Chapter 223: He Took the Long Way Back

EDRIK’S POV

Earlier that afternoon, before Dove met the water trader, Edrik had watched a different customer look down her shirt, heard her tell him exactly where to put his attention, and counted the seconds until the man did it again.

Three. He had managed three whole seconds.

Dove turned to a customer buying batteries. Edrik stayed by the hardware doorway with his hands empty and his face calm. The man staring at her saw that calm and made the mistake of thinking it meant nothing had happened.

Edrik knew better. He had already decided where the conversation would take place.

He did not interrupt Dove’s sale. She liked the shop working properly, liked knowing what she had earned and what she wanted to do with it. Watching her tell people no was one of his favorite things. Watching them ignore it was considerably less enjoyable.

The customer drifted away toward the diner after buying nothing. Edrik remembered his shirt, the dark patch at one shoulder, and the way he walked with his left heel turned out. Then he helped close the cabinet and carried a bag upstairs as if the man had stopped existing.

Dove sat on the edge of the bed, fanning her face with a folded receipt someone had left in the room.

"If this heat gets any worse, I’m selling everything and becoming a bathtub resident."

"I would support that," Edrik said.

"You would make it weird."

"Only if you let me."

She rolled her eyes, but her foot nudged his ankle. He bent, kissed her cheek, and felt the small turn of her face toward him before she remembered she was pretending not to enjoy his attention.

He wanted to stay there. He wanted her cool fingers under his jaw, her voice going soft when nobody was listening, the weight of her falling asleep against him because she had finally stopped trying to finish one more thing.

He also wanted the man downstairs to regret his afternoon.

"I’ll get your drink," he told her.

Thorne looked at him from the window. Edrik met his eyes for a moment, then left by the stairs.

The diner was crowded. People stood near the fan pretending they were waiting for someone. Edrik bought the drink Dove had ordered, asked the cook to keep it behind the counter for a minute, and walked through the passage into the back lot.

The customer was there, talking beside a parked van. His companion went around to the driver’s side when Edrik approached. Edrik caught the customer by the sleeve before he could follow.

"Your wife was only joking," the man said, too quickly.

So he knew exactly what this was about.

"She told you where to look."

"I didn’t touch her."

Edrik hit him once. The man’s back struck the van, and his hand flew to his mouth. Edrik kept hold of the sleeve so he could not fall under the wheel.

The man looked frightened now. Edrik smiled and straightened the collar he had twisted. He had spent years dealing with men who understood only what happened when they pushed too far. This one was learning faster than most.

"You heard her," he said. "Next time, believe she means it."

The man’s companion came around the van, stopped at the sight of Edrik, and decided to help his friend instead of rushing him. Sensible. Edrik let go of the sleeve.

"You’re insane," the customer said through his hand.

Edrik checked the blood on his knuckle. "And you’re a slow learner. We all have faults."

He walked back toward the passage before the man could find another useful observation. A diner worker stood by the back door with a trash bag. She had seen enough that pretending otherwise would be pointless.

"Keep it out of my dining room," she told him.

"I did."

"That wasn’t praise."

He inclined his head and went inside. The cook pointed him toward a sink away from the clean dishes, then stayed beside Dove’s glass while Edrik checked his cuffs. Fair enough. He wouldn’t want someone else’s blood near her drink either.

For a moment, he looked toward the stairs instead of the kitchen. He knew which step creaked, which window faced the lot, and where Dove had put her shoes. A week ago he would have called that checking a room. Now he pictured her bare feet on the cool floor and wanted to be the person she called when she could not find the other sandal. He could live with that sort of inconvenience. He wanted years of it, which was a far more dangerous thought than the one that had brought him outside.

He checked his cuffs before going upstairs. Dove could know exactly what he was. She still deserved a husband who did not put another man’s blood on her clean sheets.

At the sink, he checked his knuckles. A small split, nothing that changed how his hand worked. He cleaned it, dried it, and picked up her drink.

Thorne stood at the foot of the back stairs. His gaze moved from Edrik’s face to the hand holding the glass, then toward the van.

He said nothing.

Edrik liked him for that, although he knew silence was not a promise to agree with every future decision. Thorne had his own temper. Edrik had seen enough of it to enjoy having the panther on his side.

Upstairs, Dove took the drink with both hands and made a pleased sound when she felt the cool glass.

"My favorite delivery," she said.

"I was hoping you meant me."

"You’re very large. Difficult to leave on a doorstep."

He sat beside her and let her lean against his arm. Her clean scent settled over everything else, warm and distracting in a way he had stopped trying to be reasonable about. She was talking about the generator, already imagining a fan pointed at their bed, and he listened because he wanted that room too.

A room she chose to stay in. A door she opened for him because she knew who stood outside it.

Downstairs, a van engine started. Dove paused, then looked through the window as the customer climbed in with a cloth against his mouth.

She turned back slowly and took Edrik’s hand, inspecting the clean split across his knuckle.

"Why," she asked, "do I think you took a very interesting route to the kitchen?"

He turned his hand beneath hers and kissed the inside of her wrist.

"Do you want the polite answer, little Dove, or the one that explains the blood?"