Chapter 14 Nasrin #3
“No, actually, I don’t know the answer. It’s why I asked. It’s why I keep on asking you things. Because I barely know anything about you!”
His sight stars, still more controlled than any other set I’d ever encountered, were practically vibrating, a subtly quaking storm. His brows were set heavily, his jaw taut with anger, even as his gaze dragged over my face, my body, with something that could only be a raw and helpless desire.
I really was getting better at reading his emotions.
Or he was getting worse at hiding them.
He made a bitter sound, then said, “You know me better than most.”
I gawked at him. How could that be possible? I hadn’t grown up around him, like his people had. But…
He’d never had a friend. He’d likely never kissed anyone before me, either.
Had he never told anyone else about how he got his scar?
The thought just about winded me. And just like that, all my anger evaporated.
“What would you have me do, Nazreen?” Oxriel’s question was quiet. Unobtrusive. But firm. Telling me that he was here to do my bidding, and not Gahn Thaleo’s.
“It’s alright, Ox,” I said, turning to him. “You can head back. Thank you so much for coming on the walk with me. I feel much better.”
His warm sight stars searched my face. “Are you certain?” he asked, perhaps a delicate way of pointing out that I didn’t look better. I felt drained, and imagined my face must be paler than usual. But I nodded encouragingly at him anyway.
“I’m sure. You go make sure Zoren’s doing alright on his own. He might need you for something.”
That convinced him. Oxriel hesitated, then sighed. “Alas, you are right, Nazreen. While Zoren is an adequate enough male, I fear that, when it comes to caring for the new women, he is not nearly as capable or experienced as I am.”
“That’s exactly why I asked you to come on this walk,” I told him in serious tones, even though that was just a tiny bit of a white lie. I would have walked right out of the cave without him if he’d let me. But sweet Ox didn’t need to know that.
“Because you are very clever, Nazreen,” he said, his chest puffed, his sight stars spinning with pleasure.
“It was an honour to escort you tonight. But as you say, I must return to Zoren. For he is entirely on his own now, and as there are two new women currently under his care, he is rather woefully outnumbered.”
I chose not to point out that the two women who now outnumbered Zoren probably didn’t even weigh as much as he did put together. Plus, they were sound asleep…
Oxriel raised his tail and bounded away, spurred on by thoughts of helping Zoren restore order to the sleeping caves. When he was out of sight, Gahn Thaleo said, “Why couldn’t you sleep?”
I was probably a coward, but I wasn’t exactly ready to admit that I’d been lying awake thinking about him.
So instead, I turned to him and asked, “Have you eaten?”
“Is it a habit of yours,” he said after a moment, “to answer a question with another question of your own?”
“Is it a habit of yours?” I echoed back at him. “Because you’ve just done the same thing.”
My eyes trekked across the rugged lines and brutal angles of his face. There was tension around his eyes, and a somewhat grim set to his mouth.
He was tired, I realize with some astonishment. I’d never considered the stony Gahn Thaleo to be capable of mortal conditions like weariness before. But then again, I’d never expected him to groan into my mouth, seize my hips, and fuck his needy, hard cock against my clothing either.
“I have not eaten,” he finally admitted. “I have been gone since early morning. Much longer than anticipated.”
“Well, we should fix that,” I said, noticing the “we” I’d injected into the sentence.
I wasn’t telling him to eat. I was telling him I planned to somehow feed him.
While I didn’t personally believe in ghosts, it very much felt like the ghost of Maman was working through me in that moment.
Or maybe some genetic pang of memory was coming alive, activated by the sight of a weary Gahn Thaleo after I’d worried about him all day.
Whenever Baba or I had had a hard day at work or school, or were stressed about something, Maman’s first instinct was to soothe it all away with something delicious she’d made.
It was always how she’d cared best for the people she loved.
Obviously, I wasn’t planning on taking over a Deep Sky kitchen or anything like that.
I didn’t even know where in the mountain various ingredients were stored.
But I did know that there was usually a bit of moonbark or dried meat to be had in the main hall between mealtimes.
I began walking that way without checking to see if he’d followed. I knew he would.
And he did.
The hall was beautiful when the fire crackled, daylight streamed in, and people filled it.
But it was even more lovely like this. Empty and hushed, the fire burnt down to a row of glowing coals that nearly ran the length of the naturally-formed room, sending fire-gold light licking up the glittering walls.
Outside, the band of asteroids, this planet’s moons, sent silver cascading through the outer crystalline wall.
Gahn Thaleo was all stone and suede, metal and skin in this lighting.
His scar was a dark claw down his face. His sight stars were so fucking bright on me.
“I can get you something,” I said when he made no move towards the food at the side of the cave.
“I don’t want to eat.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to, as in, you have an actual desire to avoid eating, or a true lack of hunger?” I asked, raising a challenging brow. “Or is this another moment where you try not to want something even though you feel it anyway?”
His nostrils flared on a sharper intake of breath than usual, telling me I’d found my mark. He likely really was hungry. And exhausted. I wondered if there had been lean years where he’d foregone eating so others could have more.
But things weren’t like that now. He had more territory, more resources, the alliance. If the man was hungry, he should just eat. It was that simple. I didn’t even know if I could comprehend how many calories a man that size needed simply to keep all that bulk running.
But he still hadn’t budged, so I went to the side myself, collecting a small bone tray and piling meat and moonbark on it before bringing it back to him.
“Eat,” I said, pressing the tray into his huge hands.
And once again, I felt my mother superimpose herself over me.
Even though I was on another planet, speaking an entirely different language, I seemed to say it exactly the way she used to.
My voice had become more like hers in adulthood, and somehow, without even trying, I’d used the exact same tone she always did.
Tender, but leaving absolutely no room for argument.
Goosebumps spangled my arms, and I gave a shaky laugh.
“I sounded exactly like my mom there,” I said in response to Gahn Thaleo’s curious glance. “I nearly added khoshgelam on the end!”
“What is that word?” he asked as I flapped my hand at him, indicating he should sit now that he had his tray. Of course, he didn’t. So I sat first, and he followed suit immediately.
“Khoshgelam? Oh, it’s something both my parents called me. It’s a Persian word. It means ‘my beautiful one.’”
Something flickered in his sight stars, then was gone.
“Are they yet living, your parents?”
“No,” I answered after a small, steadying breath. “None of us have living family. It’s part of why we were brought here. Because we were all alone in the universe.” I flung my arm out towards the stars and asteroids to illustrate my point.
“But you are not alone now,” he said at once, his voice quiet but fortified with the sort of calm that comes from absolute certainty.
A hot lump plugged up my throat.
“You haven’t even touched your food,” I complained after a hard swallow and another awkward, tremulous laugh.
“Is that what you want me to do?”
“Of course!”
Apparently, that was enough to finally get the man to do it.
I watched his hard jaw flex, the contractions of the muscles in his thick neck as he worked his way through the food.
When he was finished, he put the tray beside him on the ground with the caution and care of a man handling a newborn child. Everything he did seemed so deliberate.
Even last night?
“Why could you not sleep?” he asked me again. He pinned me in the beam of his sight stars, as if to show me with his eyes that he wasn’t going to let me wiggle out of the question this time. “If there is some comfort you are lacking, you must inform me. It will be rectified at once.”
I turned my attention to the window-like wall of stone, contemplating the night sky as I considered my answer. I supposed I could lie. Tell him that I’d been cold or something, so that he’d give me some more blankets and be on his way.
But suddenly, the prospect just felt so fucking exhausting.
I didn’t want to lie to him. At least not here, not tonight, with the stars and asteroids bathing us in light nearly as liquid as water.
“Because I was thinking of you,” I said, not looking at him. “I was wondering where you were. And if you were alright.”
A pulsing silence, vulnerable as the tissue of an exposed heart between us. Then, my breath catching in my throat as a rough-yet-gentle pressure skimmed across my cheekbone. His knuckles.
He let out a soft breath then, and I could have sworn there was a word inside it. A word that sounded a hell of a lot like khoshgelam, but was too low for my human ears to pick up, and I was probably only imagining it anyway.
“You were worried.”
A statement, not a clarifying question. He saw straight through to the core of my admission. There was no point in denying it.
“Yes.”
His knuckles traced a slow line down my cheek. I didn’t stop him.
I didn’t want to.