Don’t you dare fuck around. The odds arenotin your favor with a self-taught woman who understands that knowledge is a discipline and every afternoon, over lavender tea, she has a lust affair with its logics.
She was an intellectual wet dream. Barefoot. Somehow that made her more threatening. The wispy skirt the color of pink rose petals and sleeveless white top over a chest that was unmistakably woman, was an exclamation mark dramatizing the facts.
And there he went, following her. Alone. Into her home. Boat smashed. Hope gone, regret gone.
She paused at a shallow tub of water on her porch and washed her dainty feet. His gaze devoured every second, inch, and angle of the strange act, while the fire in his mind moved over her ankle and up her calf.
“I have a disproportionate loathing for dirty feet and dirt on the floors,” she said, explaining the oddity with words that set fire to his sick gifts.
“You have no need to explain yourself to me, Miss. LaFleur.”
She paused and looked back at him. The smile she gave was barely there, maybe amused. But it was a declaration of war on his lust. “Call me Hope, please?”
The request/question got logged as an infraction. His lust was already stockpiling. Every oddity, every quirk, every anomaly would be counted as attacks that would then demand a just countermeasure.
Inside her home, the battlefield was scattered with more offenses waiting to be scrutinized. Beginning with the messy tidiness. He scanned the abstract sculpture art everywhere, some part of him offended with the chaotic form of entertainment.
“Sit if you want,” she said, hurrying her quiet bare feet to a desk tucked into a wall.
He would cut the visit shorter.
Call for a ride that could reach him quick.
She returned with a notebook pressed to her chest, her steps less hurried now. He waited to be given the tablet, a necessary prison for his greedy eyes.
“I should read it to you,” she said, index fingers tapping on it. “My handwriting is indecipherable.”
That she’dwrittenit, that she’d written itmessily, that she’s written it messily on actualpaper.He weighed each one, watching his mind catalog it as a kink he needed to submerge himself in.
Then he realized her proposed alternative. Her mouthreadingthat kink to him.
His gaze would have no leash. “As you see fit,” he said, nailing his eyes to the floor.
She cleared her throat. “Uh… Would you like a drink first.”
“No, I’m fine,” he said, hearing the hurry in his tone. “I will need to call for transportation so I’m not late for my next order of business.”
His gaze escaped the floor and moved up a wall, then along the ceiling, making its way closer to her.
“I’ll read it as fast as I’m able,” she said, implying her handwriting might be indecipherable to her as well.
“So…Pah-Pah’s procedural memory is right as rain.”
Skul’s gaze flew to her at that first statement. Procedural memory. His lust took a virtuous turn. That she would dare know and understand this term while at the same time being sofuckingbeautiful felt like a sin.
Fuck, he hated himself.
Her gaze moved off the tablet and moseyed around the room as she explained. “So… his feet remember the dock. His hands remember the boat and his mouth remembers how to fuss Mah-Mah, but his… face-knowing is going bad in a weird way.”
She scorched him with her burning wheat gaze. It was full of worry but one she was determined to defeat. “It’s a very messy agnosia,” she said, smearing her logic-lust all over his cock.
“Pah-Pah’s decline is… too fast and too crooked.” She hugged the notebook tighter, her teeth scraping her lower lip. “They don’t match ordinary aging fades. His body remembers things his thinking mind can’t explain.”
Her unique logical expressions got counted as word sorcery.
“His recent memory is breaking down fast. He forgets meals, conversations, warnings, and instructions within short stretches of time.”
She turned and began to slowly stroll, her bare feet moving in quiet, chaotic patterns.