn him first, so he could stay close. She had expected questions about getting more goods. He had asked what happened to her while she fetched them.

They moved together to the covered outer threshold while he heated a can of spaghetti on his stove, safely outside. Thorne wrapped the thermal cloth around her shoulders before touching his own bowl. There was bread in his pack, canned meat for later, rice, and enough supplies that dinner did not need to become a competition in being noble about hunger.

"Eat," Dove told him when he offered another portion. "I refuse to be rescued by a man who faints into the sauce."

He laughed and took his share. When they returned to the room, she latched the door while he spread one blanket over the bench. He sat, held out his hand, and asked her to come closer.

She expected to sit beside him. Instead, when she took his hand and moved willingly between his knees, he drew her onto his lap with a quiet question against her hair. She answered by settling back against his chest, too tired to pretend she had ended up there through poor balance.

His arm rested around her middle over the blanket. His chin found the top of her head, and she leaned into him until the last hard bit of her back stopped trying to stay upright by itself.

"You comfortable?" he asked.

"Horribly. It’s damaging my brand."

His chest moved with the laugh she felt before she heard it. She tucked her cold nose beneath his jaw, and his arm tightened a little, just enough for her to know he liked having her there.

Earlier, through the staff passage, she had seen dead escalators and a poster outside the closed theater. The people on it had looked wonderfully annoyed about problems that did not involve freezing to death.

"I want a movie," she said now. "A stupid one. I want to complain that the popcorn costs too much, then buy it anyway because I have no morals near butter."

"We could find somewhere warmer than this bench."

"That’s not the same, handsome. There should be lights, a huge screen, and someone in front of me making bad decisions with their phone."

He listened as though missing that deserved the same attention as a broken latch. She loved that about him for one frightened second, then refused to inspect the word too closely.

"I’d go with you," he said.

She turned on his lap. He was close enough that she could see where silver hair had dried into an untidy curl above his ear. She touched it, and his hand settled at her back without pulling her any farther than she chose to go.

"You’d hate the prices," she whispered.

"I might like the company."

Her first kiss was a little clumsy because she smiled halfway through it. He waited for her to close the gap again, and that small choice mattered more than she knew how to tell him.

"Well," he said, rough and low in that way that made Dove’s stomach flip. "This is new."

"Don’t make it weird," she said, even though her face was heating up something fierce.

"Wouldn’t dream of it. I’m saving weird for later. Got a whole speech planned."

That startled a laugh out of her, breathless and quick, and it loosened something tight in her chest.

Her hands landed on his chest before she even decided to move them. His shirt was thin and worn, the kind of fabric you could feel heat through, and underneath it she could feel the solid shape of him, every muscle defined like he was carved out of stone.

She spread her fingers out, feeling him soak into her palms, and a slow pull wound tight low in her belly.

"You’re staring now," he said, a little laugh in his throat.

"Shut up," she muttered, but she didn’t stop touching him. Her hands slid up slow, feeling the shape of his collarbone, the thick cords of muscle in his neck, then back down to settle flat against his chest, right over where his heart beat steady and strong. She could feel it speeding up under her palm, matching the frantic beat of her own, and a bloom of heat spread through her chest.

He was watching her face the whole time, patient, waiting. She liked that he waited. She liked that he let her take this slow, even though every part of her was buzzing with the need to just dive in already.

"If you keep looking at me like that," he murmured, "I dont know if ill be able to control my self."

She leaned forward, slow at first, giving him every chance to pull back if he wanted to, though she already knew he wouldn’t. His hands tightened on her hips, just slightly, like he was bracing himself, and she closed the last bit of distance between them and pressed her mouth to his.

It was soft at first. Just a press of lips, testing, careful. He tasted like black coffee and spearmint, and the second their mouths touched she felt a spark shoot straight through her, curling her toes in her boots. She pulled back just enough to look at him, searching his face, and what she found there made her breath catch.

He looked wrecked already. Just from that one little kiss.

"Dove," he said, her name coming out rough, like it cost him something to say it.

"Yeah?"

"You sure?"

She didn’t answer with words. Instead she grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands and pulled him down to her, and this time there was nothing soft about it.

His mouth crashed into hers and everything turned hot and messy real quick. His lips were warm and a little rough, moving against hers with a hunger that made her whole body light up like a struck match.

She kissed him back just as hard, matching his pace, refusing to let him think for one second that she was the type to be led.

His hands slid from her hips up her back, pulling her closer until there was barely any space left between them, and she went willingly, pressing her body flush against his. Her fingers tangled in his hair, that soft silver hair that was always falling in his face, and she tugged just enough to make him groan low in his throat. The sound vibrated against her mouth and she swore it lit up every nerve ending she had.

He tilted his head, deepening the kiss, and she opened for him without even thinking about it. His tongue brushed against hers and she tasted more of that coffee-sweet mint mixed now with something darker, something hungrier. It was sloppy, not neat or practiced, just two people who’d wanted this for way too long finally letting themselves have it.

Teeth clashed once, and she laughed against his mouth, a breathless little sound.

He pulled back just far enough to rest his forehead against hers, both of them breathing hard. "Careful," he said, thumb tracing her jaw. "Keep laughing like that and I’m gonna fall in love with you more."

"Took you long enough to notice that too," she whispered, and he grinned before diving right back in like he couldn’t stand to be away from her mouth for even a second.

Afterward, she kept hold of his shirt. Wanting him had stopped being a joke she could get out of by changing the subject, and she needed an answer before she made a choice she could not undo.

"I might want to choose you," she said. "But first, I need to know what happens the next time you hate something I do."