She was endearing when disconcerted. “You must clean the sand off your hands,” I instructed. “And now the needle, too.”
“Right, of course.” She grabbed a bottle and doused her hands and the needle in water. Afterward, she brought the needle to the fire again and threaded another string.
Then she settled herself between my spread thighs, and her eyes met mine.
We gazed at each other candidly, openly. Time was strangely suspended.
Nothing had prepared me for this moment, for someone to feel safe enough to be this close to me. Nothing had prepared me to be face-to-face with a woman who made my heart beat out of my chest. It was easy to allow myself to be penetrated by her when my entire body locked up under her gaze, and to penetrate her because she wasn’t pulling away.
When she lowered her eyes, I dropped my head back, freeing a breath.
“I’ve gotten my ears pierced four times now,” she said, and I flinched when she laid a warm hand on my side. “It’s easier when you’re touched first by a hand than a needle. It’s not as shocking when the needle comes.”
I swallowed and kept my head back, looking at the roof of the cave as the pad of her thumb stroked the other side of my stomach. She hadn’t known I was more familiar with the feeling of something sharp than soft. I was more prone to a needle than a finger.
Her palm dragged across toward the wound, and when the needle pierced my flesh, I felt Circe’s eyes on my face. “Did you not feel that?”
“The needle piercing through my skin? Yes, I felt that.”
A soft laugh escaped her, and I lowered my head to see it.
I hadn’t meant my words to be amusing, but she’d laughed all the same.
“Okay, Mr. Tough Guy,” she said, continuing to stitch the wound.
Then it was quiet between us. Though I could feel every sharp piercing of the needle driving into my flesh, all I could think of was Circe being entirely too close. While she concentrated on stitching my wound, I admired all her details. All the ones I’d gotten wrong in my drawings. The tiny baby hairs curled along her hairline, the freckle on her chest, the shape of her brows. As she moved around my torso, my skin thinned, causing everything to be more sensitive.
The next burn came, more painful this time, and I clenched my jaw.
She dared a glance at my face, and I should have looked away but couldn’t.
“I need you to talk to me,” I confessed through an exhale.
“Talk to you?”
“Yes, talk to me. You have a nice voice, so anything will do,” I admitted.
Circe’s mouth parted, but nothing came out. A small smile curved her lips, and she lowered her gaze and continued stitching.
I scanned her face. “Will you tell me why there are cries in the night?”
Her hand stopped briefly, but she didn’t look up at me this time before resuming. “Cries?” She shook her head, her hair like lazy ribbons of blonde silk falling around her striking features. “Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. It must be the wind. Sometimes, the wind is so strong at night that it sounds like it’s screaming at the cliffs.” She smiled a small smile that was only hers and meant for no one else. “Maybe it wants to get out, too.”
“You don’t like it here,” I said, more of an observation than a question.
“I didn’t say that. This is my home.”
“You said—”
“There are many ways one can feel imprisoned, Stone.”
My heart raced when she said my name.
I’d never met anyone like her, with a vault as a mind, everyone else an outsider. Between her lines were hidden meanings—none meant for me, but meanings I still somehow understood. She spoke with a tongue shaped like a secret, and I wondered if anyone had, or ever would have, the key to unlock them. Would I know her long enough to find out?
“And there?” I asked, eager to know what information Circe would offer. Or perhaps I enjoyed the singsong in her voice after a long bout of loneliness. “What’s out there?”
Circe glanced up, and I poked my chin at the lighthouse in the distance. A place I’d felt a pull since arriving.
