Page 59

“Two hundred and twelve what?”

“Weddings I’ve set up a room for.” He turns the water bottle. “Anniversaries. Bachelorette parties. First dates, if they’re big.” His ears tip back, then forward again. “I’m a lot better at building the room than going on the date.”

He says it like a joke, and drinks his water.

Two hundred and twelve rooms. I think about him carrying iron tables down the hall tonight for somebody else’s party, and I don’t laugh.

I look at him. At the broad, dark muzzle and the brass ring and the warm brown eyes under the long lashes, and the horns, curving up and out from his head, wide as my arms.

There’s a scuff on the left one. A pale scrape, near the base, where he must have caught it on something carrying tables.

He’s sitting, and his head is bent toward his water, and it’s right there at my shoulder.

I reach up without thinking and touch it.

Tav’s whole body jolts.

His ears go flat. His hand clamps down on the edge of the bench so hard I hear the steel creak. He makes a sound low in his chest, deep enough that I feel it through the bench, and his head comes up and around, fast, and his eyes are suddenly much darker than they were.

I snatch my hand back. “Oh my God. Did I hurt you? I’m sorry, there was a scrape, I wasn’t thinking...”

“No.” His voice has gone very rough. He’s breathing hard through his nose, and the brass ring trembles. “You didn’t hurt me.”

“Then what...”

“Horns,” he says. He clears his throat, and it doesn’t help. “They’re. Sensitive.”

“Sensitive how?”

He looks at me. He doesn’t have to say it. I can see it all over him, in his ears and his nostrils and his hand still locked on the edge of the bench.

“Oh,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Like, sensitive sensitive.”

“Yeah, Boss.”

I look at my hand. I look at his horn. I look at him, seven and a half feet of minotaur who just carried six cast-iron tables down a hallway like they were folding chairs, sitting on a steel bench and trying to get his breath back because I touched him with two fingers.

I start to grin. I can’t help it.

“Does everybody get that reaction?”

“Nobody touches them,” Tav says. “You don’t touch a minotaur’s horns. Not without asking. It’s...” He searches for the word. “Personal. Very personal.”

My grin fades a little. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t.” His ears come forward again, slowly. His voice is still rough, but it’s warmer now, almost a laugh. “You should see your face.”

“You should see yours.”

“I can feel mine.”

I laugh. He does, too, a deep rumble I feel in my own ribs. Then I stop laughing, because he’s still looking at me with those dark eyes, and I want to touch him again so badly my hand is tingling.

“Can I?” I ask. “Again. Now that I know.”