Page 31 of A Witch and Her Minotaur
He finishes the cupcake and dabs his lips with a cotton napkin, then clears his throat. His eyes flick up to meet mine. “Well... thank you.”
“Mm-hmm.” Instead of looking away, like I usually do, I hold his gaze. One second, two, three. A tingle goes through me. And by the way his eyes narrow slightly and his gaze flicks down to my mouth, I wonder if he’s feeling what I’m feeling right now.
And I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I know that. He’s a faculty member, and I’m already on the verge of being expelled. But I can’t help being drawn to him. He’s so different, so unlike anyone else I’ve ever known. And I want to know more.
Like what his beard feels like. What his lips taste like. What his—
Cairn breaks eye contact, looking at something over my shoulder.
I turn and find the red fox he’s been tending to standing just outside the open door. The fox sniffs the air, ears perking up. Then it turns and regards us with a steady gaze.
“I-I must have left the door open,” I say, starting to panic as I push to my feet. “I’m sorry.I’ll—”
“It’s okay.” Cairn stands slowly. A smile tugs on the corner of his lips. “I think it’s time he went home.”
My focus slides back to the fox, even as Cairn walks around the bistro table to stand beside me.
“Are you sure?” I whisper, as if my voice might scare the fox away.
Above me, Cairn nods. “I’ve been leaving the door open, letting him decide. And it seems he’s ready to go.”
On quiet hooves, Cairn walks out of the garden and approaches the fox. He kneels and holds a hand out, and the fox must understand his intentions, for it offers its paw, waiting patiently as Cairn unwraps the cotton bandage and double-checks the wound.
“Looks healed,” he says, though I think he’s talking to the fox and not to me. “You’re fine now, my friend.”
The fox tests its weight on its paw, not limping in the least as it twirls in one circle, then another. Then it leaps up onto Cairn’s knee and licks his chin.
And Cairn laughs. It’s such a deep and beautiful sound, like a song of the mountains. It makes my chest squeeze.
“You’re welcome,” he says to the fox.
And just like that, the fox lopes across the grass and toward the tree line, a smudge of crimson against the darkening night. At the edge of the woods, it pauses for a moment to look back, as if to say thank you one more time, and then it vanishes into the trees, disappearing into the shadows like a specter on Samhain.
Cairn watches it go, then stares at the place where it disappeared for a few long, quiet moments. I observe his profile: the twirl of his glossy horns, the firm set of his brow,the nose ring he wears as it catches the last of the autumn sunlight.
And I know, can no longer deny, that I want this man.
I want himbadly.
He pushes up from the grass, and I swallow as he turns to face me. Our eyes meet. My mouth goes dry.
Does he feel the same? No, of course not. How could he? I’m a fire hazard, an extra duty he has to see to in his day. But the look in his eyes makes me wonder, tempts me to hope.
Cairn glances away, then back. He shifts his hooves in the crinkly autumn grass.
And if I’m not completely imagining things, I think he looks almost... nervous.
Of my fire? Or of me?
The thought makes more of that hope shimmer to life in my chest.
“The moonflowers will bloom soon,” he says, breaking eye contact again to glance at his garden. “As soon as the moon rises.”
Tipping my face to the sky, I can just barely see a few tiny stars twinkling into view as the sun finally sinks over the distant horizon.
“I’ve never seen a blooming moonflower before,” I remark, lowering my head to regard him again. Beneath my ribs, my heart pounds harder. “But... I’d like to.”
Cairn flexes his fingers into fists at his sides, then releases them slowly. With a quiet voice, he says, “You could stay a while longer, if you’d like. To see them.”
