Chapter 12 Azalea #2
My hands begin blindly grabbing at ingredients, somehow putting together a recipe as if I’m well-versed in the kitchen. I can’t remember the last time I even chopped a vegetable for myself, yet here I am letting my hands lead me through a recipe I have no memory of.
When my fingers curl around a wooden spoon, I hear the woman clear her throat again. Looking over, I see that she’s holding a small metal whisk out to me.
“I think ye’ might find this a little better suited.” There’s a heavy lilt in her words, telling me that she’s not native to this land. I gratefully take the utensil from her.
“I like your accent,” I say, as I continue gathering my ingredients and materials. I begin sifting flour into a small bowl before reaching for a larger one to measure and pour sugar into.
The girl smiles. “Thank ye, lady—”
“Nope,” I stop her before she finishes. “Call me Azalea.”
“Thank ye, Azalea,” she chimes with a smile. She goes back to cutting up the vegetables laid out in front of her.
“Do you know where the eggs are…” I let my words drift off, hoping she’ll get the cue that I’m asking her to fill in the end of my sentence with her name.
“Valerie, but most people call me Vee.”
“Do you know where the eggs are, Vee?”
She nods happily before turning to a basket sitting on the next counter over, where fresh eggs are stacked inside.
Her bright orange curls bob around her as she does so.
Her skin is pale like Rhoden’s, but not quite as milky.
It has a more rosy hue to it that is complemented by her bright blue eyes and sprinkling of freckles along her nose, cheeks, shoulders, and chest.
“Thank you.”
The rest of the afternoon, I’m happily talking to Vee as she finishes her kitchen prep.
She stays for a while longer, as I continue working on my recipe.
I still haven’t let my mind focus too much on what I’m doing in fear that it’ll cause me to stop and think instead of continuing to run on this unknown muscle memory I seem to have.
It isn’t until Vee leaves, taking her lovely distraction with her, that I realize that I have no recollection of how I know what I’m doing.
I look down at the batter I’ve concocted, somehow knowing exactly what I’m making while simultaneously having no clue where or when I learned how to make it.
“Enjoying yourself?” My head snaps up to find Braxton leaning in the doorway.
His shirt is rumpled, and the top two buttons are undone exposing the sliver of his chest, and with it the small tattoo that resides there.
A line of numbers that must mean something to him if he decided to have it permanently inked onto his body.
I hate how my curiosity is piqued, and I make a mental note to ask him about his tattoos at a later date.
Not wanting him to realize he’s caught me by surprise, I curl my lip and drop my attention back to my work. The coals I started in the kitchen’s stone hearth have been heating up for long enough now that it’s time for me to bake the batter to the butter cake that I’ve made.
“I was,” I say, grabbing one of the pans to pour the cake batter into.
“I wanted to apologize for earlier. I’ve had some important and stressful matters come up, but that doesn’t excuse how I treated you.”
“You don’t regularly treat me with respect, so I’ve become accustomed to it,” I retort without giving him a second glance.
Turning around, I place the pan in the oven before wiping my hands on the apron that Vee gave me once she realized I wasn’t going to stop baking.
“You look very comfortable in here,” he notes, waving his hand around the room.
“Yeah,” I look around the scullery. “I guess I am.” Grabbing a damp rag, I begin to clean the mess I made on the counter. “Though I’m not sure how,” I grumble under my breath.
“What do you mean?”
Only now realizing what I admitted, my eyes round before I lift them to study Braxton’s neutral expression. I clear my throat and drop the wet rag on the counter with a thunk.
“I mean that I don’t remember how I know how to do any of this.
It came to me like second-nature, but I don’t have any memories of learning to bake, least of all doing it so often that I was able to craft a cake from scratch with no recipe in hand.
” I cross my arms over my chest, feeling the need to close myself off after my honesty.
I sit back until I’m able to lean against the counter.
Braxton nods his head in response, twisting his mouth to the side and crossing the threshold into the room.
“I must sound crazy.”
I half-heartedly laugh before dipping my finger into the remnants of the cake batter clinging to the edge of the bowl and plopping it in my mouth.
I have to stifle the moan that wants to escape me as the delectable burst of sugar dances across my tastebuds.
When I look up, I notice that Braxton is tracking my every movement with rapt intensity, so I decide to play up the action by slowly licking the sweet creation from my fingertip.
I’ve found, like most men, his guard falls the quickest when his desire rises.
“Unfortunately, you’re the most intelligent person I know,” he says, his eyes still locked on my finger.
“You never leave the castle,” I scoff, becoming entranced by the way his eyes flick from my fingertip to my lips.
“I used to,” he muses.
“Why did you stop?”
He steps closer, reaching his hand out. Though my mind tells me to flinch away, my instincts keep me locked in place.
His thumb reaches out and brushes at the bit of batter that stuck to the corner of my mouth.
He drags his thumb across the residue, collecting it, before bringing that thumb to his own lips and licking it clean.
“You’re out of questions for the day.”
His pupils swallow his irises as he looks down at me. My skin flushes under the intensity of his gaze, and I swallow thickly as his tongue darts out to collect every last bit of the sticky-sweet batter clinging to his lips.
“I’ll ask one less question tomorrow,” I bargain, hating the plea in my tone as well as the quickness in my breaths.
Braxton contemplates this for a moment before finally answering. “Let’s just say I’d rather spend every day locked away with you than go outside and experience a world absent of you.”
My throat constricts as I tell myself that he doesn’t mean it.
He doesn’t know me well enough to mean it.
He only knows me as his captive, and I only know him as my captor.
It’s his psychological warfare, and the only reason I’m even having to remind myself of that is because I’ve been kept from interactions with normal humans for too long.
This is a trick. I chant this in my mind as I keep my eyes locked on his.
“Excuse me.” Braxton bows his head before exiting the room in three long strides, leaving me standing there. Frustrated. Confused. And my mouth practically agape as I try to sort through what in the star-filled realms just happened.