Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 731(@200wpm)___ 585(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
“So we both were revirginized, essentially.”
His dark brows knit together. “Did you not say it had been a year for you?”
“Over a year,” I correct.
“Aye,” he agrees, deadpan. “Alright, I can see how that is the same.”
It’s the closest thing to sarcasm I think I’ve ever heard him say.
The days start to run together, like time has been granted extra fluidity. I don’t know if it’s because Alasdair likely experiences time differently because he’s been exposed to it for so long, and that has started rubbing off on me. Or that the seconds, minutes, hours, days all start to slip past when your brain is so focused on making sense out of one-hell-of-a fucked-up situation.
Because that’s all I’ve been doing, other than breathing, eating, drinking and fucking. I’m trying to marry together what I know about Alasdair, the myth and legend, and what I experience in my day-to-day life with him.
And, for the most part, things really do seem normal. The terror I sometimes feel when I remember what he is doesn’t stay sharp. It blurs, the way someone who lives by a railway stops hearing the trains.
The cottage takes him in, in a way I never thought it would. All these decades it has been warded to keep him out, but now that he’s inside, it’s embraced him and made it look like he’s always been here. He has a place at the kitchen table now, the chair across from mine I never used to use. He has a place in the sitting room, Effie’s wing-back by the fire where he reads in the late afternoons. He has a place in the bed, the side between me and the window because he sleeps with it open a crack, the briny scent of the loch filling my dreams.
He keeps the fire going while I work, and he makes me work, reminding me of deadlines that seem to belong to another life, and he makes me coffee in the morning. I take care of breakfast and lunch since he’s fond of kippers. I tried it once, smoked, with a poached egg on top and it was fine, but I never really got into that tinned-fish craze. To be honest, I don’t think Alasdair is much into tinned fish either, I’m sure he’d rather be swimming in the loch and eating them there, but I figure hey, I don’t care what he eats…so as long as it’s not people.
The thing is, none of this feels strange. All of this feels right, like it’s supposed to be this way.
And that’s the part that should worry me, the not-finding-things-strange.
Because there are some little things that remind me of what he is from time to time. For one, he’s often wet for no reason. Not always, and not in an icky uncomfortable way, rather his hair is perpetually damp, and if it’s not, then the hem of his pants or his shirt is. This is how I know Alasdair is not autistic like me, because I would be driven absolutely mad to have continuously wet sleeves. No sensory issues with this guy.
He’s also always cold to touch, his skin soft and smooth but with a chill like he’s just come from outside. He doesn’t seem to sleep at all, not even the dolphin method, he’s often very still, not moving an inch, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s in predator mode or not. I suppose I should be grateful that what I’m seeing from him is the part of him from the loch, and not the part that is a horse. He doesn’t snort or neigh or eat hay. If I hadn’t known the about the each-uisge, there would be no reason to think he was a horse-man.
Man-horse.
Morse?
He also goes for long swims, for hours at a time. Just walks into the bay butt-naked and dives under and doesn’t come back until later. During that time, I do my best to draw and paint and forage since when he’s back, he’s devastatingly distracting.
Because, yes, I’m still one horny bitch, and if you think him being a monster on the side is enough to gird my loins, you are sadly mistaken. Our desire for each other has only increased, and we spend most of our time naked together, fucking all over the damn cottage.
Which does bring me to the strangest, and certainly most unnerving thing about him now. That sometimes, during the height of passion, especially when he’s being rough—and believe me, I like it rough now, apparently—his eyes do that thing. That all-black thing, where there is no iris, no white, only pupil. It’s like a horse’s eye but a horse’s eye is soft, and his eyes are decidedly not. They are fathomless black pools that have the same pull as a bottomless pit, like a black hole that leads to a never-ending void. Looking into them sometimes I feel like I’m looking past the man—and even past the beast—seeing into time immemorial itself, where great ancient, terrible gods rule the cosmos, rendering all of our little lives pointless and inconsequential.