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His gaze is fixed firmly on my face, and what was respectful before is beginning to feel insulting in the wake of the past couple of days.
I don't know how to put into words what I want to ask him, though, so I say nothing, only move aside to make space for him under the wide stream of water.
He steps under the cleansing rain, but carefully keeps a solid couple of inches of space between us. And I know I'm not imagining it, the way he is trying so hard not to touch me. I just can't figure out why.
I stare, transfixed by the rivulets of water rolling down his body, by the way he moves the cedar soap he chose in a circular motion across his chest. His eyes burn into mine, and I am so caught up in this moment that I find myself asking what I want to know in the bluntest way possible.
"Why won't you look at me?"
His eyes widen, and the soap falls to the floor.
"I am looking at you," he replies with a strained sort of calm.
Slowly, pointedly, I let my eyes roam from his tousled white-blonde locks down the muscled planes of his chest, all the way down his body before dragging them back up again. I raise my eyebrows.
His lips are parted, questions and lust vying for attention on his features. Then, his face hardens in resolve.
In a challenge.
It's the face he gets when we are playing chess, and every part of my body tightens, even before he lets his gaze drop. And though I am the one who initiated this, I suddenly feel very unsure, because I have spent the better part of a decade keeping a tight rein on my emotions. I am not used to feeling so out of control.
A frenzy of feelings runs wild through every inch of me. Desire and revulsion war with one another while I drink in all of him, soaking this image into my memory to save and hold on to, but nevertheless being terrified of wanting him. Of wantingthis.
But that's what Einar does; he makes me want things I never thought I would.
His eyes linger on each inch of my skin like a caress. They travel down, and he doesn't stop or pay any extra attention to the stark white scars decorating my abdomen.
Which is just as well, because I don't want to pay any attention to them right now, either. By the time his eyes meet mine again, they are filled with a heat so intense, it is more like lightning. He leans down, his mouth hovering just above mine when he whispers.
"Because when I look at you like this, it's all I can do to keep my hands off of you."
I hold his stare, my chest going tight and every fragment of me burning with desire.
Then don’t.For as bold as I thought I was feeling, I can’t seem to voice the words aloud.
Slowly, he reaches toward me, and I have a moment of panic before I realize he’s reaching around me to turn off the stream of water.
Einar steps out of the space and grabs a towel to wrap around my shoulders, pressing a kiss to my forehead as he does so. Somehow, the gesture makes me want him even more, even as I wish I could crawl into a hole and die.
After wringing out his hair, he grabs one for himself as well, quickly wiping down his muscled body before wrapping it around his waist. He gestures to where he has left my clothes on a vast counter before turning to leave.
I am unreasonably irritated by his thoughtfulness, by the way he seems to know my mind better than I do. Heart still racing, I take my time getting dressed.
By the time I emerge, I tell myself there will be no more encounters like this. I tell myself I don’t care, that I never did.
I lie harder than I’ve ever lied before, and still, I don’t believe it.
I study Einar over breakfast, and I sense his scrutiny in return, but neither of us speaks until we are both finished eating. We had gotten dressed in a charged silence, one with more questions than answers, questions neither of us had voiced aloud.
Khijhana is back, but she is curled up in his chair again, napping. There are no sounds aside from the scraping of his spoon against the bowl and the sharp crack of me breaking off another piece of my flat bread.
"I don't regret the caves," Einar says out of nowhere.
Sometimes, I feel like he really is reading my mind.
"You just aren't anxious to repeat them?" I don't look at him when I say that, because I don't want him to see whatever emotions are swirling in my eyes.
Besides, you don’t care,I remind myself again.And it soon won’t matter, even if you do.
