Arousal

by A. C. Rose

  “Your heart line is broken from here to here,” she said tracing the groove in my palm that ran less than an inch under the fold of my fingers. “These small lines that cross the larger line show you have had emotional trauma. But this,” she said, gliding her small fingertip across my hand, “shows that the impact of this trauma ends in this part of your life. You can accept love, if you choose to.”

  I looked over at Nicolai. He was holding his chin in his hand and tearing up. And he was looking at us both with so much love. Somehow, I could no longer even remember the man who hijacked me during a business event and tried to make me believe we were destined lovers. What I saw was a man who was strong enough to show how much he could love. A man who loved me. Me.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Petre.” I wanted to scoop her up in my arms and hug her. I wanted to keep her alive forever.

  “Please call me Grandmamma if you wish,” she said, squeezing my hand. Her skin was impossibly soft. My memory flashed back to my own grandmother’s skin. “It took some time for Nicolai to be ready to find you, but there has always been a place for you in our family. We waited for you.”

  “Waited for me?” Now I was crying ugly tears. I thought his showing up on the elevator and our meeting had been random. What did she mean that they’d been waiting for me?

  “I know you have been through a great deal of loss, and pain, and that it’s not easy for you to accept our unusual way of doing things.” She seemed to get a new burst of energy as she gripped my hand more firmly, but she was teary-eyed too. “But I ask you to trust my Nicolai. You have only to look into his eyes for the truth of his feelings—but I think you already know this. Only true beloveds can know this in such a short period of time.”

  “I think I understand,” I said. “I’m trying to understand.”

  “Understand with your heart, my dear.” She looked away for a moment, as if giving some thought to something and then brought her gaze back to mine. “You have not been raised to believe this, but you have a special power in your DNA, same as Nicolai. Tomorrow, a convergence of influences in the heavens will give you both the chance to open to you gifts. But you must do this together.”

  “What kind of gifts?” Finally, I was getting some answers. “And why must we do this tomorrow, together?”

  “In our spiritual clan of seers around the world, a large mass of power passes to the next generation tomorrow,” she said. “It is the power to know things before they happen.”

  She eyed me, as if looking for a reaction, but I kept my face frozen and listened.

  “This power is something people of ill-intent would like to use to throw darkness into the world,” she continued, shaking her head. “We use our powers only for the best intentions, to help ourselves and others. Nicolai needs his Ves’tacha by his side, and you need him. Two are stronger than one.”

  “But what if I don’t want to take on this power,” I asked, feeling the edge of panic, and still not sure what I was signing on for.

  “It’s not something outside of you.” She sounded a bit tired now. “The power is inside you. Just as true beloveds are inside each other’s hearts before they meet. The full moon will activate it. Nicolai must be with you because he is more spiritually prepared. But then, when you are married and settled, you will be the one with more power—the women folk always are.” She laughed. I laughed too, but the weight of the statement—“married and settled”—did not escape me.

  Nicolai, being sensitive to my reactions to the M-word, brought his body closer to mine and placed his hand on my lower back. I think he knew how much I loved that feeling and wanted to soothe me a little. A great, warm energy came from his hand to my spine.

  For a moment, I was distracted. That’s when his grandmother pressed something into my hand.

  “This is for you,” she said, closing my hand around a deep blue velvet pouch. It was a bit heavy, like a stone. “Keep it close to your heart tomorrow—and always.”

  I was reluctant to accept, but it didn’t feel like the right time to refuse her gift. His grandmother’s hand was still pressed against mine as she began to fade. She closed her eyes so suddenly I was afraid she was dying.

  “She’s just weary.” He must have sensed my alarm. “She saved her energy to meet you and to share with you. We’ll go now.”

  As I made the move to stand up straight, she reasserted her hold on my hand and looked into my eyes—in the deep, knowing way that was Nicolai’s signature look. I marveled again that she had the same eyes—beautiful, blue, sparkling and expressive eyes.

  “My darling Allison, you must not be afraid to meet your destiny,” she said in a grandmotherly way, a smile on her lips. “It will all unfold as it is meant to be. You are a strong woman, and now, there is a strong man by your side. Fated love is not always an easy love, but it offers the strong foundation upon which to build your lives, and to get through anything, if you do so together. It gives you a chance to leave the world a better place.”

  I didn’t want to leave her. I wanted to bathe in her magical, loving energy. But I also wanted to know more about her grandson and the destiny she was so sure was mine. She seemed to have the answers. Now was the time to get Nicolai talking too.

  “Come, my love,” he said, taking my shoulder and urging me away. My hand was still closed around the mysterious item she’d given me.

  He said something to his grandmother in Romanian and kissed her forehead.

  As we walked out, my attention was caught by a collection of vintage black and white photos in beautiful period frames. She had, indeed, been a beautiful young woman, and the images were from many stages of life—from childhood, to wedding photos, to a photo with two young boys dressed in tiny suits with shorts on her knees. There was one photo of her laughing with another woman. They sat in front of a house that looked so familiar. I wondered if it was some classic building in Europe, and I could swear I’d seen it somewhere.

  Nicolai’s eagerness to get us out the door gave me little time to take in the photo, but it stayed in my consciousness.

  My head was spinning after that beautiful and unusual encounter. I must have stumbled while departing from her room because Nicolai quickly moved his hands around my waist to keep me from falling. Then he walked by my side, with one hand around my right hip and the other holding my left hand. It seemed he was catching me a lot the last few days. Why did I feel like I was falling so much? Was it a metaphor for falling in love?

  “Let’s get you food and a libation,” he said, guiding us downstairs. “There is something awaiting us in the kitchen.”

  My right hand began to throb with energy. It wasn’t clear whether Nicolai knew what his grandmother slipped to me. I planned to look in the pouch once we got downstairs where he could see it too.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Just as we began to make our way down the grand staircase, there was a noise below. It sounded like someone entering the palatial residence and chatting with the person who’d opened the door. Maybe it was the nurse? Or perhaps it was Sam or someone who was running the household. A commotion echoed through the very still, quiet halls.

  As we reached to the bottom of the stairs, Nicolai looked over to make sure I was okay and he released his tight hold on me. I caught a glimpse of a young maid walking through the foyer to the main room, and there was a gorgeous man with dark hair and blue eyes with her. He looked a bit like a darker-haired Nicolai. The maid was fawning as she escorted him in. They seemed to know each other.

  A cautious smile crossed Nicolai’s face. He moved to greet the other man and I trailed along. I clenched the velvet pouch tighter in my hand.

  “Vlad,” he said, kissing the man on one cheek and then the other. “You made it.”

  “Da. How is she?” Vlad asked. That name! All I could think about was Vlad the Impaler that I’d read about when I was searching for information on Transylvania. I wished Aisha, my walking encyclopedia on men, were here to add historical insights and first impressi
ons.

  “Stoic, and determined as usual, but she’s weak.” Nicolai’s eyes rimmed with water. Though he appeared on the verge of tears again, he also seemed to speak with caution, as if he did not want to cause alarm for the other man.

  “I want to see her.” Vlad looked eager and concerned. “I don’t want to wait another minute, man.”

  “Go. Go see her, and then come and have a bite with us.” Nicolai’s demeanor was warming up a little more, so I assumed he genuinely wanted to share a meal with him.

  For the first time, the other man looked over at me. His gaze linked to mine in an all-too-familiar way. Those eyes apparently ran in the family, yet he was looking at me as if we had known each other for more than ten seconds. Then he gave me a once over, crudely stopping at my breasts, and then the most visible hickey on my neck.

  “Ah, your Ves’tacha?” he said to Nicolai.

  “Da,” was his response.

  The two men shared a knowing glance. I was still standing there waiting for an introduction. It annoyed me to think this may be a thing in the region they hail from—not politely introducing the Ves’tacha before chatting away—but I gave Nicolai some slack for being distracted and upset about his grandmamma.

  “Allison, this is Vlad,” he said, tentatively, “my cousin.” Ah, the cousin who is the model no doubt. Yes, I could imagine him on the home page of our e-reader as “Hot Guy with Accent.” And he would look good on a widely circulated meme in social media—shirtless and windblown on a beach. But there was something off-putting about him. And Nicolai seemed hesitant to introduce us.

  I quickly transferred the velvet pouch into my other hand and reached out my hand to shake his. He lifted and kissed it. Another hand kisser! Uncomfortable, I looked over to Nicolai to make sure it was okay. “It’s a thing,” he explained. “Men in Romania do not shake hands with women. They kiss hands.”

  “Or they ignore you,” said Vlad, with a huge grin. “But who could ignore a woman as beautiful as this.” He had the family charm, like Nicolai, but he was more of a pretty boy. I sensed immediately that he could be trouble.

  “Yes, cousin, I agree she is beautiful.” Nicolai pulled me to his side possessively. I was sure he’d add, “And she’s mine.” But he refrained. I sensed an unspoken tension between them. Maybe they were both grieving, or perhaps they were so alpha they could not help being competitors.

  “Okay, I’ll see you in a few,” said Vlad, in a statement addressed to Nicolai, but he looked very intentionally at me. His flirty nature would be fun on a photo shoot, where we like to tease out that side of models. Here it was uncomfortable.

  When the two men spoke, they sounded culturally western. Yet Vlad also had a slight accent, which I heard again when he turned to the maid and said, “Take me to the countess, please.”

  That’s when the world suddenly stood still, as I replayed what I thought I heard in my mind. Nicolai stood there, looking as if he was bracing himself for my response to overhearing his cousin. I waited for Vlad and the maid to walk away before saying a word.

  “Countess?” I said softly, raising an eyebrow to Nicolai.

  “Yes, my love,” he said, just as softly. “Grandmamma has had that title for a long time.”

  “Is it, like, a royal title?” A gazillion questions shot off in my head like fireworks. “From where? What is she countess of?”

  “Years ago, it was connected with the court of the Royal Consorts of Transylvania, who were basically seated kings and queens of Romania,” he said. “The bloodline was mixed with monarchs being married to Romanian rulers from other countries. My grandfather came from a well-to-do family and fell into favor. Grandpappa was rewarded with an estate, land, and a title for himself and his wife. That is the family legend, anyway.”

  He took a deep breath and put his hand to his chin before continuing. He appeared to be measuring how much to tell me.

  “Oh, please, don’t stop there.” I folded my arms and shot him a glance that let him know I expected him to continue. I didn’t care that we were still standing in the foyer.

  “Grandpappa was very young. His family decided they had to work quickly to find him a bride so he could properly claim the rights and deeds to what had been promised.” He paused for a moment and looked into my eyes to see how I was taking the information. “My grandmother was born to a wealthy Russian family. She is of Romani blood and her father did not want her persecuted or shunned as a gypsy. He wanted her to have a title and prestige that would elevate her. So he made an arranged marriage that gave her security and social status. The marriage was put together within a week.”

  Finally, a clue. Maybe this is a family of fast-tracked marriages—even eighty years ago.

  “I guess it is difficult for the family to lose the titles when your grandmother is no longer here?” I placed my hands on my hips and started tapping my foot, eager for his response. From working with my dad, who had executed public relations and marketing for royals, I knew a little bit about people with old money and old titles—they liked to keep everything in the family, forever.

  “Well…” He pointed toward a room off to the side. “Let’s get out of the foyer so we can grab some food and sit. Family history is always better over a meal and liquor.”

  “Okay, but, you’re not going to tell me you are a marquis or a baron or anything like that, right?” I slipped the pouch his grandmother gave me into my purse, suddenly afraid to look at it. “I mean, your generation is not titled, right?”

  “Technically speaking,” he said sheepishly. “I do have a title.”

  “And are you going to tell me this title?” Now I was on edge, waiting for the bombshell to drop.

  “Count,” he said, taking a breath and looking down before bringing his eyes back to mine to answer. “My title is count.”

  “Jeez-us. Does it look like my mouth dropped open?” I asked. “Because it feels that way.” How did Aisha miss this in her research?

  “The older generation likes to keep their titles, and pass them to the next, along with land that has been in the family and certain inheritances a bit more international in scope. It became my inheritance when my father refused it, and later passed away, and my grandfather insisted it continue. And Grandmamma also wishes to keep the titles alive.”

  “By passing it to a daughter or granddaughter?” I wondered if there was a royal Romanian soap opera about to unfold, with multiple relatives vying for the wealth and legacy of his grandmother.

  “No, to you, Allison,” he said, calmly, as if it was a logical next step for his family. “There are no daughters or granddaughters. Besides, the title is inherited through primogeniture, meaning through the male heir. Through marriage, you would be the new Countess of Miklosvar.”

  “The Countess of what now?” It may have come out a bit louder than I intended. “Do I look like I’m having a hard time breathing?”

  “It’s just a family tradition,” he said, putting his arms on my shoulders and pulling me toward him. “But there is an inheritance involved, material and spiritual. If you choose to marry me—someday—that is.”

  I felt the blood drain out of my head and drop down to my feet as my breathing hastened.

  “I think you need a drink,” he said.

  “Da,” was my response.

  Chapter Nineteen

  We wandered toward the back of the house, into a grand kitchen. The appliances were old-fashioned. Unlike the fancy newfangled bathroom under the stairs and far from Nicolai’s super modern abode—with his glass front refrigerator, shiny equipment, and marble countertops—this area looked unintentionally retro. It was something from a time before either of us was born, but it was familiar because my grandmother had older appliances in her apartment when I was growing up.

  The refrigerator was a bright turquoise classic Frigidaire that looked like something from the sixties. Nicolai opened it and was poking around inside when he noticed my breathing was still a little unhinged.

 
He closed the door, leaned against it, and pulled me into his arms.

  “Should I find you a paper bag to breathe into?” he asked, trying to be lighthearted. “Or maybe I can use my lips to calm you. It worked once before.” I pouted at him in protest, but his mouth came down on mine and somehow, he was right, my body and my breathing began to settle from his touch. I melted into him, remembering the feelings that led me to this crazy situation in the first place.

  He took hold of my face and pulled me closer. His mouth moved wildly over mine, his tongue urgent, probing, and moving in an out. Our bodies naturally melded together as we kissed. It was more like tongue fucking each other’s mouths—right there in his grandmother’s retro kitchen. I got so turned-on that I was about to suggest he do something dirty to me on the Formica countertop. I pulled his shirt out of his pants in the back so I could get my hands on his flesh.

  That’s when an older woman in a server’s uniform came in. She was zaftig and donned in a white apron and an old-fashioned hairnet. She had on black work boots. The stern look in her eye indicated she didn’t want us fornicating around her food.

  “Please, Count Nicolai, sit with your Ves’tacha, and I will serve you.” She waved us away from the area toward an adjacent dining room.

  He glanced over at me quickly for my reaction to the C-word. I tried not to roll my eyes and instead stayed very still so I could recover from the kiss—and from getting caught kissing and fondling him. He definitely got my mind off the matching titles and taking over the grandparent’s legacy for a few minutes—until his scary—looking maid reminded me I had just tongued a Transylvanian count. She apparently was one of his constituents. I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. Why couldn’t there be anything normal about this man and his family? Including the maid?

  “There’s no need, Helen,” he said, straightening up and tucking his shirt back in. “We can grab something.”