Page 17 of The Huntmaster

The scent of her—the fear and that dark, involuntary sweetness—lingered in the steam, heavy and intoxicating. I brushed the recognition off, forcing myself to look away from her wide, blue eyes. I would not make this more uncomfortable for her, not when her form held that shattered, glass-like fragility.

"Proceed with your cleansing," I commanded, moving to a nearby stone. "I will keep watch."

She hesitated, then slowly turned her back to me, sinking back into the crimson flow. I watched as her shoulders—previously tight enough to snap—slowly began to drop. She actually felt safe. With me. The realisation was a strange, heavy pressure in my chest.

I sat where I could see both the entrance and her. As she shifted to reach for a handful of moss, the red water parted, offering glimpses of the pale, soft swell of her breasts, the tips darkened by the cold air and the heat of the spring.

A sharp, illicit stir of heat flared within my loincloth, a primal reaction I couldn't ignore. I chided myself instantly, my jaw tightening. She was an anomaly. An intruder. A seed of the stars. This feeling was merely the result of a new scent, a new form—nothing more than the curiosity of a hunter for a rare specimen.

I tried to justify it, but as I watched her struggle hopelessly to wring the red water from her golden hair, I knew my hearts were lying to me. She was a fighter, a fragile light in my dark forest, and I was becoming far too accustomed to the scent of her skin already.

The Zha-root was a cruel companion. It had dulled the edges of my rage, but it had sharpened every other sense to a point that felt like a needle under my skin. I sat on the cold stone, watching the star-woman struggle.

She was a chaos of motion. Her small, pale hands were buried in that golden thicket on her head, her fingers twitching with a frantic, agitated energy. The more she pulled, the more the amber sap wove itself into her fibres, cementing her hair into a singular, heavy mass. I could hear the tiny, wet snaps of breaking strands and the sharp, frustrated huffs of her breath.

"You are only making the tangle tighter, Ly-ra," I rumbled.

My voice felt heavy in my own throat, vibrating with a resonance I couldn't quite dampen. She looked up, her blue eyes flashing with a spark of that glass-shattering temper.

"Oh, really? Is that what's happening? Thank you, Captain Obvious!" she snapped, splashing the crimson water in a childish display of defiance. "I’m so glad the resident expert on everything is here to give me the play-by-play while I’m turning into a human candle!"

I stood up slowly, the stone cool against my feet before I stepped onto the damp moss. "The water is not enough. It needs to be groomed properly. The Pulse does not favour such a mess within my nest."

She huffed, blowing a wet lock of gold from her face. "Well, I thought soaking it in the water would be classed as fucking grooming, no? Isn't that what the ladies do? Or do they just use magic alien soap I don't know about?"

I moved to the edge of the basin, looming over her. The steam rose between us, carrying the scent of her sweat and the sweet, lingering arousal I had detected earlier. "No. The blood of the planet only softens the grip. To detach the sap from the gold, it requires the enzymes of the tongue and the oil of the Vra-leaf."

She froze, her fingers still tangled in her hair. She looked at me, her mouth dropping open in a way that made my stomach tighten. "The... what? The tongue?"

"The tongue," I repeated, my gaze fixed on the soft curve of her lips. "And the oil."

"I am not licking this!" she blurted out. She stuck her tongue out—a small, pink, ridiculously smooth thing—as if to prove her point. "Look! It’s tiny! I’d be here until the next century, and I’m pretty sure this sap tastes like poison. I'm not a cat!"

I leaned down, my nostrils flaring. My markings flickered a low gold. "No smooth, tiny human tongue would work for anything," I said, my voice dropping into a guttural purr. "It has no ridges. No heat. It is a useless tool for grooming."

She let out a sharp, breathless laugh, her eyes darting to mine with a sudden, daring heat. "Oh, you'd be surprised what this 'useless tool' can do," she quipped.

The air in the grotto seemed to vanish. My pupils dilated instantly, swallowing the amber of my eyes until I saw only her. The words were a riddle, a challenge thrown from her small mouth that hit my Zha-heightened mind with the force of a death-strider.

"What does the star-woman mean?" I pressed, stepping closer until the heat of her skin was a physical pressure against my shins. "What purpose does a smooth tongue serve if not for the hunt or the grooming?"

She blinked, the heat in her eyes flickering into something more frantic, more flustered. "It... it’s just an expression. You know, human stuff. Don't worry about it. Let’s just focus on the sap, okay?"

She turned her head away quickly, brushing the comment off as if it were a stray insect, but the spike in her pulse told me otherwise. A deep, resonant vibration started in my chest—a sound of dominance and burgeoning hunger.

I didn't push further—not yet. I stepped forward, my heavy leather wrap brushing against my thighs as I prepared to enter the pool.

"Wait! What are you doing?" she stammered, her face flushing as the water rippled toward her. "Are you... aren't you going to get your furs wet? The leather? You can't just jump in like that."

I halted my movement, the water swirling around my ankles. I tilted my head at her, my markings flickering with a dry, humoured gold. "Shall I just take it all off then? To preserve the hide?"

Her face went a violent shade of red. She stammered something incoherent, but I didn't miss the way her eyes darted down for a fraction of a heartbeat—a flash of raw curiosity—before she snapped her gaze back to my face.

"No! No, no," she said quickly, shaking her head. "You're... you're fine as you are. Just stay back there."

She turned her back toward me in the springs as I got closer to her, but she was too small for me. Even submerged to her neck, I could not reach the crown of her head without bending in a way that would break my rhythm.

"Stand," I commanded.