by Chant, Zoe
“Is that raspberry or chili pepper?”
“I don’t know. They both came out the same shade of red. Guess I’ll find out.” He lifted his mug in a toast. It had a velociraptor painted on the side, and the curled tail formed the handle. Hers had a design of scampering cats, also with a tail forming the handle. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
They clinked their mugs together and drank.
“Ah-ha,” said Merlin. “Raspberry.”
The hot chocolate was rich and sweet, but not too sweet. It brought up childhood memories, but it wasn’t a child’s drink. The flavors were too complex for that, with heat from the spices and sharpness from the peppermint. It was sensual and surprising and playful, all at once.
“It’s wonderful,” Dali said. “It’s very... you. Grandma always says that cooking is an expression of who you are.”
“She’s very wise,” Merlin said. “And now I want you to cook for me.”
“Right now?” Dali asked, startled.
He laughed. “No, I meant in general, so I can taste who you are. Though if you wanted to make something now, I have enough ingredients that you probably could.”
Once he mentioned it, she realized that she was hungry. Which wasn’t surprising; when she glanced out the window, she saw that the sun was setting. And she did want to show him who she was.
“You’re on,” she said. “But we’re, uh, staying here tonight, right?”
They had to stay together so he could protect her. But after the kissing in bathroom—and at the circus—and the kissing she was tempted to do right now, the question had an obvious double meaning. Dali braced herself for either an awkward discussion or him assuming that of course they’d have sex.
“It’d be more comfortable than your apartment,” he said. “And safer than a hotel. The sofa folds out.”
“Sure. Sounds good.”
And just like that, it was decided. No awkwardness, no assumptions, no pressure to decide right now who’d sleep where and whether they’d do more than sleep. For all his complicated life and booby-trapped house, Merlin was surprisingly relaxing to be with.
“Let me make a phone call,” Dali said. “I need to get Tirzah to take care of Cloud.”
“Can she get in your apartment?”
Dali began to smile, realizing that she knew something he didn’t about their mutual friend. “I can always call the apartment manager and ask him to give her the keys. But I don’t think it’ll be necessary. Did you know she’s my landlord?”
“What? I thought she was a tenant.”
“She might be a tenant,” Dali said. “But I don’t think so. When I first came to the building to look at apartments, Tirzah just happened to be there when the manager showed it to me. She introduced herself as a tenant. The manager told me the rent, and I said I was sorry, but I couldn’t afford it. Tirzah coughed really loudly—”
“Like my seal bark?” Merlin asked.
“Very similar,” Dali replied. “I didn’t think of it at the time, but it was pretty fake-sounding. As soon as she did, the manager said he’d misspoken and was talking about the rent for a larger unit, and this one cost much less. I signed on the spot—the new rent was a fantastic deal, and it’s a great building. Really nice neighbors.”
“If Tirzah’s secretly picking them, they would be. How did you figure it out?”
“The rent checks go to an off-site landlord no one’s ever met, and Tirzah’s always around when prospective tenants were looking at apartments. If you tell her about a problem with the building, it gets fixed right away. I eventually asked another tenant, and he said they were all convinced that Tirzah owns the building. ‘She’s the best landlord we’ve ever had,’ he said. ‘So if she likes to think we don’t know, well, we just let her think that.’”
Merlin cracked up. “That is so Tirzah. I’m sure you’re right. Well, I’ll join the conspiracy to not tell her everybody knows. Let her enjoy her ‘secret.’ But let’s find out for sure. Don’t mention calling the manager to ask him to give her your key, and see if she gets in anyway.”
“I feel like a rat playing roulette.”
“Fun, isn’t it? I’ll call my mom while you’re doing that. She’ll want to know I’m fine.” He heaved a sigh. “And she’ll want to know all about how I became a shifter and why I waited this long to tell her.”
Dali leaned over and kissed him. “Good luck.”
“Thanks, I’ll need it.” He kissed her back and vanished into his bedroom, then poked his head out. “Oh—please don’t tell Tirzah the details of, well, anything yet. I need to report it to Roland, and if you tell her she’ll tell Pete and Pete will tell Roland and—”
“My lips are sealed.” Dali called Tirzah on her cell phone. “Hey, Tirzah. Would you mind taking care of Cloud for a bit? Merlin and I are staying at his place—”
“Oooooh,” Tirzah said. “That moved fast!”
Dali had been so focused on not letting Tirzah find out about the trapeze attack or Merlin’s circus issues or that Dali knew she was her landlord that she’d entirely forgotten to not let her find out that she and Merlin were... whatever they were doing. She was so blindsided that she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“Not that I’m judging,” Tirzah said quickly, apparently mistaking Dali’s silence for offense. “I’m happy for you! For both of you. Seriously, I think it’s awesome. Merlin is so much fun, and he’s really a sweetheart. Pete’s mom and daughter both love him. Any man who’s adored by thirteen-year-olds and grandmas has to be a great guy.”
“I didn’t think you were judging me,” Dali assured her. “Look, you’re not wrong that we’ve got something going on. But I don’t know where it’s going yet. And okay, yes, I’m spending the night, but it might be on the sofa bed.”
“I don’t thiiiiiink so,” Tirzah sang out.
“No, really,” Dali protested.
“I was kidding you, Dali. Sort of. No matter what, you won’t be on the sofa bed because Merlin would never ever let you take it. You’re sleeping in his bed tonight whether he’s in it or not.” Tirzah snickered. “Though I will say that if lithe, blond, and chatty was my type, I definitely wouldn’t kick Merlin out of bed!”
“Yeah, he’s incredibly hot, and I’m sure he’s great in bed...”
“He used to be an acrobat,” Tirzah put in. “Just imagine what he could do!”
“Oh, believe me, I’ve imagined,” said Dali. “But it’s so complicated. There’s all this stuff going on that I can’t tell you about because he wants to keep it private for now, but it makes me wonder if we could have a future together. And I get the feeling that there’s even more that I don’t know about because I haven’t asked the right question yet.”
“Pete wasn’t very forthcoming either when we first got involved,” Tirzah said. “Every time I thought I knew all his secrets, something new would come out. He didn’t even tell me he was a dad!”
“Do you feel like you know everything now?”
“Oh, definitely. And to be fair, I didn’t tell him everything about me right away either. It took patience and trust, and those don’t come overnight.”
It was such a relief to be able to talk to Tirzah, even if Dali couldn’t tell her all the details yet. When Dali had moved into her building, Tirzah herself had been adjusting to being newly disabled. They’d had plenty of satisfying mutual gripe sessions about inaccessible buildings, condescending doctors, and movies where the disabled characters always died at the end. And now they had yet another thing in common: a shifter man in their lives. Not to mention a flying kitten.
Dali was about to ask about Cloud when Tirzah said, “Has he said anything about mates yet?”
“Mates?” Dali echoed. “You mean his teammates?”
There was a brief pause. “Yeah. His teammates. I know he and Pete have clashed a bit—a lot—but Pete really does care about him. Is the stuff Merlin doesn’t want you to talk about because he thinks his teammates wo
uld give him a hard time?”
“Some of it, yeah. I think you’re right, he’s making it into more of a big deal than it really is. Anyway, I was calling to ask if you can take care of Cloud for me. She’s in my apartment, and I have everything she needs there.”
“Of course,” Tirzah replied. “I can’t wait to introduce her to our kittens, but I’ll hold off till you’re there. I’ll just go down myself with my laptop so I can keep her company for a bit.”
Dali suppressed a chuckle. Tirzah had a master key, all right. “Thanks. I appreciate it. Hey, say hi to Pete and Caro for me.”
They chatted a bit more about lighter, more ordinary subjects: Caro’s science fair project, an upcoming family vacation with Pete’s mom, and Dali’s plans to try rock climbing again with adaptive gear.
They’d just said their good-byes when Merlin came out of the bedroom, looking tired. “Looks like your conversation went better than mine did. Mom went ballistic on me over not telling her I was a shifter for six months—”
“You’ve been a shifter for six months and you never told her?” Dali exclaimed.
“Yeah,” Merlin said glumly. “I can’t decide if that was a bad idea or the bad idea was telling the truth now.”
“I don’t think telling the truth is ever a bad idea,” Dali said.
Merlin looked at her for a long moment, then said, “Did you get a chance to check out my fridge? It’s pretty well stocked up. I found this great butcher who learned his craft in Tuscany almost thirty years ago. He told me this funny story about how when he was still an apprentice, a guy in town decided he wanted to have a turkey stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a quail stuffed with an egg stuffed with an olive stuffed with a...”
Patience and trust, Dali thought, and let him tell his story, which was funny. He showed her his fridge, freezer, and cupboards, all of them stocked with a wild array of ingredients from every culture Dali had ever heard of, and several she hadn’t.
But in the end, she went with the tried and true: simple things she could do well. She found two steaks, rubbed them with salt and pepper and olive oil, and seared them in a pan. For a side, she made greens sautéed with a bit of bacon for flavor. And since she had the pandan leaves right there, she searched both her memory and Google for the recipe, and produced a reasonable approximation of her mother’s pandan chiffon cake.
Dali had never done much cooking, so it was a little nerve-wracking fixing dinner for a man who made his own marshmallows. She’d also never enjoyed it enough to cook just for herself, though she’d liked helping her mother or grandmother, so she’d spent the last year subsisting on ramen and takeout when she didn’t have anything Grandma had made. But having Merlin help her made it fun. He did all the tasks that were difficult with a prosthetic or that just needed two people, and he kept her company.
There was something distinctly sexy about Merlin in the kitchen. The heat gave his skin a glowing quality, and the moisture made his hair curl. She kept getting distracted by watching his hands as he beat cake batter or chopped with slightly scary speed. He was so competent and confident, so dexterous and quick, and his hands reflected that. She could easily imagine him hanging from a trapeze and catching his partner’s hands as she flew through the air.
Dali wished she’d tried learning trapeze before the bombing. There was no way her prosthetic, which attached by suction, could stand up to the force exerted by a trapeze hand catch. But even if she had learned before that, she hadn’t known Merlin then. Having him catch her in mid-air could never be more than a fantasy.
There were other things she could do with him that didn’t have to stay fantasies, though.
He had fallen silent. She could feel the sexual tension between them sizzling in the air like the steaks sizzling in the pan. Every time they brushed up against each other, which was often as it was a small kitchen, it felt like an electric shock.
When they sat down to eat, the meal that Dali had worried was too simple turned out to be exactly right. Everything had come out beautifully—the steak juicy and flavorful, the greens cutting the richness, and the pandan cake light and fluffy—but it was all familiar and uncomplicated, a meal that could be enjoyed solely as a sensual pleasure without having to adjust to something new.
“What did you think?” she asked when they were done.
“Other than ‘absolutely delicious?’” Merlin asked. “It made me think of craftspeople who spend a lifetime learning to do one thing perfectly, like sushi masters in Japan or woodworkers in Germany. I know you said you don’t know how to make very many things, but you don’t need to. You made that dinner with focus, attention to detail, and respect for the ingredients, and it came out perfectly. It was straightforward and honest and close to your roots, and... is it weird to call food sexy if you’re not eating it off someone’s naked body?”
The thought of Merlin eating something off her naked body dazed her enough that she only barely managed to get out a “No.”
“And sexy,” he concluded. “Very you.”
“So, you tasted who I am?”
He caught her double meaning. All teasing gone, he replied in a low voice that sent shivers of desire up and down her spine. “Yes. I did.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, his fingertips stroking her throat. No one had ever done that to her before, and it made her catch her breath. “Shall I do it for real now?”
Desire threatened to sweep her away, to make her agree to all sorts of unwise things just because she wanted them so much. For the first time in her life, she truly understood the meaning of temptation. The part of her that was sensible required her to say no. Every other part of her—her heart, her soul, and especially certain parts of her body—was already saying yes.
As soon as his job with me is over, he’s going to run away to the circus, the sensible part of her thought. And I’ll never see him again.
I should tell him that kissing him was a mistake, she thought. I should tell him I want to keep things strictly business between us from now on. It’ll be less painful in the long run.
Then she remembered Grandma telling her to enjoy the roses. A rose only lived for a few days; did that mean you should walk away from its perfume, just because it wouldn’t last?
Dali recalled her old fear that at any instant, she could wake up in a hospital with everything changed. But this time, rather than sending her spiraling into panic, it made her think, If I knew that when I went to sleep tonight, I’d never wake up again, what would I do now?
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Merlin, I want you.”
He went down on his knees before her, then looked up. The intensity in his eyes spoke of the ferocity of his desire, but there was a depth there too. An unspoken commitment, like her own: if this was my last day on Earth, this is how I’d want to spend it.
“I’ve never wanted anyone more,” he said. His voice had dropped lower. She thought she could feel its vibration in the air, making her tremble like a plucked guitar string. “Only you.”
She put her hands on his shoulders, feeling his acrobat’s muscles flex as he bent to take off her shoes. She started to stand, so she could get out of her pants, but he glanced up at her and shook his head. Merlin, still kneeling, placed his palms on her hips, took a deep breath, and lifted her. Dali gasped; in that position, it was an extraordinary feat of strength, and that alone was one hell of a turn on.
Then she realized something, and giggled.
“What?” said Merlin.
“I still can’t get my pants off.”
He glanced from his hands to her waist. “Oh.”
She was still laughing as he lowered her back down, but it was as much with giddiness as anything else. She felt as effervescent as champagne. When he put her down, she stood up, caught his hand, and pulled him to his feet. “That chair’s not comfortable enough anyway. Let’s go to bed.”
They made their way back to the bedroom, where Dali quickly stripped off her pants and underwear, then sat down
on the edge of the bed. “As you were.”
Merlin knelt again. Like a knight at the feet of his queen, she thought.
If he was a knight, he was one without armor. He’d stripped himself bare to her, as she had to him. And as he kissed his way up her inner thighs, they parted without her conscious intent, opening her body to him as she’d already opened her heart. Every touch of his hands and his hot mouth sparked an inner fire in her, a hunger and a need that only he could satisfy. And satisfy it he did, sending her to the brink and beyond.
She fell back on the bed, gasping and flushed, satisfied and yet ready for more. He followed her, his eyes like the blue heart of a flame, his sweat-damp hair curling like strands of gold. She stripped off his clothes, wincing once more at the bruises.
“I’ll be gentle,” she said.
Merlin laughed. “Don’t bother.”
She could see for herself that what he was feeling was nothing even remotely like pain. He took off her blouse, then her bra, and kissed her breasts until she was on fire with need, to touch and be touched, everywhere. Their bodies slid against each other, his hard, hers softer, both hot as flame. Her hair came down and hung around her face, and he ran his fingers through it.
They took their time exploring each other’s bodies: every soft curve, every hard angle, every freckle, every scar. His touch set her aflame with desire, and she burned even hotter to hear him gasp at hers. His hands were every bit as strong as she’d experienced, and deft as she’d imagined. But more than that, he paid attention to her reactions just as she did to his. She could feel that he loved seeing her pleasure as much he loved feeling it himself. And she felt the same way.
She wanted to go on forever like that, but she wanted more as well. The first time she tried to say so, he slipped a finger inside her, and then she lost track of what she’d meant to say for a long stretch of helpless, trembling bliss.
“Good hands,” she murmured, overcome.