Daska moved behind me, settling at the edge of the pool. I stayed in the water, submerged to my waist and facing away from him, while he knelt on the rock. His hands touched my hair gently, gathering it, testing its weight.
Then he poured water over it with the bowl, shielding my eyes with his hand, and began to work the soap through.
Oh.
His fingers were careful and methodical, massaging my scalp in slow circles, working the foam through the tangled mess. I closed my eyes without meaning to, my whole body going loose under his touch.
Nobody had touched my hair like this since I was a child. Since my mum used to wash it in the kitchen sink on Sunday evenings, humming off-key while she worked the conditioner through the tangles with infinite patience. The memory surfaced with a sharpness that stole my breath, and I had to press my lips together hard to keep from making a sound. This however, did not feel like it did when my mum did it.
Daska's fingers moved from my scalp down through the lengths, separating the worst of the knots with a gentleness that seemed impossible for hands that size. He didn't pull. Didn't rush. Just worked through each tangle with the same steadypatience he brought to everything, easing the strands apart rather than forcing them. When he hit a particularly stubborn knot near the nape of my neck, he paused, supporting the hair above it with one hand so the tugging wouldn't reach my scalp, and teased it free with the other.
I swallowed hard. My throat felt thick.
He poured more water over my hair, rinsing the soap away in a slow cascade that ran warm down my back. His fingers followed the water, combing through the wet strands, checking for tangles he might have missed. The touch was light but thorough, and every pass of his fingertips against my scalp sent little shivers down my spine that pooled somewhere low in my belly.
Get it together. He's just washing your hair. This doesn't mean...
His thumbs traced the line behind my ears, pressing gently into the tight muscles at the base of my skull, and a sound escaped me that was dangerously close to a moan. I bit my lip, mortified, but Daska didn't pause. Just kept working, his fingers moving in slow, deliberate circles now rubbing my scalp that felt obscenely good.
He gathered my hair into one hand, lifting it off my neck, and poured another bowl of water over the length of it. The cascade ran warm where it had sat in the sun, trailing down my bare back in rivulets that made me shiver for reasons that had nothing to do with temperature. Then he squeezed out the excess water and began to comb through it with something. I twisted to look and saw he'd pulled out a wide-toothed comb made of bone or antler, worn smooth with use.
He made a sound and gestured for me to turn back around as he kept combing. Daska's free hand rested lightly on my shoulder, steadying me as he worked, and the warmth of his palm against my bare, wet skin was doing things to my nervoussystem that I absolutely did not have permission to feel. Each stroke of the comb sent a cascade of sensation from my scalp down through my entire body. Not pain, not quite pleasure, but something in between that left me breathless and slightly dizzy. The kind of touch that made you realise how long you'd gone without being touched at all.
Two years. Two years since anyone had put their hands on me. Two years since I'd let anyone close enough to try.
The silence between us was thick. It wasn’t uncomfortable, I was never uncomfortable with Daska, but it was weighted with something I didn't have a name for. An awareness that hummed beneath my skin, electric and terrifying and completely inappropriate given that I was naked in a river being groomed by a man I'd known for less than a week.
His knuckles grazed the back of my neck as he lifted a section of hair, and I felt the touch everywhere. In the hollow of my throat. In the palms of my hands. In the tight, warm place behind my ribs that I'd thought was dead.
I'd been so numb for so long. Two years of feeling nothing, of going through the motions of a life that had stopped making sense the moment Nathan had looked at me with those flat, empty eyes and told me he didn't want me anymore. The bond severing had been like having a limb amputated without anaesthetic—a white-hot agony that faded into a permanent, dull absence. I'd learned to live around it. But Daska's hands in my hair were waking something up, and I didn't know whether to be grateful or terrified.
I was acutely aware of every point where his body was close to mine. The warmth radiating from his chest behind me. His knees bracketing my shoulders where he knelt on the rock. The occasional brush of his forearm against my upper back as he reached for another section of hair. The water lapped gently at my waist, and the morning sun was warm on my face, and hishands were in my hair, and I felt more present in my own body than I had in two years.
It was almost painful, that returning sensation. Like blood flowing back into a limb that had been numb for too long, pins and needles of feeling, sharp and overwhelming after so much nothing.
His thumb traced along my hairline at the nape of my neck, slow and deliberate, following the curve of it down toward my shoulder. The touch was feather-light, barely there, but it sent a wave of heat through me and I sighed. He paused for a moment, and then lay my hair gently down my back, and moved away. I immediately missed his touch, and looked back over my shoulder.
He stood behind me, holding a large deerskin. I managed to stand myself, without turning around, and he wrapped the skin around me. It was slightly warmed from the sun. He'd laid it out on the rocks while I wasn't looking, preparing for this exact moment.
He thinks of everything.
I pulled it around myself.
“Thank you,” I said. He cocked his head slightly again, then nodded.
“Tek,” he said. I frowned.
“Tek?”
He nodded, and seeing I was still confused, he reached forward and gently tapped my lips. “Tek.”
My eyes widened. “Oh! Thank you. Tek.”
Daska smiled. “Tank oo. Tek.”
He gestured slightly up the bank to where the rocks lay in smooth flattish layers. I could see he’d spread another thicker fur out on the ground, and let him carry me up and set me down on it.
“Ula,” he said. I ran my hand over the soft fur.
