Stay (14 page)

-melissa

Chapter 12

Possession

The first time I breathed underwater was in his arms. As long as I was with him, no storm or tempest could harm me. His home beneath the waves was more beautiful than anything I could have imagined, a pearl-crafted palace of light. Seid was always a being of such contrasting natures, light and dark, beauty and ugliness. I loved all of him.

Eventually,
I grew used to the gills he placed on my neck and chest that allowed me to breathe with him in the depths. We spoke with our minds as if it were the most natural thing in the world. So I asked him of his life before I entered it. Had he ever known true love before?

“
No,” he replied, stroking the inner skin of my arm. “You are the first and the last, Orona. My brothers chose different paths, yet I was never tempted long enough to fall with a human. You have become my undoing.” He covered my mouth and the air escaped us in thick shining spheres that floated above.

My walk back to Cain’s apartment was not pleasant in the thin dress Lissa had given me. My dress and my cloak were back in the dressing room I had been whisked away from. I wondered at the state of my mind that I could forget so important an article of clothing. In Lissa’s haste to dampen her somber spirits, I had forgotten myself. Now I wished for that mind-numbing chill that made men seek shelter and the heat of a warm fire.

My night with Lissa had been charged with drinks, dancing and human delights, yet only a familiar emptiness was my companion. Ignoring the stares and occasional calls from the people I passed, I gave my will to the pull Cain had over me and followed it home.

By the time I neared his street, my hair was covered in snow and the sandals covering my feet did little to battle the freeze.

I was at a complete loss on how
to repair the wounds Lissa had inflicted on Cain. True, I did not know his part in their story yet. But I could see nothing but goodness in him. How could he deserve to lose something so precious, without any say in the matter? Lissa’s logic sickened me as much as her naivety incited my compassion.

What do I do now, Seid?
I asked and glared up at the heavens. This was the danger of giving in to mortal emotions. When the bitterness faded away nothing but a never-ending ache remained. I bit my lip and clutched my gold sequined slip, trying to claw out the sting in my heart.

“I still hate you
,” I whispered to the cool night air.

Closer to Cain’s apartments
, the streets were far less crowded and the lights of hardworking citizens already extinguished. Or in some cases, the artificial lights burned till dawn, until their workload was completed. When I checked the position of the stars, I realized how late it was and picked up my pace.

Forgetting the eyes of mortal men, I
tapped into the curse and instantly felt its power expand. I willed the winds to pull me as I gave into it, for my body to be weightless and the world rush past. I blamed the alcohol for my lack of foresight. I knew Cain would have been home some time ago. But would he have forgotten about me already?

Cain’s motorcycle
was gone from its metal post. Residual feelings of fear and panic lingered in the air around it.

“Where could he have gone?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

From here I could still hear the voices inside his apartment building as they spoke of Cain’s new girlfriend. They said the lonely biker had knocked on the doors of thieves, drug dealers and ordinary people, asking about
me
. What I learned shocked. I was an indestructible and immortal being, so shock had long ago fled my makeup.

Though I shouldn’t have worried about
the human, I rushed back onto the street. At the same instant tires screeched on ice and a heavy engine rumbled closer. Without stopping I ran until I saw the bold headlight aiming straight for me. The pain in my chest eased the closer he sped to me.

Cain’s bike groaned and slid in a precarious circle, until his body was nearly parallel to the asphalt. At the last possible moment he thrust out a clunky black boot to catch his fall.

“Rona!” he shouted, stripping off his helmet and killing his engine, but forgetting the headlight. “Do you have any idea what I thought, when I came home and you weren’t there? And after I
told
you to stay put!” I held my ground even as he advanced upon me. His blue eyes were brilliant against his brown skin in the light of the broken street lamp and his body a silhouette before the artificial light.

I couldn’t help smiling as he grasped my arms and held me in place because his warmth infected me. I
hadn’t known I was freezing until he held me. I hadn’t known until then, after the long hours of separation, that with Cain I could pretend to be human.

Now that I knew
the torture Lissa had put him through, I wondered how such a person could still carry so much love inside of them. Rather than apologizing or trying to say something meaningless, I slipped my arms about his neck and buried my face into his chest. A feeling greater than happiness wrapped around me and I felt the unfulfilled emptiness within me fill to the brim.

Cain snatched me up as if I weighed nothing. He c
rushed me to his chest until I was no longer trembling with cold.

Silence separated us afterward as he returned his bike to its resting place and carried me to his apartment. Ms. Ngu
yen watched us from the open crack in her doorway and smiled knowingly at me when our eyes met.

Cain’s work clothes were scattered and the apartment was a mess. It looked as if he had taken his anger out on some of his less than favored furniture, including the magical couch.
His mouth tightened when he noticed the direction of my attention.

“It was stupid of you to go walking out in that cold,” Cain growled
after carrying me into his room. “Why were you wandering in the streets, huh? Are you asking to get killed?”

I reached out to touch his face
and he grumbled under his breath about his “luck with crazy chicks”. He set me down atop the sink counter in his bathroom and stripped the nearest towel off its hook. With a start, I realized this was the same towel he had wrapped me in the morning things changed between us.

I sensed the beginning of something far great
er and insurmountable coming with a tiny warning flashing in the back of my mind. All I could think of was calming the dark cloud of swirling emotions covering this human’s aura.

“I was in no danger
, Cain,” I said, reassuring him. “I am much stronger than I appear.” I looked him deeply in the eye and willed him to feel the truth behind my words. He knew I wasn’t normal, that I could not feel the things other people felt. But there was power stirring in him, too. I had felt it all along, but only now began to wonder as he reluctantly met my gaze if there was not more to this mission than I was aware.

“Well
,
I
saw you, didn’t I?” Cain said angrily. “Rona, you don’t know! Didn’t you say something about your powers getting weaker? How do you know some bum off the street didn’t see you and think you were offering something else, dressed like that?”

D
espair and fury oozed from his aura and from his expression, overshadowed by his desperate need for control. I had seen this need before, from people who had experienced too much loss, beginning at an early age. Irreparable damages such pain caused the soul were almost impossible to fix. Only one cure I knew of existed for such internal scars.

“I left your jacket at the club…” I whispered.

Cain continued to rub my shaking limbs down with the towel. “I’ll get it later,” he mumbled. He furrowed his brow as he fumbled with the edge of my slip of a dress. “Where did you find this getup anyway?” Cain remarked with a grimace.

The sleeve
drooped low against my arm, exposing my upper chest and the tattoos above my breasts that marked my lineage. “Lissa let me borrow it. She took me out for drinks, for fun,” I said, regretting my words the instant his features froze into a hard mask.

“And how did you meet her, huh?” Cain
demanded and then shook his head. “Unbelievable… can’t believe you went to the club after I told you to leave it alone.”

Cain
stood abruptly and stripped out of his heavy coat and my stomach clenched to see the muscles in his arms flex. He linked his fingers over the top of his head and hissed a stream of unintelligible phrases as he stomped out of the bathroom. He plopped down on the edge of his mattress and pulled his wet boots off.

“Rona, I
get it that you feel like it’s your
mission
to get us back together,” he said through his hands after. “But I’d rather you stayed away from her. She’s no good for anyone. She uses people, Rona, just like she used you as her wingman to find out what I’ve been up to.”

I hopped off the counter and
walked into his space, until I was standing between his parted knees. I rested my hands on his bare shoulders. “She didn’t use me. I simply wanted to know her. The curse brought me to both of you. I need to learn why. And I cannot learn if I am always here.”

H
e reached up and clasped my hips, pulling me closer. The center of his eyes darkened so the blue reflected the eye of a storm. “Did you dance with any men tonight?”

Smiling softly, I teased him. “One or two, perhaps…” I squealed when he tipped back onto the bed, pulling me on top of him
, and then rolled us so he had me effectively pinned beneath.

“Dressed like this?” he said, glancing down and wagging his eyebrows suggestively. “
Baby, there’s only one person I want you dancing with from now on.”

My question
was drowned in the wave of his passion.

-farleigh

Chapter 13

Lessons in Humanity

I woke with the sun shining on my face and Cain’s soft eyes above me. The golden rays cast e
verything in a new light. The same smooth jazz music we had danced to the other day was already playing from his stereo box. It made me think of the club, of Lissa and her complicated relationship with Cain’s cousin, Jude. I was no closer to fulfilling my mission in bringing Cain and Lissa back together. After Lissa’s drunken confession the night before, I wondered how I was going to heal a relationship that was so obviously beyond repair. The temptation to grumble at Seid for sending me to resurrect a lost cause was growing daily. And I had avoided speaking directly to him ever since he stopped appearing to me a thousand years before.

I
looked up into Cain’s open sea-blue eyes and felt the fleeting fear that losing him would destroy what remained of my heart.

“You know what’s happening tonight, babe?” he asked.

“What?” I asked with apprehension. Something in the twisting of my features must have amused him, for he revealed a familiar, breathtaking smile.

“Tonight
, I’m taking you to work with me.”

“Are you certain?” I asked,
with the job I still needed to do fresh on my mind. Already the thought of leaving him, of making them both forget me was painful. I tried not to let it show, but knew I had failed when Cain pressed his thumb to my lip.

“Rona, I know you think you still have a job to do. But haven’t you stopped to think maybe the Man Upstairs just wanted us to meet? Maybe it never was me and Lissa you were supposed to hook up.” The rest he left open to my
over-analytical mind. Yet with his lips pressed to mine it was difficult to think of anything.

Mrs. Nguyen invited me to eat what she called “brunch” a few hours after Cain left.

Today I
had decided to obey his wishes to stay in the apartment. I spent the morning tearing myself apart on the inside, trying to decide what was right and wrong, and learned I was not capable of the task. Truth was, I had never been required to think that hard about what my couple needed most. Before, it was an easy fix of testing their trust or sending disaster their way to determine the power of their love. I let the curse use me to follow through its purpose, often time grudgingly. But this time everything in me screamed against the nature Seid had forced upon me.

Cain’s words
had stirred a secret hope in my chest. He knew little of the events leading up to my curse, but perhaps he was right. The curse did seem weaker in his presence, almost non-existent even, and leaving me feeling vulnerably human.

“Y
ou need to eat some more, honey,” Mrs. Nguyen said and like a slap to the wrist broke my train of thought.