by S. L. Naeole
Robert pulled away to look at me and his eyes widened, the cold metal softening as the silver began to smolder and, God help me, I felt the heat inside of me bloom into something familiar, something almost…desperate.
“You understand now why I kept stopping, Grace. You know that it wasn’t because I’m not attracted to you. On the contrary; I’d given up on feeling anything physical for anyone, angel or human, until I met you.”
He reached a hand out to stroke my hair. “You’re more alluring than a nymph, the way you tempt me with that smile; so genuinely sweet and generous.”
His fingertips trailed to the corners of my eyes, fluttering over the lids when I closed them, sighing at the feather light touch. “The brown in your eyes are so rich, looking into them is like running through a forest of redwoods and never being able to find my way out—I never want to find my way out.”
Robert’s hand then moved down the side of my face, the backs of his hands stroking my cheek and running along my jaw line. “Your skin—the first thing I’ve ever been able to actually feel—will always be what I imagine every time I hear the word ‘soft’.”
An index finger traced along the bridge of my nose, trailing down and then across beneath my eyes, the touch almost reverent in its gentleness. “Freckles. I promised myself that one day I’d kiss you for each one. I plan on keeping that promise, Grace, if you’ll let me.” When my cheeks began to heat from the blush that crept into them, he stroked the color with that same finger. “How lovely.”
With the pad of his thumb, he rubbed the curve of my bottom lip, the friction slightly pulling it down. “Your mouth is perfect—I’ve never seen anyone, human or angel, whose lips are as soft and generous as yours. I admit that I wanted to kiss you that first day. When I heard your name, I thought how sweet it would be to kiss Grace Shelley. I changed my schedule around just so that I could be in at least half of your classes.”
I looked at him in surprise, this being news to me. “You did? Why?”
A sly smile spread across his face. “Well, how else was I going to introduce myself? I’m not one for the social graces. I’ve never needed them—your kind flock to me, it’s instinctual. But you…you ran away from me. That had never happened before and I was a bit…confused by it. So I took a look into the registrar’s thoughts and saw your class schedule and simply…altered mine to match. You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“No, I’m not, but why couldn’t you have changed your schedule so that you were in all of my classes?” I laughed.
“That would have been a little too obvious, I think, but there’s enough time left in the year where I could make a few adjustments…”
His playful expression and the suggestion of changing his remaining three classes for the next five weeks filled me with a warmth that I had been missing for such a long time, I didn’t recognize it at first. And when he looked at me, the warmth turned into something much hotter—I had to look away; I knew if I didn’t, I’d burst into flames just by looking into his eyes.
“How strange—you’re shy, like this is the first time you’ve ever seen me this way.”
His comment caught me off guard. I had to stop and think about what he had said, and whether or not there was any truth to it. My eyes lifted back up to his and the warmth that had cooled after I had turned away flared up once more, quicker and more intensely. Once again my gaze turned elsewhere to keep from self-combusting.
A soft chuckle against my cheek, followed by a caress so gentle, I thought I imagined it, preceded the whispered words that filled my ears. “So we meet again.”
THE ON/OFF SWITCH
“I’ve always wondered about that,” I laughed as he gave me an innocent smirk. “With fifteen hundred years of knowledge under your belt, one would think you’d have learned a new line by now.”
He grinned and I shook my head as his shoulders rose and fell in a careless shrug. “I just told you that I have no real social skills. Besides, that line worked just fine with you.”
“Well, I’m easy to please.”
I groaned inwardly at my comment and felt my face turn flush with embarrassment.
“Why do you feel so bashful, Grace? Have things changed that much between us?”
“Well, yes,” I answered softly. “You’re being honest with me for the first time—at least, I think you are; things…are different—you’re different. And I’m not sure why that would affect how I feel, but it does, and not exactly in the way that I thought it would, or should.”
We sat on the floor of his room, leaning against the side of the bed that faced the windows looking out over the back yard. Our hands lay at our sides, his smallest finger barely touching the smallest of mine, yet it was enough to feel like a thunderstorm was passing between us.
“Grace, you’ve changed, too. You’re stronger, more self-assured than you were when I met you. I suppose that is why I find this shyness so endearing.”
The sun was beginning to rise, the slowly creeping light turning the dew that clung to the grass into a reverse of the nighttime sky. “It’s beautiful,” I sighed, closing my eyes to the odd twinkling. “How fitting, you’ve turned my life upside down and now the sky is as well.” It took just a few moments, and the welcomed weaving of Robert’s fingers between mine, before the sweet pull of sleep finally won me over.
***
They say that the dawn of a new day always brings with it time for reflection. What do they say when you’ve slept through the dawn and awaken in the afternoon?
And what do they say when you awake in a bed not your own, and alone?
I opened my eyes and groaned, my body stretching to undo the tightness that had formed in my limbs. The afternoon sun was flowing through Robert’s window, the dust that floated in the room sparkling like tiny fairies from some childhood fantasy. “I’m losing my mind,” I muttered to myself before rolling over. The other half of the bed lay perfectly unused—the emptiness finding its mate inside of me as I realized that I had hoped Robert would be there.
With a grunt of disapproval, I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed and a surprised squeal came out of me as something flowed around me legs. I looked down and saw the skirt of what could have only been the longest nightgown I had ever seen in my life. It touched the floor and swirled around my legs like I had just stepped into a pile of down. The fabric was whiter than anything in the room, and softer than my oldest shirt. It trailed up, a row of tiny buttons beginning at my navel and continuing up to where the neckline began just below my collar bone, accompanied by thick, lacy straps that rested gently on my shoulders.
And the only thing that I could focus on more than that was the fact that I hadn’t put it on, which meant someone else did.
I stood up and rushed to the mirror to look at myself. I didn’t look any different—there was no dramatic change to my features or my expression. I simply looked shocked. My hair looked like Kansas probably did after Dorothy’s tornado touched down, but that was normal.
The sound of activity beyond the closed door caused me to jump and I hurried back to the bed, diving beneath the covers and pulling them up to my chin. When the door opened and Robert appeared, a tray in his hand, I felt nervous…and giddy.
“I tried to be as quick as possible, but no matter how capable I am at other things, I’m simply not able to cook at a pace any faster than a human’s.” He was smiling in a rather peculiar way as he placed the tray on the bed next to me.
I looked at the contents with great trepidation. There was a small plate of buttered toast, a small cup of strawberry jam beside it, and a larger plate that held what looked like a short stack of pancakes and several slices of bacon.
“You don’t like pancakes? Or is it the bacon? I wasn’t sure if you were a bacon fan, although I know that Graham eats an inordinate amount-”
I stopped his speaking with a simple shake of my head. “It’s not that. I like pancakes. And bacon, I like bacon. It’s just…”
H
e sat down beside me and reached for my hand, confusion riddling his face. “What?”
“Well, it’s just that your mother isn’t exactly all that good in the kitchen, which is surprising since she is what she is, and I guess I’m a little hesitant to try something that’s made by someone who’s only had her as an example on how to cook.”
The confusion soon made way for humor and amusement as his eyes crinkled and his mouth widened in a full grin. “I can assure you that I did not learn how to cook from my mother, although I should tell you that when my mother tries to be good at something, she usually succeeds, which probably means she wanted to do poorly in the kitchen.”
I picked up a strip of bacon and slowly brought it to my mouth, the smell of it turning my stomach traitorous as it began to rumble. I took a small bite and closed my eyes, bracing myself for sheer disappointment…and then proceeded to consume the entire tray of food, saying nothing, allowing only the sound of the fork hitting the plate to fill up the space around me. Robert stood off to the side, smiling.
When I was done, he took the tray away and disappeared for less than a minute, returning with a dish towel in his hands. “You ate that faster than I expected. I guess I’ve proven myself in the kitchen?”
Laughing, I nodded earnestly. “And then some. Of course, if I had taken my time, Graham would have shown up—he can smell bacon a county away.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I made the entire package for when he arrives then, isn’t it,” he joked.
“So he’s coming?”
He nodded and then motioned to my bags sitting at the end of the bed, sitting on the trunk that rested there. They were still packed. “You should change—He’s coming to pick you up and take you to the hospital to see Janice and the baby.”
“Will his car make it that far? I mean, it’s been struggling just to get here and back for school.”
“We’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
He began to head towards the door and I finally asked him the question that had been on my mind since the moment I woke up. “Robert, did we…I mean, did you and I…” Okay, so I didn’t actually ask him—it was too personal a question to ask, especially since I didn’t know how to tell—but he could see the question floating around in my head, struggling to get out, and his eyes grew large.
“No. No, Grace, no. Nothing like that happened.”
“Oh.” I tried to hide my disappointment, allowing only the relief to show. I think I must have mixed them up.
“Why would you think that?”
“Well, because I’m in different clothes—clothes that aren’t my own—and I was in your bed.”
His amused smile did nothing to encourage me to speak more frankly, and he only laughed at my reaction. “Grace, you fell asleep in your clothes, and I thought that you’d have been more comfortable in something meant for sleeping.”
“So you changed my clothes?”
“Well, yes. But I didn’t look—I promise.”
My face felt incredibly hot at the immediate denial, and I had to look away. He understood why and was sitting on the bed beside me in a flash. He turned my face to look at him, his eyes searching mine. “Grace, I’m sorry. That came out all wrong—I told you, I’m no good at these things, and as time goes by I’m only going to get worse.”
“Did you…want to look?”
It was impossible. Absolutely impossible, but there it was: a flash of red in his face that told me that somehow, he was embarrassed by the question, and more so his response.
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t, though. You didn’t know what I was doing and I didn’t want to get too…involved. But I wanted to. I can’t deny that.”
“But you saw me in the shower,” I responded.
“No, I didn’t.”
I felt my jaw set in a stubborn line and I looked at him with doubt and exasperation. “How is that possible? You had to have seen something in order to catch me.”
“I don’t need to see you to know where you are, Grace. I can feel you near me, hear you, smell you. Everything about you is something physical for me. And, since I’m being completely honest with you, I have to admit that it’s much more…enticing to know that you’re unclothed and not see you.”
There it went again, the rush of heat in my cheeks. I suddenly didn’t feel like asking any more questions.
“Well, how about if I ask one?”
I looked at him and nodded.
“Do you really think it would be that bad or that unmemorable, our being together…intimately?”
“W-what?” I sputtered, too taken aback by the question to fully comprehend what it was he wanted to know.
“You asked if we had been together—do you think it would have been that horrible that you’d forget it entirely and need to be reminded the next day?”
His face showed disappointment, but his eyes sparkled with amusement. I couldn’t help but feel somewhat upset by that. “It’s not fair,” I whispered to him, my voice low and angry.
“What’s not fair, Grace?”
“This,” I answered, pointing to him and then myself. “You think that my assuming we had slept together is funny, but it’s not. It’s not funny, and it’s not fair because we can’t ever be together, not in that way, anyway, because of something that happened way before either of us were born. And that’s a pretty damn long time ago, just in case you forgot or something—and you can live with that because you’ve got this ridiculous and divine patience while I’m human with the patience of a flea on a frying pan, and-”
Robert had had enough of my ranting. He didn’t have to say it. He simply showed it by grabbing my face in his hands and pulling me toward him, his lips making contact with mine so roughly, I wouldn’t have doubted they had split from the force of it.
But any doubt, any idea that I might have had in my thoughts flew out with the very last bit of oxygen in my body as I felt his mouth open and his cool breath touch the bow in my top lip. The sweet aroma, followed by the smooth slickness of something else crossing that curve had my heart slamming into the empty wall of my chest. I watched the silver in his eyes darken into something stormy, almost frighteningly so, before everything became lost in a snowstorm of white and black.
“Grace?” Grace?
It is quite the oddest thing to hear your name said in such a way. Two voices, both in my head, one heard through the filter of my ears, the other, untainted and clearer than glass. And I knew I must be delirious when the voices gave way to an urgent sort of pressure against my face, the feeling following the line of my jaw until finally ending at the apex where my neck began. The pressure held there for a minute, sweet and gentle against the pulse that beat beneath it before finally moving lower.
Once again, I felt the air leave me, but this time it surged back into me when the pressure met against the hollow between my shoulders. My eyes flew open and were met with the top of Robert’s jet black hair tickling my chin and nose.
“It appears I have figured out your on and off button,” he said grinning, his head lifting up to become level with my own so that I could see just how much enjoyment he got out of his newfound discovery..
“That’s not funny,” I replied, gasping slightly as my chest grew accustomed to the renewed breathing.
“Oh, but it is. Just think of all of the arguments that I could have ended had I’d known about this.”
“I…” What could I say to that? It’s not as though I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, preferred it even.
“I’m glad you see it my way.”
“But you can’t just end arguments like that, Robert. There are some things that need to be discussed. Like what do we do about us?”
He cocked his head to the side and smirked. “I thought we just figured that one out?”
“Making me pass out is your solution?”
“No. Making you pass out and then waking you back up with kisses is.”
My head began to hurt
as I realized that he had no clue what it was that I was trying to get at. I grabbed his hands and pressed them against my face, his fingers gently caressing the corners of my upturned mouth. “Do we spend the rest of our time together like this? With you holding onto my face like it’s going to fall off of my head? Or treating me with kid gloves just because I’m supposed to die at any moment? Good grief, now I understand how Stacy feels.”
Robert’s hands grew more intent as they escaped my grip and traveled to my shoulders, squeezing them gently. “Grace, there’s a difference between you and Stacy. Stacy’s going to die.”
“Yes, and so am I. The only difference between us is that she gets to die openly.”
“I’m not going to let you die, Grace. Not by my hand and not by anyone else’s.”
He looked so determined when he said that, I almost believed him. “You’re not going to sacrifice yourself for me, Robert. I won’t let you.”
“You won’t let me? Grace, in case you’ve forgotten, I’m the one who has to kill you in order to fulfill the duties of my call, and there’s nothing that you can do to make me kill you.”
I grunted in frustrated at his smugness, but mostly at the fact that he was right.
“Graham’s here—he just drove through the gate.” Robert lifted me up effortlessly off of the bed and placed my feet onto the floor. “I suggest you hurry and change before he walks in.”
I pulled the nightgown away from my body and looked at him questioningly. “Are you sure you didn’t look?”
“Grace, what is it going to take to get you to believe me when I say that I didn’t look? I kept my eyes closed the whole time; I didn’t want you to feel like I was taking advantage of you. I believe I’ve acted quite honorably these past few months with you, all things considered, and have never given you cause to think otherwise in that particular department, so if at all poss-”
I pushed myself forward and allowed my mouth to cover his, the impulse just too great to resist. It was a burst of euphoria that washed over me when he didn’t push me away, and I responded by playfully pulling on his lower lip with my teeth before letting him go.
