With herculean effort, I bring my eyes up to his face.
“I think that answers my question though,” I nod, and duck out of the room. Once safely back in my little room, I take my clothes off and pile them on the shelf. The towel is big enough to wrap around me twice, and about as long as a dress on me.
Man, I want towels like these. All my towels at home are too short to wrap around me even once.
I swear I’m just hypnotized by the soft luxuriousness of these towels, and that’s why my mind wanders off into a scenario where I come here more often with Khent.
I pinch myself.No, don’t think like that. That’s just the Blood Fever talking.
After I’m done admiring the size of these towels, it occurs to me that I still super do not know what I’m supposed to be doing in here.
This time when I shuffle to Khent’s door, I knock.
“Yeah?”
“It’s me again,” I call through the door.
“More questions?”
I scoot through the door and the image that greets me nearly knocks me over, I stumble back against the door as it shuts.
Khent is – all of his green glory, sitting down on that mossy stone stool. His knees splayed wide, the towel draped over them making me forget why I came in here.
The humidity in the room is starting to condensate on his skin. His shoulders are just massive.
“I don’t know what I’m doing in there,” I confess after a few minutes.
“You didn’t read the links I sent you?”
“I was in meetings till the end of my day,” I lie, and I’m sure he sees right through it. I shake my head quickly. “Can you show me what to do? And then, I promise I’ll go back into my room, and I won’t bother you again. I swear.”
I feel like everything I say to Khent is dipped in defensiveness, but when I look at him, the openness of his posture, his expression, I wonder why I felt the need at all. He looks even a little happy that I’m here, asking him this.
“I’ll show you.”
“You will?”
“Sure.”
The moss that carpets the floor is soft and damp underfoot as I cross to sit on the stone slab. It’s probably a good thing the towel wraps around me twice so he definitely can’t see the way my nipples harden when I step closer to him.
My hand will probably have terry cloth imprinted on it by the time I’m back in my room and I can stop clutching the knot closed like it's my sole lifeline.
Khent pauses by an arrangement of stones that, to me, had mostly blended in with the rest of the room’s pocket of nature.
I hadn't seen the little waterfall weaving between the stones of that panel the back wall, the water pooling in a small basin. As I step nearer to it, I can feel how it’s the source of most of the warmth in this room.
He picks up a little vial from a shelf, unscrewing the top. He’s clearly well versed in what one’s supposed to do in this room.
From the vial, he drops a little dark colored oil on a heated metal disk, a small tuft of vapor blooms off from it.
There's so little of it used, but taking in a breath of it is amazing. It’s less like a smell and more like a sensation. Like being rolled up in fresh sheets still warm from the dryer. There's a hint of something almost musky.
I guess I should do the same things he’s doing? So I reach for it as well.
“You're don't want to touch that,” Khent says abruptly, pulling me from my thoughts as well as physically tugging me back. He sweeps me back a few steps like it was dangerous.
“I wasn't going to touch the hot plate,” I protest, getting my bearings back after that dizzying swoosh.