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“Not yet.”

It climbs another degree. My pulse is going hard under his palm, and I know he can feel it.

“When,” I say.

The heat stops climbing. It holds right there, steady, not a degree more. He doesn’t move his hand.

“I’ll keep it right here,” he says. “You say when, and that’s where it stops. You can trust me with that.”

“How do you do that?”

“Ninety-one years of practice behind a bar full of ice.” He slides his hand up my forearm, slow, and leaves a trail of heat behind it like he’s drawing on me. “And very good motivation.”

I hook my fingers in the front of his shirt and pull.

He comes down to me, and he kisses me. His mouth is hot, like tea you have to sip, and I open for him and he makes a sound low in his chest, and I tighten my knees around his hips.

He kisses me the way he laughs, with all of himself, and he’s smiling into it halfway through, I can feel it.

“What,” I say against his mouth.

“You threw your boot on my couch.”

“You want me to go get it?”

“No,” he says, and kisses me again, harder. His tail comes around and knocks one of the bar stools over. It hits the floor with a bang. In the living room, Billy Bob lifts his head, looks at us, and puts it back down.

“Your tail,” I say.

“I told you. It’s on its own time.”

“Does it always do that?”

“Only when I’m happy.” He pulls back enough to look at me. “I’m very happy, Trouble.”

I put my hand on the base of his left horn, where I held on when he carried me out of the rain. It’s hard and ridged and warm all the way through.

“Bed,” I say. “Yours. Not the guest room.”

His hand stops on my thigh.

“Mine?” he says.

“Yours.”

He picks me up off the counter. I wrap my legs around him and he carries me, and his tail takes a picture frame off the wall on the way past. I hear it hit the carpet. He doesn’t look back.

Merek’s room is across the hall from mine, and I’ve never been inside it.

It’s big with the same dark wood as the rest of the house, a window cracked open to the firs, and a bed so wide it looks like two beds pushed together. The sheets are gray. There’s no duvet, just a thin cotton blanket folded at the foot. The headboard is dark wood, and there are two long scorched grooves in it, side by side, about where a horned head would go.

“Wow,” I say, looking at the grooves.

“Bad dreams,” he says.

I’m laughing when he puts me down on the bed, and he’s grinning, and then he takes his shirt off over his head, carefully, ducking it around his horns, and I stop laughing.

I’ve seen his arms. I’ve seen the lines on his throat. I haven’t seen this.