She stops, meeting my gaze, and her smile turns to something more serious. She nods and turns her back to me.
I carefully take the straps in my hands and right them, laying them flat and letting my hands brush over her back, which is covered by another of Ati’s shirts. I reach around her small, round body and take the waist straps and tie them snugly behind her.
“Thank you,” she says softly, face turning to look up at me over her shoulder.
“You are most welcome, wedari,” I breathe, our faces close.
I hesitate for a moment as she continues to stand still, looking at me, and I wonder if I should kiss her.Surely this is an invitation?
But if I’m reading her wrong, and she does not want that... no.The risk is too great. A final inhale of her floral yet mouthwateringly sweet scent and I pull myself away.
I step back and open a cabinet.
“Alright now, I do believe I have the ingredients for beudi muffins. They are a sweet fruit?”
Octavia’s face is shuttered, but she quickly nods. “Sounds perfect.”
WHILE THE MUFFINS BAKE, I show Octavia the larder, pointing out various fruits and vegetables, as the sound of rain on the paneled ceiling drifts in soothingly.
“You really don’t eat meat? But, like... you could?” she asks. “I mean, your body wouldn’t reject it?”
I consider the question. “Celnoe stopped eating sentient creatures perhaps a flow ago. I do not know how our bodies would respond to flesh.”
She tilts her head in the dim, close room. “What’s a ‘flow’?”
“One thousand revolutions.”
“Oh, so a long time.”
I chuckle, and she smiles up at me.
Quietly she says, “You smell almost like pumpkin pie, Zee.”
My stomach swoops happily. Both at the nickname she picked up from Atiox and Lux, and at the fact that she’s learned my scent.
I whisper back, “I do not know what pumpkin is, but you sound as though this is a good thing.”
She nods.
We stand in the calm silence for a moment, but she reaches out and takes my hand. She twists her fingers between mine. My eyebrows furrow.
“Are you nervous, wedari?”
She looks confused. “No. Why do you ask?”
“You do this to your own fingers when you are nervous or upset.”
“You noticed that?” She blows out a breath as I nod. “No, this is hand-holding. You lace your fingers together. You only do it with... partners, I suppose, or children–to keep them safe.”
I smile, happiness filling me. “Then I like it very much, Tavi.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lux
“Take it,” I growl, hand under my mechacock as I line it up.
“Fuck,” Ati whines.
