Page 21 of Fate Promised
She huffed and pointed. “Put it back in order.” Keeping his claws back, so he didn’t rip its delicate paper cover, he slid it into place. “You always did like to show off how much taller than me you were,” she said.
When he turned back, one side of her mouth curled upward in a half smile.
“Wasn’t hard, you were always a tiny thing.” Not anymore. She’d filled out exactly right.
Triska’s gaze skimmed down his body, and he wanted to flex but didn’t. Had her breath just hitched? Her pupils dilated, and the scent of warm honey filled the room. As his groin tightened, he stifled a groan. Definitely a bad idea to be alone with her in the house, especially with the rune spitting poems at them. A poem that kept racing through his mind, the words echoing.
“You’re so big, Juri. I mean,” she swallowed, her throat flexing, “look at you.”
Was big good or bad? “It’s a vulk thing. Do you like what you see?” It came out as a purr.
Her lips parted, and she stood with her head tilted up at him, her cheeks turning pink. “Yes.” She reached out and ran her fingers over the smattering of hair on his arm, and her expression turned puzzled.
“What?” he asked.
“You were blond as a kid. I’m surprised your hair is charcoal now.”
“All vulk are dark gray, except for our Alpha and his brother,” Juri said. “Hans is solid black, and his brother is white. We called them Shadow and Ice when we were younger.”
“Did you have a nickname?”
He rubbed his mouth. “Er, sort of. They called me the Bard, and it’s stuck a bit.”
Triska looked down, long lashes shading her eyes. “The rune called you that, too. You always did like to tell me stories to help me fall asleep.”
“I still like telling tales.” Whenever he told a tale, even after all these years, he pictured her as his audience. He stepped back and glanced around her room again. Besides the shaggy rug under his feet, blankets of the same fluffy material were tossed on the couch. “I think you’re single-handedly keeping the Ryba sheep market in business.” He pointed at the blankets. Ryba sheep had a unique wool; unlike any other sheep, the soft inner part could be used for spinning soft clothing like Triska wore. Or it could be kept in its natural state, long and shaggy for rugs and such.
She raised a brow. “I like warm things with a bit of soft hair.” Her gaze went to his chest again.
He forgot how to breathe.
Triska returned to the kitchen, and the way her breeches hugged her backside … he may not remember how to breathe ever again.
She stirred a bowl with a large wooden spoon. “Do you want dinner now or later?”
“Definitely now. What are you making?”
Triska waved the spoon, a drop flying off it and splattering on the floor. “Oops. I’m making flapjacks. My specialty. Well, not really. More like my go-to when I’m tired and don’t feel like making anything else. Or, in this case, when I haven’t bought any groceries.”
Her kitchen was u-shaped, with stools pulled up to the counter instead of having a separate dining table. He eyed the wooden chairs and settled into one. It creaked but held his weight. The only vulk sized chairs were the ones Hans made. Over the past year, Hans had outfitted their pack den with some really comfortable ones.
The youngest pack member, Ayren—one hundred and sixty-seven years old—was trying to learn woodworking, but so far, all Ayren had made was one oddly shaped stool, and Finn said he’d had to pull a nail out of Ayren’s palm. Not the most promising of starts.
As Triska turned to the flat pan on the stove and dolloped out flapjacks, Juri watched. This was the first time he could drink her in without feeling like an outsider, sneaking a glance through the trees.
Her home suited her perfectly, and there was a coziness here he rarely found, but possibly it was because Triska was with him. She was in profile, facing the stove, as she said, “Tell me what your life is like. What do you do?”
At first, he was hesitant. Unsure what to say. The vulk were secretive, and as Kyril pointed out earlier, there were a lot of rules around interacting with non-vulk, but the longer he spoke, the easier it was. He told her about the pack, first about Hans—his best friend and their Alpha—then Kyril, then moved on to the other seven pack members. He described their new pack den and the intricate carvings of stone they’d inlaid in the walls last winter.
Triska spread the pile of flapjacks in front of him and took out a small sack of brown sugar. She went to her icebox, pulled out a lemon, and sliced it. Before she returned to the counter, she gestured toward the ice box. “Do you want a beer? I have some from Vieska. It’s really good. Hazel goes there every once in a while, and brings it back.”
“Beer and flapjacks?” He shrugged. “Sure, why not. I haven’t had a beer in ages.”
Triska pulled two brown bottles from the icebox and sat beside him, their shoulders touching. She grabbed a couple flapjacks, spread brown sugar over them, then squirted a bit of lemon over both. With a flourish, she rolled them up into tight little logs; the sugar tucked inside. She handed him one, then took a bite of the other.
Her face softened, and she closed her eyes. “Mm.” She licked her lower lip.
Juri shifted on his seat and swore mentally. If he ran his tongue along her neck, would she make the same sound? Tearing his gaze away, he took a large bite of flapjack. His brows rose. “I forgot about these.” In two more bites he polished it off. “I could eat about a hundred.”