Catan breathes another air

The door at the end of the gallery swung open just as Catan’s hand left the handle of the door to her room. For an instant, she stopped where she stood, but she saw that with such long legs Leofric was only a few paces away.

She swerved and headed towards the low wall above the hall, but there was no one below. She was alone with him.

She awaited with dread the touch of his fingers on her fingers and his lips on the back of her hand. He did not move.

The omission of this courtesy began to disturb her more. It made it seem that they had gone beyond the need for such banalities, or that any contact between them was too important to be made so lightly.

“We weren’t expecting you back so soon,” she murmured.

“I missed my baby.”

“She missed you, too.”

He had already moved closer to her. “Did she?”

The slow exhale of his breath was not quite a sigh, but she could hear it, and, hearing it, she almost thought she could feel it on her face.

She held her breath as long as she could. The thought of his breath entering into her body made the skin prickle across the back of her shoulders.

“Is Leia in her room?” he asked.

Calling her Leia immediately after speaking of “his baby” made Cat wonder whom he had meant before. She could not remember what she had said to him. She was beginning to panic. She had to lift her eyes to read his face, to see where she stood—but his face was nearly more than she could bear.

“It’s upstairs she is, with all the ladies.” She could not keep the tremor from her voice. “That’s where I was going.”

“Where were you? In your room?”

She did not answer, but the answer was obvious. She could only have been in her own bedroom or someone else’s.

He leaned low so he could look up into her face. “I thought so,” he murmured. “Your face is a little flushed.”

He was close enough to share her air again, but she could not hold her breath forever. She was feeling faint enough as it was.

“What do you mean?” she mumbled.

“You know what I mean.”

She did not, at first, but when she looked into his face again, she thought she understood.

Then she knew she was growing flushed indeed—with outrage.

“I was alone!” she whispered hoarsely. She waved a hand wildly at the door and said, “You may go in and see for yourself! I was alone!”

He stood tall again and smiled indulgently. “I supposed you were alone. That’s what I meant.”

Again she did not understand at first, and again when she looked into his eyes she saw what he meant. Outrage had been strength, but he had pushed her beyond outrage into shock.

“You are disgusting!” she hissed.

“Now, now. I shan’t let it be said. You all do it, every blessed one of you. And if your friends tell you they don’t, they’re liars.”

“Disgusting!” She could speak, at least in a whisper, but there was a lump in her throat preventing her from swallowing.

“Do you suppose we don’t know it?” He bent his head to hers and whispered, “Do you suppose we can’t tell?”

Her shoulders shuddered, as though trying to shake off something clinging to her back.

“Think of that next time, when you come down to breakfast in the morning.” She could feel his silent laughter on her face. “We all know.”

“You know nothing!” she whispered. “You liar! Filthy—disgusting—”

“Shhh… Don’t be ashamed, my dear. I’m not your priest. I find it quite charming.”

“I find you quite disgusting.”

He smiled. “You’ve said that already.” He spoke so low that his deep voice crackled into whispers from time to time. “It is not I who disgust you, Cat, but what I do to you. And it is becoming apparent that you find a few things disgusting that you ought to find quite pleasant. Therefore I am certain you will find me quite pleasant before long.”

“Never!”

“You are too young to say never, my dear. Now, tell me. When you are alone, as you say… Is it me you’re thinking of?”

He had shocked her too much by now for her to expect anything less than something shocking. She understood at once, and the weight of his meaning fell on her like a body—heavy on her back, hanging from her shoulders, dragging her down.

She had defended herself against bigger men, lewder men, drunker men than he. Yet before this man she was as helpless as a child. Tears filled her eyes, and she whimpered, “Go away.”

He leaned close enough that she could feel his breath upon her cheek. “Because I think of you,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes and yelped. The skin of her scalp and nape and shoulders prickled and contracted, tugging her cheeks back into a grimace.

He thought of her, and she could do nothing to stop him. In his mind he had already done what he liked with her. The fact that he had never truly touched her scarcely seemed to matter.

She could not bear to open her eyes again. She could blind herself, but it was all she could do. She could feel the heat of his body in the air that he warmed. She could hear him breathing, and she could not help but breathe the air he breathed. With her lips parted, she was like a cat breathing through its mouth to taste the air, and the air tasted like him—sweat and leather, and whatever there was about his odor that was unique to him.

He was not touching her, but it scarcely mattered. Blind, she had only the immediacy of her other four senses, and those he overwhelmed. He was not even touching her, but he might as well have been inside of her, like his breath.

“Leave me alone,” she whispered.

“You do like to be alone, don’t you? You must not yet know how it is to be with someone else. Why don’t you come tonight and let me show you? I think you would find that even being alone together is far more pleasant than being alone alone.”

“Let me go,” she pleaded.

“I am not holding you here.”

That was true. He had not touched her once—not even to kiss her hand.

She shrugged her shoulders to shake off the heavy weight that held her, clinging to her back and pressing her down. Then she swerved around him and went to the door as fast as her quivering legs could take her.