Instead of leaving my hand where he’d left it, I moved it slightly to test what I felt. A soft smooth skin covered hard muscle. Under it, I felt the steady beat of his heart. Most women would kill for skin like that. The thought made me cringe. The women in our family had killed enough without envying the texture of skin.
I became aware that I just stood there lightly running my fingers over him and stilled my movement. The last thing I needed with Morik was a mix-up in signals. I know he wanted me to choose him, but what I’d been doing definitely was not an indication of that.
Without removing my hand, I looked up into his strange eyes. “Did I meet my part of the deal?” He met my gaze easily and I felt relief.
“Almost,” he said quietly, flashing me another triumphant smile as he quickly stepped away from me. “Now I get an hour of your time.” He reached behind him, lifted a shirt off the chair, and quickly put it on. I hadn’t even noticed he had a shirt there.
When he tugged it over his head, it mussed his hair, and I noticed his ears weren’t the only thing hiding in those waves. What I thought was just a thick head of hair also included dull black horns. They adorned each side of his head like a gentle wave running back from his hairline. Starting at the temple, they curved up and then back down toward his ear before curving back up at the tip. The tips of his ear reached the middle width of the horn. Channels ringed the horns lending them a carved look.
He caught me staring and the worry lines came back. Forcing my eyes away from his horns, I scrambled for something to say. “What are we going to do?” Unfortunately, my voice quavered.
He stepped close to me, tilting his head to study me, his face now carefully blank. “Are you frightened?”
“No,” I answered quickly. And I wasn’t. Not really. I liked this version of Morik, at least a lot more than the shadowy one and the body snatching one. But the site of his horns had me wondering if there were other versions of Morik I hadn’t yet seen.
He studied me closely. “You touched me without fear, but,” he reached up with his right hand and ran his fingers over his horn, “this bothers you?”
His expression said he wasn’t going to let this go. Standing so close, as he talked, his long teeth kept peeking at me, distracting me. He was so different… there was so much to look at it was hard not to stare at any one thing. But apparently he didn’t like my staring, so I dropped my eyes to his shirt. Fabric was safe. It was some vintage band t-shirt and I wondered if he got it when the band was new. He was old enough.
“Not really. You’re just different from what I imagined. I’m sorry for staring.”
He nodded and stepped back again. Cautiously, I met his eyes. We watched each other for a few minutes, the silence growing uncomfortable.
Struggling for something to say, I asked, “What do you do when you’re not busy with Belinda’s line?”
His eyes never left my face, but I still felt weird standing in front of him wearing my pajamas when he was dressed. Not that I wanted him to take his shirt off again. That had been worse. My eyes fell on the sweatshirt on the chair behind him.
“I broker deals when called,” he said softly regaining my attention.
“People still call you? Do you always have to answer? Like a genie or something?” My skin, warmed from the bed, started to prickle in the cool room.
“They will always know how to call me. No, I don’t have to answer, but I usually do. What else is there for me to do? It’s the only way I can interact with your kind.”
He watched me expectantly, a slight smile on his lips. It began to make me nervous. Wrapping my arms around myself, I sat on the edge of my bed contemplating pulling a blanket over my shoulders.
He turned and grabbed my sweatshirt, looking at it for a moment before stepping forward to hand it to me. “Why didn’t you just ask for it?”
“Uh…”
“I saw you look at it. You’re cold. Why didn’t you ask me to hand it to you? Why not reach for it yourself?”
I plucked the sweatshirt from his hands and quickly tugged it over my head. I couldn’t bring myself to answer his last question and hoped he wouldn’t notice. The truth was that his eyes, horns, off colored skin, and ears all together in the dim reading light unnerved me. My words were briefly muffled. “Because I don’t know the rules here. If I ask you for something, am I making a deal with you? I don’t want to do what Belinda did and compound an already difficult situation with bad choices.”
“Difficult situation?”
“I’m sure you’ve noticed that not everyone has to sleep when it’s dark out, or touch a boy to figure out what kind of live she’ll have with him, or sees his death… my life is a difficult situation. I don’t want to make it worse.”
He nodded and sat down on the bed next to me, shoulder to shoulder, setting the light to the side. Shadow covered the side of his face toward me hiding his horns. “You can ask me for anything and I will try to do as you ask. A deal isn’t necessary unless you want one. The only thing I can’t do is undo deals already made without making a new deal.”
Averting my eyes, I changed the subject. “So what do people usually ask you for?”