Dark One: One for Sorrow... (The Khiara Banning Series Book 1) (28 page)

I can’t do anything else but nod my head and sink deeper into the warm water. Once he’s gone, I start to lather myself with the soap and eventually muster up the courage to unplug the tub so I can take a proper shower. I stand up slowly hoping this isn’t a big mistake, turn on the shower, and then close the curtain. A second later I hear a soft knock on the door.

“Your clothes are in the wash,” says Cael. “I’ll be in the living room if you need me. Clean clothes and towels are on top of the toilet.”

I don’t have the energy to say anything.
Okay
, I think.
Thank you
.

I emerge from the bathroom in a pair of oversized sweat pants and one of my own shirts that he was nice enough to get for me, probably from my room; I’d left my window open a crack and I assume he is more than capable of moving around unnoticed.

“Hi,” I say, as I sit down on the couch next to Cael. He smiles at me, that sad smile that I’ve grown to love.

He says, “Hey. Was just about to check up on you. I never asked why you came so late at night…never got a chance to.”

I try to explain myself, but the words are hard to explain so I settle on, “You dropped me off without saying anything, and I hadn’t heard from you all day so I just…I was worried. I
am
worried. And I just…I don’t know, I felt like something was really wrong. My gut told me.”

He smiles a little, “I guess we’re still connected in some way. God works in mysterious ways, you know. I guess we haven’t exhausted all the loopholes yet.”

We sit in silence for a while, and then he asks if I’d like some coffee.

“Do you have anything food related?” I ask, hopeful.

Cael chuckles, “Yes, I have food. No, I don’t have any baked goods for you. Vicky ate the last of my double-chocolate cake and I forgot to make more. Would a sandwich be okay?”

I nod, and we both go into the kitchen. While he’s rifling through the fridge for some sandwich meat, I move to start the coffee. I’m just pressing start when he swears, and something clatters to the floor. I whip around at the sound, and see him cradling his hand, blood pouring down onto the counter.

“Oh God, Cael, are you okay?” I ask as I run to get him paper towel to clean the blood.

“It’s fine, don’t bother,” he says flatly.

“Why? You’re
bleeding
, we should get that cleaned up!”

“Khiara, leave it. It’s okay. I just have to clean up the blood. Don’t worry about the cut.”

“What?” I ask, but then realization dawns on me. “Oh,” I whisper, “right. Does it hurt?” I grab some paper towel.

“It doesn’t matter if it hurts,” he replies tiredly, running his hand under cold water. I can see it slowly stitching together on its own, something that has the potential to seem so magical just seeming so sad. It must have been a very deep cut for it to not have been fully healed within seconds though, because it takes a little longer than I thought it would.

“Of course it does,” I say, mopping up the blood with the paper towel.

“No, not really. I’m not normal. Normal rules don’t apply to me. Look,” he shows me his now fully healed hand, “it’s all sealed up. You’ve seen worse than this; you’ve seen Vicky heal from a huge chest wound, I mean are you really surprised?”

“Well no,” I say. “It’s just instinct. I forgot.”

“It’s easy to forget,” he says wearily. “For everybody else. But not for me.”

“I…” I try to think of something useful to say, but come up blank. “I’m sorry,” I say for lack of anything beneficial.

“Don’t be,” he replies, throwing away the spoiled bread and meat.

“But I am,” I say. “I truly –”

Pain flashes in his eyes and he turns towards me and cuts me off. “Don’t you
understand?
I want to be human. I want to feel things the way you feel them. If I get cut I want to feel true pain instead of slight discomfort because I know I’ll simply heal. When you kiss e, I want…” He doesn’t finish his sentence; instead he walks into his bedroom, and I trail after him. We sit down on his bed.

“Cael.” I feel as though my heart is beating so fast that it might thud straight out of my chest. I can feel myself blushing, but I don’t stop myself from finishing his sentence. “You want to experience it the way I do, as a human.”

He nods and hangs his head, looking ashamed. I take his face in my hands and tilt his head back up, so I can look into his eyes. “Tell me something Camael,” the use of his angelic name sends a visible shiver through his entire body, “when I do this,” my lips touch his, feathery soft and quick, “do you not feel like your heart is about to beat right out of your chest?”

A tear escapes his right eye and I kiss it away before it falls down his cheek, saying, “When I did that, did it not let you feel that you’re not alone?”

He smiles, and it touches his eyes just slightly. I kiss his lips again, this time much more passionate. “You want to experience it the way I do?”

He closes his eyes and I whisper, “But you do. I don’t care if you’re not human.”

Cael looks at me and his eyes are full of tears and an amount of adoration I feel I don’t deserve. “I love you,” he whispers back.

Wrapping my arms around him and pulling him close to me, I reply, “I love you too. Just because you’re practically indestructible doesn’t make your body feel things any less like I do.” I pull back and cup his face in my hands again. “Unless of course I’m judging your bodily reactions completely wrong…” I glance down towards his thin boxers, and quickly look back up, a small smile tugging up the corners of my lips. We haven’t touched this territory yet in our short relationship, and I don’t know where my boldness comes from.

His face is on fire, but so is mine. He looks everywhere but at me. “I’m not hungry anymore,” I say, biting my lip nervously. “Let’s just go to bed.”

“I don’t know if I could go back to sleep,” he says hesitantly, unsure of what exactly I mean.

I decide to clear it up for him. I grab the waistband of his boxers and pull him closer to me. “I didn’t say we had to go to sleep,” I say, “just to bed.”

And he’s kissing me. So deeply, you’d think he’s drowning, and there is a level of desperation in this kiss that calls all of my emotions to the forefront. I bite his lip and he groans; and then somehow we’re in his room and I’m on my back, our bodies pressed tight together and I can feel every part of him.

I’ve never felt this way about anybody before, and though I know we’re moving fast, our relationship isn’t like anything that’s ever even existed. His love for me is ages old, and I’ve only known him in person for a short while, but my soul has always felt his presence and his love. A part of my heart has always belonged to him.

I don’t care if I wasn’t assigned a soul mate; my soul has chosen its
own
.

“God,” his voice is husky and so, so wonderful. “You don’t understand how amazing it is to kiss you.”

I’m drowning in the taste of his fiery kisses and every moan that escapes my mouth elicits one of his own. I never knew I had this much passion; I didn’t think it was possible. And we’re burning bright, not like logs that have caught fire on top of hot, scorching embers because even that isn’t enough to describe what we have.

No, we’re like the embers themselves.

Our love burns long after the fire is gone, as I close my eyes and cuddle up to him, right up against his back.

“We’ll figure everything out,” I whisper.

“I know,” he replies sleepily. “I just wish we didn’t have to.”

“Fate will do what she will,” I say, repeating a phrase my mother used to tell me when I was a child and things didn’t go my way.

He turns around to face me, and our legs tangle together, then in the dark he smiles, cupping my face in one of his hands while using his other arm as a pillow. “Yes. She will.”

“Cael,” I say.

“Mm?”

“What am I going to do without my necklace? I don’t even know who gave it to me, but it was supposed to keep me safe and it did such…amazing things.”

“We’ll get it back.” He promises. “And don’t worry who it was from. Whoever it was obviously knew how much you needed it.”

“Cael?”

“Aye, sweetheart?”

“I love you.”

“I love you more.”

Twenty-Four

Going back to school somehow feels almost wrong considering we only have a couple of weeks back until winter break begins, and also,
oh yeah
, because I’ve begun intense training after work, by Liam, Vicky, Lisa (who is also training Tristan, considering he only found out his heritage recently) and Cara, who is getting some training from everybody else as well. Cael is not training me, because most of the training I need involves being repeatedly injured, and he can’t handle hurting me.

We’re really a motley crew if ever there was one.
How cliché!

It’s now Wednesday.

Damien never bothered showing up to classes this week, having stolen my necklace, and Vicky has dropped all of her I-hate-you, queen bee pretences since she blew her cover to Damien. She has been waiting for Cara and I after school every day; she’s dropped out of school, since being an emancipated minor in the eyes of the State means she can kind of do what she wants.

Apparently, she rather hates everybody in this school, including her number one minion, Janie, who isn’t taking it very well at all. Before Vicky came to school, Janie was the top girl and though she spoke to most of the kids in our grade in passing she kept to herself and Chris mostly until she met Cara; but as soon as Vicky stepped in and acted like she hated me, she just kind of fell into her role as minion very well – it helped though that she had that stupid grudge on me.

Right now she looks lost.

Cara and I are sitting with Janie and Chris at the lunch table, and she hasn’t said a mean word to me the whole time. Come to think of it she hasn’t really said anything nasty to me for the past three days.

“You seem um,” starts Cara.

“Tense,” I supply for her. She nods her head in agreement.

“Yeah, tense.”

Janie looks up from her uneaten pulled pork sandwich and shoots me a half-hearted glare. “You’d be upset if your best friend here left you high and dry out of nowhere,
abandoning
you. Victoria was my best friend…I thought.”