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Noa closed her eyes to hide the tears that were building, and if a few managed to break free and roll down her cheeks, then the shower disguised them, sweeping them away before he could see her weakness.
Diel broke from her mouth and lowered her feet to the floor in silence. Noa was a statue as he washed her hair and cleansed her body. He turned the shower off and wrapped her in a towel. Noa couldn’t speak; she didn’t know what she would say even if she could. Her heart was a sledgehammer in her chest.
What was happening to her?
Diel led her to the fire, a towel around his waist. He stood behind her and ran his hands over her towel to dry her skin. The fire’s shadows danced on his body and cast a burnt-orange sunset in the pupils of his eyes.
Noa’s body felt weightless as she stared at him. It felt incinerated as he smiled at her and said, “Let me brush your hair.” Words still failed her, but she nodded at the odd request.
Diel disappeared into the bathroom and returned with a brush. He pointed to his bed. Shedding the towel to the floor before the fire, Noa walked naked to the bed. Diel watched her like she was a vision made flesh. As she reached the end of the bed, he dropped the towel around his waist, leaving them both bared to each other’s heated gazes.
Noa crawled onto the bed. The soft sheets were like clouds beneath her. In her chaotic life, she’d rarely slept on a comfortable bed. Certainly not one like this. She stopped in the center of the bed, and Diel took his place behind her. Her breathing was labored as she waited for him to begin.
She didn’t know what was happening. Rough fucking was one thing, the crazed sating of needs. This … The shower. The slow and tender licking of her pussy … She didn’t know how to cope with whatever this was.
The first stroke of the brush through her hair made her freeze. Her lungs turned to iron, and her head pounded. Noa squeezed her eyes shut against the onslaught, but the pounding persisted. With every stroke of Diel’s brush, that pounding opened up a window in her mind. She remembered a small cottage smelling of lavender and patchouli. Incense burning, and a soft voice humming as someone brushed Noa’s hair.
Then a crown of flowers upon her head.
Noa opened her eyes, her held-back breath tumbling out of her mouth. Diel’s brushstrokes faltered for a second at the sound, but then resumed. Noa’s heart was a deep, shamanic drumbeat, a sound she knew well, a sound that invoked within her a sense of peace … a sense of home. She tried to shut out that familiar hypnotic sound. But something within her refused to let it go, a stubborn part of her that fought for it to remain. So it drummed on. As Diel combed through her long hair, the drum beat on. A calmness replaced her sense of unease, enough that Noa could eventually speak.
“Where …” She cleared her throat. “Where did you learn to do this?”
Diel was silent, and the brush stopped. When she turned to face him, he was frowning, eyes lost to the fire. Confusion flooded his face. Even with the orange glow kissing his cheeks, she saw the color drain from his skin.
“Diel?” She rose to her knees and shifted directly before him. He looked to the brush in his hands as if the dark, barely touched bristles could tell him the answer to that question.
After several heavy seconds, he lifted his head. “I don’t know.” The slight catch in his deep voice made something inside her break. She looked down at his hand holding the brush; it was shaking. Noa couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t stand the lost look in his gaze, or the sight of him frozen on the bed.
She brought her hand to Diel’s and kissed the back of it. “Will you continue?” she asked, trying to bring him out of whatever answerless void he had slipped into.
Diel blinked, grounding himself once more. He jerked his head in agreement, and she turned and flicked her damp hair over her shoulder. It was a few moments before Diel began running the brush through the long strands again. Noa exhaled a breath she didn’t even know she had been holding. She was still as the statue of Mary that the Witch Finders had bowed to each day in the Circle.
She controlled her breathing as Diel worked out the tangles from her pink hair. But all the time her mind reeled. He didn’t remember. Diel didn’t remember anything of his old life; that much was obvious. It was like a blade sliced into her chest. Noa blocked out the memories of her past, the smells, the sounds that took her back to those days, but at least she had them. She knew from where she came; she knew who she had been before the Brethren had torn her happy life apart.
