The Rejected Beast Bride's New Mate novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Breach

Orrin didn't answer right away.

The wind pulled at the edges of his wings, still closed around us.

"Ask me again," he said. "But not for the law."

"What?"

"If this is how you beat him, I'll stand next to you in any room in this city." His thumbs moved once on my bare waist. "But I won't be the paperwork, Clover. Not even for you."

My face went hot.

"You think I'd use you for a form?"

"I think you've wanted out for two years," he said. "And I'm the nearest door."

I put my hands flat on his chest and pushed back just far enough to see his face.

"Listen to me," I said. "My fever's been gone since the night you sat in my hall. I'm not in Heat. I'm not in anything. I'm cold, I'm wide awake, and I know exactly what I'm saying."

He waited.

"I'd want you if the law didn't exist," I said. "I wanted you when you put the ice on my neck. I wanted you with dough up to your elbows. I wanted you through a door. The law is just the reason I'm done waiting."

He looked at me for a long time.

Then the corner of his mouth moved.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"That's the one I'll take."

He flew us down.

I didn't scream this time.

I kept my eyes open and watched the stoneyard come up at us, the gargoyles, the shed roof, the gate.

I laughed into his shoulder when his boots touched down.

His loft was up a narrow outside stair over the workshop.

I'd never been inside.

On Sundays he'd always kept me down in the yard, with the carvers and the dust and the coffee.

He opened the door and stood back to let me in first.

It was one long room under the roof beams.

A skylight over the bed.

A kitchen that was really a hot plate and a kettle.

Shelves of books and chisels and broken pieces of old cathedral, a stone hand, an angel's ear, a rosette.

The bed was oak, wide and low, plainly built by somebody who knew wood less well than stone.

And on the windowsill, by itself, sat my brave potato fox.

"You moved it," I said.

"It was getting dusty downstairs."

"It's a potato."

"It's a fox," he said. "It's the first thing you ever made with my grandfather's chisel. I'm keeping it where I can see it."

I turned around.

He was standing just inside the door with his wings folded tight and his hands loose at his sides.

He kept them there.

He'd asked once on the roof.

He was going to ask again.

I could see it in his face.

"Clover," he said. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"You can change your mind at any point. Halfway through a sentence. I'll stop."

"I know you will," I said. "That's why I'm sure."

I walked to him.

I took his hand, the huge careful hand that held a chisel like a pen and a bun like a dead octopus.

I put it on my waist, under my sweatshirt, where it had been on the roof.

"I'm asking," I said. "In words, Orrin. Take me to bed."

He dropped his forehead to mine.

"Say it again."

"Take me to bed, Orrin."

His hands left my waist.

He pulled his T-shirt over his head.

My mouth went dry.

His chest was broad and pale, gray veins faint over his ribs.

The muscles at his shoulders bunched where his wings folded down his back.

I reached for his belt.

My fingers felt small and quick against the leather.

He let me do it.

I unbuckled it and opened his trousers.

He stepped out of his boots.

I shoved the trousers down.

He kicked them free.

He stood in front of me in nothing but the city glow through the skylight.

I had never seen a body like his.

Big everywhere.

Stone-gray skin warming to something closer to marble in the lamplight.

His cock was already hard.

It curved up against his belly, thick and flushed darker at the head.

I put my hands flat on his chest.

His skin was cool at first, just like the ice pack in the dish towel the night he sat in my hall.

"Neck," I whispered.

He made a sound.

Not a word.

His chest rose under my palms.

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