Despite understanding he was teasing, for a tick there Eppie nearly struck him anyway. She reckoned Alistair would have deserved it, for so provoking her in such an intense moment. But then his fingers were upon her chin — A startling level of physical intimacy — and he was declaring his intention ...

"I— Oh— All right—" Eppie stuttered as the lamp was lifted from her hands and set aside. Her gaze swung back up as Alistair straightened, and she then blinked, her mouth silently working.

"You could have— All right," she began, motioning with her hand to indicate that he might have stood in front ...

How odd to hear D's oft-repeated words issued from Alistair's mouth. All this time, she'd brushed the idea away with the promptness she had believed it was deserving of — The gentle praise from a biased source that could not be further from the truth. Oh, Eppie was not without self-worth, she simply ...

The touch to her elbow jerked Eppie free from her mortification, and she spun with a swing of the light with her, its arc picking out bottles and shelves and stone before it settled again on Alistair. What was it that D hoped for them, she asked herself again. Certainly he'd not press his ear to the ...

"No, not that I'm aware of," Eppie was quick to reply, shaking her head in the upward glow from the lamp. "I've come down here more times than I could count, and— Oh. " This last word was more enraged breath than properly-formed sound, and her nostrils flared as stepped back to the door and pounded ...

Glad for the cloak of the room's dim, Eppie bit her tongue: Alistair had seen her quite worked up only the day before, but had perhaps been too uncertain of himself or the tension of the moment to recognize as much. Belatedly, she became aware of how close they two were, and of the fact that she'd ...

"He would use that excuse, but he's more worried it will contaminate the bottles," said Eppie as she motioned for Alistair to follow her. "Or so he has said. It's possible he is in jest. I think he enjoys seeing me worked up."

Beyond the door, which swung slowly closed under its own weight, were ...

Eppie stared at the proffered hand a tick and then accepted it. Were it anyone else — And by anyone else, she meant D — she might have batted it away with a protest that she was more than capable of standing from a chair. But this was not anyone else, although with the way Alistair's skin felt like ...

The notion of spending yet more time alone with Alistair sent Eppie's stomach into knots that managed, somehow, to be both contrary — For their excitement and dread — and work in concert to produce a faint nauseation. There would certainly be no further extending of her already lengthy repast.

"It ...

"I knew a woman once who lived her entire life in a little house next to a water wheel, she said she loathed hard freezes because she couldn't sleep without the sound of it creaking away all night," Eppie ejected, the anecdote out of her mouth quite before she had become aware of speaking. She ...