Chapter 229 | Reverse
Selene shook her head firmly.
"Even so, its still inappropriate for me to sleep in your bed. And not give you the chance to sleep."
Dexter blinked.
"No, it’s all right," he said. "I also slept."
Selene’s head snapped up as her pale eyes, sightless started at Dexter, stunned.
"You slept?"
Dexter shrugged casually.
"Yeah. I also slept, you slept, so we slept together."
The words left his mouth and silence filled the entire room.
In that split second, Selene’s pale neck flushed read and she wa slightly flustered.
"You..." she stammered. "We... you..."
Dexter’s brain caught up with his mouth.
Approximately one second too late.
He chuckled and quickly clarified things.
"I’m just joking," he said. "We only cultivated together. We cultivated. You fell asleep. I put you to bed. Then I went to the kitchen to make the meals. Then I went outside to deliver them."
He paused. Regrouped.
"We didn’t sleep together."
The clarification was explicit. Unambiguous. Delivered with the deliberate, precise enunciation of a man who was acutely aware that the wrong word or wrong inflection at this moment could result in a frost seizure in his bedroom.
Selene stared at him.
Her pale eyes, still red, still wide, still carrying the particular, stunned expression of a woman whose brain was processing information at approximately three times its normal speed, held his face for a long moment.
Then she exhaled.
"Oh."
The word was soft. Relief. Clear, unmistakable relief. The exhalation of a body that had been bracing for one outcome and received another.
But Dexter, watching her through his Enhanced Hearing, detected something else in that exhale. A trace of something that wasn’t relief. Something that existed in the same frequency as relief but carried a different emotional signature.
Disappointment?
He wasn’t sure. The signal was too faint. Too brief. Too quickly buried beneath the larger, more dominant emotion of embarrassment to be reliably identified.
But it was there.
Or at least, he thought it was there.
Selene straightened her posture. She smoothed her sleeping gown with both hands. She pushed her disheveled hair back from her face. The process of reassembling her composure was visible, like watching someone build a wall brick by brick.
"I want to go freshen up," she said. Her voice was controlled again. Measured. The voice of a woman who had decided that the previous thirty seconds had not happened and was now proceeding with her day as though they hadn’t.
Dexter nodded.
"All right. I’ll have your food prepared at the dining table."
Selene walked out of the room.
She didn’t rush. She didn’t flee. She walked with the careful, measured grace that she always used, her bare feet finding the floor through memory and vibration. But her ears were pink. And the pink didn’t fade until she was well down the hallway.
Dexter stood alone in his bedroom. He stared at the closed door. Then at the rumpled bed. Then at the pillow that Selene had been holding.
The pillow still had the impression of her face in it.
He shook his head.
’She was disappointed. She was actually disappointed that we didn’t sleep together.’
’No. I’m reading too much into it. She was just embarrassed. The disappointment was relief that was misread by my Enhanced Hearing because I was overanalyzing micro-expressions in a woman who can’t make normal facial expressions because she’s blind and communicates through Echolocation and probably doesn’t even know what her face is doing half the time.’
’Or she was disappointed.’
’One of those two.’
He rubbed his face with both hands.
’I need to stop analyzing everything. I’m turning into a one-man surveillance system.’
He walked to the dining room.
---
He began plating the food. The Grade Five Celestial Phoenix Nectar Bowl for each of the girls. The Harmony Congee alongside it. The Star-Shaped Leaf tea in four cups.
He placed Mira’s bowl at her spot. Then Selene’s. Then Lyra’s. Then his own.
As he was setting Selene’s portion on the table, he felt something.
A gaze.
Not a sound. Not a vibration. Not a telepathic ping. A gaze. The particular, weighty, unmistakable sensation of being watched by someone who was waiting for you to notice them.
He turned around.
Lyra was sitting on the couch in the living room. Her dark eyes were open. The Primordial Beast Egg was still in her lap, but her cultivation had clearly been interrupted by the smell of food wafting from the kitchen.
She was staring at him.
Not at the food. At him. Through the living room, across the hallway, and into the dining room. Her dark eyes, behind the AI glasses, were locked onto his face with an expression that was simultaneously expectant and innocent.
The expression of a woman who wanted something to eat and was waiting for permission.
Dexter chuckled.
He projected his thoughts toward her through their telepathic connection.
"Do you want to eat?"
Lyra’s face immediately brightened. The transformation was instant. The serene, meditative composure of a cultivator dissolved, replaced by the eager, luminous enthusiasm of a woman who had been offered food.
She nodded. Rapidly. Her dark hair bounced. Her eyes sparkled.
"Can I eat too?" she asked as her telepathic voice carried the particular, hopeful quality of a child asking if it was time for dessert.
Dexter smiled. "Of course."
Lyra’s face broke into a full smile, glowing like the sun itself.
She stood from the couch, egg in arm, and walked toward the dining room with excitement in her eyes.
Mira, who had been sitting in her wheelchair by the window with her eyes closed in what was supposed to be cultivation but was clearly eavesdropping!
She looked at Dexter then at Lyra but her expression was one of indifference as though she wasn’t interested in what theh were talking about.
Dexter saw her expression and he smirked.
"You’re free not to eat with us if you don’t want to," he said casually but was clearly using reverse psychology on her.
Mira’s eye narrowed.
"I wasn’t eating," she said.