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“I have just as much right to be close to the new women as you do.”
It was not the new women in general that concerned me. Just one.
Suddenly, I wondered if it was the same for Oxriel.
“Do you have a... a connection... to one of them?” I asked, my words very slow and my voice so controlled I rather thought I deserved some recognition for it.
I would not be so controlled if he told me he was attracted to Fiona.
Oxriel’s tight sight stars misted across his gaze, turning his expression into something so dreamy it looked more like it should belong on the face of a child than that of a man.
“No, no. Nothing like that. There is not one I like above the others. At least, not yet.” He gave a small laugh and settled himself more comfortably on his hides in a way that felt annoyingly permanent, like he was ignoring the fact that he was absolutely not sleeping here tonight. “I don’t know how a male could even choose between them. They’re all so kind. And lovely. And they all smell so good. Have you ever noticed that?”
When I did not answer, Zoren muttered in agreement that he had, indeed, noticed the nice smells wafting off of the new women.
“Nasrin smells very sweet. Actually, so does Tilly,” Oxriel said, as seriously as if he had devoted great study to the topic. “And Fiona-”
“Do not tell me how Fiona smells!” I snapped, leaping off my hides and turning on him with a glare. “If anything, you should be forced to sleep as far away from the new women as possible, if only to save them from your obsessive sniffing and cataloguing of their scents!”
Oxriel looked at me askance.
“Are you telling me,” he said, confusion thick in his reply, “that you have not made note of their scents? That you could not pick out one from the other merely by smell alone? You were the one sniffing your card!”
Of course I could. I’d be able to scent Fiona in the whipping winds of a sandstorm. Nasrin and Tilly, too, but theirs were not scents that haunted me.
“You are being very odd, Dalk,” Zoren piped up most unhelpfully. “It is only natural to notice their scents. I have also learned to identify the scents of Gahn Errok’s tribe. It is no different.”
“Of course it is different,” I hissed, rounding on him. “They are new women. And unless any of us are bonded to one of them, we should not be bemoaning the sweetness of their scents.”
“Easy for you to say,” Oxriel grumbled, still sitting in that stupid spot beside my hides. “You got to kiss one of them.”
“I...” I stared at him, unsure if I should deny it or gloat or smack him. Maybe all three. But instead, I simply mustered up a very undignified, “What?”
“I saw you,” Oxriel said, finally standing up once more and pointing a black claw at the centre of my chest. “At the event of the New Age Eve.”
“It was a New Year’s Eve party,” I said quietly, feeling suddenly awkward in a way I had not experienced since... since...
Maybe ever.
“I saw Fiona throw her arms around you,” Oxriel continued, accusatory, like he was laying out every bad deed of my life. “I saw you bend down to her. I saw her press her mouth to yours. And,” he said with a triumphant spasm of his sight stars, as if he’d somehow cornered me, “I saw how tight your loincloth looked afterwards.”
Never, in all my days in this world, had I ever let another male comment on my loincloth or what lay beneath.
I was so shocked, the feeling shooting straight down to my bones, that for a moment I could not even be angry.
“Zoren,” I said, disbelief slowing my words, “am I mistaken, or did another man just try to tell me about the state of my own loincloth?”
“You are not mistaken,” Zoren replied on a growl, “but do not take that as a reason to drag me into this. You and Oxriel can discuss kisses and loincloths all you want. Leave me out of it.”
“I am not judging you,” Oxriel said quickly, seemingly oblivious to the rage blackening at the edges of my vision. “A man would have to be made of ablik to not respond to such a soft, nice-smelling little creature all pressed up against him with her mouth on his like that. If you had been any other man, and not one prone to such excessive fits of fury, I would have even asked you what it was like.” He sighed, casting a wistful glance towards the new women’s cave, and that alone nearly sent me into one of the aforementioned fits. “I wonder if I’ll get to find out for myself one day.”
“Do not get your hopes up,” I hissed savagely. “Fiona has already told me that such a thing will not happen again.”
“Well, maybe not with you.”
Any other man watching this encounter would have lauded my control up until that point. Would have told me that I was well within my rights to cock my fist and hurl it at Oxriel’s head as fast and as hard as I could, which I did. In fact, there was another man there – Zoren – and he knew better than to even try to stop me.
But Oxriel, insufferably dopey male that he was, was also cursedly quick. He ducked the blow and skidded out of reach, drawing a blade before I’d even turned back around to face him.
