Chapter 17
XVII.
“That yt ys so temperate ys mooste fortunate.”
“If you had told me of a pond earlier,” she chided him in Rivanic, “I could have made use of it.” She had been less than pleased when she found out about it only after expressing dismay at the idea of hauling buckets of water around for bathing now.
“It is warm yet,” he rephrased in her tongue. He sniffed the air. “I think it will be for a while. I am anticipating a mild winter.”
“I hope so. I have every intention of coming here every day I won’t freeze to death.” She kept her hand on his shoulder and her dirty clothing on her other hip.
After his convalescence, Baró tried walking on hind legs.
Rivani scolded him for attempting it when he was in no physical condition to do such a thing, especially when it was purely for vanity and pride.
The livid, tender wounds on his ankles and legs only complicated his gait.
Although he insisted, she outmatched him, citing that the reason he bothered to walk on two legs was for her. And he relented.
The one serious incident, that of acquiring a new gift, spurred a whole new situation of embarrassment and shame although he behaved as if he were immune to these changes.
But his face could not lie to her, betraying his humiliation over the addition of a tail.
When she suggested making an opening for it in his pants, he glared at her as if she had suggested that he do something absurd.
“I would prefer to hide it,” he told her.
“From whom precisely?” She shot back, her arms thrown out wide to indicate the emptiness of his home.
He relented again. His tail now stuck through the neat opening she made in the fabric.
“You know, Baró,” she said, “you don’t have to wear pants for me.”
“I know,” he grumbled. Rivani did not expect him to say anything else, but he added, “I wear them for me.”
“That’s acceptable,” Rivani assured him. “However, I hope you’re prepared to surrender them. They need cleaning.”
He glowered at her.
“It will afford me a nice backside view,” she teased. And frontside, she didn’t say. She dropped her hand from his shoulder and winked at him.
She moved ahead of him with the sight of the pond and unburdened herself at the water’s edge.
Sticking a toe in the pond, she shivered.
Cold, yes, but she had taken colder baths than this.
And if she were getting choice views of Baró, she admitted that she might need a cold bath, especially if she continued on in this fanciful vein and still intended to preserve his sense of modesty.
Baró might be a monster, but between the two of them, she trusted herself less.
After taking cover behind bushes, Baró handed his pants over.
Rivani found his modesty amusing since he only did it because of the delicate sensibilities he imagined she possessed.
Without her there, Baró would never have bothered with the pretense of clothing.
Perhaps that was what had made those absurd fripperies in his wardrobe so distasteful to her.
He was a forest god, above such paltry, yet pretentious, human trappings.
“Although temperate, it will grow dark sooner,” she warned him. “If you intend to bathe, do not tarry. Fair warning — propriety will have to go by the wayside as I will be joining you shortly.”
He grunted at her pronouncement and she laughed.
She would scandalize Baró if he learned her full views on the matter. He had been a docile patient when she had tended him, but he drew a hard line between the nudity of the sick room and nudity anywhere else.
He waded into the water upright.
When Rivani glanced over, she received a glorious rear view of him from horn to knees before he had time to slip beneath the dark surface and hide all the feral power of his body.
She could understand how he hated his new tail, but she appreciated it as a finishing touch to the glorious line of fur down his back.
With a sleek layer of fur down the length and a more riotous bristle at the end, nothing about it put her off.
She longed to touch it, but such a suggestion might make him more self-conscious or reticent.
The view also afforded her another glance of his hips, wide and round, almost womanly from the back, at such a contrast to the expected tapered ratio from his shoulders and waist. He was magnificent.
Rivani contemplated, for his sake, going into the water clothed and chided herself for the absurdity of doing such a thing.
Granted, if Baró had been any other man, she would not have bathed with him, but his well-meaning propriety assured her of her safety.
And besides, Baró never looked at her the way she looked at him.
She braced herself for kissing so many times and yet he only displayed platonic propriety and courtly courtesy.
On the rare occasions she had noticed that he had cause to feel confined by his pants, she understood that it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with self-denial.
Perhaps it was from fear regarding his perceived capabilities in cruelty and his adamant desire not to be touched due to the abuse he himself suffered.
Still, she could wish, even as she respected his clear disinterest.
She stripped and unbraided her hair, feeling tempted to call out to Baró and have him see her state of undress, but she did not, thinking it may be cruel as he was so determined to be proper.
She waded out, cold and still regretful that she would have so few opportunities to enjoy this before the snow fell.
She called to him when the water reached her belly, not feeling like there was anything scandalous above that mark.
Baró betrayed no horrified sensibilities when he turned around. His ears swiveled, at some point having changed to be long enough to swivel now, even though he employed most of his attention in combing through his fur with his claws.
“Dost thou need aught?”
“Fish?” She used Rivanic to remind him to do the same and enacting the movements of a fish since she had not used the word before. “It would be easy to clean and cook.”
“Not tonight. I have not practiced catching of late,” he confessed, flexing his claws in front of him as if testing them and ensuring they still functioned the way he remembered. “I will hunt for you tonight. Fish another day.”
“Thank you.”
She submerged herself, drawing her hair back and twisting it in a rope over her shoulder after breaking the surface. She stretched out her foot and tested the ground with her toes.
“Baró, come here? I would come to you, but I will be up to my chin in a couple steps. Let me help you.”
He plunged beneath the water and broke the surface on his way to her. In the brilliant radiance of the setting sun through the forest trees, he glowed and glistened, droplets sparkling like diamonds in his fur.
Baró was a monster, a creature whose shape changed in degrading and disparaging ways.
Although the world would see Baró as a grotesque aberration of nature, he was also, simultaneously and concurrently, the most beautiful and incomprehensibly divine being that could ever exist. This monster was one she trusted, and hated that she trusted.
She wanted him with her, and hated that she wanted him with her.
She stretched her hand out for him, burying the tips of her fingers in the curls of his mane on his chest when he came near enough.
He let her touch him as she wished, nodding his consent when her eyes asked and her fingers hesitated. He stared down at her and tilted his head to the side as she gazed at him. He blanched under her scrutiny and turned his face away. His embarrassment charmed her in moments like these.
“Thou shouldst not peer so closelie. My goode fortune relieth on thy blyndness and thy swete touch wouldst be withdrawn yf thou shouldst see me verrilie.”
“I do see you, Baró,” she spoke to his chest in the absence of his direct gaze.
She smoothed over the fur there, tracing one of the long-healed scars by his clavicle.
Then she laid her hands flat against him, feeling the steady, rapid beat of his heart through her palms. “I see you better than you see yourself.”
“That thy touch remayneth telleth me that such beeth not soothe.” He placed his hands over hers on his chest, firmly enough to indicate that her touch pleased him but lightly enough that she could withdraw. “Woldest that thou myght always thynk me worthie of thy affectionnes.”
The water may have been cold but Rivani burned.
She shivered at his hopeful, longing tone.
Her fingertips curled into him as she leaned towards him like a flower bending to the sun.
She tilted her face upwards, meeting his gaze.
When he looked at her, she felt seen in a way that scared her, that thrilled her, that matched the intensity of her own gazing.
She could barely breathe, so captivated she found herself by his eyes, so hopeful and so uncertain.
If she were of a mind to think of anything but him, she might have called herself a fool for thinking earlier that he gave off none of the heat that she had for him.
She extracted one of her hands and reached up to touch his cheek, letting the tips of her fingers trace the line of his jaw and brush over the velvet fur of his face.
For a far too brief moment, peace and stability and contentment eased her restlessness.
Although she never understood it, for that moment, she experienced what non-Rivani did when they chose to make a life for themselves in one place with one person.
Her mouth parted slightly, wishing he would take the initiative and kiss her. If he did, she would be lost in her own open floodgate of passion. She would terrify him with the vehemence of her lust even if she could now recognize a similar echo of desire in his eyes.