Page 6 of The Hummingbird’s Gift

“Biscuits.” The word didn’t express how good it felt to make Tier something with his own hands. Something that would nourish Tier’s body and touch his lips. Not that he was going to tell Declan that.

“Oh, he’ll love that. You should bring him some of your blueberry preserves with it.” Declan’s excited tone suggested that he already knew, anyway.

“Maybe I will.” Most of the preserves were kept in the collective storehouses, but he had a couple jars of his own. He put one on the cabinet.

“Really, Ro. You should have seen him when he found out you were missing. He was flipping out. I mean, he wanted May and the kids back, but he was frantic about you.”

“Yeah?” Rohahen hoped he was keeping his voice calm.

He wasn’t quite ready to tell Declan about how Tier had taken off his whole afternoon to groom his ears yesterday. Or how they’d walked back to Ro’s house together, still in animal form. At the door, Ro had shifted, but Tier hadn’t, perhaps to spare them both the embarrassment of being naked.

Only after Ro had shut the door, Tier had walked around his house and made three scrapes, scenting the ground first with his interdigital glands in his hooves, and then rub-urinating to catch the scent on the tarsal glands where his back legs bent.

Ro had stood quietly, just inside the door, listening and smelling the air and feeling very claimed. Long after Tier had left, he’d walked around his house just to catch that dry, musky smell.

It wasn’t exactly subtle, and he wondered if any of his neighbors had noticed. And what it might possibly mean. He knew everything that he wanted it to mean, but of course it could just be that the Chief was worried about a friend who’d been in danger.

“Yeah,” Declan continued, bringing him back to the present, “he had the nurse call him every hour with an update about you.”

Rohahen let himself smile. He’d been smiling a lot since he groggily woke up yesterday morning.

“Oh,” Declan continued. “And I might have mentioned that I was showing you all of the sexy marks Geir gave me, and that you liked them too.”

“What?” Ro screeched. “Are you kidding me?” That was not good. Not at all something that Tier needed to know about him, especially when he was just starting to think he had a chance.

Declan giggled. “So, you know how Geir disappeared? It was because he saw you looking at my marks and he thought I was coming on to you or something.”

Rohahen snorted. Not a chance.

“So, it was scary at the time, but now he knows that when I flirt with you, it’s just a game. So next time, he’ll just get all aggressive and claim me or give me another spanking.”

“What?” Sometimes he couldn’t believe the things that came out of Declan’s mouth.

“Yeah, he gave me a spanking yesterday and it was soooooooooo good. God, I was crying all over him but then I felt all floaty afterward.”

“TMI,” Rohahen warned, though he might have secretly wanted to know more. Not about what Declan did with Geir, which he’d heard more than enough of. But the thought of maybe Tier doing the same thing to him…

He still thought often of the business card that he’d found kicked under the edge of Tier’s desk almost ten years ago. He’d picked it up, intending on returning it. But when he read it, he’d been too embarrassed and confusingly turned on to do anything but slide it into his own pocket. It was an invitation to a kink party, which had led to a lot of research and some recurring fantasies of Tier pinning him down and…

He cut off the thought. He didn’t even know who the card belonged to. If Tier was actually interested in him, he wasn’t going to mess it up by being weird. It was already difficult enough that they were both strength-sharers.

He shouldn’t have let Declan get them off topic. “Hang on, what did you actually tell the Chief?”

“Oh, that was it, pretty much. Just that you liked my marks. And he might have overheard some stuff I was talking with Geir about in the van.”

“Alright,” he said cautiously. He had no doubt that anything Tier “overheard” had been carefully planned in Declan’s devious and impulsive mind. But Ro could admire Declan’s scrapes and bruises without wanting any of his own, right? Not that he specifically wanted round sucker marks all over him, of course—Declan could have those tentacles.

“Oh, come on. You’ve got to tell your man these things so that he knows how to treat you right.”

“Nope. Definitely nope.” His fantasies were staying in his head.

“Oh, hey! Guess what? Geir has, like, new magic powers. Or old ones, maybe?”

Rohahen welcomed the change in topic. “Are you allowed to tell me about them?”

He heard Declan’s voice raised in a shout, but muffled by a hand over the phone. “OK, yeah, I can tell you. He says the People already know about it. Or used to.”

“Ah, alright. So I’m guessing he can tell where people are from a long distance away and identify if someone comes on the property who doesn’t belong?”