Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
THE WOMAN WHO HAS A SYSTEM (THE SYSTEM IS CURRENTLY FAILING)
S he woke to the smell of him. Of course, considering the last thing she remembered was leaning against him and looking out at the Atlantic Ocean, she hadn’t been sure where she thought she would wake up.
But she was snuggled in the cozy bed, warm and comfortable.
Judging by the newness of the scent, he had only left recently.
She sighed and took a deep breath. Traces of rye and woodsmoke and something mineral and clean.
Everything she associated with Stenrik in the short time she’d known him.
She had never connected a scent with anyone before unless they wore a specific cologne.
This wasn’t a cologne but a certain uniquely male scent that was all Stenrik.
She had reveled in it last night, felt safe just being in his presence, and for approximately three seconds before she was fully awake, she felt warm in a way that had nothing to do with the blankets.
Then she was fully awake, and she still had that warmth in her chest, a tugging that pulled her outwards. Steps echoed in the hallway and she held her breath as they paused for a brief moment at her door, then moved on towards the kitchen.
She rubbed her chest absently, and chalked it up to an unfamiliar sleep environment and the aquavit. She had work to do.
But the warmth didn't entirely go away.
S tenrik was already in the kitchen when she pushed through the door just after six. He was at the counter with his back to her, working the flatbread griddle. He’d already pulled the skyr, the butter, and a board for the bread.
He didn’t turn around. “Coffee’s ready.”
She crossed to the counter and poured a cup, and the silence between them was comfortable, which was something she didn’t expect.
He slid the flatbread onto the board and pushed it toward her end of the counter. “Eat before we go down. The chamber is warm, and the steam affects appetite in the early hours.”
She spread skyr on a corner of the bread and took a bite and the crowberry ash hit her immediately. It was the same as last night’s dinner but somehow simpler, lighter, a morning version of it.
“The same ash,” she said.
He glanced at her sideways. “Every day. Same ingredient, different context.” He poured his own coffee and leaned against the far counter. “It adjusts to the menu and what it accents.”
He walked her through the rúgbraue process while he built the new batch—starter, rye percentage, the diffusion system he’d fitted himself, the twenty-four-hour window and the narrow margin between optimal and over.
She took notes. He measured flour and worked the dough with the motion of someone who had done it enough times that recipe lived in his hands rather than in a book.
She could have watched him do this forever. It was soothing, comforting. Like a taste of home. Something she hadn’t felt in many years.
When the dough was ready and the ceramic vessel sealed, he set it on the counter and looked at her.
“Before we go down,” he said. “The preparation chamber is further into the cave system. The ceiling is lower in sections. The steam makes the air dense.” He said it directly. “Some people find enclosed spaces difficult. If that’s the case for you, I need to know now.”
She held his gaze. “I’m fine with enclosed spaces.”
He looked at her for one long beat, then nodded curtly.
“Good,” he said. “Then it won’t be a problem.” He picked up the ceramic vessel. “Wear the linen shirt. You’ll regret anything heavier.”
T he passage to the lower chamber was not, technically, narrow.
She knew this. She had noted the measurements with her eyes the moment they stepped through the kitchen’s rear door, and she had calculated them as she did every measurement.
A meter and a half wide, stone on both sides, ceiling at two meters through the first section before it opened into the chamber beyond. Navigable. Solid. Fixed. Not a problem.
Stenrik moved through it ahead of her with room to spare. She focused on the width of him rather than the width of the passage, and told herself that everything was fine.
The preparation chamber opened around them .
It was not a small room. The ceiling rose into the arch of the lava tube, the walls curved away with the organic irregularity of stone that had never been cut by hand. The iron oven door was set low at the far end, its gauges steady. The floor was wet stone. The air?—
The air was the thing.
Warm, yes. She’d expected warm. What she hadn’t accounted for was the heaviness of it — dense and saturated, the steam not visible but present, a thickening that made the walls feel much closer than they were.
She knew they weren’t. She had the measurements.
She had the exits—the passage behind her and the supply door to the left that Stenrik had pointed out on the walkthrough.
She raised her camera. Having something to do with her hands helped.
Stenrik set the vessel on the holding shelf and moved through the chamber checking gauges, testing the latch on the oven door, narrating the process for her in a flat, unhurried way.
She filmed it. She asked questions about starch gelatinization and the Maillard compounds and the difference between dry oven heat and steam.
Her voice was level despite her rising panic, and she was proud of that.
Then something shifted.
Not dramatically. A small pressure change, a pulse of warm vapor from the lower housing. The room went two degrees warmer. The air thickened, just slightly. Her brain registered it unconsciously—not as information but as a signal, a fight or flight response.
And her response is always flight.
The room was the same size it had been three minutes ago. She knew this. She had every fact she’d prepared and they were all still true. And her body didn’t care.
She lowered the camera. She looked at the oven door because it was solid and fixed.
She began the count—five things she could see, four she could hear—but her breathing was coming more rapid.
The blood was rushing in her ears. Her vision was narrowing.
She was on three and losing ground and she did not want to do this here, not in front of him, not in his space that he had built and was so clearly proud of?—
His hand closed around both of hers.
She hadn’t heard him cross the room. He was simply there, suddenly, his hands around hers—large and warm and steady.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice deep and rumbling, shaking her out of her panic.
She looked at him. His expression was intense but not unkind. He was watching her, holding her gaze with a steady calmness that soothed her.
“I had a sous chef,” he said, very quietly.
“Years ago. She had the same thing happen to her in this room, her first week.” He didn’t look away from her face.
“She taught me that the counting doesn’t work when you’re already past a certain point.
You need an anchor instead.” His thumbs moved slightly against the backs of her hands. Just once. “So. Anchor.”
She was staring at him.
“What do you smell?” he said.
Her brain, apparently, was still capable of following instructions, because it answered him before she’d decided to. “Woodsmoke.” A breath. “Rye. The starter.”
Her face burned as she realized what she’d said, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“What else?”
“Steam.” She was breathing slightly slower.
“Mineral—the rock, the water that’s been moving through it.
” She pushed further because the list required it, because reciting it required attention and that was the only thing that worked.
“Iron. The fittings.” Another breath. In, out.
“Something sweet underneath—the dough from last night, still in the air.”
“Yes.” He said. “What do you feel?”
The tightness in her chest had loosened one notch. She noticed this from the outside, as if she was observing everything.
“Warmth from your hands,” she said, before she could pull the words back. “Calluses, scars from the kitchen. Knives, burns maybe.” She stopped, her face on fire.
Something flicked in his expression. Brief, and immediately steadied.
The warmth that had woken her up was back, located now behind her sternum, and it had nothing to do with the steam.
She was breathing normally. But utterly and completely surrounded by him. His scent, his presence, him. And she wanted more. She tilted her head, wondering how it would feel to be pressed against him, to kiss him. Just once. How would it work with the tusks? Would they get in the way?
He held her gaze for one more moment. And, for one wild and crazy moment, she thought he might have the same feeling too.
He leaned forward, his head bending down, his body shifting ever so slightly towards her.
Then, as if a spell had broken, he released her hands, and stepped back to the oven housing.
She missed his touch. But it was better this way. Wasn’t it?
“The starch gelatinization you asked about,” he said, as if they had simply paused mid-conversation. “I’ll show you the gauge readings. You can see the temperature curve across the full twenty-four hours.”
She picked up her camera .
Her hands were steady. The room was the size it had always been. And somewhere beneath all the data she was assembling and all the professional composure she had rebuilt in the last thirty seconds, that warmth sat quietly in her chest and refused to fade.