As the days passed, he took every opportunity to get closer to me, and I to him, every chance we got. We stopped every afternoon to enjoy some cider, which he brought for us himself, saying he didn’t want to dip into my secret supply. I noticed that he brought the finest cider in all the land, made by the royal orchard itself. It even had the king’s seal on the label.
“Where on earth did you get these?” I asked.
He looked at the bottle and paused. “At the market?”
No market I had ever been to, that was for sure. He didn’t even sound particularly sure himself. Why did he ask it like it was a question? But cider was one of my few secret pleasures and I was determined to know where it came from. “In Aramoor City? Which stall?”
He shrugged absentmindedly, and grinned in this boyish, charming way he had. “Can’t even remember. I was too busy thinking about you.”
I nearly swooned.
And yet, whenever I tried to send a hint to him that my heart actually ached when I looked at him, that I was falling for him, he didn’t seem to notice. I was like an archer with awful aim. But I found I was too modest and inexperienced to actually pluck up my courage to say exactly what I felt.
Over those days together, we fell into an easy, happy rhythm. I would bring lunch and he would bring a mid-afternoon snack of all manner of exotic and interesting things. I got to sample raisins for the first time, and dates, and dried apricots too, as well as the most delicious pears I’d ever tasted.
“You don’t have to do all of this for me,” I said, as I bit into a juicy ripe pear, and caught a trickle of juice on my chin before it ran down onto my chest.
He didn’t answer right away, but smiled at me in a way that I don’t think anybody ever looked at me before. In his eyes, I saw such adoration—and so much affection—that it made my cheeks bloom with an embarrassed blush.
He groaned and my cheeks got even hotter. It felt like a sunburn, sudden and intense.
“You’re fucking beautiful, Iris. You know that, don’t you?”
I wasn’t so sure. I was sticky with pear juice and sweaty with work, and whenever I was around him, I felt so topsy-turvy that I didn’t feel very beautiful at all. He reached out and swept my hair from my cheek, tucking it behind my ear. I offered him my pear. He took a modest bite, eyeing me all the time.
Suddenly I was overcome with the desire to feel his lips on mine, to know what it was like for this kindly beast of a man to kiss me. I had been kissed just once before, by a boy at the village fair, years earlier.
I’d never been kissed as a woman; and I’d certainly never been kissed by such an incredibly strong, sexy man. But yet again, my courage failed me, and I didn’t know how to make the first move. I blinked several times in rapid, flustered succession.
“Something in your eye?” He asked, looking at me with concern.
Grateful for the excuse, I nodded. “Must be a little piece of hay.” I blinked again and again. “Do you see anything?”
He peered at me—close, but not nearly close enough. So I leaned in closer to him. He inhaled quickly as I closed the gap between us. He was still shy about my looking at him too closely, and clearly even getting too close caused the same response.
“It really hurts,” I said, grimacing a little.
Now all his self-consciousness seemed to vanish, same as when he’d helped me when I was stuck underneath Nellie. He leaned down so that his beautiful eyes were level with mine. They were the most beautiful, crystal clear blue-green, like emeralds dropped into the ocean, with a darker edge.
“Let’s see.”
He was so close that I could feel his breath on my cheek. His scent was like a forest, dark and alluring. I wanted him so badly that I was growing wet between my legs. He placed his thumb beneath my eye, gently drawing my eyelid lower, while cupping my jaw and cheek with the rest of his massive hand.
Kiss me, please just kiss me. I couldn’t keep up this nonsense of something stuck in my eye any longer, staring at him with lips trembling.
He narrowed his eyes, smiling a little.
“There’s nothing in your eye, is there?”
I shook my head, never breaking his gaze and the words tumbled from my lips like a child taking their first steps. “I was hoping you’d kiss me.”
He groaned, a lion-like purr from deep within his throat. It was a softer version of what I’d heard him do when some physical effort took all his strength. “Kissing is just the fucking beginning of what I want to do to you.”