* * * *
"Yes, Mother. No, I couldn't get the tree," I huffed and watched Arjun struggle into a pair of Michael's spare flannel pajamas. "Look, you're my mom and all, and God, I do love you, I really do. But, Mother, let's face it. You're driving me completely insane."
Over the line, she clucked, and I was sorely tempted to hang up. But then she'd just call again, and I didn't want to deal with that. "That's not fair, Evelyn. You promised me a tree. A good tree. I absolutely refuse to get a tree from those common lots. Do you have any idea how the trees from those horrid places look? They're almost hacked into bits! If you really think I'm going to allow something looking like that to pass my doorstep…."
The gorgeous man almost pitched head-first into the fire, trying to balance on one foot to slide a slim leg through the pajama bottoms, and I knew it was time to go.
"Mother, I'll get Michael to do it, okay? He's so much better than me at that sort of thing anyways. You know how he's got an eye for that kind of stuff. With my luck, I'll probably end up sawing my own leg off. You know how clumsy I can get sometimes."
"Now, see here, Evelyn. You know your brother's not going to be home until three days before Christmas, and I'm afraid that—"
Time for drastic measures.
I knocked an inexpensive vase I eyed for just the occasion off its perch next to the phone and even pulled the receiver down so she could hear it shatter on the hard wooden floors of my tiny living room.
"Evelyn? What was that?"
"Oh heck, that must be the new cat someone gave me. Anyways, I love you and I'll be by to see you soon. Tell Herbert I wish him happy holidays. Bye now!"
I dropped the phone back on the hook with a relieved sigh, glad to not hear the screeching tone in my mother's voice that had got worse ever since Dad died in that car accident.
"These clothes, they are very restricting."
A Nordic god stood on the tatted rug in front of the fireplace, and I had to look away for a moment so he wouldn't see the way I bit my lip, trying to suppress myself from laughing my head off.
"You are smiling. You think this is funny," he said, his tone almost accusatory, and I tried to wipe the grin from my lips, even though it was easily one of the hardest things I'd ever done. "This is my first time wearing modern human clothing. You cannot expect me to wear them perfectly the first time. I am not a God."
Oh, wasn't he? For a moment, he'd almost had me fooled.
The buttonholes were lined up with the wrong buttons so the pajama shirt hung off his shoulder at a crazy angle, and the pants scrunched on the left side of his body. All in all, he looked very, very foolish, and I found myself wishing that I had a camera handy.
"Here, you've got the buttons in the wrong holes."
Adjusting the shirt and his pants took a lot more effort than I thought. He smelled fresh, fragrant, almost similar to balsam. Yes, he was like something out of a dream, and while I wanted to throw myself on him, no questions asked, the rational part of me knew that would be the most stupid thing to do. And I was not a stupid woman.
He sniffed at the sleeve of the green-and-white pajama top and wrinkled his nose distastefully. "This has another man's scent. I do not like it."
I busied myself with straightening out the embroidered pillows on the small sofa Herbert, my stepfather, had bought for me as a house-warming present.
"Yes, well, considering it's my brother's, of course it would smell like another man. And it's the only thing I have, so you should quit complaining, unless you'd rather go around naked."
To be honest, I was privately entertained by the notion of him going completely nude. But then I thought about how distracting it would be. Knowing me, I'd probably end up burning the house down while staring at him cavorting around in the bathroom.
He fixed a glance at me with the jade eyes that had captivated me the first time I'd seen them. In fact, they still fascinated me, although I was careful not to let it show. Too much. "You live with your brother?"
I shook my head and perched on one side of the couch, painfully aware of the eyes that could have burned a hole straight through my body and out the other side. "Not live with him, per se. He lives in another state, but when he comes to see our mother, he stays in the spare room, and because it's a lot more convenient than lugging around suitcases all the time, he keeps some spare clothes here. He could stay with her, but she would drive a saint to do some pretty bad things." I wasn't exaggerating.
He nodded, and the leaping flames in the modest-sized fireplace turned his hair a fiery crimson that made me think of poinsettias. "I see."
The blood beat loudly in my ears, and as he padded silently to the window, where outside, snow started to drift lazily from the dark skies, I admired the grace in which he carried himself. He almost reminded me of a tree swaying gently in the breeze.
Which reminded me of the most important question that had been lying dormant in my mind since I'd had to strap him into the car.
"Arjun?"
"Yes." He didn't turn from the window, but kept his eyes forward, almost as if he was looking for something. I nearly got distracted to pieces letting my gaze rove over his perfect profile. No, he certainly wasn't human. No man could have been shaped so beautifully, like a Raphael statue come to life.
The logs crackled in the hearth, and I turned away from him, unable to stare at him for too long; I was half-afraid I'd be rendered blind, just like the way people can't look at the sun directly when it hangs high in a clear sky.
"What are you?" I asked and then wished I hadn't, because ignorance was bliss. If I didn't ask, then I could just pretend he was some poor guy who was slightly crazy and didn't mind strolling out in the nude in the middle of winter. But if I asked…and if he said something completely out of this world…I would probably be questioning my sanity.
Not that I wasn't doing it now.
He shook his head and put his back to the window. "It does not matter. I am Arjun, and that is the only thing you need to know. Other information would be superfluous, unneeded."
And maybe he was right.
But as I watched him watching me from beneath those heavy-lidded emerald eyes, the breath caught painfully in my throat, and the palms of my hands started to sweat.
After a horrifying experience of getting left at the altar by my then-fiancé almost three years ago, I'd sworn off any sort of relationship. Sex and the release that came with it seemed completely useless. I didn't need a man anymore. I didn't want to deal with that again.
But Arjun made me think of things I hadn't thought of in a very, very long time.
The silence in the living room felt stifling, as if someone had placed a bag over my head and was slowly but surely closing off the air. I needed to do something, anything, just as long as my thoughts didn't wander in that direction. It was far better not to have something, not to know about something, then have a taste of it and know that you'll never get to have it again. There is nothing more torturous than that.
But Arjun didn't move from his spot at the window, standing still, almost like…like a….
A tree.
I couldn't help but laugh, although it was more from sheer giddiness rather than something funny.
"You know what's funny? For one second I almost thought you were a tree."
Anyone else would have laughed, or at the very least, cracked a smile.
Arjun didn't, and the fact that he didn't, scared me, if just a little bit.
"A tree?"
I covered my mouth and tried to stifle my giggles. "Well, yeah. I mean, there I was, about to cut down a tree, and then the tree starts to talk to me. And then, as if that's not weird enough, said tree says he'll show himself to me. And, lo and behold, guess who walks out! Butt naked, I might add!"
His eyebrows furrowed, and if I wasn't mistaken, a faint glimmer of concern flashed in his eyes. "Evelyn, you are in shock."
"No, I am not!" My last word came
out a bit more forceful than I'd meant it. "Now, if I was totally off my rocker and completely insane, I'd say you're a dryad, but that's just plain myth, so I'm still trying to figure out who or what the heck you are!"
I'd shouted again, but I couldn't help it. Better out than in, Dad always said.
"A dryad." His lips curved into an utterly beguiling smile. "You think I am a dryad? A nymph?"
Why was I blushing? "No, I don't think so! Only females are dryads and nymphs."
The gleam in his eyes was definitely playful. Nice to know he regarded this as a joke, while I fretted over my sanity. "Then you believe in those beings, Evelyn?"
"What? No, I don't believe in them! Well, that is to say that I don't usually believe in them, but then I just can't—" I clapped a hand to my mouth before I made even more of a fool out of myself. What the hell was wrong with me? "You know what? I'm going to shut up now."
"Evelyn."
He pushed away from the window and sauntered toward me, looking more dangerous than a man wearing Snoopy pajamas ought to look.
"Wh-what?" I hated how my voice trembled.
"Are you scared? You look as though there is something that greatly disturbs you. As if…." His grin widened. "As if I disturb you."
I stood but refused to back up. That just wasn't me.
"I'm not scared of you, Arjun. I'm not." I took a deep breath and realized that doing that was a mistake—a very big and a very bad mistake.
The scent of evergreens, the crisp bite of pine needles caught at me, leaving me breathless and unable to think clearly.
His hand, strong and lean, reached for me, but he didn't touch me. Instead, his fingers extended out, only an inch away from my face. I couldn't move, even if I wanted to.
I didn't know what he was, but he held me completely, utterly spellbound. And I didn't care.
"You asked what I am, and I say it does not matter." He no longer sounded so amused. I didn't know if that was good or bad. "If you know what I am, will it change anything?"
I didn't know what to say.
"Well?" he prompted, hand still hovering inches from my skin.
"You're not human."
He shrugged. "That depends on how you see it, Evelyn. What does it mean to be human? I look human, therefore, am I not human? There are those who look human but act like beasts. Should they be considered humans as well? Or are they merely animals?"
My throat was painfully dry, and when I swallowed, it only made it worse. "What do you want? Why are you here?"
"Because you brought me here."
"That's not what I'm asking."
Dropping his hand, he turned away then, face toward the fire. Shadows leapt from plane to chiseled plane on the beautifully formed countenance.
"Arjun?"
A silence ensued, the type of silence that seems to extend for centuries, even though in reality it's only a few seconds.
"Lonely."
"What?"
He closed his eyes and sighed. "I was…lonely. It's been long, too long since I had the opportunity to talk to someone."
"What, no one was coming around trying to cut down trees?" I tried to inject humor into my question, but it fell flat.
Arjun's lips thinned into a bitter smile. "You wouldn't understand what it's like. To be alone for so long…when everything you knew has faded away, when the only being who chooses to survive is you."
He spoke in riddles. Either that, or I was completely stupefied by his unearthly beauty.
"I cannot remember how long I have been alone. There was no one to talk to, no one to speak to. After a while, I stopped trying."
His eyes flashed open, and he smiled ruefully. "It's rather odd. How I finally communicate with someone, and it's a woman trying to cut down a tree. My tree."
"Your tree?" I tried to lessen the heavy atmosphere, tried to stop the breath from catching in my throat. "I didn't think I saw a sign around the base of it, stating as Arjun's Property. Touch me, and he'll give you a headache you won't forget in a hurry.'"
He laughed softly, and I felt vaguely relieved.
"So long, so long since I've heard someone else's voice echoing in my ears." His voice grew hushed, and I felt every syllable like kisses down my body. "Since I've felt someone's skin against mine, since I've breathed in someone's scent…."
He reached a hand to me, and I was tempted, sorely tempted to take it. I wanted to touch him, wanted to so badly that my hands shook.
"Beings like me, we cannot survive in this age the way we'd survived hundreds, thousands of years ago. Humans say one must adapt or die. Many of my brethren chose to fade away because they could not adapt. But I did not."
"Arjun, I don't know what you're trying to say."
But I did. My heart knew, but my brain refused to comprehend it.
He quirked a brow and dropped his hand. "Don't you? Beings like me; we don't live like you. Sustenance is what keeps you alive, isn't it? What keeps us alive is touch. Feel. To hear someone's cries of pleasure ring in our ears. To see ourselves in their eyes, to know we mean more than anything else to them, if only for that moment. We may abandon them after a while, but for that time, we feast."
"Sex? Sex keeps you alive?" Incredulity couldn't even being to describe the state I was in. "You're an incubus or something?"
"No, no, no." He shook his head, vehement. "It's not sex. That comes, but sex is not the key. Incubi are demons. I am not demonic in any way."
"Then, what are you?"
The crucial question.
Would he answer to my satisfaction?
But the more important question was: Would I believe him?
"Again, we come to that. You insist you must know, that without knowing, you cannot do anything."
Slowly, he lifted a hand, and this time he didn't stop, and I didn't pull away. His touch was soft against my cheek, and I snuggled deeper into the curve of his hand, loving the winter snow tree scent of him.
"This one night, I do not want to be alone. I would like to be with someone. Will you not be that person?"
This whole night, there was something magical about it. I didn't know what, but I would've been stupid to break it.
Come tomorrow morning, I may regret it, but for now, I wanted this.
I wanted him.
I would take the chance.
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Arjun Page 3