Page 14 of Tusks And Conditions

Jagger nods. A single, controlled dip of his chin. "She is."

More silence. Meatball burps wetly against my ankle.

"Good. That was... the kiss was... adequate. Very convincing. Good performance." I am speaking in fragments. I am an accountant. I am a woman who has delivered quarterly earnings presentations to boardrooms full of partners without a single tremor. And right now I sound like a malfunctioning GPS trying to recalculate a route that no longer exists.

"Adequate," Jagger repeats. He reaches down, picks up the shirt he discarded during the window repair, and pulls it over his head in one smooth motion. The fabric stretches tight over his shoulders and the tattoos disappear beneath dark cotton and feel an absurd, unwanted pang of loss. "I'll clean up the living room."

He turns and walks down the hall, and his heavy footsteps make the floor creak beneath my feet. I stand in my bedroom with my hand pressed against my sternum where my heart is hammering against my ribs like it's trying to escape, and I gaze at the rumpled bed and the leather bracers on the nightstand and my displaced copy of Strategic Tax Planning for the Modern Professional lying facedown on the floor, and I think about the fact that I have eighty-seven days left of this arrangement and that if every day feels like this I will not survive it with my sanity intact.

I smooth my hair. I straighten my blouse. I grab my book and place it precisely perpendicular to the nightstand where it belongs. Then I walk to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, and stare at my reflection until the flush fades from my cheeks and I look like a person who has not recently been kissed by an Orc bounty hunter in front of a Fae government official.

Routine. Routine is the antidote to chaos.

I spend the next twenty minutes getting ready for work with the kind of methodical precision that has defined my entire adult life. Foundation, concealer, a single coat of mascara. Hair smoothed and pinned. Neutral blouse, charcoal slacks, low-heeled shoes that are not the scuffed beige ones from the DMI, because those are in the trash where they belong. I pack my laptop bag, check my calendar, and review my client list for the day. Three meetings, two reconciliations, and a preliminary tax strategy session with a new corporate client that Whitfield & Associates has been courting for months. Normal work. Predictable work. Work that makes sense and follows rules and does not involve blood-magic ink or supernatural bonds or the taste of pine and woodsmoke on someone else's lips.

I emerge into the living room to find Jagger sitting on my sofa with Meatball curled in his lap and a thick fantasy novel open in one enormous hand. He has cleaned up the glass from yesterday's window incident. He has straightened the cushions. He has, I notice with a small shock, folded the throw blanket that normally lives on the arm of the couch into a neat, precise rectangle. He looks up when I appear, and his gaze tracks from my face to my laptop bag to my shoes and back again with the kind of rapid, comprehensive assessment that reminds me he hunts people for a living.

"I'm going to work," I announce, and I say it firmly, like I am declaring a mathematical truth. The sky is blue. Two plus two equals four. I am going to work and I am going to sit at my desk and I am going to reconcile numbers until the memory of that kiss dissolves into the safe, sterile white noise of fiscal responsibility.

"No."

The word lands like a boulder dropped from a great height. Jagger closes his book, one finger marking his page, and looks at me with that immovable expression that I am beginning to recognize as his default setting.

"What do you mean, no?"

"Someone came through that window yesterday." He nods toward the repaired glass, which still bears a faint crack in the lower corner that he hasn't been able to fully smooth away. "One of the Bloodfangs crew. Which means they tracked me here. Which means they know where you live. Which means you don't go anywhere alone."

"I go to work every single day, Jagger. I have clients. I have deadlines. I have a quarterly review in eleven days that will determine whether I make senior associate. I cannot just not go because some supernatural thug decided to redecorate my living room."

"I didn't say don't go. I said don't go alone."

The implication settles over me like a cold blanket. We peer at each other. Meatball, sensing tension, opens three of his seven eyes and makes a gurgling noise that sounds vaguely like a question mark.

"Absolutely not." I grip the strap of my laptop bag so hard my knuckles bleach. "You are not coming to my office. You are not coming anywhere near my office. Whitfield & Associates is a highly professional, highly conservative accounting firm that handles financial portfolios for some of the most prestigious human families in the city, and if you think for one second that I am going to walk into that building with a six-and-a-half-foot Orc covered in shimmering tattoos and carrying enough weapons to arm a small militia..."

"I'll leave the weapons."

"That is not the point!"

Jagger stands up. It happens so fast that Meatball tumbles off his lap with a wet, indignant squawk, and suddenly the room shrinks by half as he fills the space between me and the door with his body. He doesn't crowd me. He doesn't loom, exactly. He simply exists at his full height and width and mass, and the sheer physical reality of him makes my argument feel very small and very fragile.

"Sabine. I have nineteen active bounties. Four of those targets belong to organizations that retaliate against people connected to the hunter. You are now legally, magically, and very publicly connected to me. Until I clear those contracts, you do not leave this apartment without protection. That is not a request."

I open my mouth to argue, and decide better of it. Instead, I close it. But shortly after, I open it again.

He's right. I hate it with every organized, fiber of my being, but he's right. Someone literally crashed through my window yesterday. There is a crack in the glass to prove it. And the bond registration is public record, which means anyone with access to the DMI database can find my name, my address, and my connection to one of the most notorious bounty hunters in the supernatural district.

"Fine," I say through my teeth. "You can ride in the car. You can sit in the lobby. You will not speak to anyone. You will not touch anything. You will not bring that creature." I point at Meatball, who is attempting to eat a throw pillow. "And you will not, under any circumstances, embarrass me."

Jagger's mouth twitches. "I'll be invisible."

"You are six foot six and grey. You have never been invisible in your life."

He picks up his jacket from the back of the chair, shrugs it on over his shirt, and the leather creaks as it settles across his shoulders. Without the visible weapons, he looks marginally less terrifying and significantly more like the kind of person who would be cast as a villain in every movie ever made. He holds the door open for me, and I walk through it with my chin high and my stomach in knots, and I do not think about the kiss. I do not think about the kiss. I absolutely, categorically, do not think about the kiss.

The ride to Whitfield & Associates takes twenty-two minutes in moderate traffic. Jagger sits in the passenger seat of my sensible sedan with his knees pressed against the dashboard because the seat won't go back far enough, and he doesn't say a word the entire drive. He watches the streets with a scanning attention that makes me realize he is cataloging every vehicle, every pedestrian, every potential threat in a continuous, unconscious sweep that is both deeply unsettling and, if I am being honest, deeply reassuring. My hands stay at ten and two. My eyes stay on the road. The silence between us is loaded with the unspoken memory of his mouth on mine.

The lobby of Whitfield & Associates is all polished marble, recessed lighting, and the kind of hushed, reverent quiet that suggests money is being handled with appropriate seriousness. I swipe my badge at the security gate and gesture for Jagger to sit in one of the leather chairs near the reception desk, the ones reserved for clients waiting for their appointments. He lowers himself into the chair, and the frame groans beneath his weight, and the receptionist, a young woman named Claire who has never seen anything more alarming than a paper jam, stares at him with her mouth slightly open.