Mystic Realms: A Limited Edition Collection

by Nicole Morgan

I couldn’t help darting a quick glance around me to make sure he wasn’t actually looking past me at someone else. In a crowded club, of course, that proved to be a useless move.

  Taking a cue from the social butterfly bouncing in the seat next to me, I turned and sent the man a shy, tentative smile.

  The absorption in his gaze intensified, though he didn’t smile back.

  Okay. I’d tried and nothing happened. Not knowing what else to do, I forced my attention back to the other seventeen-year-olds at our table. Most of them were neighbors. We attended high school together and rollerbladed or skateboarded in the afternoons once we finished our homework. After dinner, we usually congregated under the streetlights and chatted until bedtime. On Friday and Saturday evenings, we almost always ended up here at Club Halo.

  Something told me the man staring at me from across the room didn’t spend his afternoons on a skateboard. Though I was no longer peeking over my shoulder at him, I could still feel his eyes on me. I twisted a lock of my shoulder-length light brown hair around a finger and glanced down at my lemon yellow sweater and jean leggings. I wished now I had buckled in to Antjie’s endless nagging and invested in some red or blonde highlights and a manicure. I should have worn something more sophisticated, too, like the blood-red cocktail dress in the back of my closet. At least I had on the pair of strappy white sandals with three-inch heels Antjie had tossed at me from my closet. I’d splurged on them during an end-of-season sale at the Base Exchange last summer. They’d set me back nearly a hundred dollars. At the moment, they were worth every penny.

  “If you’re going to play chicken,” Antjie teased, “at least let’s go dance on his side of the room. It’ll make his night. Trust me.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for dancing, but she wasn’t taking no for an answer. She grabbed my hand, pulled me to my feet, and pretty much dragged me across the floor to stand directly in front of his table where his friends were still kissing. It was such an unsubtle move that I blushed, as in really blushed. My face felt hot enough to explode.

  Throwing an embarrassed glance at the man, I caught his amused expression. Gah! He was laughing at us.

  When Antjie spun away from me in a fast-paced set of dance steps, he rolled his eyes in her direction.

  I froze in surprise at his quick understanding of my predicament but had no time to react before Antjie whirled back in my direction.

  “Come on,” she urged, reaching for my hand, and doing a few dance steps for my benefit. “You’re one of the best dancers on the planet. Show the guy some of your moves.”

  I shuffled my feet to the number blaring from the DJ’s table, but it’s hard to do anything halfway in three-inch heels. You have to commit. Besides I love to dance. I finally gave in to the tug of the music and sashayed a few steps to the delight of my friend. Then the tempo slowed, and the music transitioned to a sweeter melody. Individual dancers left the floor and crowded around the bar, while couples took their places beneath the rotating disco lights.

  The dark-skinned man and his exotic date took their place on the dance floor, oblivious to their growing audience. It turned out they could dance as well as they could kiss.

  I swallowed a sigh of envy. Time to step aside and make room for those who’d actually shown up with a date.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Antjie threatened when I took a step toward our table. “We just got out here.”

  I shrugged and capitulated with a wry chuckle. So we stayed on the dance floor, dipping and swaying. I finally relaxed and let myself go a little. Maybe it was because I knew Antjie wasn’t going to let me sit this one out, or maybe it was because I knew I had an appreciative audience.

  Man, but the guy watching us was insanely good looking! My guess was Slavic or Czech. The way he caressed me with his gaze made me feel like I was the only girl in the room. Either that or my imagination was getting the best of me, which was more likely the case.

  None of it mattered anyway. The whole point of spending the evening at the club was to shake off the suffocating fingers of melancholy that had threatened to choke me earlier. I would have to thank Antjie later for forcing me out of the house tonight, even if it meant enduring one of those I-told-you-so twinkles in her eyes.

  I closed my eyelids halfway through the song and let the music flow through my limbs. It was a song meant for lovers, but I knew how to slow dance solo. My father had made sure his only child had years of dance lessons under her belt. He considered it an essential life skill. As a result, I knew ballroom dancing, tap, swing, jazz, disco, some hip-hop, and a few unique steps I’d developed on my own. I danced as effortlessly as most people breathed and dreamed of opening my own studio some day. Or club. I hadn’t decided yet.

  The song ended and started to transition to yet another slow song. Maybe now Antjie would let me sit down. I gave one last twirl but before I completed it, male hands enclosed my waist and pulled me against a hard chest. I opened my eyes and almost swooned.

  It was him. The guy who’d been staring at me the past twenty minutes or so.

  “You,” I breathed, awed. Everything about him was overpowering up close. His height, the breadth of his chest, the intensity of his expression. My chin barely cleared the top of his shoulders. His scent was amazing, too — a mixture of spirits, woodsy cologne, and smoke. The bonfire kind, not the cigarette kind, though smoking was a popular pastime in Germany. There were cigarette dispensers on every major city corner and no surgeon general warning signs to scare people away like there were in the U.S.

  “I’m Stellan.” He bent his head to speak against my ear, probably to be heard above the music. His smooth baritone washed over me, intimate and possessive sounding. As I’d suspected earlier, he had a distinctly northern accent. A very entrancing one. I could seriously listen to the man speak all night long.

  With one hand on the small of my back, he guided me to a far corner of the room, away from the blare of the main speakers. He resumed the dance by spinning me in a slow circle, then catching me close again.

  I was surprised how cool his hands were. Probably from the chilled ale he’d been cradling earlier.

  “Sorry for stealing you away, but these places aren’t exactly built for conversation.”

  My heart pounded out a thousand beats a minute, but it wasn’t due to any regrets over being stolen away from the main dance floor by the gorgeous Stellan.

  “I’m Grace.” I wished I could think of something interesting to say, but my brain felt pretty dazed at the moment.

  “Please assure me you’re legally old enough to be here dancing and drinking beer.”

  “Why?” I felt my eyes widen. Sixteen was the legal drinking age here for most beer and wine products. I was seventeen, almost eighteen. “Are you a polezei?”

  “Nein.” It was German for the word no. “I just want to make sure you’re old enough to kiss.”

  My lips parted in wordless shock.

  I stared through half closed lids as he slowly lowered his head over mine, stopping an inch or so above my mouth. “You’re so lovely. Unblemished like a perfectly cut gem. Fresh. Uninhibited. Do you have any idea how rare that is these days?”

  I compressed my lips, unsure whether to be flattered or offended at his old-fashioned sounding assessment of me. I’d kissed boys before, gone on a few dates. I wasn’t completely inexperienced.

  “And your eyes.” He traced a cool fingertip down my cheek. “They reflect every variation of emotion, every fleeting thought. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  I almost stopped breathing. “Eyes. The window to everyone’s soul,” I responded shakily. “Yours are a pretty incredible blue.”

  “Thank you.” He sounded relieved and pulled me closer — so close we could only sway back and forth.

  It was the most intimate I’d ever been with a guy. His hard and chiseled body undulated gently against mine like he was trying to brand himself on me. I should have been shocked at his boldness. Instead, I reveled in the
knowledge this fascinating creature seemed to be as attracted to me as I was to him. I darted a quick glance at the wall clock, feeling like Cinderella. It was about five minutes ’til midnight. I’m not normally a superstitious person, but I hoped the magical moment I was experiencing wouldn’t end at midnight. Or that I wouldn’t wake up in my own bed to find this was only a dream.

  He wasn’t much of a talker, but what was happening between us didn’t seem to require many words. Even though I wasn’t the least bit cold, I shivered. Maybe it was from the knowledge his tight t-shirt and the delicate knit of my sweater were all that separated us.

  I wondered if he could tell the effect he was having on me. In the attempt to hide another painful blush, I rested my head against his shoulder. Though in heels, I was standing on my tiptoes to wind my arms around his neck.

  He made an appreciative sound and rested his cheek against the top of my head. At the same time, he dropped a hand to my lower back. Because my arms were raised, my sweater was riding up a little. He caressed a slow circle there with the cool pad of his thumb against my bare skin.

  My lurking headache from earlier fled. In its place was the biggest case of female jitters I’d ever experienced. My shaky knees finally gave out and forced me down from my tiptoes. I gripped Stellan’s shoulders to steady myself. They were impressively hard beneath my hands. Like steel.

  Years of dancing and working out kicked in. Without thinking, I dug in my fingers to massage away the knots in his shoulder blades and wondered again what he did for a living. There was no way he was this tense over meeting a high school teenager.

  “You’re good at that,” he muttered against my temple. “Very good.”

  The attraction between us intensified to a potent, nearly overwhelming level. I never wanted the song to end. Never, never, never! Which it did. All too soon.

  The last note faded. Stellan brushed his lips lightly against my neck and took a step back. When he dropped his arms, I wanted to cry out from the emptiness that flooded me.

  He turned to leave.

  That was it? It looked like he was planning to simply walk away. After what we’d just shared, I couldn’t believe it. It was the first time in months I’d been able to forget all the heartache in my life for even a few minutes. There had to be more to this than goodbye. There just had to be!

  “Will I, um, see you again?” I asked, desperate to detain him a little longer.

  He paused and half-turned back to me, speaking without looking fully at me. “Believe me, the right thing for me to do at the moment is walk away.” There was a world of regret in his voice and infinite yearning in his stance.

  “I don’t understand.” I was mortified at how crestfallen I sounded. Like a kid who’d dropped her ice cream cone on the pavement.

  He raised his head, and our gazes clashed. His formerly blue eyes burned with so much heat, I could have swore they flickered around the edges with tiny red flames. For a breathless moment, I thought he would pull me back in his arms. Instead, he spun away and disappeared in the crowd.

  Grace

  The only right thing for me to do is walk away. Stellan’s words continued to haunt me. I was anxious to see him again and anxious to find out what he’d meant.

  So much so that Antjie had no more trouble getting me out of the house on Friday and Saturday nights. I made a habit of sitting where I could watch the entrance to Club Halo, but it was a full three weeks before I saw Stellan again. He arrived wearing a navy and white uniform and black leather gloves. This time he was alone. Just as before, he downed an ale and joined me on the dance floor. This time he didn’t dance. Instead, he took my hand, led me to a table in a corner of the room, and signaled the waitress. He continued to hold my hand after we sat.

  “You came back.” I drank in the sight of him. The determined set to his jaw made my heart stutter a few beats. I knew before he started talking something was wrong.

  “Not for long. I’m leaving town,” he announced quietly.

  His words squeezed something in my chest. “When will you return?”

  “I don’t know. I never do.” He laced his gloved fingers through mine and brushed his lips across the top of my hand. It was old fashioned, yet romantic; and his lips were deliciously cool, as if he’d been standing outside in the crisp breezes for a while.

  As the old saying went: Cold hands, warm heart. In his case, cold lips.

  Regardless, my heart thrilled at his touch. “Are you going on a military deployment?” I didn’t recognize the uniform. Definitely not U.S. Armed Services like my father.

  His brows shot up. “No.”

  “Oh,” I said, abashed. “Your uniform—”

  “This is my sailing gear. You haven’t spent much time on the water, eh?”

  I hadn’t, but now I wanted to. “What are those bars on your shoulders for?”

  His voice was dry. “It means I’m the captain of my ship.”

  Okay. Wow! “A cruise ship?” I asked hopefully.

  “I wish.” Stellan hooked an arm around my waist and pulled me against his side.

  I laid my head on his shoulder. We sat there in silence for a full minute, just enjoying being together.

  “If I owned a cruise ship,” he ventured softly against my temple, “I would be tempted sail you some place far away, where I could have you all to myself.”

  The bleak longing in his tone made my heart ache.

  He cuddled me closer and slid his hand up my spine to cup the back of my neck. “I know I have no right,” he muttered, “but this is the real reason I wanted to see you tonight. I don’t want to leave the country without knowing what this feels like.” He lowered his head with devastating slowness.

  I caught and held my breath as he brushed his lips against mine, tenderly, wonderingly.

  Though his lips were cool, I gasped at the warmth that washed through me. I twisted in his embrace to twine my arms around his neck, seeking more. I had hoped for this, dreamt of this moment over and over for the past three weeks, but nothing in my imagination — absolutely nothing — matched the sheer ecstasy of reality.

  He moved his mouth over mine with a cautious gentleness that swept me deeper beneath his spell. It was like an unhurried walk in a light rain that fell heavier with each step, until the eye of the storm engulfed us. Suddenly I knew what it felt like to be struck by lightning. It was blinding and entrancing, the single most wonderful moment of my life. I trembled from the impact as it swept over my emotions, setting them ablaze, making me want to laugh and weep at the same time.

  Stellan abruptly broke off the kiss, and we sat there staring at each other, stunned at what had just happened. I could no longer breathe properly, and my heart was acting like it was going to pound its way out of my chest and keep on walking.

  “Grace,” he sighed regretfully. “You make me want things I can’t have.”

  Another mixed and cryptic message. I briefly closed my eyes and waited for him to explain himself. We had just walked hand in hand through a kaleidoscope of light and magic. I wasn’t ready to let go of it yet.

  “I shouldn’t have come back here. Any decent man would have stayed away.”

  Was he referring to the difference in our ages? “Why did you come then?” I asked, puzzled and alarmed by his words but secure in the knowledge he was as wildly attracted to me as I was to him. Our kiss had proven it.

  “To say goodbye.”

  My heart skipped a beat, and an unbearable sadness filled my chest. I didn’t want to say goodbye to him. Ever. “No,” I countered firmly.

  He arched a brow at me. It was a comical gesture, but I was far from laughing.

  “Goodbye sounds too final. Say something else.”

  The blue of his eyes seemed to deepen. “Any suggestions?”

  I smiled sadly. Yeah. Don’t go. “How about…’til next time?”

  He rubbed a thumb across my lower lip. Though the soft brush of leather wasn’t unpleasant, I would have preferred the caress of h
is cool hand. “If I don’t come back, please understand it’s not because I want to stay away from you. It’s because I should.”

  His haunted gaze shook me.

  “Why?” I whispered, agonized to hear what it was about us being together he found so unacceptable.

  “Because I’m no good for you.”

  My heart was screaming otherwise. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Instead of answering my question, Stellan turned to the waitress who’d arrived with two glasses of shimmering pink liquid. “Since you seem to possess no appreciation for beer, I suspect you’ll find this Rose Moscato more to your liking.” He handed me one of the glasses and tapped his against mine in a toast. “Until next time, beautiful.”

  I was right. Those words sounded so much better than goodbye.

  He was also right. The cool, sweet wine tasted delicious. It was the last night of my life I ever ordered a beer.

  Stellan

  When I exited the club, Ivan and Olga were sitting at one of the curbside tables with a round of wine, waiting for my cue. I nodded at them as I strode past.

  It was a few minutes earlier than our agreed on time, but I needed to get away from Club Halo. Away from the utterly enthralling scent and touch and essence of Grace. Kissing her had been a mistake. The innocent and youthful taste of her combined with the tantalizing aroma of her lifeblood pulsing through her veins had nearly shattered my control.

  Returning to the club altogether had been a mistake. I’d entered its doors tonight as if compelled, longing for one last glimpse of her yet determined to keep my distance. Where she was concerned, however, I seemed to have very little will power. The moment I saw her, I started walking her way as if propelled by a powerful magnetic field. It was a new and unsettling feeling. I’d never been drawn to a human like this before.

  I couldn’t quite define what it was I wanted or needed from her, only that every cell in my body was seeking something every moment I was in her presence. Approval? Acceptance? Empathy? Justification? Not that she could genuinely offer any of those things while she remained in the dark about who I really was. About what I really was.