Chapter 13 Rivven #2
But she did not even want a husband. Not really. She was taking this program seriously because she knew it mattered to me and to the other men. Because she was clever and compassionate. Because she was not the sort to take the feelings of others lightly.
But what about her own feelings?
There was a long silence. Then, she picked up the brush and held it out to me.
“Do you want to try?”
The fingers of my left hand curled into a fist. My right hand had been my dominant one.
I’d relearned how to do everything from hammering nails to saddling Foxitt with my left hand and tail only.
But I could not imagine attempting something as precise and delicate as the strokes I’d seen Shiloh doing.
“No,” I said gruffly. “I’d ruin it.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t think you could ever ruin anything, Rivven. I swear, you make things better just by breathing.”
She tugged on the edge of her painted paper. It came away from the book with a gentle ripping noise.
“But if you’re worried,” she went on, “you can have your own page. All to yourself. There are no rules. And you don’t have to make it mean anything, or even look like anything.
But sometimes…Sometimes just creating something with your own two hands can have meaning all on its own.
Can be soothing, or meditative or – ah. Shit. ”
She turned pleading eyes on me, her mouth tight.
“I’m so sorry,” she stammered. “The two hands thing…That’s just a saying! It just means creating something real, something physical, with any part of your body! Some people paint with their toes, or hold the brush in their teeth…Or build saloons! Or-”
“It’s alright.”
“No, it isn’t. That wasn’t what I meant to say at all. It came out all wrong. And I’m sorry.”
“Really,” I rasped. My chest ached. “It is alright.”
She looked so miserable at the prospect she might have offended me, or hurt me. And seeing that sort of misery in her made me feel entirely wretched in return. I wanted anything, anything, but to see her unhappy. I closed the distance between us with one unsteady stride. My hand cupped her face.
I had never touched her perfect face before. But I had to do it now. Because I could not bear to see that expression on it for one moment longer. And I was at a loss as to what else to do.
The silk of her skin was incredible to feel. I’d had her hand on my arm before, of course. But that was not nearly the same as this – the plush curve of her cheek against the rough callouses of my palm. The feather-light fluttering of the tips of her human eyelashes against the pad of my thumb.
“You did not offend me,” I murmured. She hadn’t. Even in this short time, I believed that I had come to know Shiloh. And I knew enough to say with certainty she would not consider a person lesser for the things they’d gone through. For the things they lacked. A hand. A herd.
I did not think she took the measure of a man that way.
“It is just that I have never done any painting like this, even when I did have two hands,” I told her. “And you do not have so many pages left in your book. I would hate to waste one.”
Her small hand rose, hovering for a moment, before she placed it – pressed it – over mine. Briefly, she closed her eyes and whispered, “Nothing you do could ever be a waste.”
When she opened her eyes again, her face was much closer to mine than it had been before.
Had I bent down towards her? I must have.
It was not as if she could have gotten taller.
Somehow, I was being inexorably drawn towards her.
Down into her. Her rapid exhales became my ragged inhales.
Her scent was all around me. My right arm was at her waist, and I did not know when that had happened.
But she was not pulling away.
By the empire, she was not pulling away.
When our lips touched, it was her that did it.
Just the tiniest brush at first. Her mouth over mine, a caress as light as the flit of her eyelashes.
But that simple touch rocketed through me.
My right arm fully circled her waist, my forearm like a bar against her back.
My left hand spasmed at the side of her face.
My breath was fire in my lungs as I pressed my mouth harder to hers.
This was a human kiss. I had read about them. Learned about them in our lessons with Warden Hallum. It was a way humans could communicate and get to know each other physically. A sign of affection. And sometimes, a precursor to sex.
I did not anticipate the latter with Shiloh now. Or even that this might be linked to any kind of affection. But if it meant she was interested in getting a little closer to me, at least for this moment, I would seize the opportunity.
It might not come again.
Shiloh gave a tiny gasp at my increased pressure, which opened her lips. I felt heat, moisture, and seemed incapable of doing anything but opening my own mouth in return. When her tongue tentatively met mine, so cursedly sweet, desire slammed my cock until it strained to the point of pain.
In a startling way, this moment had at least one similarity with the worst moment of my life. When I’d snatched the new director’s cane, and fought him. Because both that time and this, my body moved purely on instincts that I had not known that I possessed before.
But once they were awakened, they did not seem to stop.
My grip on Shiloh’s waist tightened, and I backed her up against the window. When her lower back hit the window sill, my hand shot down to her hip, gripping hard, lifting her so that she was seated.
Her thighs were spread. With me between them.
The positioning of our bodies was so erotic that I nearly lost the reins on my cock right there.
And Shiloh’s actions seemed only to be hastening that organ’s inevitable eruption.
She was touching me more, her hands on my jaw, then sliding down to my shoulders, lighting each of my nerves like candles as she went.
She looped her arms around my neck, drawing me closer, arching against my chest.
And she was still kissing me. Open-mouthed. Eagerly now. I hadn’t a blasted clue if I was doing the kissing bit right but, by the empire, I’d keep on going as long as she let me.
Or until I ejaculated and needed to change my trousers.
Despite my complete lack of experience with kissing – with any physical closeness involving females – those instincts were still hot and alive inside me. They were feeding me images, ideas.
Telling me how good it would be to tear away the clothes between us, plant my hand on the window at her back, and rut into her. Here. Now. Just like this.
She had to feel my erection. It was big and swollen between us, throbbing against her groin.
When my tongue slid into her mouth, my cock tail snapped, and my shaft gave a violent tremor.
The muscles of her thighs jumped in response, and her hips arched in a tiny, sensuous motion that sent me clenching hard and groaning.
“Oh, Rivven,” she breathed against my lips.
She made my name sound wonderful.
“Can I kiss you other places?” I panted.
Her mouth was so, so good. But so was the rest of her. I wanted to place my lips to her eyelids. Her jaw. Murmur in time with the pulse at her throat.
Between her legs.
Her eyes were heavy-lidded now. Her mouth looked slightly swollen, and I worried that I’d hurt her. But she was not acting hurt. She was opening her mouth to reply to my question. And I thought she might have been about to say yes, but I never got to hear it.
My data tab began to vibrate.
We both jerked, as if unexpectedly woken from sleep.
From a dream.
The best blasted dream of my life.
“What…What is…”
“It is my data tab.”
I could have smashed the thing. I knew where it was – behind the bar, on the counter there.
I blew a harsh breath out between my lips. “It could be my warden,” I said. “When he calls, I have to answer.”
“Of course! Go…Go right ahead.”
Already, Shiloh was adjusting her clothing, checking her hair with her hands, as if recalibrating herself to real life. Real life, where she did not do things like suddenly kiss me in the dining room of the saloon.
I did not want to recalibrate. I did not want to adjust. But I forced myself away from her anyway, feeling woozy with all the blood that had gone to my groin, leaving my brain behind.
“What is it?” she asked when Warden Hallum finished speaking and I put the data tab down.
“They’re nearly done with the snow removal,” I said. “The others will be here tomorrow.”