Damien had spent the night with the end of his tail caught under the couch because getting up to free it would have woken the woman in his bed. Around the time his scales went numb, he accepted that he had a problem. Around the time Felicity opened one blue eye and whispered, "You can move, you know," he discovered he'd been uncomfortable for absolutely no reason.
"I thought you were sleeping," he said. She had left the blanket exactly as he'd given it to her, except for the top corner she'd rolled into a ball under her chin.
"I was until you started trying to work yourself loose one scale at a time. My husband does that with his wing. It's rather like sharing a room with a man trying to eat a bag of chips in secret."
He got himself off the couch. Her eyes followed the gold along his dark scales, from the patch he'd rubbed sore to the turn of his tail. He liked the way she looked at him. The pleasure lasted until he realized she was also checking how much space he'd left between her and the door.
He put her cup on the table where she could reach it without passing him. "Tell me about this husband of yours. Does he have a name, or do I just listen for the chips?"
"Victor has the wings. Voss is much quieter about the trouble he gets into." Her voice warmed over both names, and something low in Damien's gut tightened hard enough to hurt. "They're looking after my cubs. They'll be looking for me, too. What have the people upstairs told you about me?"
She had waited for daylight to ask, in a room with one high, filthy window that barely admitted any. She'd eaten what he gave her and got what rest she could. Now she was sitting up straight, ready to hear how much trouble she was in. He'd been using the word mate in his head since the minute he caught her scent. The least a man could do for a woman he'd been thinking about that way was answer the damn question.
"They told me I'd be collecting a prisoner. They didn't give me your name. They said nobody would come asking where you'd gone."
"What were you supposed to do with me once you'd collected me?" She set the cup down with some water left. Her hand was steady enough to do it without a sound.
He'd been turned away at three gates already. Funny how simple it had seemed to explain the deal to himself at the third one, with two men pointing rifles at his face and telling him to take his snake hide somewhere else. "There's an inland city willing to let me through the gates if I deliver a woman. The brokers here would supply one in exchange for my solar panels. I kept those panels working when half the roofs in Sydney still had them. Figured they'd buy me a place to live after the change."
"They would, so long as somebody else lost hers." She turned the cup in her hands. "Did they give you a good reason why I deserved that, or were you supposed to think of one yourself?"
"They called the women here thieves and fighters. I didn't ask what anybody had stolen. I didn't ask why a city full of men with rifles needed me to bring them one woman." Hearing himself say it out loud was worse than the question. She had every right to throw the cup at his head. He wished she'd do it. He was beginning to understand that he had expected violence because he knew exactly how to handle it.
She put both feet on the floor. "There was a woman upstairs who tucked her bad hand inside her sleeve every time a guard went past. She was scared they'd see it and send her somewhere worse. Would you have taken her if they'd brought her down here instead of me?"
He looked at the patch of clean floor where he'd set out supper the night before. He hadn't lost a moment of sleep over that other woman until Felicity put her in the room with him. "Yesterday I probably would have. That's a miserable thing to have to tell you, but I'd rather you knew what I agreed to."
Some of the strain went out of her shoulders. He wanted badly to touch the little dent the blanket had left in her cheek. Instead, he took a piece of stiff paper out of his tool bag and laid it in front of her. It was the receipt for his panels, with a blank space where he was meant to sign that he'd taken delivery. He tore it straight through the stamp and handed her both halves.
"I won't take you to that gate. I won't give you back to the men upstairs, either. If you can tell me how you got in here, I'll see what I can do about getting you out."
She kept the scraps. "I don't suppose you've got a receipt for the building. I'd like a turn at tearing something up."
It was the first time she'd made him laugh without either of them paying for it afterward. He got the tool bag and spread out the drawing of the lower floors he'd been given with his work order. She sat beside him to look, leaving a hand's width of space between them. He was achingly aware that she could have taken the other chair.
She traced the route she'd walked with her finger. The upper holding rooms were above his workroom, and the women who slept in them had to pass the stair door to get to the loading floor. She showed him where she'd heard the locks release and made him draw in a second set he'd missed. By the time she was done, he had something better than the tidy little diagram the brokers had let him see.
A guard knocked for the signed receipt. Felicity's fingers closed around the scraps and she waited for Damien to answer. Beyond the door stood a man who could still get him through that city gate. Beside him sat a woman who would spend the rest of her life trying to get home if he did.
"Tell your boss there's a fault in one of my panels," he called through the door. "I'll give him what he's owed when I've had a chance to fix it."
The footsteps receded. Felicity put the torn receipt in his palm and closed his fingers over it. "I think you've just bought us some time," she said. "Show me which light goes out when you pull that panel."