"It meets structural requirements for..."
I stomp on the nearest plank.
It cracks clean down the middle. The sound is sharp and satisfying, a gunshot of splintering mahogany that echoes off the tiny room's walls. Dash's mouth opens. No sound comes out. His gold-ringed eyes track downward to the broken wood, then back up to my face.
I stomp again. A second plank splits.
"Magnolia."
Stomp. Third plank. My heel drives through the polished wood and the grain splinters outward in a starburst. Something feral and electric is pouring through my veins and I cannot stop. I kick the towel aside. Drive my foot into the fourth plank. Fifth. The wood skids across the floor, crashes into the wall.
"That was load-bearing," he says, very quietly.
"You are not sleeping on a pile of furniture scraps." Kick. Crack. "Like some kind of." Kick. "Discount." Crack. "Floor goblin."
The last plank skitters under the radiator. The floor is clear. Sawdust and splinters and the sad little towel in a heap. My heel throbs. My vintage dress has wood shavings clinging to the hem.
Dash stands perfectly still. Arms at his sides. The destroyed tuxedo shirt hanging open. Green blood drying on his forearms.And on his face, an expression I have never seen on any man, human or otherwise.
Awe.
Pure, slack-jawed, weapon-down awe. Like I'm a siege engine he didn't see coming. Like I've breached a wall he didn't know he'd built.
I grab his suspenders.
Both fists. The elastic straps are thick, built for Orc shoulders, and they stretch taut as I pull. He outweighs me by at least two hundred pounds. My shoes slide on the hardwood. My arms burn. I plant my feet and haul.
He doesn't budge.
"Move," I say through my teeth.
"Where."
"Bed."
Something detonates behind his eyes. The gold flares. His throat works. But he doesn't move, and I understand suddenly that this is the contract, his code, his ironclad mercenary discipline holding him in place like rebar through concrete.
So I cheat.
I twist the suspenders around my wrists for leverage, set my back foot against the bed frame, andpull. Not because I'm strong enough to move him. Because the gesture itself is the message. Because I need him to understand that this is me choosing, me deciding, me tearing apart his stupid noble honor pallet and demanding he stop sleeping on the goddamn floor.
His boots shift. One inch. Two.
"This violates protocol," he rasps.
"Write me a citation."
His knees hit the mattress edge. The bed frame groans in protest, a sound of genuine structural alarm. I release one suspender and shove him. My palm meets a wall of muscle that doesn't give at all, but he lets the momentum carry him,his weight collapsing backward onto the tiny mattress with the finality of an uprooted tree.
The bed screams.
Every spring compresses at once. The headboard cracks against the wall. The frame bows. He fills the mattress corner to corner and beyond. His feet hang off the end by a solid eight inches. His shoulders span the full width. There is technically no remaining bed. There is only Dash.
I stand over him, breathing hard, suspender elastic marks burned into my palms.
He stares up at me from the pillow. Hair wild against the white cotton. Shirt destroyed. Thorns still bristling from his skin. The green blood has smeared across the sheets and he looks like a battlefield someone planted flowers in.
"The bed is for you," he says. Hoarse. Wrecked. "The contract specifies your comfort takes..."
