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Silar didn’t respond to that, and I fretted that he wasn’t convinced, but I was saved from trying to fill the awkward silence by the sudden bump of a soft nose against my cheek. I squawked, grinning ear to ear, instinctively reaching up to pat Tarion’s neck. His hide was lovely to the touch, velvety and so warm.
“He likes you,” Silar observed.
Do you?
I almost said it out loud. But, rather pathetically, I wasn’t sure I could handle his truthful answer right now. And though he didn’t say much, Silar struck me as a cuttingly honest sort of person.
I can make him like me in a month. I hope.
“Well, that’s good,” I said, giving Tarion another pat, which was answered with a friendly, animal chortle. “So he’ll be alright with me riding him, then? Although, I should tell you that I don’t exactly have experience with this sort of thing.”
I glanced at the saddle, which seemed intimidatingly high off the ground.
Except it suddenly wasn’t so high. Because I was being lifted.
I gasped when strong hands settled around my waist. Strong warm hands. Silar boosted me as easily as he might lift a child, setting me down onto the saddle.
“Don’t need experience,” he said gruffly, immediately hoisting himself up onto Tarion’s back behind me. He reached around me from behind, grasping at brown reins, his arms enclosing me in an intimate circle “You’ve got me.”
“Oh. Alright,” I said, disoriented by his sudden nearness. I grabbed at a raised sort of ridge on the front of the saddle for stability. The last thing I needed right now was to fall off this giant shuldu and break my neck. Not that that would be possible now, with Silar’s thick, muscled arms around me, his chest warm and solid at my back.
Silar is as solid as they come.
I was beginning to think that the warden was right about that. I barely knew the man I’d married, but a strangely sudden feeling of tremulous comfort bloomed inside me. For the first time since I’d missed my loan payment, I felt…
Safe.
Which was crazy, considering I was about to go home with an alien male I’d only just met. But there it was. I felt so fucking safe I almost could have cried.
I gave a low laugh instead, shading my eyes against mid-day sun.
“I should have brought a hat!” I said, thinking with some longing of all the provisions I would have received from the program if I’d left on time with the others. I didn’t have a jacket, either, and I knew it would get cold here at night.
Oh well. I’d figure it out, even though I wasn’t much of a seamstress. I’d fixed a few buttons and split seams on my factory uniforms, but that was the extent of my skills. Maybe Silar had a blanket I could turn into a jacket or something.
Hmm. That’d probably be pushing it. A jacket might be beyond me.
Maybe a poncho, then. A nice, cozy poncho with ugly, uneven seams. I’d probably look goofy as all get-out, but Silar didn’t strike me as the sartorial type. And now that I thought about it, weren’t ponchos kind of a classic cowboy thing, at least among humans? I was fairly certain I remembered the image of a man in a hat wearing something similar in one of the films I’d watched with Mama. So maybe I wouldn’t look that silly. Maybe I’d –
My thoughts were deadened by a softly thudding darkness all around me. I jerked back, blinking hard, panic rising and telling me I’d just gone instantaneously blind.
Of course, I hadn’t. But it felt that way for a moment.
A heavy but deftly gentle hand fell to the top of my head, adjusting the hat I now wore until the brim was high enough that I could see again. Cautiously, I reached up, the tips of my fingers brushing the edge of the sun-warmed garment. The hat was far too big for me, but it cast enough shade that I was no longer in danger of getting a wicked sunburn on the way back and I didn’t have to squint.
I touched the brim of the hat again, stroking as if it were a living thing to be petted, suddenly fighting tears. It was such a small act. For Silar, he was probably just tossing a hat down on his whiny, unprepared wife so he didn’t have to hear her complain about the sun the whole way back.
But for me…
For me, it was the first time anyone had done anything even remotely caring for me since Mama had died. I didn’t realize how badly I had needed it.
Such a simple thing. A hat artlessly plonked down on top of my head. And now I was in danger of breaking down weeping.
Silar would think I was fucking certifiable, if he didn’t already.
With what felt like an astronomically mighty show of will, I inhaled deeply through my burning nose and blinked my tears away. When I was pretty sure my voice wouldn’t crack or falter, I said, “Thank you.” And then, letting my fingers fall away from the brim of the hat that had just about broken my little human heart, I said, “But what about you?”
He’d been wearing a hat. Same with the warden. I doubted it was for fashion’s sake. They obviously needed them out here as much as I did.
