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“Your hands are freezing,” he says. His voice has gone rougher.

“It’s Portland.”

“It’s June.” He doesn’t look away from my face. “Are you cold?”

That’s a ridiculous question. I’m about to say so when I realize I’m not cold at all. He’s standing two feet away from me, and I’m warm all the way through, the way you get standing next to a bonfire, and I want to move closer.

“I’m fine,” I tell him.

“You are,” he agrees, and lets his eyes travel down me and back up again, slowly and without any shame at all. “Very.”

My face goes hot, and it isn’t from standing next to him. “Do you flirt with all your business partners?”

“No.” He tips his head toward Lenart. “He’s never let me.”

“Merek,” Lenart says.

“See?”

I laugh and take a step back to put some air between us.

I step right into something very large.

Two hands catch me under the arms before I can stumble, and suddenly my feet aren’t touching the floor.

I’m in the air. I’m just in the air, held up like a toddler at a swimming pool, and when I twist my head to look behind me, I’m looking up at a face that isn’t human at all.

He’s the biggest person I’ve ever seen. He has to be seven and a half feet tall. His head is broad and heavy, with a wide dark muzzle and a brass ring through his nose, and two enormous curved horns that nearly scrape the ceiling. His ears are long and soft-looking, set sideways below the horns, and his eyes are a deep, warm brown with long lashes. His hands are big enough that each one goes almost all the way around my ribs.

He’s holding me like I weigh nothing. He must have come in while Merek was talking, and I didn’t hear a thing, which seems impossible for someone his size.

Then his face changes. His ears flick back. His nostrils flare wide.

And he lowers that enormous head toward me, slowly, until his muzzle is in my hair, and he breathes in.

A long, deep breath. I feel it move my hair against my neck. I feel the warmth of it when he lets it out.

“Did you just smell me?”

“Yes,” he says. His voice is so deep I feel it in my back where I’m pressed against him.

He doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t put me down either.

“Okay,” I say. “Could I have the floor back before we discuss that?”

He blinks, like he’s coming back from somewhere. Then he lowers me, slowly and very carefully, until my feet are flat on the carpet, and he doesn’t let go until he’s sure I’m steady. He releases me and hurries to take two steps back, shoving his hands into his pockets as if to keep them under control. I get the feeling he hadn’t planned on picking me up. “You were falling,” he says.

“I was backing up.”

“Into me.” His ears come forward again, slowly.

“Tav,” Lenart says from somewhere to my left. He sounds very tired. “Tara Iverson.”

“I know who she is.” Tav’s nostrils flare once more, smaller this time, and he looks at me like he’s memorizing me. He doesn’t say anything else.

The last one is standing in the doorway, and I don’t know how long he’s been there.

He’s nearly as tall as Merek, but leaner, and his skin is the pale, faintly speckled gray of carved stone. Short horns sweep back from his forehead. Huge wings are folded tight against his back, dark and leathery, the tips of them rising above his shoulders. His hands are long and clawed.