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“You and falling things.”

He agrees.

I put my hand flat on his chest. His heart’s going fast.

He lies down on his side, facing me, so we’re closer to level, and puts one hand on my stomach.

“Tell me if anything hurts,” he says. “Your knees. Your hands. Anything.”

“My ribs, if you lean on them. My knees, if I kneel. Everything else is fine.”

He reaches over without a word, folds a pillow in half, and slides it under my knees. Then he moves his hand down off my ribs and onto my hip.

“Tell me anyway,” he says.

He takes his time.

He kisses my shoulders and my collarbone and the inside of my wrist, above the scrapes, and when he gets to my bra he stops and looks at me, and I reach behind me and undo it myself and throw it off the edge of the bed.

“Show-off,” he says.

“Says the guy with a bed made of trees.”

His hands are so big that when he cups my breast, his thumb is on one side and his fingers reach almost all the way around to my back. His palm is rough with calluses and very warm. He moves it slowly, watching my face, and when I arch up into his hand, he makes that low sound again.

“Like that?” he says.

“Mmhmm.”

I get his belt open. He has to help with the rest, because his jeans are as big as a sail and I can’t find my way around them, and then he’s naked, and I sit up on my elbow and look.

He’s proportional. Seven and a half feet of proportional.

“Oh,” I say.

“Boss...” Tav says.

“No, no, I’m not...” I start laughing. I can’t help it. “Give me a second. I’m just doing the math.”

“Don’t do the math.”

“I’m doing a lot of math.”

He’s grinning now, a real grin, the first one I’ve seen from him in two days. He rolls me onto my back and leans over me, propped up on one arm so none of his weight touches me, his horns way up above my head, out of the way.

“Then stop doing math,” he says, and slides his hand down between my legs.

I stop doing math.

He’s careful and he’s patient and he pays attention. When I gasp, he does it again. When I say “slower,” he goes slower. When I say “no, faster, I was wrong,” he laughs against my neck and goes faster. One of his fingers is as thick as two of mine, and he goes so slow with it that I’m shaking before he’s even started, and I grab one of his horns with one hand and the quilt with the other and hold on.

“Okay?” he says against my ear.

“Yes,” I say. “God. Yes. Okay.”

I come with my hand wrapped around the base of his horn so tight I feel him shudder through his whole body. He doesn’t stop until I push his wrist away, and then he just holds his hand there, flat and warm, while I come down.

When I can see straight, he’s watching me.