27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
~Evalina~
With the way the fluttering in my stomach kicked up at the idea of spending time with Felix, I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat anything else. Luckily, I’d already eaten quite a lot. All the food of this world fascinated me, but the tart red berries that Felix called raspberries might have been my favourite. I already had a dozen ideas how I could incorporate them into some of my favourite desserts. Maybe I would have time to visit the kitchens before I left and ask the staff some questions about what they did with them.
“I’ll go change into some fresh clothes,” I announced, avoiding Felix’s eyes as I realized I had been wearing the same thing for more than a full day. Both my dress and myself had felt a lot fresher when I put it on the previous morning. “Is there clean water somewhere that I can wash with?”
“Like… a shower?” Felix asked, his throat contracting heavily with the word.
Once again, I had no idea what he meant. “A what?”
“A show…” He started to repeat himself before shaking his head. “Never mind. I’ll show you.”
His large frame followed me back through the doorway into my room, and he went into the small, white and shiny room next to it, where he’d gone that morning to change back to himself after waking up as a wolf. I hadn’t taken a look at the room yet, and my eyes widened as I stepped through the door behind him. It looked like some kind of laboratory.
“You’ll find fresh water here,” he said, pointing to a silver-coloured tube over a large basin. When he lifted a handle next to it, water immediately flowed out of the tube and I squeaked in surprise.
“Is it magic?” I breathed. We had nothing like it in Etta.
Felix chuckled, the sound rumbling in his broad chest. “No, just technology. The shower is here, it works the same way, but the water comes from higher up, so you can wash yourself under it.”
He reached into the glass box that stood on one side of the room, lifting another handle and, as he promised, water fell from another silver-coloured tube high above my head.
“Like a waterfall,” I murmured.
“Yes, kind of,” he agreed, beaming with pride at my appreciation. Finally, he pointed at a chair with a hole in it and water sitting in a bowl beneath it. “And this is the toilet, for when you need to… relieve yourself.”
He gestured vaguely towards his hips, and my cheeks immediately heated with the thought of what might be lying beneath his clothes in that area.
“I understand,” I quickly assured him. “And then I use this?”
The chair had a silver handle on it, like the ones in the basin and the shower, so I tried to lift it as he’d done with the other ones, but nothing happened. A frown creased my lips as Felix chuckled again. “Press down on this one.”
“Oh.” I did as he said, and instantly, the water in the chair swirled around and disappeared before being replaced by fresh, clean water. “Are you sure this isn’t magic?”
People in Etta spent hours gathering fresh water. To have it at my fingertips felt like magic.
“I’m sure,” he promised. “What do you use instead of a toilet?”
I’d never really discussed bodily functions with anyone other than my mother, but he seemed genuinely curious and not embarrassed at all, so I did my best to follow suit. “We have fire pits.”
His blue eyes went so wide, I almost giggled. “ Fire pits?”
“Everything that goes into them burns.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” he said slowly. “But it sounds dangerous. I fell into the toilet once as a boy and I only got wet.”
That time, I did giggle, glancing down at the chair. “How did you fall in?”
He answered me with a smirk. “I wasn’t always this big.”
My eyes dropped to his waist and the strong, thick thighs beneath it, my cheeks heating once again as my thoughts strayed in directions they really shouldn’t be heading about a man I barely knew. Before he could notice my stare, I looked away. “Well, thank you. I think I have what I need. I’ll get ready now. Where should I meet you?”
“I’ll be just outside the door, in the hallway. Take your time.”
Once he left, I peeled off my dress and hung it up on a hook on the wall to let it air out. With a bit of playing with the handles in the shower, I discovered that I could make the water cooler or hotter. “Amazing,” I murmured under my breath before shrieking when I made it a little too cold. My nipples immediately pebbled as goosebumps sprouted along my skin.
“Evalina?” Felix’s voice carried through the closed door. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I called back, shivering until I managed to warm the water up again. When warm, steamy drops started to fall, I relaxed, sighing as the water slid down my skin. As my muscles started to loosen, my mind began to wander. How close had Felix been standing that he heard my cry? Was he still there now? How much distance separated him from my wet, naked body?
Why did it excite me to think he might be nearby?
As my hands slid across my slippery skin, washing away the dirt and grime of the pens and the trudge through the forest, my eyes closed and for just a moment, I let myself imagine they were Felix’s hands instead. His hands were so big, one of them could easily cover my breast. My fingers slid across the nipple, still taut from the earlier blast of cold water, and I let out a soft moan as I imagined bigger, rougher fingers in their place.
I’d never had these kinds of fantasies before, not about a specific person. The thought of Tarron touching me turned my stomach, but with Felix, it felt different. I didn’t know why or how, only that it did.
Shaking my head at myself, I forced myself to abandon those daydreams and finish washing. Reluctantly, I turned off the water and found a cloth to dry myself before putting on a clean dress from the bag Calista packed for me the night before. My damp hair made a tight braid, and I added some colour to my eyes and cheeks from the small jars of herbs I’d brought with me.
The reflection in the glass on the wall showed a bright-eyed, eager woman, ready for an adventure.
Could that really be me?
With my mother on the mend and Tarron far away, my problems seemed like a distant memory. A whole new world awaited me outside the door and I couldn’t wait to explore it.