Chapter Fifteen #3
“I am,” she giggled, hugging the sheet to her chest despite how she didn’t feel she needed to cover up. “But I was naked when you stitched my lungs.”
“That’s different!” he squawked.
“How?” she sputtered.
“You were in danger. I didn’t see you like…
that. Not when you’re hurt or when I’m fixing something.
I don’t see your body like that when I’m focused.
” Austin shuffled around the slab, scratching at the back of his head.
Hyacinth eyed him in confusion, only lifting the sheet to dab at her egregiously damp cheeks.
“Like what?” She pulled more of the sheet around her to cover up her skin. It makes him stop in his tracks? It’s just my body?
“Like…like…like you’re,” Austin licked his lips, eyes glued to a wall far to their left she couldn’t see in the dim laboratory lights. “Like you’re attractive.”
“Am I?” Hyacinth swung her legs, needing something on her body to be moving if she was going to keep the sheet clutched to her chest.
“Very,” he choked, finally glancing her way. “Um, you-you-you asked about the squonk?”
“Yeah!” She beamed, bouncing a bit in her seat. Then, with a flippant hand, she motioned at her damp face that was still getting wetter. “Why does it make me cry?”
“That’s all squonks do,” Austin laughed.
He dabbed her cheeks dry then held the towel up to her undereye.
He told her to blink and the tears poured down her face faster.
It took a moment to stop. Yet her eyes were still damp and happy.
“They’re a creature you only find hidden, deep in foresty areas.
They cry and cry till they drown all those who come to see who is crying in the woods.
Then they slurp up the tears and the people they drowned. ”
Blink, blink. Hyacinth stared at him, “And you got their tears?”
“Yeah, if you send a zombie, like Kevin, into their lair, who doesn’t need to breathe, the squonk doesn’t know the difference.
It cries harder and harder trying to drown him, and then Kevin just fills up vials until we’ve got a few, then walks out of the tears.
It’s super-efficient. Though, the squonk in the woods left shortly after, so when we run out, we’ll have to find a new one.
” Austin shrugged as he pulled the towel away from her face.
Hyacinth sighed with relief, legs kicking, and realized the angry flutter returned to her chest. He brushed his palm across her cheek in order to cup the back of her head.
Nestled in his hands, he inspected her eyes.
She tried to keep them as open as she could.
But a strange tingling started between her legs.
It built up, growing more aggressive till it was a buzz as his fingers brushed along her throat.
Her nipples suddenly ached harder than when it was simply cold and she had to squeeze the fabric to her chest harder in hopes of soothing them.
They were not so easily dissuaded as he stepped back and excused himself to find her something to wear.
He finds me attractive? We know attraction.
Not we as in me, but somehow I know attraction.
I know how the heart flutters, the body yearns.
Her thighs clamped together like a book snapped shut. I’m attracted to Austin too.
She pinched and brushed her nipples through the sheet while Austin was at the other end of the lap, trying to get them to behave.
Oh no. It was a different kind of panic, because warmth bloomed in her core.
A damp, stickiness formed between her thighs and she knew if Austin removed the sheet he’d see her body splotchy and red from a blush that shouldn’t be possible.
Her body didn’t bleed. She couldn’t blush.
And yet she was certain beyond a doubt her entire torso was covered in a stinging blush.
I want him to touch me again. She’d never been more certain in her life that the ache in her nipples and the slick between her thighs would be solved with a single touch from him.
But then he returned with another large shirt, like the one on his torso, and a guilty smile, “I’m sorry. Aggie has the dress you wore upstairs. I didn’t think to grab you anything to wear.”
She grabbed ahold of it and inhaled his scent that lingered on the fabric.
That was foolish. Her thighs trembled from the pressure she put on them.
There was no winning. As she kept the fabric against her nose, watching him over it, he shyly walked away.
To give me privacy. The attraction grew.
It weighed down on her shoulders, twisting her stomach into knots.
Hyacinth didn’t know what to do with it.
My body knows what it wants… but Hyacinth felt out of her depth.
So, she pulled on his shirt, hugged it to her body, and hopped off the slab.
He even put wing slits in it! She piled up the sheets over the little desire-made puddle she’d created and tried her hardest to ignore the spike of excitement in her veins when he turned back around smiling at her once more.