“You’re staring,” he said, adjusting the small charm she’d carved for him on his belt.
“I’m not.”
“You are. I can feel it. Like sunlight on the back of my neck.”
“That’s very poetic for a male who just called me a snoring cub.”
His shoulders shook with a low, quiet laugh. He looked up then, and she saw his eyes drop, just for a heartbeat, to where the furs had slipped down and left her bare from the waist up.
Then his jaw tightened, and he looked resolutely at the ceiling.
“You need to start wearing something to bed, little one.”
She blinked at him, tugging the fur up around herself more from confusion than modesty. “But why?”
Perhaps because she’d been kept naked for so long, clothing still made her skin crawl. It made her feel trapped in a way she couldn’t quite explain. Ironically, he had been the first one toconvince her to wear clothing. But he’d also understood how she felt, and he never once commented on the way she peeled off her gowns the moment she was safe inside their inner cave.
“Have I done something wrong?” she asked.
“No,” he said immediately. “Never. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
He dragged a hand down his face, and when he lowered it, his bright blue eyes were unusually troubled.
“Because you are a desirable female,” he said, each word deliberate, as though he’d weighed it before letting it go. “And I am not carved from stone, little one. There’s only so much a male can pretend not to notice.”
“Oh,” she said, her cheeks flaming. A strange, dizzy warmth rushed through her, part pride and part something more apprehensive.
He wants me.
She wasn’t completely clueless. His body had revealed his desire more than once. But hearing him say it out loud made it real, and real was frightening, because wanting had always come attached to hands that took and voices that decided things for her.
But this was Njkall.
She looked at the careful distance he’d put between them and the way he still would not look below her chin. He was holding himself back so hard it looked like it hurt, and she didn’t know what to do with that.
She opened her mouth, even though she had no idea what she meant to say?—
“Right,” she said, losing her courage, and bolted.
She scrambled off the sleeping platform, clutching a fur against her front, and hurried across the cold stone into her own little cave. She yanked the woven curtain shut behind her and stood there in the dimness, heart going like a trapped bird.
He wants me. He said it. Out loud.
She pressed her hands to her hot cheeks and made herself breathe.
The small sleeping cave he’d given her was cluttered with half-finished projects, everything from jewelry to baskets. She had more time than she knew what to do with. What was the point of days without work or danger or the constant fear of being dragged out of her cell and used?
She dug through her chest and pulled out the longest gown she owned, a soft grey thing that fell to her ankles, and dragged it over her head. The fabric settled around her like a curtain, hiding everything, and for once she didn’t mind the covered-up feeling nearly as much as she expected to.
Because he asked.Because knowing he was watching made the cloth feel less like a cage and more like a shield she’d chosen to raise.
She smoothed the gown across her hips, took one more breath, and pushed back the curtain.
The main room of Njkall’s quarters was a wide, high-ceilinged cavern warmed by a cooking pit at its center and softened by furs and cushions. The far side opened onto a broad ledge that overlooked the main cavern, and there was a smaller meeting room to the right. Along one curved wall ran a low stoneshelf where he kept the mixture of carved tablets, scrolls, and datapads that contained the clan records. The technology the clan had resisted for so long—at least for anything other than weapons and security—was finally making its way into their everyday life.
He was already standing at the cooking pit, stirring the thick grain porridge that was their usual morning meal.
