“Of course,” I shared my response without hesitation. “How did you manage to find a handle so quickly? It looks almost identical to the old one.”
“It is,” he confirmed.
“Hm?”
“Identical. To the old one,” Rhylan pressed.
My eyes widened with panic and I almost shifted from my seat on the sofa with the urge to come closer and read the materials from the box that lay ripped on the porch.
“What is this one made of? I emailed about a handle I liked made out of golden bronze.” I tried to seem casual enough.
“It does not matter what you like,sprout.” His tone sounded mocking, almost ridiculing me and that word, calling me a sprout as if I was so young to the world and knew nothing of it.
“But I don’t want it to be made out of iron again.” The phrase escaped my mouth before I even thought of it.
He stopped and turned his gaze to me, scanning my face. “Is there a problem with iron?”
“No…” I corrected my posture and made my way into the kitchen, leaving him alone with his work. By the time I returned with two steaming mugs of coffee, Rhylan had renounced his uniform in favour of a black undershirt. So low cut that I had a perfect view of his abs and his sculpted form. Both his arms shone ornate tattoo sleeves with such intricate designs it would probably take me an hour to decipher the stories they told. I swallowed hard—he looked very hot—he had the body of a marble-carved roman god, but his entire posture shared the coldness of the stone. That chest was not one to lay your head on, it was one where even the finest of doctors would struggle to find a heartbeat.
“Coffee?” I offered, coming out from my hiding place in the kitchen and passed him the hot mug. He reached for it, placing his long fingers over mine and pressing them onto the steaming mug. My hand twitched from the burning sensation and pulled away, abandoning the mug that was left resting in his hand.
“No tolerance for pain, I see.” He threw me a dark look, taking a big sip from the black liquid.
“Black coffee, how did you guess?”
It doesn’t take a genius to see it matches your heart, I wanted to say. I settled for, “Just a guess,” and retook my seat on the sofa, sipping from my own mug, latte sweetened with two brown sugar cubes, hazelnut milk and whipped cream with cinnamon.
“Do you have the alarm clock as well?
“I'll swing that by tomorrow, I thought the priority was the handle, was it not?” Another one of his dark judging looks penetrated through me.
“No problem.” I settled further on the sofa, mending my coffee while I watched him work.
“Is this going to take all day?” I realised that Ansgar might want to make a surprise visit seeing as it was almost midday.
“Why? Expecting someone?” Rhylan huffed mockingly. Whatever his mouth kept from me, his dark gaze projected. He knew I was hiding something and he probably had a few guesses. The way he looked at me sometimes, menace blended with disappointment, made me quiver in my seat.
I fluttered my eyelashes. “I have a queue of visitors every day,” I responded sarcastically.
“I presume you will have at least one visitor.” Rhylan let the tension fade out in the air and even though I knew I should shut my mouth, I needed to push him on it.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He threw me a distasteful look. “Do you really need me to say it?”
I kept silent and pierced him with a sharp stare, trying to penetrate into his skull and find out exactly how much he knew.
“First you mysteriously decide to take birth control and now you change the locks, not because they are not working, as you stated in your request, but because you suddenly developed a distaste for iron. One can only piece the puzzle together.”
“Meaning?” I stood from the sofa and placed both my hands on my hips in a threatening stance.
“Meaning that whatever you are doingsprout, that fae is one lucky bastard.”
There it was again, that mockery of a name, yet I was much more concerned with the fact that he openly admitted the existence of fae. The tension lingered so thick I could pierce it with hot coal and the smoke would still not manage to blast off the visual bond we had created.
“I do not know what you mean,” I answered silently, in the calmest, lowest tone found.
“Of course you don’t,” he smirked knowingly and returned to his work.