Chapter 10: The Bed

His legs took an hour to come back.

We spent it on my kitchen floor, with his head in my lap and a dish towel over the part of him that was still a tail.

He told me what it felt like when the change came.

I told him I had never wanted anything as badly as I wanted him to stop talking.

He stopped.

The legs returned with a long shiver, and he lay there bare under my father's torn jeans, looking up at me.

"Minnie," he said.

"Yes."

"I do not know what I am doing."

"Have you ever...?"

"Not with a woman who was not afraid of me."

"I'm not afraid of you."

"No," he said, surprised. "You are not."

I stood up and held out my hand.

He took it, and I led him up the stairs to my room.

It was the room I'd slept in since I was ten, with a quilt my grandmother made and a window that looked out over the harbor.

I shut the door.

For a second we just stood there, and the whole afternoon was in the room with us.

"You are shaking," he said.

"So are you."

"I am nervous."

"Come here."

He crossed the room in two steps and took my face in both hands.

He kissed me slowly, and carefully.

I pulled his shirt off his shoulders.

He let it drop.

I looked at him in the window light, the long lines of him, the old scars on his wrists, the silver hair falling over broad bronze shoulders.

"You're beautiful," I said.

His ears went red.

"Do not say that."

"You're beautiful, and you're blushing, and I'm going to enjoy every second."

He laughed, shaky, and his hands went to the hem of my shirt.

He pulled it up and over my head, and the cool air touched my skin.

His eyes went dark.

"Minnie," he said, almost reverent.

"Take off the rest."

He undid my jeans with trembling fingers.

I stepped out of them, and then out of everything else, and I stood in front of him with nothing between us.

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he said, rough and low, "I have seen the whole ocean, and I did not know anything could be this lovely."

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