“So we’re just going to get the floor all wet?”
“The dome automatically collects the water and recycles it,” I tell her. “If it’s too hot, let me know.”
“It doesn’t feel like anything’s even coming out,” she says, and I swallow a laugh, knowing that she won’t appreciate it if I seem like I’m making fun of her.
“I haven’t put it on your head yet,” I tell her gently.
“Oh,” she says, that familiar annoyance back in her voice. “Well, I suppose that makes sense.”
“It is not very much water, though. It is not like bathing in a waterfall or in a great lake.”
She gives me an odd look, one eye scrunched closed while the other watches me carefully as I wave the shower wand over her soft black hair.
“Is that how your species normally bathes? Outside in a waterfall?”
“Yes,” I tell her sarcastically. “We invented spaceships, but indoor plumbing eludes us.”
Even though I’m being sarcastic, I say it gently enough so that she knows that I’m teasing with her, not making fun of her, and to my delight, she laughs. It’s not a musical sound, at all, buta low sort of bark of hilarity, and I savor it because I have never heard it from her before. I’ve heard all sorts of angry noises; my name pronounced in so many different ways of irritation I never even thought it possible.
But now, with that delicious laugh and the slight smile on her face, the way she’s slowly relaxing under my touch, I think maybe I can have her say my name in a way I’ve never imagined.
“Your nails feel really good,” she says, shuddering in the chair.
I swallow hard, my gaze tracking the rise and fall of her chest, small but ample enough, the steady tick of the pulse in the vein that runs down the smooth column of her neck. “They’re talons.”
She cracks open another eye. “Right. Talons. Heaven forbid you have something as mundane human nails.”
“I can protect you much better with these.” I lightly scratch them over her scalp, and her throat bobs. “Is that too hard?” I ask, cataloging every single tiny reaction that flits across her face.
I am certain it was not, and that that was pure pleasure I saw, but I want her to say it. I want her to tell me exactly how she feels right now.
“It’s fine,” she says, her voice high and thready, giving away exactly how she feels in spite of her not wanting to tell me, which, to use her words, is also fine.
It has only been days since we met. But the fact that she’s been able to keep her heat in control this far speaks to how hard a shell my little female has around her heart and her body. But now—now she’s letting me wash her hair.
The dainty line of her slim throat bare to me, with full trust, as I gently untangle the snarled mess on top of her head and watch her in complete submission, her eyes closed, relaxing in front of me.
Oh, it is fine indeed.
But before we are through with this ridiculous and dangerous survival challenge, it will be much more than fine. Of that I am almost certain.
CHAPTER
NINE
LILY
Goosebumps raisethe hair all over my body, and I’m completely annoyed at the fact that it feels incredible. I haven’t always liked having my hair played with. In fact, I thought most people who said that they did were lying, because it’s really only ever been painful to have someone else brush my hair. And I hate doing it myself because I don’t have the patience to be gentle enough, which is why I keep it short and comb it instead of running anything with bristles through it. It shouldn’t be hard to take care of, I don’t have the curls some of my friends have, but it always hurts.
For some reason, though, with whatever shampoo is in the water combined with the extremely delicate way Zan’s working his fingers through it and the lightest scraping of his talons across my scalp… well, it’s heaven.
I think I now have some idea of what everybody who said they wanted their hair played with were talking about. I don’t tell him that, though, because he’s already so completely full ofhimself that the thought of giving him any more ammunition for his ego is frankly terrifying.
He holds my head in place with one hand while he works the water and suds through with the other, and as he starts singing in a low, quiet voice, I practically melt into the chair and into his hands. The heat is bothering me, it’s always bothering me, but with him touching me, it’s not as bad. Either that or the sheer exhaustion of the last days in this hell have completely dulled my body’s physical need for sex—or maybe, better put, the ability to enjoy it at all.
“Do you want to clean the rest of your body before I put you in bed?” Zan finally asks after his song ends on a mournful note.
“What were you singing? I’ve never heard anything like that before.”
