She didn’t know what was happening. Rough fucking was one thing, the crazed sating of needs. This … The shower. The slow and tender licking of her pussy … She didn’t know how to cope with whatever this was.
The first stroke of the brush through her hair made her freeze. Her lungs turned to iron, and her head pounded. Noa squeezed her eyes shut against the onslaught, but the pounding persisted. With every stroke of Diel’s brush, that pounding opened up a window in her mind. She remembered a small cottage smelling of lavender and patchouli. Incense burning, and a soft voice humming as someone brushed Noa’s hair.
Then a crown of flowers upon her head.
Noa opened her eyes, her held-back breath tumbling out of her mouth. Diel’s brushstrokes faltered for a second at the sound, but then resumed. Noa’s heart was a deep, shamanic drumbeat, a sound she knew well, a sound that invoked within her a sense of peace … a sense of home. She tried to shut out that familiar hypnotic sound. But something within her refused to let it go, a stubborn part of her that fought for it to remain. So it drummed on. As Diel combed through her long hair, the drum beat on. A calmness replaced her sense of unease, enough that Noa could eventually speak.
“Where …” She cleared her throat. “Where did you learn to do this?”
Diel was silent, and the brush stopped. When she turned to face him, he was frowning, eyes lost to the fire. Confusion flooded his face. Even with the orange glow kissing his cheeks, she saw the color drain from his skin.
“Diel?” She rose to her knees and shifted directly before him. He looked to the brush in his hands as if the dark, barely touched bristles could tell him the answer to that question.
After several heavy seconds, he lifted his head. “I don’t know.” The slight catch in his deep voice made something inside her break. She looked down at his hand holding the brush; it was shaking. Noa couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t stand the lost look in his gaze, or the sight of him frozen on the bed.
She brought her hand to Diel’s and kissed the back of it. “Will you continue?” she asked, trying to bring him out of whatever answerless void he had slipped into.
Diel blinked, grounding himself once more. He jerked his head in agreement, and she turned and flicked her damp hair over her shoulder. It was a few moments before Diel began running the brush through the long strands again. Noa exhaled a breath she didn’t even know she had been holding. She was still as the statue of Mary that the Witch Finders had bowed to each day in the Circle.
She controlled her breathing as Diel worked out the tangles from her pink hair. But all the time her mind reeled. He didn’t remember. Diel didn’t remember anything of his old life; that much was obvious. It was like a blade sliced into her chest. Noa blocked out the memories of her past, the smells, the sounds that took her back to those days, but at least she had them. She knew from where she came; she knew who she had been before the Brethren had torn her happy life apart.
The thought of Diel knowing nothing … it made her feel nauseous, made her feel like she was crawling out of her skin.
Once Noa’s hair was smooth and thoroughly brushed out, Diel dropped the brush and, as though on autopilot, began threading his fingers from root to tip. Then, with obvious practiced ease, he wove her hair into a French braid. When he tied off the end with her hair tie, Noa closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
He had done this for someone. At some point in his life, he had braided someone’s hair. Who that person was to him, Noa had no idea.
Diel’s arm threaded around Noa’s waist, and he gently drew her down to the bed. She sank into the soft mattress, then rolled over until she was facing him. His arm remained around her, keeping her close. She tried to read his face. His eyes were cast over her shoulder, not focused on her. She let him have this moment, let him work through whatever was plaguing his mind.
Noa’s head lay on his bicep, the muscles hard and defined beneath her temple. She splayed her hand over his Fallen brand and felt the upturned cross