The Quirin Stone

by Marie Morin

  She'd just decided it must be one of those strange ‘deja vu’ things when she heard movement behind her and turned to see that Thor had come back in the room. A wave of dizziness washed over her. She reached out blindly to steady herself and closed her fingers around cold steel. Something flashed through her mind, so quickly she didn't manage to catch it and the next thing she knew she was staring down at her hand, watching the blood drip off of it and onto the floor.

  “Sang."

  “You've cut yourself!"

  She looked up at Thor and blinked. “I hurt my hand,” she said in bewilderment.

  He put an arm around her shoulders. “Let's get that cleaned up."

  “It's dripping on the carpet."

  “Don't worry about the carpet."

  He walked her to the half bath near the stairs and held her hand under the cold water until the bleeding subsided. He frowned as he studied it. “You should probably have stitches. It doesn't look very deep, but...."

  “No!” Cassie interrupted. “It'll be all right. I just need to put some antiseptic on it and bandage it. It's not deep."

  He studied her face. “It's a bad place, though. You're going to have trouble using your hand until it closes."

  Cassie smiled with an effort. “I'll live."

  Sighing a little impatiently, Thor dug through the cabinet and unearthed a box of stick on bandages, then discovered a tube of clear liquid bandage. “Fortunately, my housekeeper thinks of everything. I'm surprised I've even got anything.” He located a bottle of antiseptic. “This is going to hurt."

  Cassie gripped her wrist and screwed her face up.

  He chuckled. “I haven't done it yet."

  “I can't stand the suspense."

  He dashed the antiseptic over her hand, making sure he'd thoroughly drenched every cut. It brought tears to her eyes. Cassie hissed, then panted, staring at the diluted blood. She hadn't realized she'd cut her fingers. No wonder it had been bleeding so much. She must have grabbed the sword, she decided, but who would've thought it would be sharp enough to slice her hand and fingers just touching it? It must be like a razor.

  When her hand had dried, Thor put the liquid bandage on each cut very carefully then grasped the tips of her fingers and turned her hand to make sure. He glanced at her face when he'd assured himself he had the cuts covered and she looked up at him. His gaze flickered over her face. “Brave girl."

  She blushed. “It didn't hurt that much. It's just a little thing."

  The smoke alarm went off suddenly, making Cassie jump.

  “That'll be our diner,” Thor said, leaving the bathroom abruptly.

  Cassie sighed. She was such a screw up! How was it that she always seemed to manage to fuck things up just by being nearby?

  She followed him into the kitchen.

  He'd just thrown two more steaks on his indoor grill. Two were in the garbage can, still sizzling. They'd melted a hole through the plastic liner.

  Cassie climbed up on a stool, watching him.

  “No! Go—before I burn these and have to run down to the grocery store again."

  Chuckling, Cassie climbed off of the stool and returned to the great room.

  Seeing the blood trail she'd left, she decided she might as well get a cloth and try to clean it up. Fortunately, he had some sort of protective finish on the carpet. Mostly, it beaded and she was able to wipe it up.

  When she'd worked her way back over to the suit of armor, she sat back on her heels, staring up at it. There was blood dripping down the sword. She thought it best to leave that to Thor. She didn't think water would be good for the metal.

  She remembered then that something had flashed through her mind when she'd touched it. She concentrated, trying to think what it was, but it continued to elude her. Finally, she nerved herself and shuffled a little closer to it. She'd touched it. Maybe, if she touched it again, she'd remember what it was. Lifting her hand, she reached out tentatively.

  She must have been really focused on it, because she didn't even hear Thor until he grasped her wrist. She looked up at him guiltily. He squatted beside her.

  “Cassie! You're like a child. You just cut yourself on that damn thing!"

  She blushed fierily, but she didn't want to tell him she'd had this brilliant idea that she could touch it and ‘see’ things. Unfortunately, she couldn't think of an explanation that didn't sound stupid.

  He cupped her face in his hand and dropped a light kiss on her lips. “Come on. Let me feed you."

  He'd set the dining room. Cassie was overawed by it. When he'd helped her into her chair and left again, she stared at the long, graceful tapers burning at the center of the table, the beautiful china, silverware and glassware. Everything was spotless, elegant, gleaming.

  Thor returned a few minutes later bearing salad plates and set one in front of her.

  “It's ... everything looks beautiful,” she said, wondering if he'd done it for her or if it was the way he usually ate. It was like dining in a fine restaurant—or what she thought it would be like. She'd never actually been in one, even to serve.

  He tapped the bottom of her chin. “I'd hoped you'd like it."

  When he returned again, he was carrying a caddie of various types of salad dressing and a bottle of chilled wine. He sat down. “Five minutes on the steaks if you want yours rare, ten if you want it well."

  “How about medium?” Cassie asked, selecting the ranch.

  Except for the first disaster, which she knew was her fault, the meal was absolutely wonderful. She didn't particularly care for wine, but discovered it was like most any other alcoholic beverage. It got better the more you drank. She'd never dined formally, but she watched Thor and followed his lead.

  She swayed slightly when they finally finished and she got up to leave. It wasn't from dizziness, however. Gripping the back of her chair, she smiled at him resolutely. “I'll do clean up. You cooked."

  He caught her shoulders, pulling her loose from the chair, and guided her back into the great room. “The housekeeper does clean up. That's what I pay her for."

  Cassie didn't argue, mostly because it occurred to her by that time that she'd had just a teeny weenie bit too much wine.

  “What're we gonna do now?” she asked, beaming up at him suggestively.

  “What do you want to do?"

  “Well...” she said, walking a pair of fingers up his chest. “You said if you were going to breed me you needed to feed me and you fed me, so...."

  Chapter Twelve

  He caught her shoulders and held her away from him, bending so that he was level with her face. She put her nose against his and crossed her eyes. “How many fingers am I holding up?” she murmured.

  “None,” he said, straightening and looking down at her in amusement. “You're drunk."

  “Not!"

  “Next time, I'll have to limit your wine consumption."

  “Never had any before. I thought that stuff had a really, really low alcohol ... whatever,” she ended, having forgotten the word that went there.

  He guided her to the couch and pushed her down on it. Glancing around, he found the remote and moved to one end of the couch, laying it on the table at his arm.

  Cassie studied him doubtfully for some moments, and finally crawled across the couch and climbed into his lap. They shifted and wriggled until they were comfortable and then he returned his attention to flicking through the channels. Finally, he set the TV on a music station and put the remote down.

  Cassie wiggled a little closer, waiting expectantly. Finally, he pulled the scrunchy she'd bound her hair up in from her hair and began to stroke his hands along it, smoothing it. Warmth spread through her, and heady anticipation. She sighed in contentment.

  When nothing else happened, she looked up at him, wondering it he was waiting for her to initiate.

  He smiled at her absently. “I know I upset you the other day. It's just that there are reasons I don't talk about my past that have nothing to do with you,
” he said finally.

  Cassie blinked at him in confusion, casting around in her mind for the origins of this particular subject. Unfortunately, he was right. She was drunk. It took her a while to think all the way back to their last conversation the week before. “Oh,” she said finally.

  “It's all right. I understand."

  “Do you?"

  She thought about it for several minutes. “I think so."

  “Explain it then."

  Cassie blinked at him. “Explain it?” she echoed.

  “Tell me the conclusion you arrived at."

  She frowned in concentration, trying to retrace her path. She thought it would probably have been difficult to follow the ups and downs and curves of her week of emotional indecision even if she hadn't been drunk. “It's just sex,” she said finally.

  He dragged a knee up. Cupping his mouth and chin in one hand, he propped his elbow on his knee, studying her.

  When he didn't say anything, she thought maybe he was waiting for her to elaborate. “Good sex? I mean, great sex."

  “You're not sure?"

  She nodded. “Great sex."

  “It's not—extraordinary sex?” he asked, his eyes gleaming now.

  “Yes! That's the word I was looking for. That's it!"

  “So ... Let me get this straight. This, between you and me, it's extraordinary sex?"

  She blinked a couple of times. There was something about the way he was looking at her that gave her the feeling it was a trick question. “Yes."

  “But not fabulous?"

  She frowned. “Is that better than extraordinary?” she asked doubtfully.

  He chuckled. Slipping his arms around her, he hugged her tightly to his chest. “Poor baby. You are drunk, aren't you?"

  “I might be,” she said cautiously.

  He sighed. “I figured that was what you were thinking. It's not just the sex, Cassie."

  She knew it was stupid to rock the boat. He's been sweet enough to try to offer a little salve for the wound, even though he hadn't intentionally inflicted the wound to start with. She should just take it and ignore the rest to the best of her ability. This was carpe diem time. She hesitated, trying to decide whether she wanted to throw away what she had for something she couldn't get.

  It had become abundantly clear to her that, if he was seeing her because she reminded him of his wife, or whoever, then he was still in love with whoever. And that meant that even if they'd been close enough in age for there to be some possibility of a real relationship, there couldn't be one.

  Basically, she'd been right to start with. She had a snowballs’ chance in hell, period.

  She bit her tongue. She wasn't going to say it. She wasn't going to ask it. Doing so was just demanding that he come right out and lie to her, or tell her the truth and hurt her feelings. “I hope that doesn't mean you think we can't have sex because it'll give me the wrong idea?"

  He sighed. It was a sound of determined patience.

  “Don't,” she said quickly.

  “We should talk about this."

  “Let's just talk about something else."

  He was silent for a time. “What would you like to know about me?"

  Cassie swallowed. The pleasant mellow feeling from the wine had ebbed beyond her reach, bringing the real world closer than she wanted at the moment. A finger of panic scratched its way up her spine. She'd started something she didn't know how to stop. He wasn't a block head. He wasn't one of the self-centered little pricks she was used to dealing with. She hadn't managed to hide the fact that she was hurt and he was determined he was going to work it out.

  Drunk or not, she was firmly of the opinion that trying to work it out was just going to make it worse.

  It was Janie's damn fault, really. If she just hadn't put it into her head talking about his wife! Unfortunately, it seemed the more determinedly she tried to reverse things back to the way they had been before, the more determined he was to forge ahead and give her what she really didn't want. The truth.

  She sat up abruptly, trying to fight off the sense of panic that was growing in the pit of her stomach. “It's really odd, you know. I keep getting these little dizzy spells every time I come into this house. I think I might be allergic to something in here."

  “Really?” his voice sounded neutral, but he didn't look very neutral.

  “I suppose it could be something else, though."

  “Like what, for instance?"

  Panic. She got off the couch and moved toward the suit of armor again. “This looks so familiar to me. I just can't figure out why. What period is it?"

  He sat up on the couch, placing is feet on the floor. “I don't know."

  She turned to look at him in surprise. “You don't?"

  “What period do you think it is?"

  She turned back to study it. “Crusades, maybe?"

  He moved up behind her, catching her shoulder with his palms. “I didn't mean to hurt you."

  A knot of misery collected in her throat. She looked down at her palm. “I hurt myself."

  He sighed in defeat, rubbing his hands along her arms. “How can I make it better?"

  She looked up at the suit of armor. As she did, the crown of her head brushed against Thor's chest. In the short time she'd known him, she knew exactly where that was ... just above his heart. She realized at almost the same moment that she was staring at the center of the breastplate on the suit of armor. Something cold washed over her ... a ghost walking over her grave. Lifting her hand, she placed it over the knight's heart.

  Chapter Thirteen

  "Francois, don't go! Please! Leave the holy land to the heathens! Stay with me!"

  Cassie woke feeling as if a giant hand was squeezing her chest. She'd been struggling to cry in her sleep. She knew that even if she hadn't remembered the dream. She'd experienced enough in those first years after her parents’ death.

  She clutched her chest, gasping both from pain and the constriction of air. The need to cry vanished with the last of the dream, however.

  “Cassie!"

  Opening her eyes, she looked up at Thor in confusion, then glanced around her. “I'm sorry. I must of dozed off. I guess it was the wine."

  She looked up at Thor again to see if he was irritated about her falling asleep on him. He didn't look irritated. He looked shaken. “You were talking ... in your sleep."

  “Oh God! I didn't say anything really stupid, did I?” she said, still rubbing her chest, although the uncomfortable tightness had begun to subside.

  He looked surprised. “You've done it before?"

  She sighed. “Always. I can remember my mother telling me I did even when I was an infant and couldn't actually talk."

  “I don't mean you mumbled. You talked, in a perfectly normal tone of voice, with very little slurring."

  She sat up and scooted off his lap onto the couch beside him, putting her back to him as she rubbed her face. That was when she discovered there were tears all over her face. She actually had cried then. Lifting the tail of her T-shirt, she mopped her eyes. “I don't know if I always talk like I'm awake, but I've been known to. Sometimes I get up and walk around. Usually, I don't, though,” she added hastily when she glanced at him and saw the look on his face. “Mostly, I just sit up in bed and talk."

  “Your brain ... most people's brains secrete a paralyzing chemical when they sleep that prevents them from moving around and talking."

  She laughed wryly. “That's a nice way of calling me a freak."

  “I didn't say that.” He was silent for several moments. “Do you usually speak French?"

  She glanced at him sharply. “You're mistaken. I don't even know French. If I can't speak it while I'm awake, I don't think I could do it in my sleep. I was probably just mumbling and it sounded like a foreign language."

  “I speak ten languages, fluently. I know French when I hear it."

  Lifting his arm, she draped it across her lap and leaned her head against his shoulder, starin
g down at his hand in her lap and toying with his fingers. “I had the strangest dream."

  “You want to tell me about it?"

  Cassie frowned. “I can only remember parts of it now. You were in it."

  “Was I?” he prompted when she fell silent.

  “I guess it was the wine—and I got cut on the sword. You were wearing armor just like that suit over there, carrying the same sword. At least, from what I remember of the dream, it seems like it. But, maybe I'm mixed up on that part."

  He reached over with is free hand and began stroking her hair soothingly. “What was I doing in the dream?"

  “I'm not completely sure. You looked angry.” She stopped, uncomfortable now that she remembered more of the dream. There'd been a woman. She'd been begging him not to go, begging him not to leave her. She tended to be god-like in her dreams, moving from body to body, sometimes hovering above the scene and looking down.

  She'd been the woman, at least when the woman had been begging him not to go. She wasn't much for dream interpretations, but it seemed pretty obvious to her that the dream reflected her own anxieties the past week, that Thor had dumped her and wouldn't be coming back.

  “You don't remember anything else?"

  “No,” she lied.

  Gathering her hair in his hand, he draped it over one shoulder and leaned toward her, nipping at the nape and exposed side of her neck. A shiver went through her as the warmth of his breath aroused her flesh to heightened perception, moving outward in every direction with a prickling of her skin. He shifted, straightening one leg along the couch and dragging her back, between his spread thighs, until her buttocks were nestled against his crotch.

  Slipping his hands beneath her T-shirt, he skated his palms upward and cupped a breast in each hand, massaging them, tweaking her nipples with his thumb and forefinger until they stood erect and became excruciatingly receptive to his touch.

  Cassie caught her breath as the welcome tension burgeoned within her, the intoxicating wine of passion spreading warmth and lassitude, and the dizzying sensation of floating free of her mind and becoming nothing more than a receptacle of pleasure. By the time he'd sucked a string of dark pearls along her neck and shoulder, her world had narrowed only to the feel of his hands, his mouth, and the constant flow of pleasure through her breasts and into her belly.