Page 11 of Sky and the Grumpy Troll

“A man is in danger, and a… friend is stuck far from his home. What greater need could there be than that?”

The look he gave me was half teary gratitude, half suspicion, as though he couldn’t quite believe someone would offer to help without an angle. “Why?”

“Because it would be wrong to do nothing,” I said. “You’re a guest in my home. In the — tradition.”

“The ancient troll tradition.”

“Yes.” I drank my tea and did not make eye contact. “That one.”

He narrowed his eyes at me, the suspicion taking over his expression. “Moerrven, if you want sex, you can just ask. I mean, you’re beautiful. It’s not like I’d turn you down.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. My body was responding to that in a very obvious way that I needed to hide before he noticed, and I could feel the heat rising to my cheeks, so I stood and turned away. “Come. I suppose I should show you my library.”

The library occupied two rooms. One was meant to be a sitting room, but was packed with shelves, floor to ceiling; the other was a smaller study off the hallway that was more books than room. Every surface was covered. Shelves, stacks, piles organized by a system that made perfect sense to me and to no one else. First editions, research texts, collections of poetry, natural history, three centuries of Stonedeep literary journals, and a considerable collection of romantic fiction that ranged from tastefully explicit to extremely explicit, some of them illustrated.

Sky walked into the study and stopped. His mouth opened. His eyes went wide. He took in the shelves, the stacks, the tottering piles on the desk and the chair and the small table I’d given up trying to use for anything other than book storage.

“Moerrven. Holy shit.”

“Mm?”

“You have so many books.”

“Yes.”

“Oh my god, I want to read them all! A huge library right in your house? This has been my dream since I saw Beauty and the Beast when I was a kid.” He spun in a slow circle in the middle of the room, arms out. “The only thing missing is a ladder. One of the ones that slides on rails, so I could ride it across the shelves while singing.” He clapped his hands together under his chin.

It was incredible how easily he transitioned from fear and sorrow back into joyful chaos, which seemed to be his default state.

“Reading wouldn’t happen to be part of this trollish tradition, would it?” Sky asked, eyes wide as saucers.

I was beginning to suspect he was on to me. “Reading is encouraged. Very much a part of the tradition. You’re welcome to read anything. Everything. With the aetherwoven magic, allow your mind a minute to process the translations.”

“Oh, I know. I read half of one of your novels before I fell asleep. The one about the prince who can’t stop fucking the fae warrior who is holding him captive.”

“That is not what that book is about.”

He blinked. “Are you sure? Because it seemed like there was a lot of fucking.”

“I wrote it! I used the bare minimum of explicit scenes to show their romantic connection.”

He pinned me with his gaze, his blinks slow and deliberate, then let his eyes run up and down my body until I shivered.

“What?”

“I mean, I’m just taking note of your idea of bare minimum sex. Makes me want to explore what your ideal is, and perhaps what you’d consider excessive. Honestly, it’s too bad more of your books aren’t about men who are into men.”

“I try to cover all genders,” I said firmly, even as I was thinking of putting Sky in the position of the fae warrior he’d just mentioned.

With that, he turned, already pulling books off the shelf, stacking them in his arms with the indiscriminate enthusiasm of a child in a sweet shop. “What’s this one? Is this one of yours? Oh my god, it’s illustrated, and very spicy! Ooh, this looks delicious.”

He was holding a copy of White Stag, my erotic illustrated novel about two men finding fulfillment. Sexual fulfillment. Gods, he was going to get all of the wrong ideas.

“That’s mine. It’s — it’s an early work.”

“You wrote this.” He set the rest of his stack on the desk, flipped the book open, and gasped. “Holy shit, these illustrations. Moerrven, this is straight-up porn. Mm, look how he’s taking that big dick.”

“There are scenes of an intimate nature that serve the narrative—”