He opened his eyes to find her in front of him, a puzzled expression on her face. But there was a hint of pain in her interesting, changeable eyes. Pain that he had caused.
“Yes.”
She took a deep breath and he felt her withdraw. She didn’t move physically, but he knew he had insulted her deeply, and yet his tongue felt like it was tied in knots, unable to explain the hellish nightmare of his intentions. “I see. I’m sorry if you don’t like me, but—”
“No, it’s not that.” He gestured awkwardly, tried to think of words that would make everything right, make her understand, but they all tumbled around in his brain and refused to form sentences. He tottered over to her chair and slumped down in it, elbows on knees, and his head in his hands. “It’s not you, it’s me. It’s... women.”
“You don’t like women? You’re gay?”
“Not gay. It’s just... hard.”
Air swirled gently around him, the faint spicy aroma of exotic scents teasing his nose. Whatever perfume she wore went straight to his head. “If I ask ‘What’s hard?’ you’re not going to make a dick joke, are you?”
“No,” he said, braving a little smile as he looked up. “I’m the least likely person to do that.”
“Why?” she asked, kneeling on the ground next to him. Shetsked, and pulled a packet of papers out fromunder her knee. “Lady Sybilla’s private journal. She swears it’ll make a best seller if I type it up for her. Why are you not likely to make a dick joke, not that I want you to, mind, but still, why theleast likelybusiness?”
He sat up straight, his hands on his knees, unable to look her in the eye when he bared his soul. He didn’t even wonder over the fact that he suddenly was driven to explain the truth to her—he just knew he had to. He owed it to her. He didn’t want her hurt simply because he was socially inept. “I’m... I have anxieties. Social anxieties. With women.”
“You’re... shy?” she asked, her nose wrinkling a little.
He thought it was a wholly charming expression, one that perfectly suited her open, honest face. He considered that face for a few moments. She wasn’t what would have been described as classically beautiful, with a round face, straight eyebrows, and a little nose that drifted toward the upturned category. Her hair was the color of dark honey, straight and cut in a shoulder-length bob that rippled like silk curtains when she tipped her head to the side, as she was doing now. No, she wasn’t strictly beautiful, but he found her all the more appealing because of that.
“‘Shy’ is a good word for it. I don’t communicate well with women.” He made another awkward gesture. “I try, but... it all gets tangled up, and... and then...”
“And then you just want to escape.” She nodded. “I know exactly what that feels like. One time, when I was in Edinburgh taking some classes in criminology, I was wearing my favorite pair of capris. They were light blue. Really pale baby blue. And my period came, but I didn’t know, because I’m not always crampy, and I spent a goodchunk of the day running around with a huge old stain that no one told me about, and when I found out, I could have died. I just wanted to hole up in my room and never face all those people in all those classes who must have seen me, but instead, I told myself that there was nothing to be ashamed about a perfectly natural occurrence, and I wasn’t going to let societal reaction to women’s bodies and their functions ruin my life. So I went to my classes the next day with my head held high.”
“That must have been truly horrific,” he said, empathy making him flinch at her story.
“Oh, it was. It was hard as hell to do it, and you know what? It’s hard to tell you, an almost stranger, about something so intimate, but here we are both surviving the incident and, I hope, finding a little common ground because of it.” She smiled, and patted his knee in an impersonal manner. “I know you can’t help anxiety, and being shy around women, but the next time things get all tangled up around me, just think about me going to classes the day after Stainageddon, and remember that I’ve been in embarrassing situations and survived.”
“Thank you,” he said, smiling back at her, and even placing his hand on hers in order to give her fingers a friendly squeeze.
“Good lord!” she said, staring down at their hands. “Look at you touching a woman! Of your own accord! Let me alert the newspapers—wait, do we have a camera? Maybe I should post this online!”
He made a face and pinched the back of her hand. “Are you going to make fun of me every time I manage to speak to you?”
“Of course I am,” she said, laughing and getting to her feet. She held out her hands for him, and he allowed herto pull him up. “I wanted to be a psychologist for a while, and one of the things I learned in two years of psych classes is that you need to desensitize whatever you’re afraid of. If I make a big deal about you talking to me, and touching my hand, and staring at my boobs, then soon you won’t even think twice about those things.”
He felt the color rushing to his face again. Dear god, had she noticed his reaction to her earlier? He’d kept careful control of his libido since walking into the library, but perhaps she knew the way her scent sank into his blood. Horrified, he pulled his hands from hers, and stammered, “I wasn’t ogling your breasts!”
“No, you weren’t, and that makes me wonder why.” She puffed out her chest and peered downward at her breasts. “Is there something wrong with them? Do you not like them? Would a push-up bra help?”
He stared first at her face, then at her chest (since she seemed to expect him to do so), then back to her face. “Are you... is this more desensitization?”
“No. That was ribbing.Thisis desensitization.” She put both her hands on his chest, and leaned forward, kissing his cheek. “There, now you’ve been kissed by a woman you just met, and you got to look at her boobs with her full permission. And we both survived with no ill effects.”
He was speechless for a few seconds, wishing she’d stay standing so close to him, but she immediately backed up. “Thank you,” he finally got out. “I... thank you. For everything. For understanding.”
“You’re welcome.” Her head tipped again, the hair sliding in a way that made his fingers itch to touch it. “Maybe tomorrow we can throw caution to the wind and hold hands.”
That sounded like a very fine idea to Alden, but he couldn’t possibly tell her that. Instead, his mouth blurted out the very worst thing it could. “There’s a woman coming here, to the house.”
“Oh,” Mercy said, and once again, he felt a slight withdrawal of her personality. It was as if a cloud had rolled in front of the sun. “Gotcha. You’re in a relationship.”
“No, I’m not,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “It’s... someone I might like, is all.”
“I understand. I wasn’t trying to push myself on you, just in case that’s what you were thinking. I mean, you’re nice, and I like you now that I know you don’t loathe me, but I wasn’t chasing you. The hand-holding thing was just a joke. If you’d rather I not get touchy-feely, I won’t.”
