know what I mean.”
I shook my head. “I think you lost me, because I don’t quite follow, no.”
He smiled and hooked the back of my head with one big hand, dragging my forehead to his lips and kissing it soundly, pausing to soak in the gesture as much as I, myself, relished it. My muscles going loose beneath it as I soaked in his love and care – a pathetic, starving thing for love and affection that Fenris was proving to be ultimately patient with on that front.
Then again, perhaps he was just as starved in a way, as desperate to give it as I was to soak it in.
It didn’t seem like something to discuss, just something to enjoy while we each had the ability to enjoy it from one another.
“Thank you,” I whispered when he finally let me go.
“For what?” he asked softly.
“Everything,” I said simply. “For taking me in, taking me away from all that mess for a while and giving me a chance to breathe. For all of the care, for the amazing sex—” He laughed abruptly, and I smiled. “And most of all for all the orgasms,” I said laughing myself.
He hooked an arm around me and pulled me in to hold me tight, whispering in my ear, “The best is yet to come.”
I shivered with delight.
“I like the sound of that,” I whispered.
“Good.”
Alas, there was no rest for the wicked in my case. Amber called and said we were dangerously low on the colonial mugs that I made, which wouldn’t have been a terribly big deal except for the fact that they were the subject of the upcoming Thursday night Paint Night and I had twenty-three signups. I made my apologies to Fenris and he shook his head.
“Head on into your shop,” he said. “I’ll get some shit done around here and ride on over when I’m through. The day’s not completely shot. It’s nothing to worry your pretty little head about.”
I smiled at the memory as my hands crafted the bodies of the mugs on my pottery wheel in the back.
It took some doing, but I was good at these ones. The time-consuming part came with attaching the handles, to be honest, making sure the edges wouldn’t fire up sharp and that they didn’t have any burs or spurs.
I smiled when I heard Fenris’ bass growl out in the front of the shop, asking after me. Amber seemed a bit tongue-tied.
“Back here, baby!” I called out, my smile growing when he batted aside the curtain to my little workspace back here.
“Tight quarters,” he said, looking at all of the looming shelves and the pocket of kilns. It was warm back here, the kilns firing, and I had the back door propped for some fresh air.
“Hi,” I said and tipped my face up for a kiss, keeping my hands rooted on the lump of spinning clay and silt-water on my wheel. “Watch yourself, I’m a mess,” I declared.
He laughed and said, “You look happier than… and don’t take this the wrong way—”
“A pig in mud?” I asked, finishing his thought and smiling pleased. “You’re not wrong. Getting my hands dirty is one of the best parts of this job.”
He found a seat nearby and with great effort, I trained my eyes back down to the clay on my wheel as I began to shape it.
Fen made an incredulous noise and said, “That’s crazy.”
“What?” I asked, smiling with charmed pride.
“You make it look so easy,” he said, and my smile grew.
“Ah, just practice. Lots and lots of practice.”
“How many more of these have you got to go?” he asked.
“Oh, let me see.” I glanced up at the worktable and asked, “How many are up there?”
“Uh,” he stood up from the folding metal chair in the corner and counted, “fourteen.”
“I probably have a few hours left. I’d like to get up to twenty, then I need to roll out some flats and make and attach handles to each one. That’s the labor intensive and time-consuming part.
“Then what do you do?” he asked.
“Load up those shelves there and wait for the kilns to be available to fire them into bisque.”
“Then what?”
I smiled to myself. “Then put some out front and have the rest ready for the paint night this week. They get glazed and then fired again and there you have it, a finished mug.”
“Neat,” he grunted and asked with a sniff, “You got a broom back here?”
“Uh, yeah, why?”
“Mind if I work on a little somethin’