Page 6 of Screwed by the Minotaur in Hallow’s Cove (Hallow’s Cove #6)

Chapter four

Lea

I wasn’t sure how long we lay tangled up in the hotel sheets, but I was very sure that I’d never had sex like that in my life.

Maybe it was the new place. Maybe it was the way Rick’s body felt over and through and around me—massive, careful, and solid in a way that made me feel precious instead of breakable.

Or maybe it was the simple, extravagant fact of being seen—really seen—by someone for the first time in what felt like forever.

His arm was warm and heavy across my chest, palm splayed and thumb absently tracing circles over my right breast. I stared up at the cracked plaster overhead, feeling the slow drip of sweat cooling between my shoulder blades, and realized there was no way I’d sleep.

Not with every nerve ending still on high alert and the taste of him still sharp behind my teeth.

“Are you awake?” I whispered, though it was clear he was.

His breathing had leveled out but his hand never stopped moving, like he thought I’d vanish if he let go.

He rumbled a wordless reply, then nuzzled his lips into the crook of my neck.

His horns bumped the headboard lightly as he shifted, and the faintest smile played at the edge of his mouth.

“Still here,” he said.

“Good. I wasn’t sure if you went to sleep with your eyes open, or if that’s a monster thing, or…” I trailed off, realizing I might be in over my head. We’d just had possibly the hottest sex of my life, and I was already babbling about sleep habits.

“It’s not,” he said. “But I do have great hearing. You, though… you hum when you’re content. Like a cat with a song in its chest.”

I snorted out a laugh, shoulders shaking. The last person to tell me I purred was my mom, when she would set aside her Sunday to do my braids for the next few weeks.

I let the memory settle, warm and bittersweet, then reached over to snag the hotel water bottle from the nightstand.

Rick made a low, appreciative sound at the stretch of my body and traced the curve of my waist with a possessive squeeze.

My thighs ached but in a good way, like after a tough but fulfilling work out.

My heart didn’t quite know what to do with itself.

I took a long, grateful gulp and offered him the bottle. His hand dwarfed it, but he drank, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes never leaving me—as if he was memorizing every detail. Like I was the marvel here, and not the seven-foot minotaur lounging naked in my bed.

“So, Rick,” I said, snuggling deeper into his side, “is this the part where you tell me a dark secret about yourself?”

He snorted, a real, belly-deep sound. “Depends. You want the condensed version, or the full tragic saga?”

“I want all the dirt.” I grinned. “You go first. I’ll trade you one for one.”

He seemed to think about it, then rolled onto his side, propped up on an elbow.

The movement made his muscles flex, horned silhouette cutting a shadow across the wall.

He was quiet for a moment—like he was weighing how much to say, or maybe how much to risk.

I recognized the look. It felt almost identical to the one I gave strangers when they asked about my family.

He started talking, voice gone soft beneath the monster’s boom.

“My parents died when I was a kid. Car crash outside the city. I was, hell, six? Maybe seven. I barely remember them, just flashes. My grandpa would always say I got my stubborn streak from my dad, which… yeah, that tracks.” He managed a crooked smile.

“My grandparents took me in. Didn’t really have a choice—no one else in the family wanted the responsibility, no one wanted a rambunctious kid that had a penchant for knocking things over. ”

He watched his own hand, knuckles rippling as he flexed the bottle between two fingers.

“Grandpa was an old-fashioned minotaur. He owned dozens of hardware shops where I grew up in upstate New York. He never talked about feelings, but every morning he’d make me lunch and put it in the same brown bag, with a dumb cartoon on the side.

Even in high school.” Rick’s mouth twitched again.

I reached up, brushing one of the ridges of his horn where it merged with the dark stubble of his scalp. I meant it as a joke, or maybe a comfort, but the intimacy of the gesture startled us both. His eyes flicked to mine, and the emotion there made my throat tight.

“You’re a good storyteller,” I said, and I tried for a laugh, but it came out too gentle.

Rick shrugged, but something about the movement was less contained now.

“My grandma died when I was sixteen. Grandpa held on until my second year of college. After that, it was just me.” His hand found my hip, thumb moving in slow circles.

“I floated around from place to place for a long time. Hallow’s Cove is the first time I put down real roots.

Opened my shop, started sponsoring the town softball team. Pretended it was enough.”

“Only, sometimes it isn’t,” I finished for him, and the words hit like a punch straight through my chest. I think it startled him.

“It’s never enough.” I let my fingers follow the line of his jaw, the thick corded muscle there so different from any man I’d ever touched.

“Not when you’ve lost people. That emptiness just…

echoes, no matter how full your life gets. ”

He made a sound, something raw and almost angry, but he didn’t pull away. “Yeah. That’s it.” His eyes flashed, then softened, all the bravado momentarily stripped away. “I keep thinking if I just do enough, work enough, stay busy enough, it’ll stop hurting.”

I’d lived by the logic since Mom’s diagnosis.

Pack the days so tightly there’s no room for grief.

Don’t slow down, don’t sit still, don’t let the dark in, but sometimes, even when you’re lying naked in a strange bed with a stranger who suddenly doesn’t feel strange at all, the dark catches up anyway.

And instead of running from it, you just sit with it.

Or, in this case, lie chest-to-chest with it, and let someone else see what’s left behind.

I blew out a long breath, feeling the words bubbling up in my throat.

Was I really going to talk about this?

“My mom died last year,” I said, and I could feel my own voice wobble a little, but I kept going. “Cancer. It was fast. They told us six months, but she barely made it three. I took care of her at the end and, uh… I don’t regret that, but sometimes I wonder if I lost myself along the way.”

Rick’s grip tightened around my waist, just a little.

“She owned a flower shop. Well, her mom did. Then she took it over, and then I did, and…” I trailed off, waiting for that familiar awkwardness to slide in between us. But Rick just held my gaze, warm and unflinching. It made the rest pour out.

“I loved the work—genuinely. I think it made her happy to know I’d keep the shop alive.

But after she was gone, it felt like every order, every bouquet, was just a reminder that she wasn’t there to see it.

I don’t even remember most of last summer, just the muscle memory of making arrangements and smiling at customers like nothing had changed. ”

I twisted the sheet between my fingers. “My best friend, Britt, called me out. She said I was killing myself slowly, clinging to the shop like it was a lifeline, but really I was just stuck.”

I almost told him then—about the building, how I’d signed the deed and bought the fixer-upper, and how I was hoping to find my new beginning here in Hallow’s Cove. But what would the end goal be? He’d said only one night. It wouldn’t be fair to suddenly expect more.

I blinked and realized I’d let the room fall silent for a minute too long.

Rick’s eyes were heavy with understanding.

I braced for a platitude, or maybe an awkward “sorry for your loss,” but instead his thumb swept across my cheek—gentle, reverent.

And then, to my absolute shock, I saw it: a single tear, bright and unmistakable, carving a path through the dark stubble at the corner of his eye.

He looked away, quick, almost embarrassed, and swiped it with the heel of his hand.

“Sorry,” he muttered, voice thick. “It’s just—” He paused, looking back at me, and this time there was no filter.

“I know what that feels like. To want so bad to move on, but not knowing the right direction to aim your feet.” His words landed with the heavy, practical finality of a shovel hitting dirt, and something in me loosened.

“Do you always get this deep after sex?” I asked, only half joking.

Only I realized too late that I’d said “after sex,” like this was a recurring event, like I assumed it would happen again. My face flamed, but Rick only grinned—wide and toothy, like I’d given him a present he wasn’t sure he deserved.

“Only if the company’s good,” he said. “And the post-coital cuddling is excellent.”

He drew me closer, big arms wrapping around me until my whole body was eclipsed by his.

I let out a sigh and found myself sinking into him, into the pillow, into the hush of the small hours of the night.

For the first time in months, maybe longer, my mind didn’t immediately leap to a checklist of anxieties as soon as the adrenaline faded. It just… rested.

We drifted like that, talking quietly. He told stories about the townspeople, the way the monster and human populations tangled together here.

I learned that Killy’s Bar had an underground karaoke night that only regulars got invited to, and that there was a lake at the edge of town you couldn’t swim in after dark, because the nixies got handsy.

“They’re not mean,” Rick said, “but they’ll try to drown you for a prank if you look like an easy mark.

” It was clear, the longer he talked, that this place was not simply a town he’d settled in by chance.

I wondered what this town would look like with the sun up, with new flowers blooming in the window of a shop I might one day run.

Maybe tomorrow I’d tell him the truth. That I was here for keeps. That I’d signed my name on the ancient deed of the old clothing store, the one currently covered in dust and spiderwebs and possibility.

But not tonight. Tonight, I wanted to savor the afterglow and the raw connection with someone for only a brief moment. I relished the way my body still hummed from his touch, the way his palm held me like I was the answer to a riddle he’d been working at for years.

I closed my eyes for a minute, just to see if sleep would come. I was so used to fighting for rest that the quiet, sated heaviness felt like a miracle. Rick’s breathing settled into a deep, even cadence, and the sound of it—so close, so sure—lulled me toward dreams.