Chapter 17: The Long Night

Roz took both pups down to the kitchen at nine that night and said she had them until midnight.

"Both?" I said.

"I've got four arms between us and one of me. Don't look at me like that. Go up the ladder."

"I wasn't going to."

"You were already on the third rung in your head."

She jerked her chin at the loft.

Conall was in it.

He had been up there for an hour with my aunt's lamp, pretending to read her old almanac.

I climbed the ladder slowly, because the stitches pulled.

He put the almanac down.

"Let me look at it first," he said. "Please. Before anything."

"Look at what?"

"The incision. Teagan, you're ten days out of surgery."

"Pack bodies close in nine."

"I'd like to see that for myself."

I pulled up my shirt.

He knelt on the boards in front of me and ran two fingers along the low flat line.

He pressed gently at the ends, and I watched his face while he did it.

He was all healer, calm and exact.

Then his hand stopped in the middle, and spread out, and held still.

"It's closed," he said, in a different voice.

"I told you."

"You did."

"Are you going to keep staring at my stomach?"

"I'm thinking about it."

I put my hand in his hair.

It was thick and dark and soft at the back, and I pulled his head up until he was looking at me.

"Take off your shirt, Conall."

He did it in one move, over his head, and dropped it.

His chest was broad and warm and scarred along one rib.

I put both palms flat on it and moved down, slow, until I found the buckle of his belt.

He sucked in a breath.

"Teagan. If at any point you want me on the road side of the gate, you say so."

"I know where the gate is."

"Then tell me where you want me."

"Here," I said, and pulled him down onto the quilt.

His mouth found mine, and this time he did not hold back.

He kissed me as if he had been waiting ten days for it.

His hands slid under my shirt and over my ribs, careful of the scar.

He cupped my breasts, which were heavy and sore and swollen with milk.

I flinched, and he went still.

"Too tender?"

"No. Don't stop."

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