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“Thank you, sir,” she whispers.
“For?”
“Thank you for letting me come,” she manages. “Sir.”
She’s so humiliated she probably needs to come again, but that can wait. I crouch down and lift her chin. Her big blue eyes flick to mine and she studies me, trying to read my face.
“You’re doing well,” I say. “The cuffs for your wrists are almost done.”
She nods. “Thank you, sir.”
We have a few weeks left before I collar her and the amended contract begins. Part of me is looking forward to it, but the other part doesn’t care because it changes nothing. Maybe we’ll end up staying in this dynamic, maybe we won’t, but whatever happens, Keira Garrison will sleep in my bed from now on.
CHAPTER TWENTY
KEIRA
I go out to the paddock behind the barn early one morning. Big Dog and Small Dog reluctantly follow me out into the cold and sit puffed up on the porch. The sunlight is cool, still shaded behind the mountain. Tiny flakes of snow spiral from the sky. So few I have to look twice to see if they’re really there.
Angel is quiet as I put her tack on and lead her out to the paddock. We’ve been practicing a lot lately. I spend a few hours with her every day and she’s learning to trust me now. I’m not sure I’m ready to get on her yet, but that will come with time.
How much time?
How long will I be here?
Angel pauses outside the barn, blinking her dark eyes up at me. I stroke down her velvety nose and she buries it in my glove.
The painted mare sits heavy in my pocket.
Other than the mare, the only thing my mother left behind was a book of Swedish fairy tales. I read it cover to cover, so many times it fell to dust. Right now, I’m reminded of a story about a woman who goes out into the wild to rescue her father and is snatched by a dark mountain spirit. She has to answer ariddle to get by his bridge, but in the end he lets her pass for a single kiss.
I think back to how Gerard looked when I left. Still sleeping, the blanket pooled around his waist. He’s taken a lot more than a kiss, but I’m still not allowed to leave his mountain.
It tickles me to think of him as a mountain spirit. Long claws, even taller than he is now, bright white eyes.
Speak of the devil.
I hear his boots on the frozen ground. His presence fills the space like smoke. Angel lifts her head and rests her chin on my shoulder, staring past me at him.
I turn. He’s leaning on the fence, one boot on the first rung.
The corner of his mouth turns up. Without breaking his stone visage, he whistles. For a second, I think he’s trying to get Angel to come, but then I realize he’s wolf-whistling at me. Heat creeps up beneath my coat and scarf. I don’t know what he’s looking at, every inch of me is covered.
“Come here, redbird,” he says.
I release Angel and she stays still as I cross the hard, crunchy ground to the fence. He tilts his head so we don’t knock our hats off and I stand on my toes to let him kiss me. He tastes faintly of coffee. His face is smooth—he must have shaved it this morning after I’d left.
“No beard?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Not today, but it’ll be back in a day or two.”
I think I feel a crack in his cold so I offer him a smile. “You make me think of a story I read when I was little.”
“Really?”
I relate the story to him briefly and his brow rises. There’s a faintly amused shadow over his mouth. He looks at me like that a lot. When I fall silent, I start to wonder if he’ll be offended by his portrayal as a dark woodland spirit. But he just reaches outand tugs my braid and taps my chin with the side of his curled finger.
“I see how it is,” he says.
