Chapter 7

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It is all I have to offer.

Rodan reminded himself of this as he scrubbed the dish clean. He wanted to offer her so much more. Oh, yes, he wanted to bed her, wanted to bring her to pleasure and to see her body arch and tremble through the throes of passion, but he wanted more than that. He found the idea of offering his services and sending her home repulsive. He wanted to spend all day with Ella. What did she love? What did she hate? What would it be like to wake up beside her tomorrow, and the next day, and on and on? What would it take to coax her from this timidity and who in all the mortal world had made her crawl into herself, instead of allowing her to claim everything that rightly belonged to her?

I am the last person to speak of claiming what belongs to oneself, he thought darkly. There was nothing to be done for it. He finished drying the dish–an odd gesture in this odd house–and tried to compose his thoughts.

When he returned, her brown eyes swam with tears again.

“Why won’t you make love to me?” She asked.

Yes, why? His brain and other parts of him demanded to know as he gazed at this lush, rosy woman and her round eyes looking at him beseechingly. So much for his composure. Strangling a groan half of longing, half of frustration, Rodan managed to choke out, “I beg your pardon?”

“I may be inexperienced, but I know what I want.” She brushed fingers across her eyes and straightened. The tears had gone, replaced by determination bruised with a desperation borne of frequent experience with denial. “There must be something I can offer for payment. I–I can continue cleaning out the stream, I can bring you more chicken eggs–please, I know I sound ridiculous. I am. Ridiculous, that is.” She inhaled sharply, pressing her full lips into a line. Her eyes dropped. “Never mind. I should go. You’ve been more than kind.”

Something like anger flared in his chest, not at her, not even at himself, but at this whole rotten situation and the people behind it. He did not want to be merely kind to Ella. He wanted to share so much more than that with her, and for so much longer than a single morning. He wanted her; she made it clear she wanted him. Can’t I give her that much?

Rodan’s hand shot out and grabbed her shoulder just as she turned away. The feel of her skin through her chemise offered him his own chance to feel desperate, a chance he seized and swam off into the sunset with.

“If I tell you the payment,” he said, his voice rough in his ears, “you must decide whether it is worth your while. Please promise me you will not, on any account, decide before thinking it over.” He drew her back until she gazed up at him, her lips softly parted, her eyes calling him like sirens. He dreaded this. He wished he could ask for anything else but this. Ella’s softness clung to him, pulling at him. He had no choice in the kind of payment required, but he owed her the truth.

“Your life,” he said. “You must offer me a day of your life.”

Ella’s forehead puckered in confusion. “How so?” She asked. “A day of work? A day–with you?” Pink stained her cheeks at the question. “That sounds as though making love and the payment are one and the same.”

“No. But gods, Ella, I wish it were.” He shook his head. “I take a day of your life, quite literally. However many days fate has allotted to you before we met, when you leave my bed, you will have one less in your future. These terms I do not control but must abide by them.”

He could see her thinking about it, which brought him a strange relief. Most people agreed without batting an eye. Apparently, the last tenant of this cottage had had a reputation, or perhaps it was the tales humans told one another that led them here. Either way, people found him and knew what they wanted. Most came to him because their lives were unbearable in some way–boredom, an unhappy marriage, disappointment, grief. What was one less day of an unbearable existence if they could spend a few hours in forgetfulness?

“You may have it,” Ella replied, returning him to the present. Her eyes remained large and serious. “I want you to make love to me.”

“What makes you so adamant?” He couldn’t help asking, and he was more than curious. She looked as if she were entering a serious legal contract. He wanted to hear her reasons for accepting this cost, as if she would say she wanted him and not simply the experience he offered. Which, he reminded himself, was ridiculous. Of course she wants the experience. I just told her it was all I had to offer.

“Because everyone else has made decisions for me,” she answered. “Because I have always followed the rules, and it has not made my life pleasant, only bearable. I want to choose something for myself.” She stopped with a little shake of her head. “I am sorry, Rodan. Of course, if you simply do not wish to make love to me, I–well.”

She stammered to a halt, a blush suffusing her face, and she looked so charming that strange things happened to his heart. Not-so-strange things happened to his southerly regions as well. No one ever asked if he wanted to; they just searched him out and paid him. It was as if she saw him as a living person and not just a thing. He drew a deep breath.

“Remember what I said last we met? That I wanted to do impolite things to you? I was not lying, love.” He gazed at her, wishing he could convey what those things were by gazing only; if he said them out loud, he might shock or frighten her. Best to go slowly. It would not be difficult to treat her with the utmost care, only difficult to remember this was not something far more intimate than a service rendered at her request.

“Oh. Well, that is why I’m here.” Ella cleared her throat and brushed the hair from her shoulder distractedly, then looked at him with her eyebrows raised. “How will you take a day from my life? I would like to get that over with first.”

“Come here.” Rodan held out his hand. He had thought to do this afterwards, but Ella was right; better to get it over with now. At the touch of her hand in his, something shattered within him; he felt as if this were his first time being intimate with anyone, as if something new were about to happen and change him forever, as if this human creature was about to strip him bare, find all his vulnerable places, and kiss them one by one. The look on her face was trusting, if a little nervous, and he promised silently that he would give her an experience worth a whole month of days. As long as he did not break into a million pieces first.

The dark bedroom flickered with soft blue lights, like water dancing across the ceiling. Ella’s eyes landed on a large bed neatly made. Rodan murmured something she barely heard about clean bedclothes. From somewhere came the sound of ocean waves. It was a soothing sound, which, despite her eagerness to proceed, she was very grateful for.

“Lie down, darling,” said Rodan. Ella did so, staring up at the lights above as the blood pounded in her ears. He stood over her, his skin shimmering, the outline of his broad shoulders visible and his eyes catching the light.

“You are so beautiful,” he breathed.

Ella’s eyes threatened to spring with tears again. He sounded so unguarded, as if his words were not rehearsed. To distract herself she voiced an honest question. “Will it hurt? Taking a day of my life.”

He knelt and leaned against the bed. “No. But it will feel strange.”

When she nodded, Rodan reached into a drawer and withdrew a tiny bottle bearing a faint design and uncorked it. “Just close your eyes. Remember, you need only lie still.”

Ella nodded, murmuring assent, and settled into the cool pillows. She heard him speak, but his voice had changed; no longer did he speak in liquid tones, but in a harsh, grating sound. His fingers brushed her temples.

Ella gasped. A searing light blazed across her vision, leaving her strangely breathless; she was shaking. Her eyes flew open to find Rodan watching her intently. The light was gone. Rodan held her hand and stroked it softly, giving her time to recover.

“How do you feel?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little dizzy. Is that all? Can we start now?”

“You’re sure? That was a quick recovery.”

“Yes, I am sure,” she said, huffing in frustration. Rodan bowed his head and exhaled. He seemed oddly relieved, as if he had expected much worse from the exchange. When he lifted his face to meet her gaze, a wicked, mischievous smile drew across his face.

“Seeing as I have your express consent, we shall commence with impolite things.” 

He leaned over her and touched his lips to hers. The softness of his kiss sent waves of surprise and longing flooding through her body.

She had expected him to be swift and rough, judging by his expression and his words. This kiss made her want to weep from his tenderness. The way his lips brushed hers, the way he cupped her face with both his hands, offered a care that melted her core all the faster for its unexpectedness. A fire burned brighter within her. As with their first kiss, he was intent on drawing out her exquisite agony, teasing her with brief caresses on her lips and tongue and face.

She was sitting up at this point, using one arm to keep herself from falling over and grasping him with the other, when he rose to sit beside her on the bed.

“I am not sure what to do,” she whispered.

“What if I do what I do best,” he said between kisses, “and you tell me if you want me to stop or repeat the action? Is that amenable?”

Ella, quite happily losing her faculties of speech, responded with “Umhm,” and a nod of her head. And then inhaled as the backs of Rodan’s fingers slid down her throat and grazed the skin between her breasts. Just one slow, teasing stroke, and then he withdrew his hand and unbuttoned her nightgown slowly. He held her gaze with an expression that she half expected to set fire to her chemise. Leaving the nightgown to fall open, he instead palmed her breasts through the fabric. Her face–her everything–grew impossibly hot and hungry. Hunger was the only way to describe it. He seemed to take an unbearably long time with each caress, and she tried to tell him, but forming words was impossible. Whatever odd sound she managed seemed to do the trick. With his breath hot on her neck, Rodan slid the fabric down her shoulders until it pooled around her hips.

Goodness, she was naked before him, or as good as, and it didn’t feel wrong in the least. When he cupped her breasts with his hands, kissing down until he reached the fluttering of her heart, Ella’s head fell back and she clutched at his shoulders to stay upright.

“Good gods, Ella,” he whispered against her skin. “Is it improper to say that you are exquisite? To worship you with my body? Because words are insufficient.”

He was looking up at her with something akin to awe, and it stroked Ella’s inflamed senses, a pleasant ache to add to all the others. She wasn’t nearly naked enough. She wanted his hands everywhere. Urgently, she tugged off the thin gown and tossed it on the floor.