Page 72 of Carnal: The Beast Who Loved Me

“Okay,” said Free. “It’s temporary. Pair a trainee with an active. Don’t assign them together.” Turning back to the room, he said, “For the time being we’re going to need some passive duty people and trainees. Report to Carnal here at two to see if you’ve been assigned.” Free looked over the room until he found the face he was looking for. “Red, meet me outside. We have things to talk about.”

When Free stepped off the bar, he landed on his feet as if he hadn’t jumped at all, the crowd began milling about talking to each other and the elders. The noise rose to a din as Exiled discussed whether or not they thought the proposition would be a good thing or bad thing.

Carnal walked back over to Rosie. “I’m working today.”

“I heard that,” she replied.

“But I can assign myself some time off tomorrow. Afternoon?”

“That’s nice,” Rosie said as she turned to drawing cider for people standing at the bar.

He stepped between the cider tap and bar, which didn’t leave much room. When Rosie attempted to go around him, he blocked her way. She looked up at him.

“No more games,” he said. “I want you for my own.”

She stood there holding two mugs of cider, searching his face, and realized she wanted that, too, in spite of the fact that they’d spent little time together and she didn’t know him all that well. Carnal drew her like a magnet, body, heart, and soul. When he was in proximity of her senses, she couldn’t think about anything else.

She heard herself saying, “I won’t be shared,” and wondered what was wrong with her tongue. She’d meant to say, “You wish.”

His brows drew down over his eyes. “Shared? What the fuck, Rosie?”

“Ask your dad,” she said as she stepped around him and served cider. When she turned back, he was gone.

The lunch crowd was twice as big as usual and the kitchen was unprepared for the numbers wanting to eatandlinger. Would-be diners faced a standing-room-only wait for a second round of food to cook and didn’t seem discouraged by that. If anything, they seemed okay with having an excuse to congregate longer and talk about the momentous announcement. For the Commons staff, it meant they were occupying the space and drinking, even if it was water. That, in turn, meant extra work for the bar staff, but it also presented opportunity to hear reactions to Free’s landmark speech.

The diners had mostly cleared out by one-thirty, but Rosie, Dandy, and Traces had just begun to get things righted from lunch when Carnal returned. He’d brought handwritten ledger sheets with him, which he began nailing to the wall at the end of the bar. When he was done, he pulled a stool next to the postings and, with a wink at Rosie, sat down to stare at her while he waited for people to come by and get their assignments.

All in all, Rosie found it astonishing that he’d been able to sort out who would be on duty where, paired with whom, and come up with a working schedule in such a short time frame. It seemed that Carnal had more going on than rugged beauty and sexual magnetism. When two o’clock came, Exiled began filing in to get their assignments. When he wasn’t watching her, she was watching him. As she cleared, swept, wiped and mopped, she was taking note that he talked easily with people who filed past, one by one, pointing to a line here or there on the schedule.

As her thoughts drifted to the monotonous rhythm of the broom, she found herself wondering why she’d stayed at Newland, why she hadn’t left and gone home. She’d originally planned to stay away for a few days, maybe a week, long enough to make a point, albeit one that she would have to admit was childish.

The truth was that she’d come to feel at home in Newland. Partly because the job made her feel useful. It gave her purpose, which was something she’d never had. Her mother had it. Her father had it. Glen had it. But she hadn’t understood what it meant to be part of what made things work.

Every day she served the community by making their public space clean and warm. Delivering food and drink brought out the nurturing side of her, a side she might not have known existed if it wasn’t for the particular experience Kellareal had chosen for her. It wasn’t a job that required anything supernatural. It didn’t even require a lot of experience, brains, or ingenuity. It was just a job that made her feel needed.

As she swept and reflected, she concluded that her place at the Commons was a big part of her reason for settling in. It had taken root in her identity.

The other part was the people. Once Dandy had shed her reserve, she’d turned out to be a friend, the first friend Rosie had ever made. She’d also come to feel comfortable in the Extant’s household. Charming treated her like a sibling. Then there was Carnal, of course. That thought caused a sense memory to assault her mind, the feeling of being behind him on his bike, pressed to his back, legs around his hips. In her mind she pictured the bike slowing to a stop, Carnal pulling her around to face him so that her legs flanked his hips from the front.

She shook herself out of her fantasy and looked up when she heard Dandy call, “Hey, Roses. They need help in the kitchen.”

Rosie nodded, set the broom aside, and wiped her hands on her apron even though there was nothing on them. It had just become a habit. She smiled at the nickname. She didn’t remember when or why Dandelion had started calling her ‘Roses’, but she didn’t mind. After all, how could she object to a nickname like that?

She heard Carnal’s voice. He was talking to Dandy. “You call her Roses?” He smiled. “That’s perfect. She’s beautiful and she smells good, but she has hidden thorns.”

“Yeah. Look who’s talking.” Rosie regretted it the minute she said it. It seemed her mouth had its own agenda when she was around Carnal.

Deciding that she didn’t want to see his reaction, she turned away and forced her thoughts back to the huge undertaking at hand. Namely moving Exiled to Farsuitwail and integrating them without them reaching the conclusion that it was humans who should be exterminated.

Walking toward the kitchen she was thinking that, all in all she didn’t see how Free’s pronouncement could have gone better. She added highly adaptable and flexible to the list of hybrid traits because the Exiled seemed to take the whole idea of exodus in stride.

She suspected that all hybrids weren’t created equal. The Rautt may have been the unfortunate result of indiscriminate experimental practices, just as there are strains of inappropriate hostility and even mental instability in certain dog breeds. Rosie was thinking that, if that was the case, perhaps what happened to the humans of Farsuitwail was poetic justice, a deserved consequence. But Kellareal had interfered with that consequence when he’d brought the Exiled to defend them. Something about that didn’t make sense and she was going to question him the next time she saw him.

Another pair of hands helped the kitchen staff get caught up in record time, which meant she could get back to the floors that had been left half done.

She’d just resumed sweeping when a pair of scuffed brown boots stepped into the path of her broom. When she looked up into Carnal’s face, he cocked his head slightly to the side and leaned toward her.

“So you think I’m beautiful.”

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