The Forever Girl

by Immortal Ink Publishing, LLC

  At the thought of him leaving, my stomach sank, and I frowned. “No … it’s okay,” I said. “Stay.”

  “I’m not sure how this is supposed to work,” he said, his eyes scanning my face. “You’re difficult to be around.”

  “You mean I’m difficult.”

  “No,” he said, his jaw tensing. “Forget it. Just stop looking at me that way.”

  “What way?” He was the one staring at me.

  “I’d like to try being around you,” he offered. “Not only for your protection, but also to get to know you.”

  This kind of honesty—the kind requiring me to expose my heart—was debilitating. I couldn’t find words. Except for one. The worst one.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve never had such a hard time understanding someone before, and I’ve never before cared so much to understand.”

  “Great. More riddles.”

  Charles kept going, as though immune to my sarcasm. “You keep showing up in strange places. Mostly my strange places. Call me crazy, but somehow I find myself compelled to be around the most intriguing girl I’ve ever met.”

  My shoulders tensed and my voice was lost somewhere between surprise and the desire to avoid my emotions.

  Charles reached out and took my hand. His gaze searched mine. I wasn’t sure what he expected to find in my expression, but I was content to stand there with him, despite the rattling of my heart and the flip-flopping in my stomach.

  My gaze slid down, taking him in, contemplating how he might look without a shirt on. Sexy was my guess. And definitely there would be stomach muscles involved.

  “You okay, Sophia?” he asked.

  I shot my gaze back to his. “Yes, of course. What were you saying?”

  He leaned closer and whispered, “Nothing,” his gaze now trailing the length of my body as well.

  What was I thinking? All I had wanted was answers—and I’d gotten them already. So why was I still talking to him? Why the desire to be next to him, anticipating the next time he might touch me again?

  Charles cleared his throat and traced his finger over the edge of my altar behind him. “You don’t look Wiccan,” he said.

  I tried not to smile. Charles wasn’t the first person to say that. For some reason, people thought Wiccans had to be ‘Goth’ or ‘Emo’ or something. Like we’re bound to some kind of law that doesn’t allow us to have pet bunnies or paint our toenails pink or smell like something other than patchouli.

  I raised my eyebrows. “What does a Wiccan look like?”

  He shrugged. “You, I guess.” He glanced around my room. “Not much of a basketball player, then?”

  “Huh?” I followed his gaze. He was staring at the corner of my room, by the door. Oh no. A pair of lacy-black, boy-short underwear lay crumpled in a ball on the floor in front of the hamper.

  “You missed.”

  I didn’t know what to do. Thinking I’d be breaking some kind of unspoken rule to touch my underwear with him in the room, I shoved him into the hallway and asked him if he wanted some tea. I pulled the door shut, and before he could respond, my robe caught between the doorframe and the door and I tripped over my feet and crashed into him, knocking him back against the wall.

  He laughed.

  Worse: he didn’t stop laughing. He looked down at me, his arms wrapped around me from catching my fall, his shoulders shaking from laughter. My heartbeat ratcheted up at the press of his hard stomach against my breasts.

  Finally, he stopped. “You’re blushing again,” he said, his voice low in my ear.

  I started to pull back, but he gathered me closer and pressed his face against my hair. “You don’t smell human.” He breathed against my scalp. “It’s like honey and flowers and amber.”

  “My shampoo?”

  “No,” he said assuredly. “The human smell is very distinct. You’re missing it entirely.”

  What was that supposed to mean? He was the one who sometimes took the form of an animal. Who was he to say I was somehow less human?

  I stepped away, the moment a reminder of why we couldn’t be together. The idea was just too much. This time, he didn’t pull me back.

  “If you need blood, that means you’re immortal, right? Like the Cruor?” I asked.

  His hands slid to either side of my shoulders, and he held me back. “I’ve been alive for over three centuries,” he said. “Does that bother you?”

  “Not any more than anything else.” I considered him for a moment. He didn’t look or act any older than me. “So you’re immortal?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then what?”

  Charles laughed, dropping his hands back to his sides. “You are the nosiest woman I’ve ever met.”

  “You didn’t answer,” I said pointedly, starting to lead him down the hall to the living room.

  “We can age if we stop shifting,” he said.

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “Me?” His voice faltered. “I stick around for my family.”

  “Parents? Siblings?”

  “Parents.”

  Sticking around for family—that I understood.

  “What about work?” I asked. “You can’t keep one employer for three hundred years.”

  We stopped at the end of the hall, at the entrance to the living room, and Charles’ gaze panned the room. “No need. That’s one of the perks of being immortal. Old money.”

  “I hate people who don’t have to work.” Crap. Did I have to say that out loud? “That doesn’t mean anything. I … well, I don’t mean you.”

  Usually, I had no problem biting my tongue. With him, I apparently didn’t know when to shut up.

  He leaned against the arm of the sofa, ankles crossed, not at all trying to hide his laughter.

  “Glad you find me amusing.” I turned on the television and handed him the remote. “I didn’t catch if you wanted tea or not.”

  “Because you fell,” he said, still chuckling.

  “Want some tea or not?”

  He nodded.

  While the kettle brought water to a boil, I gripped the lip of the kitchen counter so hard the trim dug into my palms. What was I going to do with him? A man. In my house. In the middle of the night. Mother would have an aneurism.

  I peered over my shoulder, through the kitchen doorway. He was relaxing back with one arm hooked over the arm of the couch and the other extended across the back.

  He’s just a man. A strange, ancient man—but still a man.

  After I poured the steaming water over the loose tea in the infuser of a small ceramic pot, I arranged a tray of tea, sugar, cream, and two teacups. I brought out the tray and placed it on the coffee table before taking a seat beside him. “Please, help yourself.”

  He prepared his tea—three sugar cubes to my one, and no cream, like me. Not that I was keeping track.

  “Is it okay?” I asked.

  He took a sip. “Apple?”

  “Peach,” I said. “With vanilla, sunflower, and calendula petals.”

  “Fancy, fancy.” He set the tea aside. “I had a feeling you didn’t like coffee.”

  And apparently felt the need to point it out? Somehow, my hyperactive nerves had overshadowed my distaste for the terrible stuff, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Maybe next time you’ll ask me out for tea.”

  “Next time?” A smile ruffled his mouth.

  “If there’s a next time,” I said quietly.

  “Yes, next time,” he whispered. He trailed his finger along my hairline, down the side of my face, and across my jaw. “That would be nice.”

  Goose bumps tickled my skin. I shouldn’t entertain the thought of getting involved with him, but I couldn’t deny the increasing attraction between us, either.

  We watched television for a bit, but I wasn’t taking in anything other than the glow and mumble of the screen and the warmth of Charles’ body. As the minutes passed, our bodies inched closer together. His arm rested around my shoulder
s, and I leaned slightly into him. He pressed his lips against my forehead, and I inhaled the clean scent of his skin and the fabric softener used to wash his shirt. I was getting myself into trouble, but surely I could allow myself this one small moment without getting attached.

  Nothing could become of us—not if he lived forever. I would grow old. I wanted to grow old. And immortality? How could life have meaning without death?

  Charles caressed my arm with his thumb. “I was worried you’d be frightened of my nature.”

  “The turning into an animal thing?” I straightened in my seat. “I don’t find that scary. Weird, maybe. But not scary.” Not that part, anyway.

  “Hey, watch it. We can be scary when we want.”

  “You want me to be scared, or not?”

  He laughed. “Not,” he said. “Definitely not.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, smiling. “Maybe I better be careful.”

  He returned my smile with a grin. “One never can tell. I might be dangerous to your good sense.”

  The eye contact lingered long enough for me to realize how comfortable I’d become. Too comfortable. Having him here felt natural. Like we were supposed to be together. I needed to shift gears and remind myself why that wasn’t true.

  “Earlier today you were talking about ‘the Universe’. What’s that mean?”

  “We don’t know who, or what, the Universe is. Our Council communicates with them.”

  Huh. So the Universe was a them.

  “What’s it like?” I asked.

  His eyebrows pulled lower over his eyes. “What’s what like?”

  “Shifting.”

  “It hurts.” He picked at his fingernails as he spoke. “Your bones grow or shrink or rearrange. Your skin stretches or snaps smaller. Every muscle explodes and every bone breaks and resets.”

  “That’d be interesting to see.”

  He chuckled. “I just told you how painful it is.”

  “Right.” I pressed my foot nervously against the base of the coffee table. “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine.” He nudged me away and stood. “I’ll show you.”

  “What?” I leaned forward, my muscles tense. Now that it wasn’t hypothetical, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see. I shoved my teacup aside, spilling a warm splash of tea onto my pajama shorts in the process. “No, really, you don’t have to,” I said, my eyes not leaving him as I blotted my pants with a napkin.

  He shrugged. “Why not? If I trust you enough to tell you what I am, what’s the problem in showing you? It’s nice to—” He cut himself short.

  “Nice to what?”

  “Trust someone,” he said softly.

  There was a pause where neither of us spoke, and I stared at him with a new light. He was … lonely.

  Charles cleared his throat and rubbed his hands, as though he were trying to wash himself of his confession.

  A bead of sweat pearled at the nape of my hairline and started to trickle a slow path down my neck. “I didn’t expect you to show me right now.”

  “What’s the difference? Won’t hurt less if I show you later.” He winked and backed away several paces.

  “Wait!” I lifted my hands to stop him. “Just—never mind.”

  “I’ll be okay,” he said. He took off his shirt. “Watch.”

  I was watching all right. Or maybe staring. His body was firm, lean. Not too muscular—not in a way that implied he obsessed over going to the gym—but defined and strong. Equally as strong was the heat spreading from my stomach down to my thighs and up to my breasts. I sat back, holding my breath.

  His body trembled. Pain etched into his face as his figure blurred. My heart thundered in my ears. I wanted to tell him to stop, but the words remained trapped. Wild vibrations coursed through him.

  Then, I heard it.

  Several loud pops sounded over a deep growl. He hunched over as his skin forced his body smaller. His spine protruded against a thin layer of flesh. At the sound of bones crushing, I dug my nails into the couch cushion. His face deformed. Hair pierced through his flesh as his form shrunk. I almost gasped in horror, but bit it back, my teeth digging into my bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. At any moment, the tea I’d drunk might surge from my stomach.

  The end of the transformation came suddenly, leaving a pile of clothes on the living room floor. A bushy-tailed squirrel pounced out of the pants and scampered over.

  Perched on his hind legs, he tilted his head and chittered. I cupped my hands together and lowered them to the floor. He padded into them, and my hands shook as I brought his face to mine. Charles was in there, somewhere. His eyes had changed, too—no longer teal but an eerie shade of green, like the squirrel I’d seen in the woods and the eerie, smoky eyes I’d seen outside my window after the ritual.

  “Your eyes,” I said, lost in a sense of wonder and dread. “You were the squirrel in the woods.”

  He placed his tiny paws together and nodded. I released him and watched as he returned to his human form, the process seeming quicker in reverse. He stood naked before me. Hastily, I dropped my gaze, but the image might as well have been burned into my retinas.

  I wouldn’t have minded if I wasn’t so damned embarrassed. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him smirking as he redressed, but I didn’t dare allow my peripheral to take in anything more than the expression on his face. Even after he dressed, my heart thudded over the memory of him without clothes.

  The whole ordeal made me feel closer to him. And, surprisingly, having witnessed his change firsthand made me feel less freaked out. If I was scared of anything, it was for him, not of him—scared of the pain he had to endure with every shift. And if I cared about that, I had to admit I cared about him. Somehow, some way, he was working his way into my heart.

  He sunk onto the couch beside me, his brow heavy above his eyes. “You sounded afraid,” he said, frowning.

  “Your eyes….” I shook my head. “I would swear I’ve seen them before, and not just in that squirrel.”

  “Happens to all elementals at night.”

  “My attacker didn’t have eyes like that,” I said.

  “He wouldn’t if he was hungry. The eyes only glow when the elemental has lifeblood in their system.”

  “Why a squirrel?”

  “It’s one of the easier ones”—he swept loose hair from his eyes—“and it doesn’t rip my clothes.”

  “That was—I mean—” I paused to gather my thoughts. “An owl outside the woods had the same strange eyes. You?”

  “I had to follow you to make sure no one else had. I wasn’t the only one hunting those grounds.”

  This man was not good for me. My life might not have been normal before he showed up, but at least it’d been sensible. With him around, my senses were going right out the window.

  What would’ve happened if Charles hadn’t come along at Club Flesh? Would I have ended up dead, another mystery the police would never solve, thanks to the Cruor’s ability to so adeptly cover their tracks?

  I was shaking just thinking about it, and Charles cradled me against him. He probably meant for it to be comforting—and, at first, it was. But when I peeked up at him, and our gazes locked, all I felt was lust. I saw the shift in his eyes, too. The shift from wanting to protect me to simply … wanting me. He released me and cleared his throat.

  “This—” He shook his head. “You and me, you know it’s not a good idea.”

  “If you think so, maybe you should stay away.”

  “You don’t want me to,” he said, moving his hand to mine. Every time he touched me, my stomach got all jittery.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “You,” he said, his expression unreadable and his voice heavy and full of … full of what? Sadness? Regret? “To understand you. To know that you’re safe. To not have to avoid the only person I can be myself around.”

  He swept the back of his finger down my cheek and nuzzled his nose against mine, eliciting from me a shaky breath. Mayb
e this was okay—giving into the physical—so long as I kept my heart out of things. So long as we didn’t commit to anything. The urge to kiss him surged through me, but he pulled away. The missed opportunity left me a little sad, but I sighed quietly in relief.

  Ancient man, Sophia. Remember that. How long can it last?

  “And you?” he asked. “What do you want?”

  “I can’t answer that,” I said.

  But I knew what I wanted. It just wasn’t what I should.

  * * *

  WE SPENT THE REST of the night and early morning talking. Charles wanted to hear about my life, which meant telling him about trying to sell my house and about Mother and her religious diatribes.

  I asked him about the side-effects from the Cruor blood, what they would be, and he said sometimes a bond would form and the human might be able to ‘sense’ the Cruor whose blood they had drank.

  Those types of side-effects were said to fade within a couple of days, as had been the case with me. But I didn’t tell Charles I’d been able to do much more than just ‘sense’ Adrian. Dad had always told me to never offer up anything I didn’t have to. While others gave their sage wisdom of ‘the only stupid questions are the ones that go unasked’, it was Dad’s advice that resonated more: ‘Only ask questions you can’t resolve yourself.’

  Without more answers, I didn’t know which questions were safe to ask.

  Charles told me about his life, too. About his early urges for blood and his struggle to temper his supernatural energy. He’d never dated a human before—had always been certain they would run the second they learned about his true nature.

  Was I any different?

  Our chemistry aside, I still knew a mortal woman couldn’t have a future with an immortal man, though my reservations were no match for my impulse to live in the moment or my need to learn more about his world.

  I remembered what he’d said—that his world was dangerous for me. That I should come to him with any questions. But the supernatural perhaps offered the only explanation for my ancestor’s missing body and my family’s curse, and I couldn’t turn to Charles about those things. I’d made that mistake when I’d confided in Ivory, and I wouldn’t make it again.