Bitterroot Valley ✢ And his eyes all over me

He laughed at her, but Angel only waited, and the knowledge was soon dispensed. She practiced these words under her breath as well, and they came easier to her, her mouth shaping them less clumsily each time. She flashed a warm smile up at the man's face, and then faltered as he moved closer.

She'd not learned to fear men, strangers or not. And Sega had cared for her while she was ill, completely at his mercy; there was no part of her that registered any sort of danger. But she felt uneasy all the same, her heart fluttering in her chest. She thought, perhaps, that she liked the feeling. Even if it made her breath catch in her throat.

"So I can tell my mother," she told him, misinterpreting his questioning tone. She felt caught in his gaze, and she was not sure she didn't resent it. She tried to resent it, at least, and found herself feeling quite at his mercy again instead. "She'll want to know all that I've seen and done, and everything I've learned."

Work remained unfinished below her. She'd forgotten what she'd come to him for, and the task that he'd set for her.