Page 20 of Sky and the Grumpy Troll

“You can’t know that.” It was true, though, and I tried to force myself to relax. The mattress was wide. There was ample space between us. There was no reason for any part of me to be this tense.

Beside me, Sky shifted, rolled toward me, and laid a hand on my bare shoulder. His touch sparked at the point of contact and surged along my skin, down to my cock and up to the trolgar gland by my horns. Well, that was new.

“Very stiff.” He squeezed my shoulder.

“Mildly stiff.”

He was quiet for a long moment, and when he spoke, it wasn’t about my stiffness at all. “I might never see my family again,” he said. “My brother Connor. My mom and dad, and my sisters. I have three sisters, did you know that? All younger. The only one of all of them who ever really seemed to get me was my grandfather, and he’s passed on now. And Pip is out there somewhere and I don’t know if he’s okay. And I keep, I keep acting like everything is fine, like this is an adventure, because if I stop acting like it’s fine I’m going to—”

His voice cracked. He pressed his lips together and looked at the ceiling.

“Could you maybe just give me a hug?”

I did not think about it. I turned onto my side and pulled him against me, one arm around his shoulders, the other hand cradling the back of his head. I held him the way I would hold something precious and breakable that had been placed in my care.

He made a ragged, hitching sound and buried his face against my chest, slipping his arms around my waist. He was shaking, small tremors running through his compact frame, and I tightened my arms and let him shake.

“We will find Pip,” I said into his hair. “We will find answers at the Archive. And I will not let anything happen to you while you are in my care.”

“All because of the ancient troll tradition?”

“Yes. Because of that.”

“Does this tradition happen to include extended comforting cuddles that help your guest fall asleep?” He pressed closer.

I started to say no. I should have said no. “It just so happens it does.”

He let out a shaky sigh and dropped his forehead onto the soft spot just below my collarbone. His heartbeat drummed against my chest, rapid, gradually slowing. His shaking eased. His grip on me loosened, and his hand flattened against my stomach, his palm warm against my bare skin.

It had been five years since I had held someone like this.

Five years since Bryndala. Five years of my sisters’ hugs endured, of Tedaar’s shoulder-claps tolerated, of the baker’s kindness accepted from a safe distance. Five years of nobody pressing their face against my chest and trusting me to keep them steady. The ache that opened in me was so vast I could not find the edges of it.

Sky’s breathing slowed. I thought he was falling asleep, and something in me mourned and was grateful in equal measure.

Then he spoke.

“That scene in your book.” His voice was low and unhurried, his lips pressed against my skin. “Chapter twenty-two. Where she tells him she’s going to take him apart.”

My hand stilled on his back.

“The way you wrote her hands on him.” Sky’s thumb moved a slow circle on my stomach, and I was not certain he knew he was doing it. “The way she described his cock. The weight of it. The way he tasted.”

I could not breathe.

“I could put myself there, imagine that I was the one who brought him to the edge four times. That I had a big, beautiful man beneath me, and maybe he had gray skin and horns instead of, well, whatever color fae are.”

I said nothing and listened.

“I want to know what you look like when you finally break.” He smiled against my skin. “I liked that line.”

Those were my words. I had written them three years ago, alone in my study, thinking of no one, and now they were in Sky’s mouth, pressed against my chest, and they sounded nothing like they had on the page. On the page they had been Kethara’s, controlled, precise, a general’s strategy. Sky said them like a dare.

My body had responded before my mind could intervene. Heat pooled low in my belly. My fingers had curled into the fabric of his shirt, my pulse was hammering in my throat, and I was hard, unmistakably. He was pressed close enough to know it.

“I’m glad you enjoyed the story, but it’s just a story,” I said. “I add the elements of sensuality because the readers enjoy them.”

He sighed, huffing out a breath. “I was afraid you’d say that. Sorry, I didn’t mean to say anything inappropriate; I just really enjoy stories of powerful, strong, muscular men who willingly submit and give up their power to please the one they love. That was the second time I’ve read that theme in your books.”