I pull my hand away from the card, and stand. “I'll see you tomorrow, Aletta.”
She stands, as well, and stands on tiptoe to kiss my cheek, rewarding me for my restraint. Her skin is cool, softer than it should be, and permeated with a fragrance that stirs me in decidedly awkward ways, given the setting. Once again, her lips catch my attention, and I hold my breath, lest she decide that I'm too close.
She smiles, and then she's gone, backing away toward the exit. She throws her empty cup away on the way out, and as another group comes in, I miss which direction she walks when she leaves.
Where the hell have I seen her?
Aletta:
I shiver and weave myself through the fabric of reality to return to Limbo. It's the first time I've made this trip in one piece, and I heave a sigh of relief. A warm feeling grips me as Han's pleasantness boils down into a kind of confidence, a sense that I can do this. Maybe it's the gentle heat in his bleed. Or maybe it's that this is more natural to me. Maybe this is why so many incubi specialize. Maybe I'm just supposed to specialize in behaving this way, even if I am currently very far behind the learning curve, as far as the neurological manipulation shit.
But maybe I don't need it. Maybe, just by being myself, I can get close enough to do what the elders want.
I've never seen any of them, personally, but Lorelei has. Most of the older incubi have, but they keep to themselves, and usually avoid the young ones. I suppose if I'd lived that long, too, I'd have lost my patience with stupid questions.
It just seems like bad technique, though. They, better than anyone, should know the value of connection. And if they can't put aside their own desire for isolation long enough to greet the next generation, well, that doesn't exactly say much about how they value that generation.
To be honest, I miss my family. I miss having a family. Lorelei is mother and sister in one, but it's a relationship that has all of the competitive aspects and few of the connective ones. Half the time, I think she only answers when I call because she feels bad.
Han makes me feel wanted. Already, I'm hoping he has to run after the concert, that I have to see him again on a second date. At another concert. Because when my job is finished, so are we, and I'm not ready for that.
Lorelei casts me a sharp look. She's wearing a masculine form today, and it's marginally unnerving. I can't imagine having so little attachment to myself that I could change myself like that, but maybe they were both already in her from the start. “You're thinking of him, aren't you.”
I shrug. I know the lecture is coming whether I tell her the truth, or lie. “I think I have my opportunity. It's going well so far.”
She sighs. “Just, I don't want to see you get hurt. You know they can't love us. You know there's no future in it. So take what you need and bask in the happy memories for the next century. But you'll attract the wrong eyes if you drag this out too much longer without passing it to someone else. Did anything happen today?” There's a caution in her voice that unnerves me.
I nod. I'm not sure that I understand the edicts against maintaining friendships with humans, but it's not really my place to criticize them. “Tomorrow night, it'll be all over. Nothing weird happened. So long as I do it in the flesh, I can do it.”
She pats me on the shoulder. “Glad to see you found an ‘in’. I knew you had it in you.”
A knot of anxiety grips my innards. I wish I had all of her confidence.
Han:
I'm almost beginning to get worried about Aletta when she appears. I showed up early, just in case, and she's barely there in time. She dodges out from behind another man waiting to be admitted, and I hold out my arm for her. She places slender fingers on it, and I draw her closer to me. She's radiant, and I wonder if she gets the chance to dress up often. She wears the formal cocktail dress naturally, like a second skin. Even the tall heels might as well be bare soles for all they impede her graceful movements.
An usher directs us to our seats, and she settles in. She shivers as I sit, so I slide out of my coat, and put it across her soft shoulders. “You leave yours in the car?”
Her eyes widen. “Um, yes.” She pulls the jacket tighter around her with her free hand.
The shadow it casts along her neck, her décolletage, captures me, leaves me imagining my hands tracing over it later. Her eyes travel along my shirt as she slides her fingers into mine.
I turn my attention to the program. Truthfully, I have no idea how I'll get through the performance without kissing her. Or without an embarrassing tent just imagining kissing her. Romeo and Juliet is one of my favorite pieces of Russian romanticism, and I'm already a huge fan of that anyways.
She squeezes my hand as the lights dim, and we await the orchestra.
Aletta:
Han is considerate—too considerate for my purposes. I lean close to him, pressing myself against his arm and smiling at his flush. His warmth permeates me, brings forth muddles of emotion I haven't felt since I was reborn. I let myself share what little moments I'll have with him, without the anxiety of what's gonna happen after the performance.
As the orchestra swells, he leans down to me, his lips close to my forehead. “You ever wish you could hear these when they were first performed?”
I tilt my head up, supposedly to hear him better, but also to put my lips firmly in kissing reach and smile, thinking of all of the pieces I heard debuted when I still had a pulse. “I can only imagine it's a feeling of transcendence unlike any other.”
I press my lips together, enjoying the way his breath hitches at the sight. I tip my chin up again, and his lips catch mine as the music plays. Soft, hesitant, but full of purpose. He may have waited out of some kind of courtesy, but it hasn't deterred him from pursuing me. Maybe he wants more assertiveness, wants to know that I'm not going to punish him for reaching out to me in his own time.
I pull away and smile, already aware of his need. I slide his jacket off my shoulders and place it over his lap, with my hands underneath.
He tenses, but when I don't move my hands from his thigh, he eases in, raising an arm and sliding it around my shoulders. The current of his bleed's moving faster, and each sensation, intuition, or association I can separate from it whispers of concealed longing. I'm on the right track.
I can do this. I can prove myself to Lorelei, and the elders. I can do this.
If I don't let the perfection of the orchestra distract me.
Aside from the lights, the clarity of sound, the lack of stink, it could be any of the concerts of my youth. Aside from my dress and my red painted nails, I could be thirteen again, listening backstage with Iniga, preparing refreshments for the performers as part of our apprenticeship.
My eyes drift shut, to feel that sensation of connection, of wholeness, more thoroughly. I don't know if I should be fighting the return of so many of my old memories or welcoming them.
Han's hand drifts off my shoulder, to my cheekbone. It's impossible not to let my lips part from the relaxation of it, and the heat in his touch as he strokes me, lowers his lips to mine. But despite my efforts to focus on him, and only him, sis smell fades from my nostrils, and is replaced with a different one, somewhat more pungent.
“And for a second, I thought he was about to kiss me.”
Iniga smiles at me as we sit backstage, watching the dancers rehearse, the smell of their sweat strong in my nose. “I knew you liked him. You think your father will let him—”
I shake my head. “No. Not likely. His apprenticeship won't give him enough of a start to provide for a family. You know Father prefers the farrier two towns over.”
She bites her lip. “Doesn't mean you can't...”
I glare at her. “Don't even joke about that. He'd whip me for sure.” I sigh. “Still, it would have been nice if he'd at least been able to kiss me.”
She smiles. “That's right—you've never been kissed, have you?”
I shake my head. “No, and if I'm honest with myself, right now I think I fear
it.”
“Fear it?”
“Well, what if we're walking, and I trip, and he takes out a tooth? What if—”
Iniga laughs, leans down, and presses her lips to mine. “Now you have nothing to be afraid of. A kiss is a kiss is a kiss. If some of them truly change you, are sloppy, or bloody, or embarrassing, then isn't everything else in life?”
I tremble as Han pulls away, rests his cheek against my forehead. The music has reached its best known swell, and though my experience with it is more limited than his, I lose myself in his reactions, the delicate shifts in brain chemistry and attention as he responds, making the music a part of him, and a part of me. I'm euphorically giddy from his bliss.
The rest of the program is less familiar to me. But not to Han. He has an attachment to one of the other works, a favorite of a dead grandmother. The last one had a place of honor in a film he loved.
I miss reality being that kind of tangled web. I miss everything connecting to everything else, with an immaculate order that awes me the more I learn about it.
Rest, stalk, screw. That's our lives. No webs of associations, no pieces of ourselves shared with the world. That's no way to live.
I insulate myself deeper in Han's psyche, releasing my own experience of the music to succumb entirely to his.
Han:
I feel drunk. Aletta's fingers flex on my thigh, and when I lick my lips, I taste her lipstick. Every crescendo builds an awareness of the beautiful creature next to me, utterly entranced. The awkwardness of our first meeting is gone, replaced with the kind of instant familiarity that only the simulated empathetic connection of music can provide.
I don't care if she's still scared. I don't care if she has problems she prefers to keep from me. I want her. I want to see those bright eyes light up with every rubato, memorize the way her fingers twitch as she reflexively tries to parse out how the melody would be played on a piano.
She's a woman after my own heart, sensitive and fixated on beauty. Nothing unpleasant can permeate that shell. Not with the bass vibrating our bones, making our blood course through us heatedly.
The concert ends, but neither of us makes an effort to move until the hall is mostly empty. Her eyes are glassy; she still hasn't come back to Earth yet. Finally, she looks at me with large doe-eyes. “Thank you,” she whispers.
I help her to her feet, then put my jacket back on her. She toys with one of its buttons, idly. Then, she speaks. “I know you're capable of understanding what I have to say.”
I blink, and wait for her to think it through.
“On the first count, I'm going to arch backward. If you don't catch me, I'll fall.” Her eyes are piercing, but full of faith and temptation.
I stop fidgeting, uncertain what she's playing at.
She begins the count, her voice breathless and quiet. “Five, six, seven, eight...one.”
She does exactly what she said, rising to tiptoe, dropping herself backward one vertebrate at a time, her arms above her head. I catch her waist just as her hand grazes the floor and pull her upright, sliding my hand along the length of her spine to make sure her weight is on her feet.
“What was that all about?”
“Trust. Trust in art. In your co-performers. You said ballet bored you. But I don't think you've looked at it from this angle. Dozens of people onstage, performing, frequently disregarding their personal safety to let themselves be caught, or catch. A borderline suicidal, driven version of the beauty that people can create when they abandon their self.”
I lose myself in her voice's purr, the muscles in her back shifting under my hand.
“Musicians play safely. They don't risk life, limb, and self to bring a performance to life.” She pauses as we step onto the sidewalk, and slips off her heels, tucking them in her purse. She takes my hands, puts them on her waist. “Help me push myself higher.”
“Wha—”
She jumps before I've finished the sentence, entirely too close to me. The motion startles me, and I instinctively tighten my grip on her, relishing her muscles under my palms.
“Let's try that again.”
This time, I'm prepared. Her muscles work as she tenses in my hands, helping me keep a firm grip on her while she's in the air.
She's right. It's in her trust. Something that makes me feel as though the orchestra were still playing. As though that moment never ended.
She takes my hands. “This time, when I jump, push up, and when I let go, catch my shoulders on one of yours, and then put your hands on my waist to control me.”
I would rather just hold her hands, maybe taste her sweet lips again, but she's animated, and the change is so striking, I can't turn her down. She holds my hands, our palms pressed together at her side, her back to me, that slender frame rubbing against me Then she bends her knees and jumps.
I push up as she pushes down, and her hips are level with my face. Gravity pulls her back down, and I struggle to recall the rest of her instructions. I lean in, braced for her. Through her straightened arms overlaying my shoulders, dispersing her weight, and my hands, firm on her hips, she comes back to earth slowly, every inch of her sliding against me, toned ass to muscular back. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding as her bare toes touch the ground.
“You get it?” There's a yearning in her voice I don't fully understand.
“I think I do.”
Her face is relieved, bloodless under her faintly tanned complexion. A smile splits her lips, and she presses them to mine, kissing me with whatever the sexual equivalent of her dancing was. Falling backward into me, trusting me to catch her, to lead her.
Now, as then, I don't have the wherewithal to say no.
Aletta:
Han's hands are strong, offering me hints of a security I haven't thought to possess since before my rebirth. I lose myself, lose my boundaries. His blood hums through his body with the exertion I put him through, and I feel it as though it was my own heart pounding, my own cheeks flushed with effort. His body is hard against mine, the buttons on his shirt pressing into my chest, a reminder of that layer of concealment.
Tears well in my eyes as I hear Iniga's voice. Now you have nothing to be afraid of. But I am. The more I kiss him, the more it frightens me. I smell burning lime, sweat, and wood fumes. Hands tug at my body, attempting to pull me into a dervish I don't know the steps to.
Han picks up on my shaking, and pulls away. Without his stability, I fall to my knees, nonexistent flames licking my skin. I'm surrounded by dancers. Formerly they were immersed in their own rituals, but now they're stumbling over me, though they don't seem to see me. I can see them, irrational though I know it is, kneeling in a metropolitan street at 10PM. The physical pain and mental shock of it knots my gut to the point of pain, no matter how I try to redistribute the tension in my corded tissue. It's all I can do to maintain my physical body; every impact when their bodies collide with me nearly depletes my concentration.
Han strokes my hair, helps me up, and to a bench in the courtyard of a restaurant a half a block away.
My gaze jumps around, trying to take in every sight. The landscape tries to jerk away from me, becomes a stage, then a barn, then my father's house. But this is reality, not some metaphysical dimension where rules can be bent, or boundaries can be crossed. I pull my knees up to my chin and bury my head in my arms.
“What's wrong? Did I push you too fast?”
I fight to articulate it, a string of words that obviously make no sense to him. After a moment, I realize why. I'm no longer speaking English. I fight to calm myself. The visions fade somewhat—at least enough that they settle into a steady hallucination of the backstage area that was all but my home for a decade of my mortal life.
“I'm sorry. I'm...ill. Sometimes I see, hear, or feel things.”
His concern and barely-concealed lust turns to dismay. “What kind of things? What are you seeing right now?”
“Dancers, preparing for a performance; a man backstage with water and
blankets in case any of their costumes catch fire on the stage lights.” I lose myself in the feel of tulle against my cheek, instead of soft satin.
He pats my knee, barely even distracted by the way my skirt is riding up to handle my contortions. “That's...not normal.”
“I know. Everyone says that. That I'm just weak, that I can't control it. That I can't carry my weight because of it.” I can't stop myself from speaking, the words spilling from my lips at a pace and timbre that would make Lorelei purse her lips. “I'm lost; I'm drowning. Maybe if I was more optimistic, or had more faith in my own competence, I'd have a way out, but—”
His hand tightens on my knee, and he interrupts me. “You're a fighter, and that's not even an option to consider.”
“But it's the only option to consider. Even my dreams are corrupted.” I know I shouldn't tell him, lest he figure out the truth, and realize how crazy it sounds, thus how crazy I am. “I'm always running, running through mazes, being hunted, falling, burning—”
An uncomfortable look sets into his face; I've been a bit too specific, and he realizes how close my dreams are to his. But he's smarter than that. The distrust turns to pity. “Have you tried to stop running?”
“And do what? Be hunted down?”
“If that's what it takes to change the pattern.”
Han:
I don't want to be here. I like Aletta well enough, but although I don't know the specifics of her mental illness, it's obviously a lot of baggage, and I don't think I can help her carry it. No wonder she was so defensive when I singled her out.
Still, I wasn't raised to walk away from a person in pain, so I can't actually leave until I know she's calm, and isn't going to jump off a bridge or anything. Her voice, her anxiety...it feels young, not at all the polished late 20s-ish woman I spent the night next to. More like a teenager. I wonder if she has multiple personalities, or just looks mature for her age.
Beyond The Veil: A Paranormal & Magical Romance Boxed Set Page 56
