15
“Ha, ha,” I said to the door after he winked at me before closing it. Okay, so once again it wasn’t my best come back but after referring to my bad luck that obviously lay firmly on the dangerous end of the spectrum, what else could I say.
Then came the most annoying part. Waiting like some helpless little victim whilst God knows what was happening out there. Seriously though, I was starting to think that what Lucius had said was right, was I cursed? Well, it was starting to feel like it, that was for damn sure!
“I just beat back the bloody apocalypse for Christ sake, you would think that would entitle me to a free pass for a few days at least!” I complained out loud looking up to the Heavens and only finding a series of square panels that made up a false ceiling…yep, nothing heavenly about that or the dark damp patch growing in one corner, I thought with a frown.
I had to wonder if life was ever going to get any easier and if one day I would look back at all this and think, ‘Oh right, I remember those times. Man, how grateful am I that my life is so peaceful now?’… Yeah, I couldn’t see it happening anytime soon.
No, unfortunately I think the only way my luck was going to change was if I was to bathe in a tub full of four-leaf clovers, blessed by an Irish priest, a leprechaun and a shaman wearing a horseshoe around his neck. Then he could wave a rabbit’s foot at me after hitting me over the head with one of those nodding fortune cats, that personally I thought looked like they were just mocking you. Yeah, I could just see it now, Draven walking in on me naked in a bath of green mush surrounded by my ‘Luck Team’ all praying, throwing holy water, sprouting off Irish Proverbs and shaking dead animal parts at me.
I think my luck would sharply end there, along with theirs for that matter, as one look at the door and what now lay down the hall behind it, then I think it was easy to say that my demonic husband would no doubt kill them just for seeing me naked.
Yep, Lucius was right.
I was cursed.
By the time Lucius came back I had no idea how long I had been waiting, but it was long enough to make a tower of toilet rolls that impressively nearly touched the ceiling. I was balancing on a small step ladder as I was just reaching over to grab the smaller tower from the shelf, to join with the one I had started from the floor.
This was when the door opened.
And this, embarrassingly enough, was how Lucius found me.
Me, standing on one leg as I reached out, holding a tower of seven toilet rolls in one hand and trying to steady the tower of many, to add them. I looked as if I was auditioning for a really lame circus act. That, or showcasing a new fun way of teaching kids the importance of toilet hygiene…both of which would not have been on my top ten list of how I wished to be found by a sexy Vampire King.
Damn it, but I knew I should have gone with the toilet roll sofa!
“Uh…I fear the answer to this question but alas, still feel it my duty to ask…what exactly are you trying to accomplish here, Pet?” Lucius asked looking as shocked as a two thousand plus year old Vampire could be. Meanwhile, I probably looked like a doe caught in headlights as I looked to the door, arms out, still frozen mid action.
“I got bored,” I stated.
“Yes, Love, I can see that,” he responded wryly making me bite my lip.
“How did it go? Is he…okay?” I asked, the concern clearly written in my eyes and the waver in my voice. However, when his lips twitched I knew it was because I was still in this odd position. Thankfully, this made him take pity on my obvious deteriorating mental state. So, he took a step inside the room and wrapped one arm around my waist, at the same time wrapping a hand around my wrist that still held the mini toilet roll tower. Then, with him guiding my hand, I balanced the toilet rolls on top of the bigger tower, (Obviously he knew how important it was to me to finish and accomplish my crazy task) and all the while I was trying not to let Lucius’ devastatingly handsome and amused smile cause my hand to shake. He was clearly finding this very entertaining but thankfully did so quietly.
Once I had finished, he pulled me closer to his side before lowering me to the ground off the step ladder. Then he took my hand in his and finally answered my question,
“He is fine but come and see for yourself.” Then just as I was letting him lead me from the room I pulled back and said,
“Oh, wait a sec.” Then I looked back at the tower and started to count in my head. Lucius cocked his head to one side as if trying to figure out what ‘Insane Lady’ was doing now. After a few seconds I was done and said to myself,
“I knew it.”
“Again, I am almost afraid to ask but then I fear I wouldn’t sleep tonight if I don’t…What did you know?” I smirked up at him and said,
“The point of the tower.” He frowned once and enquired,
“And that was?”
“To see if it would take more than twenty rolls to reach the ceiling.”
“Gods woman,” he hissed under his breath making me frown in question.
“What?”
“Keira, you were only in there for ten minutes,” he informed me making me blush and want to defend myself, which is what I did with a lame bit of attitude thrown his way,
“Yeah and?” He shook his head at my reply and then threw his head back and started laughing and I mean, really laughing. Then in a very un-bad ass way, he yanked me to him and kissed the top of my head still chuckling. I froze not knowing what was so funny or what had prompted such a sweet gesture other than he must have enjoyed witnessing my brand of crazy.
We started walking back to the door that led into the dining room when I informed him,
“You’re lucky it wasn’t twenty minutes.” He looked down at me and raised an eyebrow in question but again by his slight lip curl I knew he was fighting a grin when he asked,
“And why is that?”
“Because after my tower I was going to see how many rolls it would have taken to turn myself into a mummy,” I teased making him once again burst out laughing whilst shaking his head. Damn him but why did his corded, tensed neck look so appealing…it was a neck for Christ sake!?
“Wait, where is he?” I asked the second we rounded the corner and found it empty.
“Calm Pet, he is back in the dining room,” Lucius informed me like this was naturally the most obvious place for him right now. I, on the other hand, didn’t think so.
“What!?”
“Well, I thought that to be the better choice considering our options were limited.” I felt my eyebrows meeting in a frown as I looked up at him.
“What would you have preferred, your husband waiting here for you only to find me escorting you back after we’d just spent time alone together in a broom closet or Dom sat at the dining table thinking you are innocently in the rest room?” I didn’t need to consider this for long before I said,
“Okay, good point.”
“I thought so,” he said dryly after I had just agreed with him. Smug Supernatural bugger!
“So, he doesn’t remember anything?” I asked unable to keep the hopeful tone from my voice. We stopped just before the door and I was tempted to peek inside just to check he wasn’t in there terrorizing our friends and family like a demonic King Kong looking for his little blonde human.
“No, as requested.” Lucius said in a way that made me look up at him.
“You disapprove?” I asked guessing by his tone that he did but couldn’t help wondering why. He gave me a stern look as he was obviously trying to find the right way to explain what he wanted to say.
“I do,” he stated far too briefly than what I was expecting. So, I raised an eyebrow telling him without words to elaborate.
“I do not relish going against an old friend Keira, no matter the river of bad blood that flows between us.” Okay so hearing this struck a nerve in me and I flinched from it.
“Then why did you do it?” I asked unsurely and when he stepped closer to me, intimately closer, I wished I hadn’t. He lifted my face up with two extended fingers under my chin, so that my lowered eyes could meet his intense steel blue ones.
“Because that same river is bridged because of you,” he told me in a velvet voice that took my breath away, because by the Gods, wasn’t that just one of the sweetest things he had ever said to me. It was so sweet in fact, that I couldn’t help it when my head fell forward and I leaned in, planting my forehead to rest against his chest.
“Oh, Lucius.” I felt his large hand come to rest at the back of my head holding me there and I couldn’t help but feel the slight shudder of his body beneath my palms positioned at his pecs.
After this bitter sweet but passing moment between us, I knew I would have to be the one to pull away first. So, as I took a step back, I felt resistance from where he held me for only a second, but it was enough to tell me he didn’t want to let me go.
Then he spoke and it…well, it shocked me to my core.
“I know it was never meant to be between us, Keira,” he told me with an intense softness that seemed to fight against the raw emotions that fed the words spoken. I sucked in a shuddered breath because of the pain that seemed to lance at my heart. I wished I could have just left it there and I knew with everything deep inside me that I should have. But instead I found the words coming out of my mouth being said before I could stop them.
“Then…then why did you fight for it?” At this he looked down at me and I swear I nearly lost myself in their amber depths when I saw them change, losing the steel.
“Because hope can do dangerous things to the mind.” I bit my lip and found this time I could only nod. Because he was right, sometimes even though hope could grant you the strength needed to make it through the hard times, it could also become your downfall.
To hope when all you hope for is hopeless is a weakness you can’t escape from. Not until your sorrows try to drown you and you come up gasping for air called reality. Only then do you move on from wasted time. I knew this better than most after being allowed to believe I could somehow bring Draven back from Hell. That I could somehow save him. But then finding out he was actually alive and living in the world in hiding was like drowning by my own hand holding me under the black murky water.
A hand called hope.
“You were never mine…”
“Lucius I…” I started to interrupt him, but he shook his head slightly and I knew that right now I needed to give him this. I needed to give him this moment, for I knew it would be now, or never. And never for an immortal was a very long time indeed.
“…After that night at the clock tower I knew…we both knew...we knew that neither of our hearts belonged to us to give freely to whom we hoped would own them. You had given yours long before I had even chance to earn it,” he said, and I couldn’t help it, but a tear slipped down my cheek and I had to look away. But being Lucius, he didn’t allow this for long as I felt his hand cradle my cheek and a thumb capture my falling teardrop.
“And what now…what of your own heart, Lucius?” I asked trying to keep the quiver from my voice preventing it from breaking…barely.
“That night I kissed you, you didn’t gift me the sun, Keira,” he told me gently and my eyes found his again as I waited for what he would say next with my breath firmly locked in my chest and unable to get out until he spoke.
“You gifted me a glimpse of my future.” My eyes widened as what he said started to make sense. That night, when he took me to his special place, his clock tower, we both knew that in the exact moment before our bodies could join that there was a line there. But not one drawn just in this time but one long ago in the sands of time. One that would impact not only our hearts or those that they belonged to but an act so catastrophic it had the power to change the world and the future for us all.
The fate of the world held suspended in a single night of carnal bliss.
He knew this as did I. We both saw something different that night but it all led down the same path. And for Lucius, well it seemed that path was towards his own Chosen One…which he now knew wasn’t me, no matter how much he wanted it to be.
Because his future was already written. It was already set in stone, I just hadn’t realised until now that I myself had been the one to carve it there.
I knew this after I asked the question,
“What did it show you?”
“The sun you gifted me when we kissed was never yours to give…” he told me gently but when I frowned questioning him without asking, he continued until I understood the true power and nature behind his words…
“It was hers.”