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When we get to the Whitaker House, an upstairs window is cracked open, and we can hear Gundrik in the kitchen, unhappy about onions.

“What did the poor onions do?” I joke.

“Jassor bought the wrong onions. Gundrik says an onion can’t be wrong, but an orc can.”

I laugh. It’s cold, and the porch light is on, and he’s looking at my mouth. He’s not even pretending he isn’t. My laugh dies off, and I’m looking at his.

“Goodnight, Paige,” he says, but he doesn’t move.

“Goodnight. You’re still banned.”

“I am not banned.”

He’s still looking at my mouth, and I realize what he’s waiting for. We’ve fucked on a rug and a ladder, and he has never once kissed me.

“Oh,” I say. “Yeah. Okay.”

He bends down. He takes my face in both hands, and his palms are so big they cover my ears. The whole street goes quiet. I don’t even hear Gundrik going on about onions anymore. The tusks are cool against my cheeks on either side of my mouth, and then his mouth, which isn’t cool at all. The kiss is slow, the slowest thing he’s ever done to me. I grab the front of his jacket with both hands because my knees have gone weak, and I kiss him back with everything I haven’t admitted to myself.

My toes curl as our tongues twirl together. I’m wet again before he lets go, and he can smell it. He hums one note into my hair, and then he straightens up.

If we had done things in the proper order and kissed before getting naked, I might have fucked him a whole lot sooner.

“Goodnight, Paige.” He says it again, and I’m so addled I can only whisper, “Goodnight,” back.

He goes up the steps, and I walk back down Cedar to my car. The cool air clears my head, and I’m practicing Mora’kel the rest of the way and getting it wrong. How hard can one stop in the middle of a word be?

A few days later, the county sends another letter. I pull Yorrel into my office to read it to him, so nobody in the reading room overhears. I sit on the edge of my desk with my legs crossed and read the letter out loud, and I get louder every paragraph. The part where the county explains what it counts as “operating costs” is where I really let go. He’s in my chair, looking at me with his ears forward. He’s enjoying this.

“May I interrupt?” He glances at my legs. “I would like to taste you. Now, if you will let me.”

Uh…

“The library is open for ten more minutes. I’m not sure—”

He stands up, and I forget all my objections.

Ten minutes later, the last person is out the door and the sign says CLOSED. I’m sitting on my own desk with my skirt around my waist and my panties on the floor. He’s in my chair between my knees.

My office door is frosted glass, so I can see the front desk as a blur. Just as he spreads my knees, the blur moves. Shit, how did I forget to lock the door?

It’s Birdie Halloran. I’d know that shape anywhere. She has a large-print western to return. Birdie has never read a sign on that door in thirty years, and she’s not going to start today.

She’s forty feet away. I open my mouth to tell him to stop.

That’s when he puts his mouth on my pussy, and hums.

I suck in a breath and grab the edge of the desk. It’s the same hum that makes the glass ring, and it goes through his tongue straight into my clit. He licks one slow stripe up through my folds and groans like I’m the best thing he’s ever tasted. Then his tongue curls up inside me, reaching a spot no human tongue has ever gotten to, and fucks me. I have to be quiet.

He holds me open and devours me until my legs shake. I’m going to come, and I can’t make a sound, so I grab the pencil off the blotter and get it between my teeth. He pins my hips with one forearm. The hum drops lower, and I bite the pencil in half.

“You all right in there, Paige?” Birdie calls from the front desk.

My voice is higher pitched than normal. “Just a minute!”

He doesn’t stop. With his mouth on me and the hum still in it, he says, “Mm-hm.”

I come on his tongue with the pencil clamped in my teeth and not one sound out of me. My thighs clamp around his head without moving him an inch.