Page 76 of Kiwi Sin
In any case, we weren’t in Mount Zion anymore, and the rules were different. And yet I was as confused as I’d ever been in my life when Oriana took me around the curve of the yurt and into the bath. I was following her, trying not to stare at her backside in that pretty apron, the strings meeting in a bow whose ends draped over her curvy bottom.
I didn’t want to do this, and I did. And I didn’t trust my better nature to win out. Not one bit.
30
NOT MUCH OF A VIKING
Oriana
I headed into the bath with Gabriel behind me and said, “Close the door, will you?” That was because I’d heard Daisy say something. Or maybemoansomething. I’d heard Gray’s voice, too, low and hoarse and urgent, and I didn’t need to hear any of that. Not with Gabriel standing right here!
He looked startled, but he did it. I reached around him and turned on the fan, and he made a move toward me, said, “I, uh …” and stopped.
I stepped closer, did my best to ignore the hammering of my heart, and picked up his bandaged hand. He put his other hand on my shoulder, and I froze. I mean, I couldn’t move. Not like with Valor. Different. I looked up at him, and he said, “I, uh …” again, then, “I’m not sure how to do this. Also, I’m not sure about the, uh … bathroom.”
“What?” I stared at him. “This is where the supplies are, though.”
“Oh.” Now,helooked confused. “Do we … stand up, then? And I don’t have … I’m pretty sure you’re meant to have a … a condom. So there’s no baby. Or is that what you mean by supplies?” There were red patches on his cheeks, and he hadn’t moved his hand from my shoulder. “I mean, I think we should think about that, decide about that, before we, uh …”
“What?”I took a step back, and so did he. I banged into the toilet, and he banged into the door. “I need to check yourhand.I brought you in here to change your bandage!”
“Oh!” It came out a bit loud, and then he said, more quietly, “Oh,” ran a hand over his face, and started to laugh. “Sorry, then. Sorry. I’m … I’m horrified. At myself, I mean.”
I wanted to be horrified, too, but instead, I was laughing as well. Possibly hysterically, thanks to everything that had happened tonight. Valor. Gabriel hitting Valor. Gabriel throwing Valor down the stairs. My confession. This. It was all so terribly … unromantic. Every time I thought I was over it, I looked at Gabriel and laughed some more, until we were staggering, hanging on to the door, in his case, and the edge of the sink, in mine. In thebathroom.Where he’d thought I’d taken him to … haverelations?
In thebathroom?
“You’re … as bad as me,” I managed to say at last, wiping my streaming eyes. “I know I don’t know anything, but I’m pretty sure you’re not meant to do it in the bath.”
“Yeh, well.” He was grinning. “Reckon you know now that I don’t know anything, either.”
I shouldn’t say this, but I was saying it anyway. “Really? You mean you haven’t had relations with girls? Sorry, I mean had sex. You haven’t had sex with anybody, even though girls Outside …”
“No.” He was still so beautiful, it was like looking into the sun. “It’s never seemed right. I may not be much chop at being a worldly man. Also, I’m always embarrassed. I don’t know how to do it, for one thing, or even how you get from a girl talking to you to the point of starting to do it, and I’m never sure … Don’t you think it could hurt them? I mean, aren’t you meant to have relations because you love somebody? Don’t girls feel that way, then? I always thought they did.”
“Yes,” I said. “At least, that’s how it feels to me, too. Like you should be …”
“Married,” he said. “Yeh. How it seems to me, too.”
“So just because you look like a Viking warrior,” I said, “you aren’t one?”
“I look like a Vikingwarrior?”
“Well, notnow,”I said, still wanting to giggle. “Now, you mostly look confused. But before, when you were hitting Valor and throwing him down the stairs, you may have done. And now you know what I got from my history class this past year. I know what a Viking warrior looks like, or what some artist thinks he did. They used longboats and raided Britain. That’s about all I’ve got.”
“I also don’t know how to use a longboat,” he said. “Or raid. And I don’t like violence much anyway. I’d be a rubbish Viking.”
“You did well today, though,” I said, feeling shy again.
“Yeh,” he said. “But that’s because I needed to hit him.” Now, he wasn’t laughing.
“So it’s not …” I said, and stopped.
“Not what?” He took a step closer, and his face had changed again. “You can tell me.”
“Not … because of what Valor said?” I asked. “It didn’t make you think that I’m … fallen? That you came in here with me and thought that?” I couldn’t believe I’d asked it, but I couldn’tnotask it, either.
“No!” he said. “Of course not. It’s just … I can’t tell what anybody means anymore. When you asked me to come with you, I thought— I thought, ‘Oh. I got it wrong, then.’”
