“I’d like to,” he replied simply, but with an underlying intensity. “Aren’t we friends, if nothing else?”
She shrugged, averting her gaze to the window, but the curtains were closed to keep out the chill, so she ended up staring at brocaded burgundy velvet like an idiot. Giving up, she made herself face him. “Of course we’re friends. Only friends,” she emphasized, but even she didn’t believe herself.
Jak smiled slightly, not acknowledging that. “Sexual inexperience is a reasonable expectation in some cases. For example, as we both know, Astar was a virgin until just recently, until Zeph finally managed to knock some sense into him.”
She sighed mentally for the truth of that. Her twin was obstinate in clinging to his ideals, forever trying to live up to the heroic image of their long-dead father. Though their stepfather, Ash, had always been good to her and she loved him like a father, sometimes Stella wondered if she would’ve turned out differently if Hugh had lived. Maybe she wouldn’t be so… odd. “Astar is different,” she said, knowing she meant it about herself, too.
“Astar is your twin.”
“I’m aware of that.”
He chuckled. “Don’t get prickly, little star. It’s just an observation. The pair of you are cut from the same cloth.”
“My reasons for remaining a virgin have nothing to do with Astar’s,” she replied with heat, then stuttered to a stop, realizing what she’d admitted. Really, she didn’t know why she’d tried to claim otherwise. Something about his snide comment that she was never swooning with desire. It had rankled, probably because it was true. Poor Stella, such an odd and awkward duck.
Jak didn’t call her on the admission, though. He cocked his head, considering her. “Then what are your reasons?”
“I’m not discussing this.”
“You’re the one who accused me of not knowing you. How can I know you if you won’t talk to me?”
“Not about this, Jak.”
“Why not?” He gestured to his groin. “You’ve witnessed me in my extremity.”
“I didn’t see that much.”
“But you looked,” he teased.
Her face went hot. “It was in my face.”
“Oh, no, my star,” he purred. “You’d have known if it was.”
“Fine. I am obviously a virgin—and always will be,” she flung the words at him, pushed past reasonable discretion. “Because I. Can’t. Touch. Anyone.” She spaced out the words clearly for him.
He only cocked his head, giving her a polite smile.
“I might be innocent of experience, but even I understand that sex requires touching,” she added.
He didn’t move, listening with alert interest. Thoughtfully picking up one of the daggers lying on the seat beside him, he spun it between his fingers. “I know this about you, and I feel compelled to point out that I’ve always been careful about protecting you from being touched.”
That was true. For all of Jak’s carefree ways, he looked out for her, always careful not to touch her skin, guarding her in the press of crowds so the unwitting didn’t distress her.
“But you were also touching me just now,” he pointed out in a low voice.
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“That was healing.”
His lips quirked with amusement. “How is healing-touching different than other touching?” He floated the word “other” with a mental image of very specific touching.
She nearly buried her face in her hands—would have, if it wouldn’t give away just how much he affected her. “It just is. I can’t explain it.”
“Can’t?” he asked softly. “Or won’t?”
“You don’t understand,” she ground out, clenching her fists in frustration.
“No, Stella,” he replied in the same tone, “I don’t. That’s why I’m asking the question. This is how people who can’t read minds discover stuff about each other. I can’t understand you unless you explain.”
“I never asked you to understand me,” she fired back.
“No. You’ve never asked me for a Danu-blessed thing, have you? Stop treating me like a child who can’t possibly comprehend grown-up things. I’m a man now.”
“I know you are!” She was more excruciatingly aware of that truth than ever in her life.
“Then throw me a bone here. What’s the deal with you?”
She wished she knew. Feeling cold now that the heat of anger and embarrassment had fled, she drew up her knees and curled in the corner of the seat. Taking up her thick cloak that she’d left behind in the carriage when she shifted, she pulled it around her and extracted her fur-lined gloves from the interior pockets, drawing them over her chilled fingers. Jak wore his padded leather jacket over the thin shirt, but surely he couldn’t be comfortable bare-legged like that. “Aren’t you cold?”
He tipped his chin at his lap. “The cold helps. And don’t try to dodge the question.”
“I don’t actually know what my ‘deal’ is,” she told him steadily. “I’ve learned so much about sorcery from Aunt Andi—for which I’m so grateful—but she’s not an empath like me. There aren’t any empaths like me, anywhere, maybe ever.”
He arched a brow. “Never, in all of history?”
She shrugged, irritated with it all. “Believe me, Dafne has looked.”
“Well, if Dafne can’t find the information, it’s not out there to be found.”
“True.” She smiled back, enjoying the shared amusement, before she sobered again. “I’m better than I used to be, not always so impacted by it. Shielding helps.”
“To wall people out.”
He made it sound so punishing, like she already lived inside that stone tower, shunning human company. Though, she had to admit, there were certainly times—especially when she felt overwhelmed with people—that retreating to an isolated tower sounded like an exquisite relief.
“I have to wall people out, Jak,” she said, realizing that she sounded like she was pleading with him. She didn’t want to be this person, didn’t relish the future she saw for herself. “You have no idea what it’s like if I don’t.”
“Tell me,” he urged, dark eyes quiet, his expression composed. He was restraining himself, holding back from impinging on her senses, she realized. It wasn’t easy for him, such a naturally exuberant person, to hold back, but he was trying. For her.
“It’s like… being invaded by noise. Like people shouting in my ears, but also my other senses. So I see things, too, intense and larger than life. I smell things, everything at once, so much that it chokes me. And touching someone…”
“Makes everything even more intense,” he finished for her, and she nodded, feeling perilously close to tears.
“Yes. The touch itself is overwhelming, and then it’s like it opens a door for all the other stuff to be even louder, brighter, more, more, more.” She stopped herself, aware of the hysterical edge to her voice. There was a reason she didn’t discuss this with anyone, not even Andi, though her aunt had a better idea than most. So did Astar, though he had more important things to think about than his strange twin. Their mother mainly worried to death about it, so Stella had gotten in the habit of concealing the worst ravages from all of them. She hated that everyone thought she was so fragile—almost as much as she hated feeling so fragile.