Arianna Rose: The Gathering (Part 3) (6 page)

To hell with prophesies
, she thought, imagining what his tongue would feel like elsewhere.  What she was experiencing with Desmond, the fact that he loved her, was more important than any ancient rambling scribbled in a book. 

S
he was about to begin unzipping the fly of his jeans when slowly, Desmond lowered his hand from her chest. The sensuous probing of his tongue stopped and he pecked her lips lightly. 

Arianna backed away from him,
shocked and panting a bit.  She searched his eyes for an explanation, but saw the same passion-glazed look in his eyes she was sure she wore herself.

“We can’t,” he said
, but his words lacked conviction.  And so did his body.  He wanted her; that much was plain to see. 

“I want you,” she ignored his halfhearted attempt to stop what they’d begun and looked at him with every bit of hunger she was feeling. 

Desmond cupped her face in his hands then bent his head.  He took her lips hard, sending a burst of emotion through her.  He pulled her close to him and her energy roared inside her like a river, powerful, unstoppable.  Arianna’s body melted against his and she parted her lips.  He slid his tongue between them and sent her over the last ledge of self-control that remained in her.  She loved him.  And she wanted nothing more than to be with him, all of him. 

The sudden need to touch every inch of his skin, to feel his naked body writhing atop hers, overwhelmed her. 

“I love you, Arianna.  My life is meaningless without you,” he whispered with sincerity.

Arianna threw her arms around his neck and drew herself deeper into his ravenous kiss.  She wanted to hear him say he l
oved her again and again, to hear that he needed her as she needed him, but desire enveloped her fully.  His hands found the hem of her sweater and pulled it over her head before they moved to the clasp at the back of her bra.  The satiny garment fell to the floor soundlessly and he lowered his eyes to admire her soft mounds.  Her nipples were taught with excitement and she could think of nothing more than the feel of him taking a firm peak between his lips and rolling his tongue over it.  He mimicked the act in her mouth, thrusting his tongue temptingly around hers as his hands caressed her eager breasts.  She breathed hard, panting excitedly and he pulled his mouth from hers, kissing the length of her jaw and neck to her collarbone and lower, until finally, he reached her breasts.  He kissed every part of them, progressing slowly until he reached her nipple.  He took one between his lips and Arianna drew in her breath sharply, need twisting almost painfully as it touched every inch of her like tiny shards of mind-numbing sexual desire.

“Oh Desmond,” she breathed and tangled her fingers in his hair.

He began kissing her other breast as he unfastened the button of her jeans.  He slid them down past her hips and she lifted each foot as he slid them off.  Then he removed her silky thong underwear and a quiver of enjoyment wound about her core.  He was about to kiss lower, to delve into the deepest part of her womanhood when she stopped him.  She did not want it to be that way.  She wanted to feel him first, feel his bare skin against hers.  She knelt and pulled at his shirt.  He obliged by lifting his arms and she pulled it over his head.  She tugged at his shoulder gently, before his mouth touched the soft curls between her legs and he looked up at her questioningly.  She gestured for him to stand and he rose to his feet slowly, allowing his eyes to languidly roam over her naked body. 

His act made her reconsider her decision to cuddle first as need pooled low in her belly, his eyes fondling every part of her seductively.  The need for him to be inside of her moved her and was nearly her undoing.  She closed the distance between them and pressed her chest to his.  She felt his heat, felt his swell of excitement against her
waist.  She slid her hand over it and it was he who drew in his breath sharply this time.  He groaned and cupped her bare bottom in his hands, lifting her.  She wrapped her legs around him and he carried her to the couch. 

“Desmond,” she breathed.  “To hell with the prophecy, take me now.”

Her mention of the prophecy seemed to splash on him like a bucket of ice water.  Desmond pushed himself up, away from her, up onto his hands, his body hovering over her.  She hooked a leg around his thigh.

“I want you,” she said lustfully. 

“No,” he whispered and shock immobilized her.

“What?” she asked and did not bother to hide her surprise and frustration.

“No, we can’t,” he panted.

“No?  What the hell do you mean
no
?” she asked, hurt and rejection lacing her every word. 

“I mean we can’t do this.”

“What the fuck Desmond?  We can’t do this?  We already started
something
!  What the hell is your problem?”

Her hurt and frustration quickly segued into anger.  She was naked and they’d been about to make love a second ago and
that
was the moment he decided it was a bad idea. 

“You belong to another,” he said tightly.  “It is your fate.”

“I belong to no one,” she said firmly and pushed his arms away as she sat up.  “And fuck fate!”

“Arianna, it’s not that simple, you know that,” he began but she cut him off.

“Yes, Desmond, it is,” she said through her teeth as she scrambled to cover herself with throw pillows.  She felt vulnerable, more than she had in all her life.  She was exposed in every sense of the word and wanted nothing more than to put her guard back in place, where it had always been.  “Get out,” she breathed.  She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly, fighting back tears.

“Arianna, wait,” he
tried, but she did not want to hear another explanation of why they couldn’t be together, or the newest crazy nonsense that she was destined to be with someone else. 

“Get out,
now
!” she hissed.  “And don’t come back.”

The set of her jaw and the look in her eyes warned him not to say another word
, that he had hurt her beyond repair.  She watched, feeling the weight of the world crushing her chest, as he dressed then turned and walked out the front door.  She wished he would have teleported.  Watching him go had hurt far worse than it would have had he just vanished from her sight as he had in the past. 

For several moments,
Arianna sat on her couch, naked in more ways than just the obvious, and stared at her front door.  She did not know what she expected it to do.  Burst open maybe with Desmond on the other side screaming, “To hell with rules and prophecies! You’re my woman!”  No, nothing that dramatic; in fact, she expected nothing at all.  That was how her entire life had been.  She’d gotten nothing from it, and she expected nothing from it, nothing except heartache.  She could not wrap her mind around what had just happened.  One minute, they had been lost in passion and the next, he was spouting about her fate and how she belonged to another.  She had no idea what any of it meant.  She vaguely remembered him saying something similar at Kane’s church.  Of course, they hadn’t been naked and about to make love at the time.  Regardless, it sounded familiar.  She could not remember exactly what he’d said.  Much of that day remained blurry, a horrific, nightmarish blur.  She guessed none of what he’d said mattered.  He’d made himself clear.  They could not be together.  And he’d rejected her when she’d thought it impossible for a man to reject a woman: with her naked and begging for him from beneath him.  But he had. 

Intense, indescribable embarrassment consumed her, burned up her body until it settled on her neck and cheeks.  She stood and began picking up her clothes.  She slipped her sweater over her head then her underwear and her pants with tears stinging her eyes.  She was about to walk to the kitchen and unpack to distract herself when
she felt her knees buckle.  She collapsed onto the couch.  Sobs racked her body, tears of shame and anger, of helplessness and confusion.  Was her life already laid out for her?  Had some ancient seer predicted her future?  Did it include a life of loneliness and misery?  Desmond had said she belonged to another.  She wondered what the hell that meant.  She wanted Desmond, not this mystery person he’d spoken of.  And with her luck, the other man would not be a man at all, but some awful troll of a being she’d be forced to spend eternity with. 

Too many question
s turned in her mind.  Surely someone had the answers, someone willing to share them.  Desmond merely offered her cryptic clips.  She did not know where he’d gotten his information from or how he’d gotten it, but she wanted to know more.  It was her damn life, after all.

Arianna wiped her eyes with the bottom of her sweater and walked to the kitchen, determined to finish unpacking the kitchen
, at the very least, and to make a conscious effort to forget about Desmond.

Chapter 5

Streaks of sherbet orange colored the early morning sky.  For the first time in her life, Arianna had awakened without the blaring of an alarm clock.  Her eyes had simply popped open
of their own accord to see a violet predawn canvas giving way to ribbons of salmon pink.  The view from her bedroom was nothing short of breathtaking and would take little time getting used to.  Her last bedroom had boasted scenery through a rectangular sliver of a window that had included an oversized satellite dish and the top of the trailer beside it.  Between those two eyesores, she had only been able to glimpse a slice of the outdoors.  To say her new view was better than the old was a gross understatement. 

She rolled over onto her ba
ck and stared up at her freshly painted ceiling.  Everything was different at her new cabin, including the glaring fact that she was alone.  New bedding, new clothes and a nice new place to live were, well, nice.  But she would trade all of it to have her mother back. 

Thoughts of her mother allowed familiar pangs of grief to encroach. 
That, and the events of the night before rushed to the forefront of her mind and jockeyed for the distinguished title of which would make her cry first.  Being stark naked and about to have sex with a guy, only to have him reject her flat-out had wounded her ego badly.  She had strong feelings for Desmond, had wanted to indulge in something pleasurable for the first time in what seemed like eternity.  But even that had been taken from her.  She was not the kind of girl who was prone to pity parties.  If she’d spent her life bemoaning all that had happened to her, it would have consumed her completely and been a twenty four-hour-a-day job.  She’d always taken life as it came, and dealt with it accordingly.  But nothing that had happened since the dawn of her powers had been easily dealt with.  Death, destruction, humiliation and loss after loss made regaining her footing on her path next to impossible.  Arianna felt her cheeks burn with shame, frustration, and plain old sadness.  She did not want to begin her first day at the last high school she’d ever attend with swollen, red eyes, so she drove each painful thought to the back of her mind, forcefully evicted every one of them until her mind was left with a strange numbness.  She’d return to them later.  She’d have plenty of time after school, and in the future, to mourn. 

A glance at the clock on her nightstand revealed it was just after six o’clock in the morning.  Her first class did not start until seven thirty, but she assumed she needed to get there early for her obliga
tory meeting with the principal and guidance counselor, and for a tour.  Arianna groaned aloud at the memory of her last tour at Herald Falls High School.  Going through the whole welcome-to-our-shitty-school rigmarole again seemed like cruel and unusual punishment, especially since she’d been through it so many times.  Surely, a statute of limitation on such acts of torture existed somewhere.  The only redeemable part of it all was that today would be the last time she would ever have to endure it.  Her mother was gone and moving was up to her.  Arianna had never liked moving from place to place like a gypsy.  She’d always envied people who had true roots to where they were, people who had lived in a town for their whole life.  The length of time she and her mom would spend in a particular area had always been dependent upon her mother’s fickle taste in men.  Such was no longer the case.  Now she was in charge, and the taste of power was bittersweet.

A single tear slipped from her cheek.  She quickly brushed it away with the back of her hand and sat up.  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood.  The plush carpet was warm and soft beneath her feet as she padded toward the small bathroom in her bedroom.  She’d never had more than one bathroom in any place she’d lived.  And she’d had to share it with at least one other person.  Now, she had two bathrooms and lived alone.  Two seemed decadent. 
A small smirk tugged at the corners of her mouth at the notion of having two bathrooms.  She would have killed for two when she and her mother had lived at Carl’s place before they’d moved to Herald Falls.  Carl’s bathroom habits and his utter lack of cleanliness had left much to be desired.  But Carl was a part of a past that seemed distant.  And today was the first day of her new life, one that included the title of Sola, a role she was still uncertain of how to perform.  She would figure that out, and many other things in her life, another time, though.  Presently, school awaited her arrival and she needed to ready herself for it.

After
brushing her teeth, taking a quick shower and dressing, Arianna ate breakfast and headed to school.  She drove her mother’s old Camry and decided to park it in the farthest spot in the lot from the actual school building in hopes of avoiding attention.  To her surprise, there were many other cars just like hers.  In varying states of dilapidation that ranged from rust to tied-on bumpers, the vast majority were older models.  The area surrounding the school had looked like the average working-class neighborhood, but experience had taught her that that meant little.  The parking lot always told the whole story.  The one she was currently in upheld the story the neighborhood had told.