Turning Point #2
She concentrated. “I feel it here.” She gestured at her stomach.
“Like how?”
She rolled her eyes and poked Ethan’s stomach. The cotton of his shirt was damp. “Like this.”
“Interesting.” He carefully stroked along the petal to the pointed tip. “This one?”
Mara reached out and stroked a fingertip along Ethan’s outstretched arm to the wrist. “There.”
His finger stroked in the other direction, toward the flower’s center, and Mara withheld another gasp as sensation gathered from her extremities, in and in, and warmth pooled low in her belly.
“Here,” she lied, tapping his knee.
He looked at her, eyes darker than they should be, and tapped the pollen-frosted knot of stamens at the center. “And this?”
Mara met his eyes, challenging him to call her a liar. “My foot. Are you done with your ridiculous experiment?”
Ethan leaned slightly toward her, eyes focusing on her mouth, and Mara nearly leaned to meet him, nearly begged him to touch her for real, but then he drew back, eyes shuttering.
His hands clutched his canteen again. “So there’s um…
” He cleared his throat. “So your senses are connected to your garden. Is it just physical?”
“What?” Mara nearly fell over at the abrupt change of mood.
“The flowers. You said, um, the plants don’t have minds, so do you think for them?”
“No,” she replied on a huff. “They do not need me to think. They manage quite well without a brain.”
“Okay. Okay. Good to know I’m not, um, interfering with sentient life.” He looked down at his notebook, frowning. “What about emotions?”
“Plants also do not feel emotions,” she said sharply.
“Not their emotions,” he said. “Yours. Do your emotions affect—”
“You have too many questions.” She made to rise.
“Wait,” he said, his voice a low growl.
She waited.
“I’m not trying to push,” he said doggedly. “I was just thinking. When we were fighting, it seemed like—well, it seemed like the madder you got, the more…violent the plants got. They weren’t flowers, but… Does that happen, too? Your emotions affecting the ways the plants grow?”
She stared at him for a long moment, then said quietly, “Yes.”
He smiled then, wide and bright. “That’s what I was thinking! So when you were angry it was all spikes and grr and stuff, but these flowers…” He cupped his hand around the blossom, not touching it, but she could feel the warmth of his hand anyhow. “They hold so much beauty and joy—”
That sent Mara to her feet. “They do not hold joy,” she spit out.
“Then what—”
“Be silent!” She whirled in sudden agitation, staring out at her garden. The colors of it were weeping. Screaming. Her grief laid bare for any eye to see. How could Ethan even think—? “Where do you see the joy?” she railed bitterly. “Where?”
“Mara,” he said in a placating tone of voice. “I am just asking—”
“I do not wish to answer these questions,” she spit at him. Every inch of her skin was hot. Hot with rage, hot with grief, hot with the desire she’d foolishly allowed him to stoke.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to know—”
Mara sobbed and fell to her knees, everything bursting out through her skin all at once.
She could feel the cacti around her reacting, more flowers growing from bud to blossom in bare moments, but she did not care.
She had been holding herself back for days, inhibited by the necessity to remain cool, to remain kind, and it was too much. ”
His lands landed on her shoulders then. “Mara. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“You never mean it,” she shot back, raising her face to his.
Sandy tears were flowing from her eyes now, and she bitterly cursed them.
Cursed the fact that she could not even weep properly to mourn a human.
“You did not mean to invade, did not mean to disturb me, but you still invaded. You vex me! You disturb me! You—”
She did not know which of them had moved, but his thumbs were on her cheeks and his lips were on hers, wet and hot, and she moaned and fell into the kiss.
It was sweeter than it had any right to be, and she pressed herself closer, pushing Ethan back, climbing into his lap, straddling him as she kissed him and kissed him.
And then she was apart from him, belatedly realizing that his hands were on her shoulders again, but not to comfort her this time. To hold her away.
“Mara,” he said in a rough voice. “This is a bad idea.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You humans and your hangups. It is just bodies seeking comfort. Seeking pleasure.”
“This isn’t what I want.”
“Isn’t it?” She arched against him. “Your body disagrees.”
“Okay, I do,” he groaned. “I really, really do. But I don’t.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I said something that upset you. Something wrong. What did I say?”
“I do not know,” she said, petulance welling up inside her.
Ethan carefully stroked her hair back from her face, looking into her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
She looked at him, feeling suddenly naked in a way that had nothing to do with the physical joining she craved. “You do not want to hear it.”
“I think,” he said slowly, “I need to hear it, whether I want to or not.” He smiled, eyes gentle as the rain. “It’s okay. I’m a grown-ass adult. I can take it.”
Mara gazed at him for a long moment, something shifting inside her. Not in a small way. No, it was like the continents smashing together, crushing their simple, smooth plains into jagged mountain ranges. Everything in her was sharp and harsh, and nothing was right at all anymore.
“Very well,” she said at last.
She was already broken; he might as well cast his scientist’s eyes upon the pieces.
Perhaps he would understand it better than she did.