FALL (The Senses)

by Paterson, Cindy

  Was he seeing unclearly? Was it too late? Was Zurina right and he was going to put Delara through horrendous suffering? Zurina never hesitated to try to save any of them. Could she be right?

  “No, I’ve given an oath to protect her. I will not break it. Ever. You will save her at all costs.”

  Zurina inhaled sharply. “You didn’t. Your oath is to the Senses and your mother. And more importantly to the Goddess. This woman cannot surpass that. Let her go, Waleron. Please, I beg of you.”

  Without touching Delara, Waleron felt her heart struggle to take its next beat. He smelled death in the air and his panic was overwhelming. Let her go? No, impossible. Losing her would be like taking out his heart and throwing it in the pit of hell. No. Delara must live.

  “Waleron.” Jedrik stepped closer and placed one hand on his shoulder. “Delara wouldn’t want...frig, maybe it’s best—”

  Waleron turned his head, his eyes glaring and Jedrik lowered his hand and his head.

  “Save her. I will not ask again,” Waleron warned Zurina.

  “Waleron. I can’t. I won’t put her through the suffering.” Zurina went to back away but he grabbed her arm with such force that she winced.

  Waleron didn’t know why she was so adamant about refusing to heal Delara and right now he didn’t care. “I’m not asking any longer, Zurina.”

  Zurina waited for several seconds before finally giving a solemn nod.

  Waleron gripped Delara’s hand in his and Zurina gave him a puzzled look. He knew it was because he was touching Delara. He’d visualize and feel what happened to Delara when Zurina healed her.

  “Do it now,” he insisted.

  Zurina did as ordered, lowering her hands over Delara’s chest, focusing on her heart and lungs first. Waleron watched as an intense heat filled Zurina’s palms and she closed her eyes, a soft hum emerging from her lips as she began the painful healing process.

  The visions struck him as if someone had taken a scabbard and ripped into his guts. Tarek’s fists pummeling Delara’s body like a punching bag, Delara’s limp form taking the beating with no recourse. The marble table with Delara’s blood pooling on the surface. The cracked wall after her body flew into it. The shattered TV. The snap of bone as Tarek twisted her arm.

  Waleron’s grip on Delara’s hand released. His entire body trembled and his stomach heaved with horror as he staggered to his feet, ignoring Jedrik reaching out to assist him.

  Stumbling out of the wet ditch, Waleron fell to his knees on the gravel shoulder beside the car, one hand leaning on the front tire and the other holding his body up from collapsing on the ground.

  “Whoa man, you okay?” Jedrik asked, having followed. “Christ, maybe you should…”

  Waleron waved him away with a fierce scowl then proceeded to throw up on the side of the road.

  Goodbye

  The hollow sound of his boots on the hardwood floor reminded Waleron of a man walking Captain Edward Low’s wooden plank. He felt like that unfortunate soul, hands ruthlessly tied behind his back—rage, anger, fear, and vulnerability all soaring through his insides like an out-of-control wildfire. It had been this way since Tarek’s trial before council seven days ago. He felt agonizing ambiguity about what he should say to Delara.

  Waleron’s fury during Delara’s recount at the trial had been uncontainable, ripping through his body like a serrated knife, his chest exploding into fragments of earth-shattering disgust. Zurina had risen from her seat as his power shifted to a dangerous magnitude. The Four Wraiths waited apprehensively around the oblong marble table. He felt their elements rising within them, ready to react if need be.

  However, it was Delara’s telepathic words and her serenity that reached through his black rage and kept him from going against council’s law and killing Tarek with his bare hands.

  “He is not worth your life. Please Waleron. Let it go.”

  He met her eyes and she gave him a half smile accompanied with a diminutive shake of her head, the strands of her hair floating across her shoulders as though a breeze had suddenly entered the Realm and sought to surround Delara with its embrace.

  Waleron had growled with frustration. His eyes latched onto Delara’s stiff and pale figure sitting before the council. Her hands were in her lap, most likely pinching her thighs like she always did when upset, and there were black half-moons beneath her coffee eyes. He did the only thing he could before the rage consumed him; he Traced from the trial.

  It was later he heard the outcome. The vote that Tarek be sent to Rest for twenty years instead of being executed. It had been a tied vote and Zurina was the tiebreaker. She went against Waleron and opted to put Tarek in Rest instead of killing him. Waleron had been furious with her decision, but he knew why she did it. Zurina was a Healer, which meant she had more faith and sympathy than any other. Still, the knowledge that Tarek would one day walk the Earth drove a spike through him.

  After several hours of a raging eruption, Waleron ended up walking in limbo through the corridors of the Realm as though caught in a trance—shadows of yesterday and hope for tomorrow mixed with despair. Even the supposed involuntary calm that one experienced when in the Realm had failed to appease his darkness and rage.

  Finally leaving the Realm, Waleron strode down the stairs of the Talde house in Toronto, the vision of Captain Low’s plank in his mind again. Today, he had to see her.

  Waleron stopped outside her door, resting his hand on the doorknob.

  Why was he here? Why couldn’t he just stay away? His reasoning was that she deserved an explanation and yet the truth was in his apprehension to see her for the first time in the last seven days. The knowledge that whenever he was near her a tenderness he had not experienced in a long time brought him to his knees. She made him vulnerable to his Scar and the rage it fed on for the last sixty-one years. He hated the risk And yet...he needed to see her.

  He didn’t knock; he didn’t need to. Delara was a Tracker and would have scented him the moment he Traced here. His hand twisted on the knob and he opened the door quietly to stand like a statue on the threshold.

  His eyes instantly found her on the far right side of the room leaning over the bed. She was folding a long-sleeved, dark-green cotton shirt, her fingers graceful against the soft fabric until her head snapped up as she noticed his intrusion. From her profile, he saw her nose crinkle while her back stiffened, obviously displeased.

  He shut the door with the heel of his boot.

  The shirt forgotten, now a heap on the white bedspread, Delara crossed her arms over her chest as if to erect a barricade against him. By the coolness of her expression, she was attempting to appear undaunted by his presence, yet they both knew better. Her eyes shifted uneasily from side to side, blinking too often. Fear and anger. She had witnessed his rage in the Realm and it probably scared her, reminded her of Tarek. And she was mad at him for avoiding her. Confused and hurt, too. He’d saved her life, been there the entire time it took for her to heal, and then when she woke, he left.

  God, he should have never come.

  Yet he knew that what spiraled between them was undeniable and he had to try and undo the link before it became too late. His body thought otherwise as he faced the other half of his heart.

  Control. She deserves better.

  God, but look at her. He needed to be with her just once before he gave her up for all time. Didn’t they both deserve to lie in one another’s arms after all they suffered? Could he be with her one time without hurting either of them? Could he take that chance? No—could they take that chance?

  Did he have a choice? He was standing in her room with Delara inches from the bed. Her heated anger mixed with desire, escaping her pores, and the knowledge that tonight he would end hope of any relationship made the choice for him. Unquestionably, the road he was about to take would haunt him for all time, but it would be worth it. To hold her in his arms for one night would be worth everything.

  His control fell into the depths of a bl
ack abyss and he cursed knowing that this would be the death of him. She’d be the death of him.

  Just once to ease the pain that sat like an anchor on his heart. What heart? His Scar, the snake tattoo, had devoured it. Waleron wanted to laugh, but he didn’t because he couldn’t even remember how. He was numb and void of emotions, the pills did that. Zurina had given them to him when he sat at Delara’s bedside for eleven days waiting for her to wake from the healing. Zurina told him the pills would keep his Scar from taking him over, but would still allow him to Trace under their affects. She warned him to never stop taking them. So far, on occasion, the rage still emerged, but if he used the pills, the numbness would return.

  “Waleron,” Delara said in that sweet husky voice that he’d recognize anywhere. It was memorized. Engraved. Stamped on his mind for all time. He hungered every day for sixty-one years to hear his name pass her precious lips. “What,” she continued and her voice quivered. He noticed the subtle straightening of her shoulders, “What are you doing here?”

  Did he have an answer? He did before he opened the door and saw her. His reaction compelled him to her like a magnet—him the negative and her the positive.

  “Well?” Delara asked, her voice restrained. Okay, she was mad and had every right to be after he left her so abruptly.

  Words eluded him, a definite first. How did he tell this woman that he wanted a one-night stand? “How are you feeling?”

  Delara tilted her head to the side, her nose scrunching a minute amount, and he knew she was trying to scent his feelings. A Reflection would have been able to tell as soon as he entered the room, but Delara was a Tracker, able to track others by their scent, so emotions were not as easy for her. Waleron could mask his emotions from a Tracker, however he wanted Delara to feel his desire.

  When it hit her, she stumbled back, the backs of her legs hitting the wooden frame of the bed. Her eyes widened and her mouth gaped. Well that went over well. A simple no would’ve sufficed.

  “Waleron,” she whispered.

  Her voice caressing his name was a reminder of what he clung to all the years of misery and he snapped.

  It took four strides to reach her. He grabbed the back of her neck, soft tendrils fell across his hand and he clenched his jaw to abstain from groaning. He pulled her small frame against his own, and she gasped. He knew he frightened her with his aggressive movement, but it was too late to stop. Too late to do anything but take what he wanted and hold the one woman that made the ice around his heart melt.

  One night. He’d risk the chance of further torture for one night.

  He crushed her to him, every inch of her body pressed up against his own to light the fire that had been simmering since the moment their eyes met across the courtyard so long ago.

  She sensed it.

  He knew it.

  He cupped her chin in a firm grip, tilted her head up, and forced her eyes to meet his own. “Once,” he said with all the power he could muster. He needed her to know that this was all he could give. It would sustain him for the rest of his life.

  She made a half moan as if swallowing the fear of what he no longer offered and met his cold, ice-blue eyes, not saying anything. He needed her to agree to this.

  Her hand reaching between them and resting over the cage of his heart disintegrated his willpower and in one fluid motion he swept her up into his arms and laid her on the white sheets. Without losing contact he followed, knowing that these few hours with her had to last him thousands of years. He wasn’t going to waste a single touch, a single ounce of pleasure.

  He sunk down on top of her and nestled between her thighs, his arousal fighting the restriction of his black army pants. He hesitated, knowing he had to memorize this, each touch, each look in her eyes, every tantalizing feeling that sated his hunger.

  Her lips parted as her slender fingers rose to caress his cheek, a feathered stroke that sent his mind into oblivion of sweet yearning.

  “Impossible,” he muttered before he gave in to his mind and body, capturing her lips with his own and losing himself. Something he promised he’d never do again and yet this woman made him.

  It was a fierce kiss, driven by a passion so laden with need that he cared not to interpret what it meant. He felt the satin feel of her tongue as it met his with the same fury. His hands grabbed hers and brought them above her head to trap them. He needed this to last and her touching him would end all his restraint.

  Meshed as one, he roamed her mouth, memorizing her taste and the feel of her lips moving against his own with the same driving force, making this the most dangerous act he’d ever experienced. They could never do this again. His Scar would eventually take over his entire body and it would feed off of this and hurt her.

  She fought his unyielding grip on her wrists, but he refused to let go. She sighed, the sound heightening his awareness, and he relished it as his lips traveled over her chin and down her neck to where he breathed in her scent of the peach soap clinging to her.

  “Please,” Delara begged, tilting her neck as he nuzzled the soft flesh behind her ear. “If you’re leaving me, let me go,” she said. “Let me touch you.”

  He wanted to say never. It was on the tip of his tongue to admit that he’d never let her go, but he had to. She was his liability, something he had to purge with this one night or his Scar could use her against him. Yes, he had to purge her from his heart. They weren’t meant to be any longer.

  Instead, he said, “I will let you go, Delara.” And with that, he released her wrists and felt her hands scorch his skin as she put them under his shirt, lifting one barrier between them. He pulled her shirt from her body and followed suit with her bra.

  As soon as their naked chests met, it was a high, an addiction being sated. He had no fear when she touched his skin, unlike when Zurina healed him. With Delara there was no reminder of his past, just this moment with this woman he had loved with the heart he no longer had.

  He groaned feeling her erect nipples against his chest. She raised her arm, bringing it around his neck and pulling his mouth down onto hers once more. Sinking. Drowning in her desire, Waleron drank her passion as if it was the last drink he’d ever have.

  “Touch me,” Delara said. “I want your hands on me.”

  Waleron closed his eyes, using his senses as his hands stroked her breasts, cupping the small globes he’d fantasized about holding in his palms, while he tugged on the raised nipples with his thumbs and forefingers. She arched her back and goosebumps sprinkled her flesh.

  He moved down her body, needing to taste what he felt with his hands. His tongue swept across her neck, down her chest, and finally hovered above her right breast. He stared. Waiting for mere seconds—though it felt like hours—needing this time for her to grasp the urgency within him. Her hands gripped his shoulders, pulling him towards her, but he resisted.

  “Please,” she cried, eyes spangled with passion.

  That was all it took as a deep groan emerged from the back of his throat and he took her erect nipple into his mouth. There was no softness about it as his teeth nipped, teased, and suckled what he’d been denied for so long. Every inch of his body was in flames, coldness dissipating from his veins, her passion burning him, feeding him.

  His lips traveled across her stomach, hands on her hips to keep her still as he explored every crevice of her body with his mouth, tasting the sweetness and smelling her delicious scent that made his erection pulsate. When he reached the denim barrier of her jeans, he used one hand to undo her button flies while the other continued to roam over the hot, silky skin of her abdomen. He yanked the material down her legs, off one foot then the other, and threw them across the room. He hesitated again, mesmerized by what lay beneath him, what was his for this one night. His fingers caressed her luscious toes, one foot then the other, until she sat up and drew him back down to veil her body with his own.

  He stared. It was all he could do as breath escaped him. This was the woman who made every promise he mad
e to himself fly away as though a leaf breaking free from its stem and dancing in the wind. She waited, almost like she knew what this was doing to him.

  His finger hooked the silk black material of her panties and he heard her sharp intake of breath. She placed her hands on his belt, released the leather from its loop, and then undid the buckle. He swore he was going to come right then and there as her knuckles nudged his erection. He grit his teeth and met her gaze.

  Her teeth tugged at her lower lip and she gave him a heart-wrenching smile, eyes lighting up like a rainbow of brilliance. He raised his hand and ran a finger down her cheek and across her upturned lips. So simple, to smile, and yet he couldn’t match it. It was too difficult when he knew the outcome of this night.

  But he did etch hers in his mind like a stone engraving, so he could picture her face whenever he needed.

  Slipping his hands beneath the edge of her silk panties, he tugged them further and further downward until they glided from her body, then he slid a hand back up until he felt the wetness cling to his fingers. The words tore from his throat, “Sweet Jesus, baby.”

  He slipped his finger up and inside her. His body reacted like a bomb detonating as he pushed in and out of her, succulent moisture making his finger slide easily. More. He needed more of her. He needed her part of him, meshed as one and he couldn’t deny it any longer.

  Delara knew Waleron lost control the moment his finger, then fingers, entered her moisture. She writhed against his fierce plunges, sparks of intense emotions zipping in and out of her so fast that deciphering them was impossible.

  All she knew was that she loved this man.