I took the glass from him and murmured a thank-you. Then he pointed toward one of the couch groupings. “Is that acceptable?”
“Sure,” I replied, although I wasn’t sure if he intended to sit next to me or on the couch across from the sofa he’d indicated. Only one way to find out, though.
I seated myself, and he took the couch across from mine. It would be easier to talk this way, facing one another, although I did wonder what it would have been like to have him sitting beside me, with the possibility that our legs might brush against one another. A little shiver went over me, but I made myself sip from the water he’d provided, telling myself that I needed to listen to what he had to say and not allow myself to get distracted.
When I looked up from my water, I saw that once again his gaze was fastened on me, dark, intent. “You asked me a question a few moments ago.”
“I did.”
“May I speak honestly?”
I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. On the other hand, we needed to clear the air between us before we could progress any further. If we progressed, that is. I was still trying to process the very visceral reactions I kept having to him, trying to reconcile this handsome, solemn man sitting across from me with all the negative things I’d heard about him over the years. He hadn’t behaved very well, as far as I could tell, but then, I’d only heard my parents’ side of the situation.
“Of course I want you to be honest with me,” I told him. “What’s the point if we’re going to start off by hiding things from one another?”
“Thank you,” he said. “I do appreciate that. Let me begin by saying that I certainly never thought I would find myself in this position. I had long ago resigned myself to living this existence alone. It happens to us occasionally.”
“Why?” I asked, truly curious.
“We still don’t know for sure. Something in our DNA gone slightly awry, an opportunity missed…it could be one of any number of reasons as to why one of our people finds him- or herself leading a solitary life. But I had my work, which seemed to be enough at the time.”
I wanted to ask if he’d had any of those casual relationships my father had mentioned, but that seemed like too personal a question for the current stage of our relationship. Although maybe “relationship” was pushing things a bit, considering this was the first chance we’d even had to talk alone, and before this we’d only shared a few bits and pieces of conversation.
Somehow, though, I got the impression that Raphael had kept himself severely alone, that if he couldn’t have the match of his heart, then he wouldn’t have anyone at all. From what my parents had said about him, it sounded as if he didn’t have much patience for people and their various romantic entanglements. Sour grapes?
Fumbling for what I hoped might be a safer topic, I asked, “How many people were you ‘assigned’ to before Persephone?”
His face went still again, remote. “A good number. But I don’t see how that has any bearing on what you and I are experiencing now.”
He was right; it really didn’t. To tell the truth, there was something surreal about sitting here on this graceful ship of his, with its feeling of a high-end hotel, and discussing our strange connection or attraction or whatever you wanted to call it as calmly as someone sitting down to have a consultation with their interior designer or something.
No, that wasn’t right. No interior designer I’d ever met had sent my heart racing the way mine did every time Raphael’s eyes locked on me.
I blurted, “So, how old are you?”
Surprisingly, he didn’t look offended. “Does it matter that much?”
“Shouldn’t it?”
“Did it matter to your parents?”
“Well — ” I broke off and shook my head. My mother must had had her misgivings at the beginning, but clearly they hadn’t deterred her from marrying my father, or having me. “I guess not. But they don’t talk about it, either.”
Raphael sipped from his glass, then set it on the table before us, which looked like a large piece of stone extruded in an organic, flowing shape. Threads of bluish material ran through the beige and white matrix, reminding me of the boulder turquoise stones I’d seen in some Native American jewelry. Just like everything else I’d seen on the ship, it seemed designed to be graceful and lovely and unobtrusive.
I wondered what his people’s cities looked like.
“It is different for us,” he told me. “At two decades, our people reach their majority, and after that they are free to search for their soul mate, who may be only a year or two older than they, or many centuries. We live so long that these differences in age matter very little as time wears on. Didn’t your father speak to you of this?”
“Not really. That is….” I paused, trying to think of a way to phrase what I needed to say without sounding as if I was criticizing what Raphael had done when he exiled my father to Earth. “I guess he didn’t talk too much about it, since it seemed obvious to all of us that we would all be living our lives here, and that whoever I did end up with would be from here as well. He probably didn’t see the point.”
“I understand why he would think that way.” Raphael leaned forward slightly; even that small alteration in the distance that separated us was enough to make my breathing quicken.
Could he tell? Probably. But he already knew a strong attraction existed between us. In a way, that was a relief. I didn’t have to hide my reactions from him or pretend to be coy.
“He probably thought he was doing you a service by avoiding the subject, if he thought you would never have the opportunity to enter the world where he’d been born. But I am sure he explained our people’s customs to your mother, made her understand it truly did not matter that so much time lay between them.”
Obviously, she’d come to terms with the situation. But even though I was beginning to understand how such an age difference didn’t matter, it didn’t change the fact that I still wanted to know how old Raphael was. Just to satisfy my own curiosity, if nothing else.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
For a long moment, he didn’t respond, only sat there and watched me. He didn’t look angry, or annoyed. If anything, another one of those faint Mona Lisa smiles was playing around his lips. But I couldn’t look at his mouth for too long, or I’d definitely be getting myself into trouble.
Then he said, “By your people’s reckoning, I am a little more than two thousand years old.”
I’d been bracing myself for something like that. Even so, hearing him state the number so matter-of-factly startled me. To look at him, you’d have guessed he was in his late twenties, thirty at the most. Older than I was, sure, but not so much that it would raise any eyebrows if we were seen in public together.
Two thousand years. I tried to wrap my head around that number, but couldn’t. All right, intellectually I could just barely grasp that he was an alien and so not bound by the same biological rules as the people who called Earth home. And I’d already seen how my parents seemed to age very slowly. But….
“This startles you?”
“Just a little,” I said wryly.
“But is it really that much of a surprise? Martin has changed hardly at all since I left him here twenty-five years ago, and your mother clearly takes after her father Gabriel in this, since she also appears more to be your sister than your mother.”
Well, that was true enough. Strangers were always shocked to discover that she was my mother. It wasn’t that she hadn’t aged at all; from what I’d been able to piece together, members of my father’s race had some control over their appearance, could allow themselves to age to a point where they felt comfortable. That was why my grandfather did appear to be in his late fifties, and my father somewhere in his late thirties or early forties. My mother still looked like she was barely thirty, although I didn’t know whether that was on purpose or because, being half human, she didn’t have as much control over the process as a full-blood Pleiadian.
There had been some conversations on the topic, discussions I really hadn’t wanted to hear, that at some point my parents’ apparently ageless qualities would become just a little too glaring, and they’d have to move away and start over in a place where no one knew them. I hated to contemplate the possibility, but I understood their reasoning. Really, they probably should have moved on a few years ago, although I knew my mother was loath to leave her sister and extended family behind.
The one thing neither of my parents had ever brought up — probably because they didn’t want me brooding over my future before it had even begun — was that someday I’d have to face that same eventuality. And what if I’d fallen in love with someone, knowing they would age while I didn’t, or at least did so very slowly?
No wonder my love life was such a wasteland.
“It’s all right,” I said at length. “That is, I know we’re working with a completely different set of rules here. It’s just — you don’t look two thousand years old.”
He chuckled. “Well, I should hope not.”
Something about that laugh…it was low and warm, strangely intimate. Definitely not the sort of sound I would have ever expected Raphael/Otto to make. I also could never have predicted what it would do to certain portions of my anatomy.
Once again, our eyes met. A shiver passed over me, even as a not entirely unwelcome heat began to churn low in my belly. And then Raphael got up from where he sat and came over to me, one hand extended.
I couldn’t do anything except take it. The heat that had started to pulse in me felt as if it was traveling down to my fingertips, passing to him. A single shudder wracked his body, and then he pulled me to my feet and cupped my face in his hands. Just the sensation of his fingers against my skin was enough to make me run hot, then cold, as if my body couldn’t figure out how to handle the overwhelming sensations now pounding through it.
But he didn’t kiss me. He held me like that for a long moment, staring down into my eyes as if desperately attempting to find an answer he didn’t even know he’d been seeking until that moment.
Then he whispered, “Callista, I have never — ” The words stopped abruptly there, and a look of agonized hope passed over his face.
He could have been about to say almost anything, but in that moment I thought I understood. His entire life had been spent alone. He’d long ago given up hope of ever finding the match for his soul.
Which meant he had never been with anyone. Not even once.
The thought sent a shiver of fear through me, because it seemed to mean that he’d decided I truly was his one, the echo of his heart he’d been looking for throughout the centuries. How could I possibly measure up to that? Despite my unusual parentage, I still thought of myself as an ordinary enough young woman. I hadn’t done anything all that special with my life. Someone like Raphael should have a partner who was talented and brilliant and sophisticated. My test scores might have indicated that I was brilliant, but about the only out-of-the-ordinary thing I’d ever accomplished was to get my bachelor’s degree in three years instead of four.
Also, I’d had no idea any sort of otherworldly match awaited me. I’d tried to live my life like a normal girl — or as normal a life as it could be, with a half-alien mother and fully alien father. I certainly hadn’t thought I should be “saving” myself for anybody, and even though I knew I wasn’t in love with him, I’d lost my virginity to a guy I’d been dating for a few weeks during my senior year of high school, mostly because I figured it had to happen sometime, and I didn’t see the point in holding out for no reason.
Now, though, I wished I hadn’t been so careless. There had only been two other guys after Seth, neither of them serious, which wasn’t exactly a large number for a twenty-two-year-old who didn’t have any moral or religious reasons to abstain. But even those three were more than Raphael had ever experienced.
“It’s all right,” I told him. Sooner or later I’d have to tell him about my sordid past, but right then I only wanted to focus on making this as easy as possible for him. “I want — ”
I’d been about to say, “I want you to,” but I wasn’t able to get that far. My reassurance had apparently been all Raphael was looking for, because in the next instant his mouth was on mine, sweet with the taste of the mineral water we’d been drinking. And oh, God, no kiss had ever made it feel as if every nerve ending in my body had been lit with delicious fire, a heat that seared but did not burn. Our tongues touched, and I was melting into him, feeling his arms around me, so strong, so perfect. Somehow I could hear how his heartbeat synchronized with mine.
Only a kiss, and yet it was enough to make me realize that there could be no one else except him.
After an endless, eternal moment, he pulled away. But one hand reached up to smooth the hair away from my forehead, then drifted downward to trace a fingertip across my cheekbone and down to my mouth. I trembled at his touch, marveling that such a whisper of sensation could evoke that much of a reaction in me.
To my surprise, when I looked up at him, his eyes were clouded with pain. “Raphael? What is it?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. Or rather, only the realization of how very hollow my life has been until this moment. I thought I was doing good work, making as much of a difference as I was allowed. But now I know how empty all my efforts truly were.”
I couldn’t let him think that about himself. Already everything I’d thought I’d known about him had been turned on its head. I knotted my fingers in his and pulled him toward me. “Don’t say that,” I told him. “I know it was because of your help that Persephone was able to drive the aliens from the base that first time. You did make a difference…and you saved Paul’s life. And that’s only the one instance I know of. There must have been hundreds more throughout your life.” No reply, and I tightened my grip on his hands. “Shouldn’t you be glad that at least we’ve found each other now? Everyone has regrets. We just have to learn to move past them.”
A faint ghost of a smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “I rather doubt that you have much to regret, Callista.”
“Oh, yes, I do.” I hesitated, then reminded myself I had told him only a few minutes earlier that we couldn’t hide things from one another, not if we intended to have any kind of a future together. “I wish I’d known about you, because then I wouldn’t have wasted myself.”
“‘Wasted’?” he repeated, brows drawing together slightly.
“There were…others,” I said. “Only a couple, and nothing serious. But I didn’t know there was a reason why I should have waited.” I held myself still, waiting for the inevitable look of judgment to cross his face.
It never came. A head shake, followed by a smile. He pulled me against him, strong arms making me feel more safe, more wanted, than I ever had before. “My dear Callista, you had no idea. I wouldn’t have expected that of you. And it certainly doesn’t lessen what I feel for you.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Of course not.” He bent and pressed his lips against the top of my head, and once again delicious warmth seemed to flow through every limb. “To be perfectly honest, it makes me somewhat relieved.”
I shifted slightly, just so I could look up into his face. “Relieved?”
“Yes.” He released me so he could take my hands in his and hold them tightly. “At least now I can be assured that one of us knows what they’re doing.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Maybe there should have been some awkwardness between us after that, but, strangely, there wasn’t. Raphael took me by the hand and showed me around the ship, letting me see the room where the strange drives that could hurl the vessel from planet to planet in such a short amount of time were housed. To my eyes, they didn’t look like anything much, only a series of semi-translucent dark pipes with what appeared to be glowing embers floating within, but I knew if Paul Oliver had been there, he would have been beside himself. Well, when he wasn’t peppering Raphael with questions as to
how everything worked.
But I didn’t have the same scientific mind, so I was fine with merely seeing what was there, and allowing myself to be astonished by the simple, elegant beauty of the ship. Everything seemed to have been designed for the comfort of its crew — even if that crew happened to be only one person.
He took me to another lounge, smaller than the one where we’d had our talk, but with the same enormous screens that allowed such an intense view of the Earth, hanging there in the star-studded darkness. We sat down on one of the couches, next to each other this time, and I leaned against him, my head on his shoulder. Strange how natural such a position could feel.
His hand found mine, fingers threading through one another as we sat there in the softly lit chamber. Part of the planet was in shadow, the lights from the cities there like tiny flickering embers against deep, deep black. It looked so small and fragile, as if I could reach out and cover the entire disk with my hand. And yet everything I’d ever known was contained in that blue-green crescent.
The words were out of my mouth before I even realized I intended to bring up the subject. “Do you think they’ll ever stop?”
Raphael didn’t ask who I meant by “they.” “I’m not sure.”
I swiveled to look over at him. “I was hoping for something a little more definite than that.”
A shake of his head. His profile was to me, and I wanted to reach out and trace the fine lines of his brow and nose and chin. But I didn’t, and instead held myself still, hoping he would know I needed more from him than the non-answer he’d given me.
After a noticeable hesitation, he said, “It is complicated, because the Reptilians, for all the difficulty they have given us and the galaxy as a whole, are still allowed to be part of the Assembly.”
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