She laughs, a watery sound, and frames my face with her hands, her thumbs tracing the contours I have shaped for her.
“I love you too,” she whispers. “I love you, Oz.”
I hold her tighter. Around us, the last of the crowd drifts toward their trucks, their voices fading into the desert dark.
Epilogue
Curing
Maisie
Six months changes everything andnothing.
The studio still smells like lavender and lye, still has the same scarred workbench and the window that sticks in humidity.
But the clutter is gone. Jars line the shelves in labeled rows: fractionatedcoconut, jojoba, sweet almond in ascending order by viscosity.
Finished product fills the drying rack by the window, sixty units of rosehip night serum curing in their amber bottles, waiting for Tuesday’s shipment.
The Verdance contract hangs framed beside the door, the glass smudged where I pressed my palm against it the day the first payment cleared and my credit card balance hit zero.
Oz is at the pouring station with the batch of chamomile cleanser, his form narrowed to accommodate the workstation’s low overhang. His color holds steady at deep violet, focused and calm. One tendril curls around the beaker, tilting it at the precise angle for a clean pour, while another monitors the temperature of the mixture with his innate sense for heat.
I hand him the tamanu without being asked. He receives it, and his surface ripples with acknowledgment.
We work like this for hours most days. A shift in my posture tells him when I need a tool passed; a change in his colors signals when a mixture needs my input. The studio hums with productivity, our movements synchronized into something smoother than conversation.
Mid-morning light slants through the window. I stretch my arms overhead, feeling the pleasant ache of sustained work, and set down my spatula.
“Break,” I say.
Oz’s pour doesn’t falter, but a thread of gold surfaces in his violet. His body flows around me before I can take a step. Cool and slick, sliding up beneath the hem of my shirt, spreading across my stomach.
I gasp at the first contact, the shock of his temperature against my warm skin, and then his surface warms as it always does, adapting to me.
“Oz—”
He pulls me back against him. His chest molds to my back, and tendrils trace alongmy ribs with deliberate slowness. One curves around my hip, dipping below my waistband. I shudder and lean into him, my hands finding his forearms where they wrap around me.
“Break,” he says, his voice resonating against my back. “You said break.”
“I meant coffee.”
“I prefer my original assumption.” His hand slides up my stomach, pushing my shirt with it. Cool air hits my skin, then his warmth follows, and I arch into his touch.
Then he lifts me.
My feet leave the floor and I make a sound that’s half surprise, half something else entirely. He sets me on the workbench, the scarred wood cool beneath my thighs, and pushes my skirt up in one fluid motion. His body flows between my knees, parting them, and he steps into the space he’s created.
“The chamomile batch,” I manage. “The pour—”
Across the room, an offshoot of him continues working at the pouringstation. I watch it tilt the beaker at a precise angle, the amber liquid streaming into bottles, while the rest of him pushes my underwear aside and slides against me.
“Don’t you worry. We’re still getting the work done,” he says.
A laugh breaks out of me, and then his thumb—shaped and deliberate—finds my clit and the laugh dissolves into something else.
He circles slowly while he parts me with the cock forming from his base, cool and slick, pressing inward with a pressure that makes my grip tighten on the edge of the workbench.
