Sentinel of Heaven (15 page)

As he squired
her past the bedroom she saw the box spring was still naked; he hadn't moved
the mattress back.  Indeed, it still was incorporated into his nest in the
living room where he led her.

“I hate going
to the store on work days,” she grumbled, sinking down on to the mattress.  “Between
that and the traffic I feel like there's no time left.  Soon I'll have to go to
bed.”

Leo handed her
the glass wordlessly, and shook out a pill for her to take.

“I don't mean
to be bitchy; I think I'm just tired now, probably starting to hurt a bit, too.”

He set the
water glass and pill bottle on her end table when she was done.

“Are we going
to keep this where it is?” Moira asked, tapping the mattress beside her.

He nodded
emphatically.

“I'll just
wind up waking you up with more nightmares.”

He shrugged,
implying he'd be waking up anyway. 

“You want me
sleeping out here with you?”  Again, his nod.

“Why?” she
asked slyly.  He returned her gaze the same way; you know I'm not going to
answer that, his look said.

Leo sat down
on the floor in the nest, facing her, reaching out to take one of her hands
between his.  He began to massage it gently, pulling and lightly twisting each
finger, putting pressure on the palm and on the top and bottom of her wrist. 
She shut her eyes in bliss – but not before seeing the sweet little smile on
his face.

“Ahhh, you're
good at that,” she sighed.  “Feel free to not stop.”

He moved on to
her other hand after a moment, giving it the same attention, then slowly up her
forearm, rubbing away the tension and the soreness. 

She sighed.  “Could
you go all the way up, maybe even do my shoulders and upper back?  Nothing can
be done about my lower back – that's basically fucked no matter what – but I
carry so much tension around those spots...”

The massive
angel expressed amiable agreement, gesturing to her collar and buttons,
suggesting she take her blouse off.

“Sure.”  Moira
shrugged.  Just like a cat grooming, right?  She pulled off the blouse and
tossed it on the floor outside the nest, then considered for a heartbeat and took
off her bra as well.

Leo's eyes
were dark and unreadable – focused on her abdomen, on her chest and arms, on
her scars.

“Not polite to
stare,” she chided.

He glanced up
at her face and then away, suddenly abashed.

Playing more
nonchalant than she felt Moira stretched out on her belly on the mattress and
shut her eyes.  After a moment she felt him prowl onto the bed beside her, then
move to straddle her hips.  His strong warm hands again, now moving across her
left upper arm and up to the curve of that shoulder, gently pressing with his
fingertips, gripping and releasing slowly.

When she
opened her eyes a slit she could see only white, all around.  It was a moment
before she realized that he’d set the leading edge of his wings on the bed to
support some of his weight as he leaned forward, as a man might lean on his
forearms.  The feathered appendages were glowing softly in the dim light of the
living room and projecting a comforting heat.

Leo's hands
were moving to the center of her back, firm but careful up the arch of her neck
and into her short blond hair.  He scratched her scalp lightly around the base
of her skull and chuckled silently at her sigh.

Between the
meds and his work, Moira was nearly limp with bliss.

He finished
down the other shoulder but lingered, seeming reluctant to move off of her.  He
traced his fingers up and down in rows along the flesh of her back, from the
top of her shoulders down to the waistband of her pants, the same amount of
tenderness showed to healthy flesh and hardened scars alike.

Then he shifted,
sitting back over her calves now and leaning far forward.  Moira almost sat up
to see what he was doing – until she felt his lips at the base of her spine.

He kissed her
skin for a long moment... then lifted up just a fraction.  She felt his nose
brush over perhaps an inch before he kissed her again.

Languid and
slow, he followed a meandering path over her back and left a burning trail –
everywhere he set his mouth the nerves came alive and seemed to vibrate.  His
pace never increased.  Each inch of skin was treated as if utterly precious,
irreplaceable.  His shoulder-length locks had fallen unbound around his face
and would brush across her flesh at random, unpredictable little caresses that
emptied her mind.

Leo covered
the back of her ribs and the long muscles there, side to side, then up to where
her shoulder blades began.  He didn't appear to notice how she stirred even
though she fought desperately to remain still.  Her face was hot and dry in the
secrecy of the cold linen pillowcase.

And still he
came on, relentless and gentle as a spring thaw – higher now where surely he
could hear how her breath seemed to whistle in her chest, shallow and fast.  If
his kisses had become black spots in the shape of his upper and lower lip she
would have looked like a snow leopard, white against the dark.  She could feel
the heat of his chest inches above her back.

The last line
was across the very top ridge of her shoulders and then back, to trace the
bumps of her spine until he reached her hairline.  His breath stirred against
the back of her head.

Leo crouched
there an endless moment and all Moira could think of was this: that she had
never felt more adored, not ever.  That was the only word she could imagine for
such an act, such time spent and such completion pursued.

Oh, if he
moved now; oh, if he gave any indication – she would slip onto that same back
he had just worshiped, feeling ten thousand kisses hot and forever like brands
of ownership pressed against the bed sheet.  She would reach up her hands and
pull him down and give him every single part of her – body, mind, and soul.

Oh God.  I
love him.

Oh God.

I'm
doomed.

And still he
hung over her, as the sky overhangs the earth, and just as impossible to hold.

She felt her
tears soaking the pillow and she let them come, crying silently.

He still
seemed to realize, but what he thought of it she couldn't know and didn't care
at the moment.  He shifted to lay on his side next to her, covering her with
the warm weight of his wing.  His flesh touched hers in only one place – where
one of his hands was spread on her shoulder.

Three days,
Moira.  You've known him all of three days.

Yes, and
three heartbeats would have been sufficient.  He's magnificent.

The little
voice was wise indeed, enough to fall silent.

He let her cry
it all out, unmoving.  When she dried her face and turned to look at him at
last he was watching her.  He arched his eyebrows in question.

“Girls are
silly,” she answered softly.  “It just... got a bit intense, I guess.”

Leo accepted
the explanation with no more interrogation, leaning forward to kiss her
forehead, then slowly drawing back his wing and crawling to the edge of the
mattress to walk away.  He returned a moment later with one of her nightgowns
in his hand.  She sniffed and shrugged it on, then removed her pants from
underneath it.  He turned off the kitchen lights and the one living room lamp
as she slid beneath the covers.

He still
glowed, enough for her to watch him fold himself down into the nest and reach
over to fuss at her covers, making sure she was completely protected against
the night chill. 
The stuff of stars made human-shaped,
she mused. 
So
why would a being like that ever...

Moira let the
thought trail away.

If you love
him, said the little voice finally, but he doesn’t feel the same way for you,
you mustn't burden him with it.  If he flies away someday you'll make sure he
leaves with no weight on his heart but gratitude for your hospitality.

And Moira as
always would bow to the superior understanding that her subconscious spoke, no
matter what it cost her.

But his hand
on her back again, comforting them both as they waited for sleep to take them,
made that obedience bitter indeed.

Moira would
never stop being amazed at how a decent night's sleep might improve one's
outlook, no matter what one was facing.

She remembered
she’d started having a nightmare, a oldie but a goody.  It was the one where
she was staring at the eyeball on the roof-become-floor, mentally screaming at
it for it to turn and look at her, turn and show her the iris – be it brown or hazel
or blue or, yes goddammit, green – so she would know for sure whether or not
this star-crossed trip would cost her half her sight.

Then she had
awoken just enough to feel that broad warm hand gently petting her back,
stroking her and soothing her.  He woke her up enough to regain her sense of
self, then he squeezed her shoulder affectionately and allowed her to fall back
into dreamless sleep.

And when the
alarm clock he'd transferred to the living room had crowed the oh dark hundred
hour not two feet from her head, she turned it off and stretched and even
smiled.

Moira lay in
the warmth for a long moment, considering.

Let's not even
call it the L-word, shall we?  We're not going to reference it.  We're not even
going to dwell on it, because dwelling is unhealthy.  Like any other injury, we
will work with it and around it, until it repairs itself.

And in the
meanwhile, for however long it lasts, you do have a beautiful man here.  You
can look at him, and kiss him, and enjoy his cooking and his massages and his
bright blue eyes, all to yourself.  He came into your life as a gift; when
someday he leaves it, let it be the same way – your gift back to his home
realm, the return of their wayward prince.

So she rolled
over to where he was watching her through the screen of his sleek locks.  She
rose up on her knees, brushing his hair back behind his ear with her
fingertips, then bent to kiss him deeply.

“Good morning,
Leo,” she whispered, then kissed him again and got out of bed.

Today can
be good,
Moira thought in the shower. 
I've got an interesting project
at work and no meetings scheduled with Erica so I've all day to work on it. 
The office is emptier every day with people taking vacation for the holiday;
it's more quiet and I can concentrate.

When I'm
on my lunch I can be with Leo, catch up on what he's been doing, how he's been
exploring this world and what memories and skills he may have recovered.  And
when I'm done today I can come straight home to him.

He had her
lunch fixed when she came out of the bedroom, and a glass for her to go ahead
and take some meds – a one pill morning!  As she swallowed it down and he
picked up her laptop bag and handed her the cane, he pressed another item into
her free hand.

A dried fruit
bar.  Raspberry.

Moira loved
raspberries more than just about any other fruit except for cherries but she
knew for certain she didn't have any of these bars laying around her kitchen;
the brand was expensive.  She treated herself by shopping at one of the organic
stores in the city sometimes and this was one of her little extravagances. 
They never lasted long, and they
never
got lost in her kitchen to be
found later.

So obviously
this fruit bar had not originated in her kitchen.

“What is this?”
she asked him suspiciously.

Breakfast, he
mouthed, deliberately misunderstanding.

“No, I mean:
how did you get it?”

He gestured to
his wings again.

“Dearheart – I
don't need you to steal breakfast for me.”

Leo
flip-flopped his hands: I did, and I didn't.

She raised a
brow and eye-balled him, he maintained a bland and blameless visage.

“So you can
tell me to my face and honestly that I should have a clear conscious about
eating this?  Because I like to save my guilt for bigger and more important
things.”

Yes, he
answered silently.

She held the
look a moment longer although her amusement was rising.  He could look like a
little boy trying to get out of trouble, sometimes.

“Okay.  I
believe you.  But let's keep the larceny to a minimum in the future, shall we?”

Leo grinned
when he realized she was pulling his leg, and hugged her tightly.  He had to
bend down so far to kiss her; that was the one thing about their height
difference that she found irksome.  It couldn't be comfortable for him to stand
like that for very long.

“Wait a
moment,” she said, and pulled out one of the chairs at the kitchen table, using
his arm like a rail to help her balance as she stepped up on it.

“There, we're
almost the same height; try it now,” she said, and leaned into him again.  She
felt him start with shock when their lips met.

He shuffled
her belongings quickly onto the table, not breaking the kiss but freeing his
hands to wrap around her midsection.  Standing like this, eye to eye – it was a
peculiar type of intimacy. 
He's probably never kissed anyone anywhere near
as tall as himself. 

He was
certainly enjoying it; the clasp of his arms had a possessive feel to it.  When
she drew back a little she was pleased that she could gaze directly into his
eyes, which were sparking with energy.  Her arms were resting naturally on his
shoulders, her hands in his hair.

Leo stroked
both hands down her back and pulled her into him again with a strangely hungry
touch.  She brushed her fingertips over his cheek – what had gotten into him?

“Leo, baby...
I've got to go to work soon,” she managed eventually.

He leaned his
forehead against hers and exhaled for a moment.  She felt her heart flutter in
response.   “I can stand on a chair for this whenever you want, if my back and
leg will cooperate,” she offered.  He laughed once, in his silent way.

One last kiss
then, more gentle than the others, and at last he seemed back to himself.

“Leo... why'd
this shock you so?”

He tilted his
chin down and away, but his gaze slid back to hers.  Consideration, he said,
slowly so she could read it.

And then: Sensation.

She caught his
jaw easily in her cupped hand at her current height, urged him to look at her
full-on again.

“The
consideration of someone getting up somewhere for you to be able to kiss
comfortably?  And... the sensation of being face to face with someone you're
kissing?”

Leo nodded,
brow furrowed.  He seemed completely nonplussed at his reaction; she took pity
at last and let him turn away from her questions.

He steadied
her as she stepped down and helped her to arrange her bags to carry them out to
the car.

“Bye for now,
dearheart – behave yourself!”  She waited for his smile and wave from the door
before she pulled out from around the house, headed toward the road.  She ate
the fruit bar on the interstate.  It was delicious.

Long miles and
minutes later, the guard at the front desk of her office building saw her and
brightened up in response to the grin she was still wearing.  “Good morning,
miss!” he said.

Miss?  I
look like a miss?
she thought.

Well, I
feel like a madam.

The thought
made her chuckle and she returned his salutation joyfully, leaving the man
confused but happy
.  It may be he's never seen me smile before.  The people
that I just pass by on a daily basis and never speak to...  the weight of that
frown may be all they see.  Maybe it's time I start changing that.

All the little
things that would on any other day irritate the ever-loving crap out of her,
about this building and the people in it – they didn't seem to be able to touch
her this morning.  There was some serene and tranquil core deep within her
being powerful enough to draw from.

She put her
lunch in the break room fridge and settled in at her desk, knocking out her few
emails in the first thirty minutes.  The next three hours, save for a bathroom
and water break, were spent combing through her cases until she arrived at the
current day.  Out of around seven hundred investigations carried to any depth,
there were twenty-three that had strange and untranslatable entries – whether
in address books, spreadsheets, or on purchase orders and similar transaction
records. 

Each one she
meticulously outlined in a document with notes on when she researched them,
what the outcome was, and where the untranslatable entries were found.  Any
electronic scanned documents she copied to a new folder on her desktop,
sub-foldered by investigation.  She pulled the purely hard-copy records from
her filing cabinet and went down the six flights in the elevator, putting the
copy machine to hard work for a while.

The original
prints went back into their folders; the new copies went into a separate file
in her personal laptop bag, again divided by title pages into chronological
history.

The lunch hour
was dawning as she finished up – the perfect time for the other thing she was
contemplating.  As she'd asked the little voice yesterday, it was true that the
USB ports on the front of her work PC had been disabled.  Who else has been too
clever?  That was indeed the question.

Nudged by an
impulse too subtle to be fully articulated, she eased the back of her computer
away from the grey fabric of the cube wall.  Various cords plugged into the
ports there: keyboard, mouse, power cord, monitor cord.

Ahh.  The old
round plugs where a keyboard and mouse used to be plugged in sat empty and
unused – USB peripherals were the big thing now, weren't they?

Can't disable
a port if it has to be used, right?  But she wouldn't need a keyboard for what
she was planning, only a mouse.

So she traced
them both with her fingers and pulled out the one for the keyboard.  The tiny
little drive plugged straight in.  She sat back down and waited for the
computer to find it, then it was only a matter of right-click copy, left-click
on the new folder, right-click paste.  Marvelous.

Moira restored
the setup and verified her keyboard was working again, then slipped the drive
into an interior pocket of her bag.  Welcome to the world of industrial
espionage, Moira.  But this amount of effort was too important to risk losing
the next time power to the building flickered.

She picked up
her bag and her cane, got her lunch from the fridge and sailed out the front
door past security as breezily as if she wasn't carrying out nearly ten years
of secrets and privileged information.  Still, even
that
feeling of
excitement faded in the path of a greater anticipation.

Moira
practically threw herself into the front seat of her car, pulling out her
wallet and holding up the feather again.  “I wish to see what Leo is doing
right now,” she told it.

In the next
minute she wished she hadn't wished, because she was going to have to try
strenuously not to yell at him.

Leo could feel
her presence again, and radiated pride and satisfaction in her direction.  It
had taken him several hours of work but he had managed to completely dismantle
the back porch patio and lay each board out on the grass around the house in
perfect order to its removal, with the relevant nails set neatly on top of each
one.

All that was
left to show a wooden patio had even existed there were the cement supports
that had been poured in place decades ago and had weathered summer heat and
winter frost ever since, and the four inch square wooden posts that were bolted
to their tops, standing in rank like toy soldiers.

Holding up
absolutely nothing.  The back door appeared to hover in mid-air.  The yard
looked like a peculiarly well-mannered explosion had taken place.  The patio
table and the grill and any other random items on the porch had been moved
nearly to the tree line.

“Leo,” she
started.  Stopped.  Took a deep breath.  “I need you to explain,” she
eventually continued, “why you felt it was necessary to demolish my deck.”

He was
puzzled.  He showed her a picture of it, 'before'.  It was rotten and old, and
dirty, and breaking apart.

“Yes, Leo.  I
know that.  But it was still better than nothing, which is approximately what I
have right now.”

He displayed a
picture of the yard's current state, mentally moving the boards back into place
like shuffling a deck of cards – she took it to mean 'I can put it back
together'.

“Well, you're
going to have to – don't you realize that's the only way I have to get into the
house?  I blocked the front door with a bookcase ages ago; folk around here
never bother to use their front doors.  It was just letting a draft into the
living room that I didn't need.”

Leo shifted
from one foot to the other uncertainly.

“At least the
bushes look nice?” Moira offered.  “I didn't get to see them last night when I
got home – the sun was already down.”

He sent back
an emotion that was half imperative, half time-designation; she rendered it as
'wait; give me a minute to explain'.

He wiped his
forehead and stepped next to the nearest support post.  It was grey with age
and riddled with cracks that ran along the grain.  Leo set his hand on top of
it.

Slowly the
post lightened and seemed to swell; the cracks vanished.  The color turned from
that weathered grey to the pale of dry wood, freshly cut.  When he took his
hand away she could have believed that the post was installed yesterday.

After a
moment's stunned silence, Moira said “Okay, that's a new trick. How'd you do
it?”

He showed her
a watercolor drawing of a massive sprawling oak tree, then layered the drawing
with another, that of an acorn.  He merged the two of them together.  Both were
still visible, but meant to represent the same thing.

“Inside the
tree is the memory of the seed,” she suggested.  He sent a positive response,
and gestured to the post.