10. Garrek
10
GARREK
I wasn’t spying. I was supervising. That’s what I told myself as I lurked between the shadowy shields of two conveniently-placed trees. Magnolia and Killian had taken longer than expected and so, after filling and refilling the troughs three times over, I’d come back to this spot.
To spy.
Blast! No. Not spy.
If I had come to spy, I was certainly doing a poor job of it. I barely even allowed myself to look at Magnolia until I realized that she was not entirely nude. She’d retained her skimpy underthings while bathing for some reason. I could not imagine, tiny little garments as they were, that they provided any heat for her body.
It occurred to me then that she’d kept them on precisely in anticipation of what was happening now.
To keep my… supervision… away from her private bits .
Probably a good thing, in all honesty. Even the swift glimpse I’d gotten of her belly and the bare top of her fleshy chest when she’d removed her top had struck me like a stunner’s blast.
It was absurd. It was foolishness. I could not explain it. I wanted to put it down to some sort of inevitable animal attraction, like the way a male bracku became a mindless, female-focused beast during rutting season.
But Zabrians had no rutting season.
And I had not felt this awkward clawing of… whatever this was… around Cherry or Darcy.
It was only Magnolia.
I glowered, grinding my fangs against each other as I watched Magnolia scrub something sudsy through her hair. The perfume of it wafted towards me, surrounding me, teasing me as if it knew what I was doing, as if it could see through the excuses I was making for myself. Without realizing I was doing it, I fingered the semi-circle of soap in my vest pocket, that pink half-disc she’d given me before we’d left on our journey.
Magnolia ducked beneath the water. I tensed, my lungs ceasing, until her head popped up once more. A little flicker of respect and gratitude warmed my chest when I realized that Killian was holding her hand, making sure she was steady on her feet as she climbed out of the creek.
I leaned back, further into shadows, as Magnolia headed straight for where I stood. I was certain that even her sad little human ears would be able to pick up the sound of my thunderous heartbeat.
But they didn’t.
She snatched her towel from the branch of the tree I stood behind. She was so close that I could count each bead of moisture upon the rich expanse of her moonlit skin. Could see the soaking gleam of water in the long coils of her hair. Her arms were dotted with small bumps that were not usually there. I wondered what they were, what they meant.
I wanted to touch her.
That want filled me with a loathsome sort of panic, because I didn’t know what to do with it and I didn’t know where to put it and there seemed to be nothing I could do. Nothing but stand here, wanting to touch her skin simply to feel what it felt like.
Like an idiot.
I shut my eyes before they could glow like a beacon and let Magnolia know I was no more than two strides away from her as she wrapped herself up in her towel. When I dared crack them open again, her back was to me. The towel was still around her, but with a jolt that left me dizzy I realized that she’d removed the chest covering she’d had on before. The straps that had been visible on her shoulders a moment ago were gone.
And then, something even worse.
She shimmied, bent a little, and from beneath the covering of her towel she produced the soaked garment that had been covering her backside and her sex. One-handed, she pulled it down, keeping her towel firmly in place as she did so. When the garment reached her ankles, she stepped daintily out of it, revealing the soles of tiny little feet with surprisingly high, curving arches.
That felt strangely, incredibly intimate. Getting to glimpse her feet like that. In flashes and slips, that vulnerable skin that I’d never otherwise get to see.
It made me feel nearly savage with the need to protect her. Little feet and all.
Magnolia gripped her wet underthings in one hand, holding the towel with the other, and it was only then I truly realized how completely, how utterly, how devastatingly naked she was now. There was nothing but her towel on her. It barely covered her backside.
I couldn’t stop staring at her legs. I feverishly tracked a little rivulet of creek water as it trickled down the sumptuous curve of the back of her left thigh. My throat was so suddenly, lethally dry that it seemed the only thing left to save my life now was to grab that thigh…
And lick it.
And not just her thigh. The hollows behind her low ears. The divots between the pebbles of her spine.
The secret place where her thighs met.
I didn’t even try to stop myself from wanting now. I wasn’t strong enough.
There was something addictive in the pain of it. I hadn’t let myself want anything for so, so long.
My arteries throbbed, my pulse raced, my cock and my heart kicked like trapped shuldu in tandem. Even my skin felt more sensitive, keenly aware of the shifting brushes of air every time Magnolia moved. I swallowed hard and realized I was shaking.
I could not remember the last time I’d felt so catastrophically alive.
It was like I’d been moving through my life as if it were nothing but a series of numbing repetitions. Eat. Chores. Sleep. Each day bleeding into the next with the familiar unreality of a recurring dream.
But now, I was waking up.
“Oh, no! You’re not done yet, Killian!” Magnolia called as Killian started to make his way out of the water. She pulled on her shiny sleep clothing, starting with the pants. She was forced to abandon her towel for a short moment as she put her arms into the sleeves of the top. For a blinding, battering heartbeat, the entire length of her back was exposed to me. The dark hair spilling in spirals over her narrow shoulders. The curve of her waist that flared into hips that seemed designed specifically for my hands.
Or Oaken’s hands.
That reminder was a spear of ice down my spine. It carved up my insides and left me cold. Magnolia finished dressing, the intoxicating span of her back now covered with the glossy pink. As if for good measure, as if she could feel my eyes upon her, she put her jacket on top. Another layer of protection between us.
She did the same with her feet, wiping them and putting on fresh socks, then her boots.
“What do you mean, I’m not done yet?” Killian whined as Magnolia headed back towards the water with her wet underthings. She stopped to pick up the top and trousers she’d worn earlier today, then continued on.
“You haven’t used any soap yet!” Magnolia responded, her voice thick with shocked laughter.
I wanted to laugh, too. Laugh at her optimism. The fact Killian had gotten into the water at all was a miracle she and I should both have been thankful for. Asking for soap was pushing hope into the realm of the delusion.
Magnolia appeared to have some soap with her. It was another small disc like the one she’d given me and was probably what she’d used on her hair. She crouched by the edge of the water, scrubbing the soap against her clothing and then rinsing everything. When she was finished, she hung up her dripping clothing on another tree branch and then held the soap out to Killian. Killian scowled at it like it was an ardu with its fangs out.
“At least your hair,” Magnolia cajoled. “Your body’s gotten a nice rinse so far. That’s great! But a lot of dust and oil has built up there. Let’s give it a good wash.” She shook the soap a little, as if it were a bell she could jingle temptingly at him. “I made it myself, you know!” she added. “It’s got a lot of nourishing oils in it, and some flower extracts to make it smell nice. And it’s totally river safe, too. All natural.”
I doubted Killian cared about any of that. Maybe the fact she’d made it might make the tiniest bit of difference. But not enough to actually use it.
Except …
Curse me, it was actually working.
How? How did she do things in one night that I’d been fighting with Killian to get done for half a cycle?
If she were anyone else, I would have disliked her intensely for it.
But she wasn’t anyone else. She was Magnolia. So instead, I just watched with wary wonderment as Killian came closer to where she stood, turned so that his back was to her, and plopped his bare bottom into the shallow water so that she could more easily reach his head.
And then she started washing his hair. And he actually sat still and let her do it.
They were quiet as she worked. Killian was stiff at first, unused to having someone touch him like that. But after a few moments, I could see the cautious tension in his wiry body begin to unwind. He hugged his knees to his chest and relaxed forward until his chin was resting atop them.
“OK. We might need to do a double cleanse,” Magnolia said after she’d spent some more time on her task. “Go rinse and come right back.”
He actually did it.
Once he’d returned to his seated position, Magnolia began all over again, rubbing the disc around on Killian’s head until the tangled clumps were spangled with suds.
“Your hair is practically a different colour, now!” she marvelled as she stroked her nimble fingers down his strands, spreading the thick foam. “It’s so pretty! All that dust and dirt was making it so dull before! I have a leave-in conditioner and a hair oil I made, too. I’ll help you comb this all out. Go rinse one more time.”
As Killian dutifully clambered up to do so, flopping clumsily forward onto his belly in the creek, Magnolia rinsed her hands and put her soap in a small case in her bag. Then, she pulled out two bottles. She rubbed the contents of one bottle – a viscous cream – through the lengths of her thick, curly hair. Then she added a few drops of oil, working section by section until she seemed to be satisfied.
By the time she was putting the lids back on the small bottles, Killian was racing out of the water towards her.
“Oh, boy! Let’s get you something to wear, shall we?” Magnolia muttered, glancing around. “Here. You can borrow my towel. It’s EvapoTech. It’s already dry.” She retrieved it and wrapped it around Killian’s shoulders. “There. Warm enough?”
Killian wiggled in a way that seem to wordlessly suggest that he was, indeed, warm enough.
“Good!” Magnolia crooned, as surely as if he’d spoken aloud. Killian’s eyes shone with adoration as he stared at her face. It truly was a testament to how much he worshipped and trusted her that he did not take off running through the trees when Magnolia produced what appeared to be a comb from her bag.
“I’ll be very gentle, I promise,” she said, her tone so tender and sweet that it made every muscle in me go tight with longing. And it was not even the perverse, physical longing I’d experienced a few moments ago when I’d felt as if I might die if I did not immediately lick the back of her bare, wet leg.
No, this was something deeper. Something transporting, nearly nostalgic. As if I, too, were a child like Killian, aching to move towards that gentleness.
Killian appeared to feel the same way, because he did not flinch or hide or bite. He merely wrapped himself tighter in Magnolia’s towel and sat obediently upon a nearby log. Magnolia worked smaller amounts of the same products she’d just used on herself into Killian’s tangled-but-clean strands.
She was right about the colour , I mused internally. I’d never seen Killian’s hair gleam this way before. The precise shade of moonlight draping itself over dew.
True to her word, Magnolia must have been gentle, because I heard not a single hiss of complaint from my convict-ward as she worked. She approached her task with the patient dedication of a surgeon and the relentless endurance of a soldier, her fingers never tiring as they coaxed the neglected strands into smoothness.
Her combination of competence and caretaking left me spellbound. I leaned against the tree and watched her, my own scalp tingling.
Once or twice, when Magnolia got too close to his right ear, I noticed Killian shift his head slightly away.
The third time it happened, Magnolia noticed, too.
“Is something wrong with your ear?” she asked. She ran a smoothing hand over Killian’s clean and now-detangled hair .
“No,” Killian said, shifting on the log. “Are we done?”
“As soon as I make sure your ear is alright,” she replied. “I noticed you tugging on it yesterday.”
I’d noticed the same thing tonight.
“Let’s grab your things and get back to camp,” Magnolia said, quickly packing up her comb and bottles. She reached for her wet clothing, then appeared to think better of it, leaving the garments to drip dry on the tree branch. “I have some medical supplies. I want to make sure you don’t have an ear infection.
“Infection? What infection?”
It was not until Magnolia and Killian’s heads both snapped towards my position that I realized it was I who had spoken.
“Garrek?” Magnolia said, squinting in the darkness as I abandoned my hiding place and approached them. “Where the heck did you come from?”
“The Empire of Zabria,” I snapped, knowing full well what she meant and ignoring it. “What do you mean, infection?”
I was speaking loudly. Too loudly. And Magnolia knew it. She observed me, her head tilted slightly to one side, her lips pressed tightly together.
“An ear infection,” she said after a moment that left me feeling slightly unravelled inside. “Do you know what an infection is?”
“Of course I do,” I growled. I was not so uneducated and isolated a creature that I did not know what an infection was. Infection could take down a full-grown bracku in its prime in less than a single night. I’d seen it happen.
“Back to the camp,” I told Killian in a harder, more commanding echo of Magnolia’s earlier suggestion. “And put your boots on,” I added sharply, barely biting back my exasperation as I watched Killian begin to walk away without them. Without bothering to turn around or even stop walking, he sent his tail sweeping across the ground to find and collect them. He proceeded to drag them along behind him through the dirt like some unwanted rock tied to the end of a rope.
He did not retrieve his trousers. Swallowing a sigh, I scooped them up.
“My brother is just like that,” Magnolia said as we followed Killian through the trees. “It was always a fight to get him dressed when he was younger. And he loved to run around barefoot.”
I noticed that she seemed to have hung back a little so that she could walk beside me instead of ahead.
I tried not to notice how much I liked it.
“Is that the brother you said bites people?” I remembered her mentioning that back on Fallon’s ranch.
She laughed. “Ha! No. That’s Leo.”
“How many brothers do you have?”
“Three. Plus two sisters. Five siblings total, all of them younger than me.”
I’d never had a sibling. I’d only had my father, and then my cousin Oaken after he’d come to live with us for the very brief period of time before my father’s death and our convictions. I wondered what it would be like to grow up with so many other children around you.
I wondered what it would be like to grow up with someone like Magnolia loving you.
Was even one of those five siblings aware? Of how fantastically fortunate they were?
“So that’s why you’re so good with him,” I said as we emerged from the trees. Magnolia stopped walking to regard me with her eyebrows raised.
“You think I’m good with him?”
“Of course,” I grunted, dumping Killian’s trousers down by his tent. I was about to yell at him to come get them, but when I saw that he’d finally put on his boots I decided to be grateful and not push my luck. He was covered up well enough for now. He’d tied Magnolia’s towel around his skinny hips like a slouchy apron.
When I turned back to Magnolia, she was nursing a shyly pleased sort of look on her face.
“What?” I asked, slightly stunned.
“Oh, nothing. It’s just… I have a feeling you don’t give out compliments very often, that’s all.”
Her smile was even bigger now.
Stupid, seemingly inevitable pleasure poured through me in response. She was smiling because I had made her smile, and now my whole body was reacting, buzzing with the high of it, while my mind scrambled to think of ways to make it happen again.
She was right. I did not give out compliments often. To anyone.
And yet I had dozens, hundreds of them lined up and waiting for her. I could tell her how lovely she looked right now, with her skin so soft and clean and her hair all loose and wet. I could tell her how much I admired her competence, her generosity, her spirit. I could tell her how her gentleness made me think of strength when in anyone else I would scoff at it and call it weakness. I could tell her how cursedly good she smelled. That I’d seen the bottoms of her tiny feet tonight and that I liked them just as much as the rest of her.
I could tell her how when I first saw her on Fallon’s ranch, I felt every single particle of my being shift, minutely, but enough to tell me nothing would ever be the same. I’d experienced such a thing only once before, my first morning in this world, when I’d risen before dawn and watched the sun rise beyond the mountains for the very first time.
I did not tell her any of this. Scraped suddenly raw by a pain I had no name for, I picked up Killian’s trousers and – though mere moments ago I’d decided to leave the issue be – barked at him to put them on.