He set her carefully on the tile floor beside the wide marble sink. “You can read my mind anytime you like, honey. My mind is always merged with yours. I stay a shadow in there so I can find out all those fascinating things you try to hide from the world.” He smirked at her. “You are just too much of a chicken to actually look into my mind and see what thoughts are lurking there.”
She stood there, gripping the side of the marble sink, staring up at him for a few moments. “Well?” She waited. “Out! You can’t think you’re going to stay in here.”
“I cannot leave you alone,” he said mildly.
“I mean it, Dayan. Get out this instant. No arguing. Out!” She was very firm and tough about it.
Dayan looked helpless for a moment, then shrugged and glided out of the bathroom, deciding the old adage “Discretion is the better part of valor” held true.
The door closed with a hard thud behind him at a wave from Corinne’s hand. “Make sure your mind goes with you,” she called out, then found she was smiling because she could wave at doors and faucets and set her toothbrush in motion and it didn’t seem to bother Dayan in the least.
‘I do not know why you would think my mind would not go with me and stay with you at the same time.’ His voice brushed at the walls of her mind like the flutter of butterfly wings, sending waves of warmth coursing through her.
For the first time in a long while, Corinne found she was truly happy. Standing in the bathroom, leaning against the sink, making an attempt to do something with her wild mass of hair, she was perfectly happy. Once she had pulled her hair free from the thick braid, it was too heavy to manage. She found she was too tired to lift her arms to tidy it. She sighed very softly.
‘What is wrong?’ There was anxiety in his voice.
Corinne didn’t actually reply, she knew she didn’t, she just sighed again, but it was enough to bring him rushing in, scooping her up as if she were precious porcelain. Her hair tumbled in all directions, fanning out over his shoulder and across the dark shadow on his jaw. “Just can’t stay away, can you?” she asked, secretly grateful he had raced in to rescue her.
“I knew you needed rescuing,” he said with great male satisfaction.
“Was I thinking rescue? That was the actual word in my mind?” She shook her head as she settled onto the bed. “I don’t think rescue was the precise word. I can’t imagine using a word like that.”
“Oh, it was rescue all right.” He wasn’t going to let her off the hook that easily, not when her green eyes were sparkling with laughter and her intriguing dimple was very much in evidence. He especially loved that dimple. He knew he could spend hours looking at that dimple and never get tired of it.
He took the brush out of her hand. “It is amazing what the males of my race are called upon to do.”
Corinne waved her hand toward the center of the room. “Go over there and do something.” When he sat there, she pushed him, “Go on, do something.”
“Something?” he echoed as he moved obediently into the middle of the bedroom. “What kind of something?” He sounded wary.
“I don’t know exactly. Something cool. What do you like to do?” She was looking at him from under her fringe of long lashes.
Dayan suddenly grinned like a mischievous boy. “Anything at all?”
“Sure. Something really big.”
His black eyebrows shot up. “If I show you, are you going to show me?”
“Sounds like a dare to me,” Corinne said. “I can’t resist a dare.”
“Then you go first.” He folded his arms across his chest, regarding her with his black gaze. “If I go first, you are quite likely to faint from shock.”
“Faint! I am not the fainting type. Nothing you do could scare me that much now that I know you can do it,” she replied haughtily.