Chapter 6 #2
Unlike the warden yesterday, he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
I told myself that they were the appreciative eyes of a painter (and not those of a pervert) that I now let rove over the exquisite musculature of his torso.
His back was to me, his head bent forwards over a pan, his shoulders moving, muscles along his spine bunching.
His arms were thick with tautly corded flesh, flexing with the criss-crossing matrix of veins.
His left hand gripped the pan’s handle, moving the heavy object with ease as he swirled whatever was in there.
His right hand, I realized now, was not there.
The forearm ended in a blunt line at his wrist.
This didn’t seem to hinder him in the kitchen. I remained up on the landing, watching in fascination as he commanded the room. Whenever he needed more fingers than he had, his slender, ropy tail snapped up, prehensile and powerful, gripping, grabbing, and swiping.
And he still used his right arm, too, his forearm supporting when needed and, at one point, becoming a sort of hook for a dish towel he draped over it.
I noticed another hook, too. On the back of his belt. When his tail wasn’t doing something to assist him, it coiled there, like looped rope hanging from a nail on a wall.
This had to be Rivven.
I took a small step forward, still on the landing, leaning towards the stairs to get a better look at him. The floorboard beneath my boot creaked. Just a tiny bit.
But Rivven whirled at the sound at once.
Right away, I noticed three things about him.
One: His eyes were deep, brilliant blue – phthalo blue – until they weren’t. The moment they locked on me, they surged with bright light from the centres, until they glowed entirely white.
Two: He had big, round, velvety-looking ears on the top of his head. Absolutely adorable, and providing a nearly cartoonish contrast with the unrelentingly hard lines of the rest of his body.
Three: He was handsome. Just like I’d thought he might be after hearing his voice. He looked like he might be a little younger than the warden, though it was difficult to tell. I didn’t know enough about Zabrian faces.
But I knew enough to know that I liked this one. I liked the sharp, clean line of his jaw, the angled hollows of his cheeks, the thick, dark blue brows (phthalo blue again, I thought, with the slightest edge of black).
OK. Scratch that. I didn’t just notice three things in that moment.
Four: The man moved fast.
Already, he was bounding up the stairs towards me, his boots heavy but quick on the steps.
“Are you alright?” he asked when he’d reached the step below the landing. Even down one step from me, he towered, seven-foot-something male of alien proportions. “Do you need help?”
“No, thank you. I’m feeling a lot better this morning.
” I said the words slowly, testing them, tasting them for truth.
But I found that I really was still feeling better.
The sleep and the pain medication were – at least for now – keeping me upright and functioning.
I’d definitely still needed to take it easy today, but I was feeling more and more optimistic every moment.
“Good.” His reply came out with the gentle rasp of an exhale. There was relief in it, I was certain. His bright white eyes hadn’t left my face. This time, especially with the morning light coming in through the windows below, the odd brightness of his gaze didn’t bother me.
At least, it didn’t bother me in a migraine-sense. But there was a blinkless intensity in his gaze as it lingered on me that now reminded me I hadn’t washed my face, brushed my teeth, or even looked in a mirror recently.
“I’m just going to head down now. If that’s alright,” I said, turning my face shyly away.
“Oh. Of course.”
There it was again. Of course. He seemed to say it a lot.
For a moment, he looked around, as if unsure what to do. All I really needed was for him to go back down so I could descend. It was a somewhat narrow set of stairs, and his bulk blocked the way.
But he didn’t go. He swiped the dish towel off his right arm with his left hand.
Then offered his right arm to me.
I was about to politely decline the gesture when I noticed the total lack of banisters on this set of stairs. My stomach tightened, and dizziness buzzed. The stairs suddenly seemed even more narrow than before. Very easy to fall off of.
If I’d been alone, in the off-balance wake of my migraine, I probably would have just sat down at the top and scooted down the stairs on my bum.
But I wasn’t alone. Rivven was right in front of me.
Below me and above me. His arm hovered in the air, completely still, looking thick and warm and more solid than any banister or guardrail would be.
At this close proximity, I could see some scarring at the end of his wrist, the skin there a darker blue than the rest of him, with a tight, silvery sheen.
Smiling my thanks, I lifted my left hand and laid it on his forearm.
Tension suffused his frame. It didn’t happen all at once, like a jolt.
It wasn’t like my touch had shocked him.
But slowly, like the gathering clouds of an oncoming storm, I watched it move in him.
I felt the tightening quiver of the muscles of his forearm beneath my fingers.
I watched as his nostrils flared and his hard, broad chest expanded – and just kept on expanding – like he was sucking in the biggest, deepest, and most gradual breath of all time.
Frankly, it was an impressive inhale. He probably could have set some sort of record for lung capacity.
In contrast, his exhale came out in a short, hard gust through his nose.
“Right,” he said.
I blinked. Had I said something that required a reply? I honestly couldn’t remember now.
“Right,” I repeated, not sure what else to say. “Shall we?”
The stairs were too narrow for us to walk side-by-side. So instead, Rivven remained always one step below me, his body angled so that I could keep hold of his arm. His arm was wonderfully solid beneath my fingers. Warm, too, the skin firm and smooth. There seemed to be no body hair on him at all.
Every time I let my gaze drift to the open sides of the stairs, vertigo threatened to topple me. So instead, I watched Rivven, my gaze spending most of the descent locked on where my hand was on his arm.
I was taller than the average human woman, at least in New Toronto. My boots were bigger than some of the other women in the locker room with me at the factory, and I wore one of the larger sizes of work gloves.
I’d never thought of myself as being small before.
But my hand on Rivven’s bulky forearm looked tiny. Not childlike or anything – it was still obviously my own, adult hand. But Rivven’s arm – Rivven’s everything – was so huge that he was altering my internal sense of scale more and more every moment I was with him.
When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard movement and voices from beyond the door.
“Sounds like the warden and his wife are up,” Rivven said, lowering his arm and abruptly facing away from me. He dropped his dish towel on the wood-topped counter beside his stove and busied himself with the pan. “They know where everything is,” he added. “I’ll bring breakfast out shortly.”
Hopefully that “everything” he’d just mentioned included a bathroom of some kind. I thanked him and went through the door.