More vulnerable.
I think I’m just frozen.
There’s interest, there’s curiosity, there’s intensity in the way he looks at me—but still…
I feel safe with him.
Ever since Rust came back to camp.
I’m not an idiot, I know there are limits to his protection.
But right now, I don’t feel unsafe.
I hold onto what he told me, his blatant disgust for humans.
It makes sense.
“You’ve never seen a human body before.”
Samick doesn’t meet my gaze, not as he traces the outline of my ass, then down the length of my legs.
“No.”
That’s his answer.
Plain. Firm. Neutral.
But his eyes still burn with that jade hue.
“Bee said humans are in your world,” I tell him, and his gaze snaps to mine. “That you have bargains for babies, and that’s how halflings and kintas are made.”
His lip curls at the wordkintas, but only for a moment. “I make no bargains with humans.”
“So you’ve never been with a woman?” I reach for my soaked mop of hair, rinsed of shampoo, and I start finger-combing the strands. “Like a human one?”
His lashes lower, casting shadows down the pallor of his face. “Only fae.”
Maybe it’s only a thing in the light lands.
The part of the fae world Bee is from.
But to Samick, in his part of the world, my body is as alien to him as his was to me.
I’ve gotten used to it over the months, but his white blood made me sick to my stomach, his smooth torso with no bellybutton churned my insides, the points of his ears, the sharper teeth hidden in his mouth, the inhuman colour of his eyes, the way he moves…
It all, frankly,ickedme.
Now, time has passed, and I guess I’ve gotten used to it.
But it’s like when he noticed my hair for the first time. Or now, that he watches me, still watching as I comb out my hair, he inspects every difference on my body.
But it’s not the same way I looked at him.
Those jade eyes are green flames in the dim light, rinsing over the watery glisten of my legs.
There’s no disgust on his face.
But there’s an edge.
