At first, Esya's half-open eyelids did not react, still too dazed and confused to really take the full measure of the situation. But when the fog of confusion lifted from her gaze, giving way to clarity, her eyes suddenly widened in disbelief.
Her face turned poppy red, and Jake almost felt his soul fleeing out of his heart as he faced her fully lucid glare. Her frail body shivered ominously between his arms, and it wasn't from the cold. She was undoubtedly in the throes of her greatest existential crisis.
Feeling a disaster coming, Jake immediately distanced himself from her, and leapt back in a preventive manner, but the young woman's fruity fragrance and the taste of her lips remained vividly in his mind. His righteous and honest expression was not as convincing as he had hoped, and his "victim" didn't miss a thing of his bad acting.
