“I’ll finish this,” he said, nodding towards the wine stain. “You cook.”
“No, you’re the guest, you shouldn’t?—”
“Clara.” Just my name, but the way he said it—low, rumbling, almost tender—stopped my protest in its tracks. “Let me help.”
I nodded, oddly touched by his insistence. We worked in tandem, me stirring the pasta and checking the sauce, him tending to the wine stain with methodical care. Despite the small space, we developed a rhythm, moving around each other with an awareness that felt almost like a dance.
When he reached for a clean towel, his arm brushed against my back, a brief contact that sent a shiver down my spine. I turned to hand him the salt again and found him closer than Iexpected, my face nearly colliding with his broad chest. His scent enveloped me—warm and earthy, with hints of yeast and spice from his baking.
“Sorry,” I murmured, looking up at him. From this close, I could see flecks of amber in his dark eyes, the subtle variations in the short fur covering his face, the perfect curve of his horns.
“Don’t apologize,” he said quietly. “I don’t mind.”
Don’t mind what? I wanted to ask. The clumsiness? The closeness? Me?
Instead, I just nodded and returned to the pasta, hyperaware of his every movement behind me. The kitchen felt charged with an energy that had nothing to do with the electricity powering my appliances.
By some miracle, dinner came together without further incident. I drained the pasta while Rion sliced his beautiful bread, our arms occasionally brushing in the cramped space. Each contact sent little jolts of electricity through me, and I found myself deliberately reaching for things I didn’t need, just for the chance of another touch.
When we finally sat down at my small dining table, I felt as if I’d run a marathon, my pulse elevated, my skin hyper-sensitive.
“This looks good,” Rion said, surveying the simple meal of pasta with tomato and basil sauce, accompanied by his artisan bread and a fresh salad.
“Nothing compared to your bread,” I replied, watching as he arranged his large frame carefully on my dining chair, which suddenly looked absurdly small. “I hope it doesn’t collapse under you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “The chair or my expectations?”
I laughed, surprised by the hint of humor. “The chair. Though now I’m worried about both.”
“Don’t be.” He broke off a piece of the focaccia and passed it to me. “I have high structural standards for furniture, but realistic ones for pasta.”
Our fingers brushed during the exchange, and I found myself holding the bread without immediately eating it, distracted by the lingering warmth of his touch.
“Tell me,” he said as we began to eat, “how did you become a librarian?”
The question pulled me from my touch-induced daze. “Oh! Well, I’ve always loved books. Even as a kid, I organized my picture books by color and subject.”
“Not alphabetically?” His mouth quirked in what I was learning to recognize as amusement.
“That came later, around age eight,” I admitted. “I was a very systematic child.”
“I can imagine.”
I took a sip of wine. “What about you? How does one become a minotaur architect?”
“One is born a minotaur,” he said dryly. “The architecture came later.”
“Smart aleck,” I muttered, and was rewarded with a small, genuine smile.
“I’ve always understood spaces,” he said after a moment, his deep voice thoughtful. “How they connect, how they flow. Even as a child, I built structures rather than destroying them like other young bulls.”
“Young bulls?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Are there many?”
His expression clouded slightly. “No. Not anymore.”
I sensed I’d touched on something painful and quickly redirected. “So you were building even as a child? What was your first creation?”
The tension in his shoulders eased somewhat. “A fort. In the woods behind my mother’s house. More of a labyrinth than a traditional fort. I kept adding to it, creating new passages, hidden rooms.”
