“Eyes closed,” he murmurs, and I shut them obediently, desperate for it not to end. He shampoos my matted curls with the same patience, working the soap down to my scalp, squeezing the suds through to the ends.
The methodical, predictable, gentle progress is so soothing. It’s salve for my shriveled little soul. I turn my head slightly to press my cheek against his bicep. “No matter what happens later, I’ll be grateful for this.”
“Yes,” he murmurs without understanding. He pours fresh water on my forehead, baptizing me with his care. In this moment, I would do anything for him, this person so alien to me. My purchaser. Myowner. I’dcrawlfor him.
Free love isn’t free, I remind myself. It always comes at a cost. So I know I’ll pay for this at some point. But right now, I don’t care. I just enjoy the feel of his hands, the scent of thesoap, the soft rise and fall of his chest, the embrace of warm water all over my skin.
I’m sorry when it ends and he props me upright on his broad thigh to blot my hair with some kind of towel. I try not to think about the fact that I’m completely naked. Thathe’scompletely naked, too, and he can feel every clench of my thighs.
He runs his hand over my head and asks a question I don’t understand but ends in “hair.”
“Yes.” Anything he wants.
He carefully adjusts my head and begins combing through the disaster with his fingers. It’s painstaking and slow, but he occasionally adds sweet-smelling oil to ease the tangles, so it doesn’t pull hard and hurt.
At one point, his fingers bump up against my ear, but they feel strange, more like a comb than flesh and bone.
I grab his hand, feeling to the end of his fingers. He doesn’t have fingernails...he has curved, sharp claws, not too different than a cat’s! “What are these?!”
Chapter 8
Oljin
“Claws,” I tell her, flexing them in and out. She seems fascinated, tracing along their shape. I love how excited she is to learn anything she can. We have that in common.
I examine her claws just as closely. Hers are smooth and flat, blunt like her teeth, and they don’t retract. I wonder how her people cut their fabric or shave or butcher their meat. Perhaps they don’t do any of those things. I have so much to learn, and a lifetime with her to learn it.
But first, she must heal and regain her strength. I finish combing her hair. I’d thought its wild texture was a product of the tangles, but even with them removed, her hair doesn’t hang straight like an Irran’s. It loops and swirls and makes graceful waves over her shoulders, like it’s tracing the path of the wind.
“Your hair is beautiful, Alara,” I tell her, unable to stop running my fingers through it, admiring its unusual brown color.
“Hair,” she says, practicing the word. The bath has made her soft and dreamy, eased some of her brittle tension.
“Yes. Beautiful hair. Beautiful Rose.”
She catches my hand in hers. “Beautiful claws?”
She’s so earnest, I try to smother my laugh. “No, they’re not. You can call them sharp and deadly if you want. But you are the only beautiful thing I see. Everything pales next to you.”
Despite my oath to spare her my interest, my cock twitches, brushing against her thigh. I’m sure she feels it. Sure it willfrighten her. I start to lift her off my lap, but she places her palm against my chest, stopping me.
She lifts my hand again, pointing to my palm rather than my fingertips. Her brow furrows as she struggles to remember the word. “Hand?” she asks, her pronunciation only slightly off.
“Yes, hand,” I tell her, naming my wrist, arm, shoulder, chest, and neck when she asks. She brushes each body part in turn with her featherlight touch. I move her fingers to the small flaps of skin tucked beneath my jaw. “Gills.”
She sucks in a surprised breath, tracing their sensitive openings as she repeats the word. The sensation is too much. I can’t hold my pigment back. It blooms over my skin in shades of lavender and red and pink, full of affection and desire for her.
She can’t understand that any more than I can understand scrolls written in the old tongue, but she doesn’t miss the burst of color. She follows some of the channels with her fingers, chasing the pigment’s path.
I don’t stop her. I’m satisfying her curiosity, I tell myself. I’m indulging her scholarly interest. Doesn’t matter that it gives me more pleasure than I’ve felt in the rest of my life put together with her little fingers walking all over my skin.
“Pigment,” I tell her, like teaching her the word somehow excuses my indecent enjoyment.
“Beautiful pigment,” she murmurs. This time I don’t disagree. These colors are for her. “Beautiful Oljin.”
She slides her hand down toward my abdomen, and my muscles tense involuntarily. “Chest. Ribs. Belly,” I hiss out, so I don’t haveto tell her to stop.
Alioth save me, I won’t even keep my oath to her for a day at this rate. What am I doing, letting my cock think for me? I’m as bad as Chanísh looking for his Alara in the pleasure houses. Worse, maybe, because Rose is still weak.
