Stay (10 page)

After lunch he struggled with himself before asking, “You know my shavin
g mirror, the one in the shower?”

I peered up at him and willed the numbness to remain with me. Feelings were too dangerous to tamper with now and he mustn’t see my nervousness.

“Well, did you know it’s broken? It shattered all over the floor when you fell in. The glass was covered in blood. But I didn’t see any on you or any glass sticking out of your hands.”

“Sorry about your mirror,
” I offered lamely.

“
Why didn’t you get cut? Nobody falls on glass and comes out without a scratch.”

There was more behind his words
, I sensed, a building need for things I should not tell him. I was certain then he had seen the shifting colors trapped within my skin.

“I don’t bleed,” I finally said and instantly regretted it.

With a quick rub of his hand through his unwashed hair he exhaled. His eyes were blue as the emerald sea when they slowly rose to meet mine.

I
suppressed a sigh as I closed my eyes and reluctantly opened myself to his emotions. Wild, untamed anger underlaid the overwhelming love in his heart. My breath began to pick up in time with the images of high mountainous waves and tempests and when I tried to cut the connection, they pushed back even harder against mine.

This was new and somewhat frightening. I was unused to losing a battle of wills with any human. Instead of breaking the link, I felt another wave of desire and ageless longing, so strange for one so young, so
new
. I shuddered and drank deeply from his hidden feelings, unable to help myself, enjoying what I hadn’t in ages. And what unsettled me most was I could not tell whether this love was meant for me or her
.

I opened my eyes abruptly and stood, too afraid to look into his eyes. I was too afraid he would see and somehow know what I had just done.
I moved to stand by the window, then brushed aside the curtain and pressed my palm to the glass. Its coolness helped to numb my thoughts and slow the rapid beat of my heart.

How could you have been so stupid?
I wanted to scream at myself for giving into the temptation to feed off his feelings. Now all my carefulness, all my efforts to squash away my weakness for their sakes had failed. In wonder I watched the heat from my hands thaw the window frost. My breath billowed in an opaque filmy layer around it.

The sun was coming
back again, high above the snow clouds, though not as quickly as I had called for it. I could not control the weather like the Maker, only petition its actions. But I could manipulate circumstances to protect what must be protected at all costs. If I was going to protect Lissa and Cain’s love, the sun
must
come, I reasoned.

Cain adjusted the dial of the stereo and the
voice of some long-dead singer crooned through the antique speakers. Even without turning round, I could feel his eyes on me. A whisper of a thrill laced my spine with each step he took towards me. And then he was simply there, reaching above my head to push the curtain fully aside.

“Tell me about her,”
I said, breaking the silence and hoping he might forget his curiosity.

Cain stiffened behind me and his arm fell
lifelessly as he sank onto the magical couch and sighed. “What are you talking about?”

“Lissa,” I
answered with a glance over my shoulder. I expected his darkly tanned cheeks to blush, or to see some other tell-tale sign of his discomfort. Instead my false cheerfulness fell to the pit of my stomach against the harsh glare he was sending my way.

“What about her?”
he tersely asked.

Grasping my curling blonde hair
I began to nervously twist it and fastened my eyes to the window so they wouldn’t betray me. “I saw the way you looked at her the other night.”

Frustration built in his voice as he said,
“And you just made up your mind about us after one look? You don’t know anything about us, Rona.”

“I know that you are alone. And she
might have left with another man, but she wished it had been you.” My assurances were unfounded of course and drifting aimlessly in the dark. But I had to give him something. I could no longer pretend this was about me.

Cain laughed.
“If you believe that then you
definitely
don’t know Lissa. Derek’s her flavor of the month. She’s always looking for a new wallet to dip her hands in.” He stood and paced behind me with his hands on his head. Several expressions crossed his face, from ire to consternation and then disbelief. “Where is all this coming from anyways? Did you think that me and Lissa were…”

H
e paused right behind me and I clutched the glass pane tighter to root myself in place.

“Rona
, I would
never
try to kiss you if I was into someone else,” he insisted. “I’m not one of those guys, you know?”

I shut my eyes when
he reached over and clasped my shoulder.

Sometimes the mind crosse
d fire with the heart and no matter how strongly it fought the heart always won. In my mind I was screaming at my stupid physical self to move away, to do something. But when I lifted my chin and opened my eyes, what I saw in him stole my breath away. His heart shone through, not for her but for me. Tears filled my eyes once again.

“What are you saying?” I asked,
while finding it suddenly difficult to breathe. I feared what the curse would do to us, to this forbidden bond forming between us. If I tried to see it again, to tempt it, would it kill me or even worse harm him? So I prayed he kept to himself that hidden hope of triumph pouring over me now.

“
I don’t know what happened in the shower this morning,” Cain said and then frowned. “I’ve been going over it all day trying to figure you out. Every time I feel like I’m close to the answers I get distracted.”

He laughed and I couldn’t help but smile in return. How could he know he was breaking my heart as much as mending it?

Trailing his fingers along my neck and cupping my jaw, he took another step and said, “Just one look at you and your weird beautiful eyes and I forget what I was thinking about. Not like I’m the most stable person in the world, but I thought I’d finally got my stuff together until I met you.”

He leaned
in and I yearned to kiss him. Already I was addicted to his emotions, the strongest of any human I had felt before. Also, I craved his words and the long buried feelings they evoked in me. I was cursed and was forbidden to know love again. Until now, I had believed it impossible.

“It’s lik
e I’ve been asleep all my life,” he whispered, “but when I saw you, I woke up.” He chuckled low and shook his head, adding, “That sounds so much cheesier out loud than it did in my head… but it’s true.”

I gasped when he leaned in closer and said,
“Rona, I really want to kiss you now.” Instinctively, I lifted my chin as his lips brushed mine and I fell into him. So long had I been without love, I was beginning to think his affection would become a crippling drug to me. I knew if I plunged in, I might never claw back out of my addiction.

Of course the curse chose that moment to interrupt, with a sharp jabbing pain to my temple. A groan fell from my mouth as I p
ressed my hands against his chest and used all my strength to hold him at arm’s length. “No!” I pleaded with him, for both our sakes.

Cain
dropped his arms as though I had struck a physical blow.

I backed away from him
until my back was against the frozen glass. Grasping my aching head in my hands, I cried, “I’m sorry, but what you feel for me is impossible! I can never have you because you don’t
belong
to me. Can’t you understand that?”

“Who says?
Did Lissa say something to you? Is that why you brought her up earlier?”

“No, she said nothing to me. I
only wanted you to remember your love for her.” I longed for my heart of stone then; anything but this crushing pain I was feeling.

Cain shook his head
and then said, “Orona, that’s just—I don’t even want to begin to—why can’t you just tell me the truth? What are you so afraid of?”

His arms were longer than mine, so of course he reached over my pitiful shield to grasp my shoulders. His heat combined with the cold against my back gave me chills. I blinked past the tears causing his image to blur. I was breaking the most importan
t rule by giving into him, but had I not broken all the others?

“I am afraid of
myself and
him,
but most of all you! I am afraid you will see
me
.”

When his lips crashed into mine, the
world as I knew it shattered to pieces.

-donnelle

Chapter 9

Fallen

My blood was on fire, a molten lava stream buried beneath the violent sea, or the charged earth still pulsing with the force of a lightning strike. I let out a desperate sigh of weak protest and relief. He crushed me to his chest with one of his powerful arms, while the other sank greedily into my hair. Our lips latched and we grasped for one another clumsily, perfectly, almost too wonderfully. He tasted exactly as I remembered, like the warm summer seas, melted honey and fresh rain. My tears were dried within each brush of his lips on my cheeks and my eyelids. I fought the overwhelming urge to crawl into him and never come out.

Carry me forever
, I wanted to tell him, because I was so weary of holding myself up. The light he carried inside of him filled and expanded within me, between us, weaving together in an unstoppable web. It came as nothing more than a sliver, a tendril trapped in the vast web of tangled emotions. For that one moment, it wasn’t his emotions I was feeding off of, but mine and I never wanted it to end. With this one sliver of true feeling, I knew I would always crave him now, just as I had craved Seid before.

The pain was unbearable and he inflicted his wrath on me with only the force of his will. Those glorious blue orbs were frozen into cold and dark seas now, indifferent to my screams. In all our tumultuous and tender times together I never believed he would use his power on me.

“I pledged myself to you!” I cried. “
Why are you doing this?”

“You know why,” he said, seething.

“I didn’t betray you! You would have known if I had! Please spare them! Punish me!”

The pain ceased
and a cruel smile transformed his features into something dangerously beautiful. “Will you avow yourself to my will?”

“
I shall do whatever you ask!”

My eyes flashed open and in the reflection of Cain’s irises, I saw the gift begin to fill me as the curse reawakened. Pain began to prick at my skin with the potency of a water dragon’s tail. I gasped but he deepened our kiss. And then I realized I was lying on the couch with Cain poised above me.

I saw
in his eyes that he knew what was going to happen before I could warn him or pull away. The light grew into an unstoppable force, burned beneath my skin and flashed out of my palms.

He grunted as the curse threw
him off of me and into the adjacent wall.

I was horrified.
As the aftershocks raked my nerves and quickly numbed them, I clung to the couch cushions. I didn’t know how long I lay like this, only that at some point Cain picked me up and carried me to his bed. Memories of my past life flashed behind my closed lids as I slept.

When I awoke, I was looking at Cain’s slightly creased brow. His eyes gleamed bright blue in the darkness. I pressed my fingertips to his lips in wonderment. Even after my curse attacked him, he was still here, holding me.

Surely I had broken the rules for the first and last time. I had half expected to wake up in another place, completely
and inhumanly numb once again, or on the way to another failed love.

“You’re still here,” I whispered.
Cain was silent. The azure flecks within his eyes shifted into a darker indigo. I wondered if he would be like all the others after I left, denying the truth in front of them.

“I’ve been having these weird dreams the last two nights,” he said.

“What of?” I asked with apprehension.

He traced my cheekbones, the line of my nose and jaw,
then the curve of my lips before smiling. “
You
, Rona,” he said, “and the sea. I don’t understand half of what’s going on in them and I feel seriously unhinged all the time in these dreams. I couldn’t decide if they were nightmares or just my fantasies, because some of the dreams could definitely be my fantasies.”

Our
legs had threaded together, or rather my leg was trapped between his. Whatever defenses the curse had built up were melting away under his words and his touch. Why should it choose to fight and then give into him the next minute, I wondered.