Page 27 of Nine-Tenths

"Ah," he catches himself. "Not as such, no."

"Just cause you're here every day doesn't mean you know how this place works." I say it lightly, but his shoulders still hunch up like I've landed a physical blow. Even coming at the topic from the side has him squirrelly. "I can stop asking."

Dav takes a moment to consider this, forked tongue flickering out to wet his lower lip. A surge of lust drops directly into my pants like an overheated cannon ball.

Stand down.

"I do owe you an answer," Dav says at length. "But not just now?"

It's a request, and one I'm happy to honor. "Sure thing. Now, keep cranking, bean-wench."

We have a quick lunch of to-go sandwiches. I was curious what Dav would pick —something stereotypically meat-on-bone?Instead he gets the turkey sandwich, same as me.That's not very dragon-y,I decide. We eat out back, sunlight burning away the earlier awkwardness.

While Dav stays pretty mum about his professional life—and I don't poke, like I said I wouldn't, which ishard, I amcurious—he's happy to tell me other stories. When he compared the art of coffee to winemaking, it turns out he knows what he’s talking about. He owns a small vineyard, and soon has me snorting all the way through a story about his horse, and the mess it caused when it decided that the Crushing Room seemed like a good place for a stroll when it had slipped its paddock. The horse, formerly white, was purple up to its gaskin, somehow inside the tub, and chomping merrily away at the grapes. They had to throw away the whole batch out of fear the horse had 'contaminated' it. By which Dav meant, pissed in the vat. He doesn’t provide a firm date for when this happened, and Dav has to explain to me what part of the animal thegaskinis, but I get the sense that it was more than a few decades ago.

When was the last time people rode horses as their main form of transportation?

If I'd known I would one day befriend a dragon, I would have paid attention in those hated history classes.

AreDav and I friends?

We can be friends.

I'm cool with that.

His grin while I return the favor fills me with warmth. I offer a story of the time my university buddies had gone to the Goth nightclub with a bunch of Drama kids. One had convinced me to wear her blood-red corset, but it was a real one, with steel boning. Trying to be macho, I'd told them to lace it as tight as they liked, and I'd fainted after one Jaeger bomb. Dav makes noises about knowing how tight corsets can get, and I decide hemeans because he's old enough to remember women wearing them every day, and not because he’s worn them himself.

Ooof.

I have a sudden vision of Dav, with his freckly, creamy skin and strong shoulders on display, waist nipped in by a shiny black leather corset and tiny lacy panties barely covering his dragon-hood.

Jesus.

This is getting ridiculous.

"Coffee,"I croak, balling up my sandwich wrapper.

"Please," Dav says, following me back inside.

Hadi keeps an emergency stash of whole roasted beans in the back of the freezer. Thank god it survived the fire, because I refuse to go down the street for a franchise latte on principle. I show Dav how to work the electric grinder, and we fill two mason jars with first the coarser drip-coffee grind, and then I demonstrate the trick of using short bursts to make the powdery espresso grind. Dav stands right over my shoulder.

If I turned around fast enough, I bet I could kiss him, I think, and shake my head to knock that thought loose.No, no, no, kissing coworkers is gauche.

I hip check him to get him to take a step back, and he snorts and hip checks me back. We scuffle like schoolchildren and I'm not gonna lie, I kind of love watching Dav get all flustered and giggly.

His laugh is a breathyeh-eh-ehnoise that hisses out between his teeth.

Even his joy is careful and small.

Out front, I show him how to load the porta-filter wand and tamp down the grounds, and in a few minutes we're java'd up.

"Time to set fire to some beans?" I ask, loving the way his eyelids flutter in pleasure as he sips his tobio. His spun-copper lashes arepretty.

"Indeed!" He'sexcitedand his butt looksso goodin those pants as he heads back into the kitchen, and it occurs to me with the speed and impact of getting unexpectedly smashed in the head with a frying pan, I am fucked.

So fucked.

He moves the roaster to the pastry table (he's so strong,damn, don't think about him heaving you up against the wall, about wrapping your legs around his waist, shit). I unearth a large cauldron with a thick base, leftover from Hadi's failed attempt to serve soup and panini.