Page 34 of Remmen

“It’s the best thing anyone’s ever given me.”

He looked young, and glad, and caught out.

I set the press down on the couch, careful with it, and crossed the two steps between us. He met me halfway, folding all that height down to me, one big hand coming up warm at the back of my head. I quit fighting it and kissed him.

For a while I let myself believe we had the night, and the planet, and all the time in the world.

I woke up because the light was wrong.

It came through the gap in the curtains in a flat white slab, and it took me a second to place it. Midmorning. Not the gray hour I usually dragged myself up in. Late.

Something heavy lay over my waist. A lot of something. The mattress had sunk hard toward the middle, under a weight no human body could account for. An arm the size of my leg lay across me. And I remembered all of it at once.

Remmen. In my bed. In the daylight.

The warmth from overnight vanished. Panic took its place.

“Get up.” I shoved at the arm. It was like shoving the side of a building. “Remmen. Get up. It’s late. The sun’s up. You have to go.”

He made a low, pleased sound and pulled me back into him, and for one weak second I wanted to stay right there. Then I remembered the street outside. The whole town was up by now. Everyone got out of bed with the sun here and stood around drinking that terrible not-coffee root drink, and every last one of them would notice a minotaur letting himself out of the human counselor’s door at this hour.

I twisted around to face him. His eyes opened, gold and warm, and he smiled at me, slow and easy. He had all morning. I didn’t. I had to get him out before the whole street watched him go.

“You have to leave. Now. Right now.” I got both feet on the floor and hauled on his arm and moved him roughly none at all.

“Mm.” He caught the hand that was shoving at him, turned it over, and put his mouth to the middle of my palm, which was fighting dirty. “You’re not even going to give me a cup of coffee?”

“No. That’s mine. You don’t even like it.” Despite the forlorn realization of love last night, I wasn’t about to do something crazy like share my coffee. “There are people on the street, Remmen. You have to go.”

He sighed, long-suffering, and finally started to lever himself upright.

Somebody knocked.

I’d never moved so fast in my life. I put a hand flat on his chest and shoved him back down and threw the purple quilt over all seven feet of him, and I went for the door dragging my pajama top down over a bra that was still hanging off one tit.

I opened it about eight inches.

Chelsea was on my step with two mugs of the terrible boiled root, one of them held out for me. She looked at my thrown-on pajamas. She looked at my hair, which was almost certainly sex-tousled. A little line came up between her eyebrows.

“Weren’t we going to get breakfast?”

We were. Two days ago I’d promised her breakfast, and it had gone clean out of my head under an avalanche of coffee and minotaur.

“Oh, shit, I forgot.” The lie came in smooth, right behind the truth. “I slept in. I’m sorry. Raincheck?”

I was one wrong word from a full-blown panic and I knew it. I kept my face friendly and my body square in the gap and did not so much as glance toward the bedroom.

“Is everything all right?” She tipped her head and tried to see past me into the dark of the apartment. I moved with her, easy, and kept myself in the way.

“I was out at the farm late last night. I’m just tired.” Not a word of it a lie.

Her face relaxed. She believed me because it was true. “You know,” she said, and went gentle on me, which was so much worse than suspicious, “you should include what you’re doing out there when we report to Nezara. The house calls, the dressings. It’s real work, even if it’s not on the intake sheet.” She glanced down the row of doors. “It may keep us employed.”

“Good idea.” I was sure she could see my pulse in my throat. “I’ll write it up.”

From the bedroom, muffled under a quilt and not muffled anywhere near enough, came a low, deep cough.

Some part of me left my body and went to stand in the corner. On the outside I held the smile and did not blink. “I really need a shower. I’ll see you in the office, okay?”