“You can…what?” I cocked my head to the side.
He took a deep breath, staring into the flames.
“I can feel you. Sense you. Whatever the fuck you want to call it.” He nudged an errant log back into the fire and turned to me once again.
I still wasn’t entirely sure that I understood. For so long, I thought that all he wanted was to avoid me. But now that I looked back, there were so many moments when I’d enter a room to find his gaze already waiting for me. Like he could feel me coming long before he could see me or hear me. And it didn’t really sound so crazy.
There was book knowledge and there was gut knowledge. New knowledge and ancient knowing. They weren’t the same, not at all. The deer who bolted from me without seeing me; the falcon who can find its prey in darkness. Such things made sense to me, even if I was at a loss to explain them with words.
“Like sailors who can find true north, even at night,” I suggested.
He widened his eyes at me, and suddenly I realized I must have said something that he found deeply profound. He didn’t speak, though. Instead, he nodded curtly, staring me in the eye the whole time.
A sudden chill made me shiver. Even though I tried to hide it, he saw it. He took a few steps toward me and signaled for me to stand up. With my arms wrapped tight around myself, I uncurled from my ball on the saddle pad and rose before him. With me barefoot and him still in his boots, he was even taller than I expected. He towered over me, and his muscular body blotted out the shimmer of the flames.
In one smooth gesture, he pulled his shirt over his head by the collar and tossed it aside. Then he peeled my damp tunic off of me, being surprisingly gentle and careful not to let it catch my hair as he pulled it over my head. Instinctively, I covered my nakedness but he didn’t seem interested in my bare breasts. Using his boot, he scooted the saddle pad a little closer to the flames and then offered me his hand.
“Sit,” he said, “facing the fire.”
I did just as he said. That instinctive need to obey him, to do as he asked, made following his instructions easy. I didn’t think; I didn’t argue; I let him tell me what to do and I did it. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. As I sat down, I slid my eyes over his sculpted pecs, the beautiful ridges of his abs, as well as the bulge between his legs and the muscles of his meaty thighs, so easy to see under his wet pants. I wondered if all this time, I was being willfully blind to his beauty; if I’d looked at him with these eyes all that time, I’d have driven myself mad with wanting.
Once I was seated cross-legged in front of him, he let my hand go and sat down behind me, drawing me in close between parted legs, bent at the knee, so that his massive chest was against my back. He slipped his arms beneath mine, making an X over my breasts, and he pulled me closer still. I stiffened at the touch of his bare skin against mine. I knew we shouldn’t be doing this. I knew that. But that didn’t stop my wanting to be completely enveloped by him.
“Relax,” he whispered into my damp hair. “Let me warm you up.”
I exhaled deeply and eased back into him fully, succumbing to his warmth and protection. For the first time since I’d left the castle, I began to feel warm.
And safe.
Still taking deep, calming breaths, I glanced down at his arms, with their network of pronounced veins. At the missing pinky, at a long white scar that told of a jagged wound that took a long time to heal. His skin was deeply tanned, and though I had spent much time outside that summer, I never got as dark as he did. My skin looked like milk beside his.
He rested his chin on my shoulder, so we were again cheek-to-cheek, but now facing the same direction.
“Tell me you meant what you said. Tell me you don’t want to marry him. Tell me you mean it.”
I tried to turn to face him, but he had me too tightly and firmly embraced.
“I mean it. The idea….” I shuddered, this time not with cold but with disgust. “I’d probably kill him myself if I had to marry him.”
At that, Maksim actually laughed. Just a little. Nothing more than a tightening of his stomach and a quick outbreath from his nose.
“Probably. Use your crossbow. He’ll never know what hit him.”