At least, it didn’t bother me in a migraine-sense. But there was a blinkless intensity in his gaze as it lingered on me that now reminded me I hadn’t washed my face, brushed my teeth, or even looked in a mirror recently.
“I’m just going to head down now. If that’s alright,” I said, turning my face shyly away.
“Oh. Of course.”
There it was again. Of course. He seemed to say it a lot.
For a moment, he looked around, as if unsure what to do. All I really needed was for him to go back down so I could descend. It was a somewhat narrow set of stairs, and his bulk blocked the way.
But he didn’t go. He swiped the dish towel off his right arm with his left hand.
Then offered his right arm to me.
I was about to politely decline the gesture when I noticed the total lack of banisters on this set of stairs. My stomach tightened, and dizziness buzzed. The stairs suddenly seemed even more narrow than before. Very easy to fall off of.
If I’d been alone, in the off-balance wake of my migraine, I probably would have just sat down at the top and scooted down the stairs on my bum.
But I wasn’t alone. Rivven was right in front of me. Below me and above me. His arm hovered in the air, completely still, looking thick and warm and more solid than any banister or guardrail would be. At this close proximity, I could see some scarring at the end of his wrist, the skin there a darker blue than the rest of him, with a tight, silvery sheen.
Smiling my thanks, I lifted my left hand and laid it on his forearm.
Tension suffused his frame. It didn’t happen all at once, like a jolt. It wasn’t like my touch had shocked him. But slowly, like the gathering clouds of an oncoming storm, I watched it move in him. I felt the tightening quiver of the muscles of his forearm beneath my fingers. I watched as his nostrils flared and his hard, broad chest expanded – and just kept on expanding – like he was sucking in the biggest, deepest, and most gradual breath of all time. Frankly, it was an impressive inhale. He probably could have set some sort of record for lung capacity.
In contrast, his exhale came out in a short, hard gust through his nose.
“Right,” he said.
I blinked. Had I said something that required a reply? I honestly couldn’t remember now.
“Right,” I repeated, not sure what else to say. “Shall we?”
The stairs were too narrow for us to walk side-by-side. So instead, Rivven remained always one step below me, his body angled so that I could keep hold of his arm. His arm was wonderfully solid beneath my fingers. Warm, too, the skin firm and smooth. There seemed to be no body hair on him at all.
Every time I let my gaze drift to the open sides of the stairs, vertigo threatened to topple me. So instead, I watched Rivven, my gaze spending most of the descent locked on where my hand was on his arm.
I was taller than the average human woman, at least in New Toronto. My boots were bigger than some of the other women in the locker room with me at the factory, and I wore one of the larger sizes of work gloves.
I’d never thought of myself as being small before.
But my hand on Rivven’s bulky forearm looked tiny. Not childlike or anything – it was still obviously my own, adult hand.But Rivven’s arm – Rivven’severything– was so huge that he was altering my internal sense of scale more and more every moment I was with him.
When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard movement and voices from beyond the door.
“Sounds like the warden and his wife are up,” Rivven said, lowering his arm and abruptly facing away from me. He dropped his dish towel on the wood-topped counter beside his stove and busied himself with the pan. “They know where everything is,” he added. “I’ll bring breakfast out shortly.”
Hopefully that “everything” he’d just mentioned included a bathroom of some kind. I thanked him and went through the door.
7
RIVVEN
My cock was hard and the eggs were burnt by the time Shiloh left the kitchen.
“Blast,” I muttered under my breath, scraping the ruined eggs onto a plate. I resigned myself to eating those ones as I put more butter in the pan for a fresh batch. I’d already cut up cheese, bread, pickled vegetables, and had put out an array of different fruit preserves in little bowls. I wasn’t sure what Shiloh would like to eat, and had wanted to give her as many options as possible so that something would be to her taste.
Of course, I wanted Tasha and Warden Tenn to find something to enjoy as well. But I found myself far more concerned with Shiloh and what she wanted than with them.
I cracked new eggs into the pan but barely saw them, memories of Shiloh standing there on the stairs filtering dreamily before me. I hadn’t seen all of her face well yesterday. She’d had her hand over her eyes, and then she’d been curled up in bed. All I’d gotten were glimpses around the edges. The enticingly pretty curve of a cheek here. The intriguing flutter of human eyelashes there. Rich brown skin and hair that was coiledin tight, springy spirals that she wore tied back and away from her face.
