Chapter 91: She Was Not Sending Him Away

Edrik washed the bracelet at the shared basin, checking the clasp before placing it in Dove’s palm. The silver felt cool against her clean skin. Across the walkway, the man who had offered it earlier allowed a friend to help him toward the guest rooms without looking her way.

"You said he’d live," she reminded Edrik. He glanced once toward the retreating pair and said the man would have an unpleasant few days. Dove fastened the bracelet herself, then caught his good hand before he could return to watching the walkway.

"Sit with me. You can be terrifying again after dinner."

He followed her behind the counter without pretending he needed convincing. Thorne was stirring rice, tomatoes, meat, and vegetables at the shared stove, close enough to see their awning. When he caught her eye, she pointed at the larger pot and held up three fingers. He laughed and added another generous scoop.

Edrik settled beside her on the cot. The old cut on his upper arm had closed into a tender line, although he still moved carefully when the fabric caught it. She checked the skin without taking his shirt off, then told him he could stop finding reasons to test whether it hurt.

"I wasn’t trying to impress you with the injury," he said. "I was trying to make sure that man didn’t come near your door tonight."

"I understood that part. I’m allowed to want you in one piece while you’re doing it." She left her hand on his sleeve, annoyed that such a simple sentence felt harder than telling a whole walkway to mind its business.

He looked at the hand first, then her face. "You can keep me here," he said. "You know that, don’t you? Not just for the road or until somebody safer turns up."

Dove watched the open frontage, where shadows crossed the boards as people packed away their goods. She wanted him nearby. Admitting that did not mean she owed him a bond before she had worked out what wanting him would change.

"I know what you’re offering," she said. "I’m still deciding what I’m ready to give back. Don’t turn every nice moment into an application I have to approve."

"I’m ready," he replied, without a nervous laugh or a glance toward Thorne. "You take your time. I don’t need to pretend I haven’t made up my mind."

She could work with an honest answer, even one she wasn’t ready to match. It was the waiting for a price, a complaint, or a hand where she hadn’t invited it that wore her down. She brushed her fingers over his round white ear, and he closed his eyes at once. The man who had nearly killed someone over her refusal sat perfectly still because she was touching him gently.

"There you are," she murmured. "You can enjoy something without looking for somebody to threaten about it."

"Give me a minute," he said, and she laughed before realizing he was smiling too. There was nothing innocent about him. She liked that he wasn’t asking her to mistake him for someone else.

She let the touch end when she wanted, and he let her hand go. Sprout tried to suggest where this might lead. Dove told it to organize its snack shelf and leave her alone long enough to have a feeling she hadn’t been assigned.

Thorne arrived with dinner and three bowls. Dove made both men fill theirs properly before sitting between them at the small table behind the counter. The shutters stayed half open for air, with Edrik facing the gap and her husband close enough for his tail to curl against her ankle.

"You can admire me with a full mouth," she told them. "If either of you asks whether I’ve had enough before your bowl’s empty, I’m feeding you like children."

Thorne opened his mouth, reconsidered, and took a large bite. His pleased look made her suspicious until he asked whether good boys still got dessert. She nudged his knee beneath the table and told him he was becoming far too confident about his chances.

Three Favor arrived from his amusement and affection. Her purse reached eight hundred twenty-six, and she closed the notice without changing the answer she had been about to give him. Some things could stay between a wife and the husband currently trying to steal her last piece of meat.

After dinner, she brought out the new cards. They played at the table while people closed the neighboring stalls. Edrik understood the rules quickly enough to make Dove wonder how often he had claimed not to know a game before taking somebody’s money.

"No bets involving clothes," she told him. "I can see the thought forming."

"I hadn’t suggested it yet," he said. Thorne offered to lose on purpose, and she told her husband that was somehow worse. Both men laughed when she gathered the cards and dealt again, determined to beat them honestly if it killed the evening.

Later, she spent forty-five Favor on the lingerie she had kept looking at. Seven hundred eighty-one remained. The training manual still needed more savings and one last supervised session, but she could want something pretty without turning the purchase into permission for Sprout to discuss her body.

Edrik settled on his cot behind the counter, turning the cleaned bracelet once around her wrist before she went through the rear door. "Good night, Dove," he said, looking at her instead of the jewelry. She squeezed his fingers before leaving him his own space.

Thorne waited beside the sleeping platform beneath their shuttered window. She caught his shirt and pulled him close, enjoying how quickly he followed. "You were very good today," she told him. "Try not to ruin it by getting smug."

"Too late," he murmured against her cheek. She kissed him anyway, then glanced toward the door when Edrik set his cup down outside. Her husband waited while she decided, his hands warm at her waist without moving her anywhere she hadn’t asked to go.

She led him farther into the room, lowering her voice as he followed. "Quietly, handsome. I am not explaining another noise to that bear tomorrow."

"Shh," Dove whispers, though Thorne hasn’t made a sound yet. His ears swivel forward, dark and sleek, catching every rustle of fabric as she pulls him toward the narrow bed tucked against the wall. The room smells like her clean linen and something sweeter underneath, and under that, the warm musk of him that makes her mouth water.

"You were so good tonight," she murmurs, running a palm up the plane of his bare chest.

He makes a low sound in his throat, something between a purr and a protest, and she presses a finger to his lips.

"Quiet. We can’t wake Edrik." Her voice drops to barely more than breath. "Can you be quiet for me?"