by Aja James
Slowly but surely, she felt a sizzling heat expand from the core of her throughout her extremities. Hotter and hotter she grew, until she felt engulfed in a conflagration of her own making.
And then, the flames abruptly shot out of her body in a blaze of light, leaving her gasping for breath and shivering with sweat.
In small increments she opened her eyelids, her vision blurry with a mirage of smoke, as if she’d just burnt herself out like an overheated grill.
A tall figure stood a few feet away from her, the edges of the silhouette glowing in the moonlight.
Clara rubbed her eyes with her hands impatiently, trying to clear up her vision.
When she blinked again and focused, she promptly forgot how to breathe.
Because there he was.
Standing just a few feet away.
Everything her heart desired.
“Eli,” she whispered, afraid if she spoke too loudly he’d disappear.
“Clara,” he said in that deep, smoky voice, sending pleasurable tingles up and down her spine.
Slowly, she approached him, uncertain whether she could trust herself even in her own dream.
The unconscious mind was a fickle thing. Just when you thought something was within reach, you discover it had simply been a trick of your imagination or it would be yanked away or you’d wake up frustrated to no end.
She reached out a hand to touch him, just the tips of his fingers in case the dream gods thought her too greedy.
The barely-there friction of their skin sliding against each other set off a rash of sparks that stoked a hungry fire within her.
Emboldened, she grasped his hand tightly as if she could tether him to her in this way, because now that she held a part of him, she was never letting go.
As if he knew the depth of her desperation and determination, he smiled that rare Eli smile. And squeezed her hand back.
She launched herself at him then, unable to hold back any more, and he caught her tightly in his embrace, letting his heat and scent envelop her, comfort her.
She took his mouth with hers straightaway, going full force after what she wanted, devouring him with her lips and teeth and tongue.
He met her assault with complete surrender, letting her plunder him as she wished, letting her take anything and everything she wanted.
Unsatisfied with just laying siege to his mouth, she jumped up and wrapped her legs around his waist like a particularly tenacious spider monkey, making him chuckle deep and low.
“Inside. Now. Eli. Can’t wait!” she barked out nearly incoherent orders, still kissing him like there was no tomorrow.
With much more coordination and patience than she had, he obliged and laid her down on the soft, thick grass, their clothes disappearing the moment he covered her with his body.
In her head, Clara thought to say, “I love this trick of yours,” but outwardly, she only managed a wanton moan.
Because he felt so, sooooo gooood.
His hot, satiny skin. Hard, smooth muscles. His intoxicating musk that permeated the air around them, until she thought she was breathing not oxygen but inhaling Eli straight into her lungs, her veins, like shots of the purest cocaine.
His thick, pulsing erection probed at her entrance, teasing her to madness.
She clawed her fingernails down his back and grabbed onto his spectacular ass.
“Pleasepleaseplease…” she begged mindlessly, urging him on, digging her heels into the ground in anticipation, the muscles of her thighs quivering with tension.
“Clara…” he began huskily, pulling his mouth slightly away, holding still at the entrance to her core despite her frenzied movements to possess him now.
She whimpered with frustration and impatience and desperate, violent need, and her hands clawed back up his broad back to hold his face immobile, spearing him intensely with her half-crazed gaze as she ground out, “Talk later. Love now!”
She felt his rumbling laugh before she heard it, starting from the tightening of his abs, up his deep, wide chest, through his long, graceful throat and out his voluptuously full mouth.
“As you wish,” he said with a smile.
And slowly, achingly came into her, painstakingly plowing through her tight, wet sheath with his hard, smooth steel.
Clara groaned loud and long, all but delirious with the blistering pleasure of his gorgeous sex filling her, stretching her, rubbing with exquisite pressure along all of her erogenous zones deep inside.
She lifted her hips to pull him deeper, squeeze him harder, sucking him in and pushing him out in counter point with his torturously slow thrusts.
Oh God, she loved the weight of him on her body, large and heavy and thoroughly, elementally male. The way he worked in and out of her like a pair of bellows fanning the flames of her desire. The look in his eyes as he stared into hers, so raw and open, vulnerable and strong.
Though he’d never said the words, she saw how much he loved her. How he’d die a million deaths just to deserve her. Faster and deeper, harder and hotter, he stroked her with his whole body, holding her mesmerized with his light green, double-lidded wolf-like eyes.
Her muscles seized from head to toe as the first of a series of full-bodied orgasms blasted through her, and still he didn’t stop moving, undulating powerfully like a rolling wave, his sex kissing her deep inside, over and over and over, endlessly pushing her over the edge of her climax then lifting her up again to soar even higher.
“Give me you,” she gasped into his mouth, still holding his intensely possessive gaze.
“Give me everything.”
He let go then, unleashing his crisis, flooding her with his nourishing cream, his guttural groan music to her ears as she watched the devastating beauty of his coming apart.
But as the last waves of his seed subsided, she felt the weight of him grow lighter. She tried to hold him tighter, but the more she clutched and squeezed and hugged him close, the less substance there was to hold.
“No! Nonononono!” she cried frantically, chasing after the elusive wisps of his essence as his body unraveled and lifted with the wind.
“No! Come back!” she shouted, getting to her feet on unsteady legs and futilely jumping up again and again, trying to catch the tendrils of his smoke.
“Don’t leave me, Eli!” she screamed as loud as she could, her voice echoing through the forest, into the softly dawning skies.
“Please! Please!” She fell to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably, unconscious of the flames that suddenly engulfed her body, the white hot sparks crackling above her skin.
At last she let out a wail so deafening, it shook the moon, the stars, the very heavens above.
And finally, she passed out on the mossy grass.
When she awoke, she was alone in her bed again to start another day.
Without Eli.
*** *** *** ***
Jaimie Lin looked upon her sister’s lifeless body on the hospital bed where the doctor had pronounced time of death ten minutes ago.
Leila appeared to be sleeping peacefully. Her skin was still soft, her flesh malleable; rigor mortis hadn’t yet set in. Her lips were still rosy, and a slight blush tinted her cheeks.
Truly, she looked as if she were Sleeping Beauty waiting for her prince to come and kiss her awake.
She was only twenty years old.
She was going to be a senior at NYU in the Fall. She was popular at school, excelled in everything she did, was a favorite with her professors and coaches—she had her whole life ahead of her, in other words.
Except now…
She was dead.
Jaimie hadn’t been able to process everything it happened so fast.
When they’d discovered Leila’s late-stage Leukemia a year ago, they’d tried every treatment, approved and experimental, known to man. They’d taken her to specialist after specialist, one cancer center after another. They’d spent almost all of their parents’ retirement savings in the effort, but to no avail.
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Until a few months ago they tried one last far-fetched treatment at a newly established clinic in Chinatown. Since then, Leila had been visibly improving. With each visit they made to the place, she returned home looking better than ever, full of energy, glowing with life. They thought they’d been granted a miracle.
But a few weeks back, Leila suddenly grew weak and pale and began to exhibit strange behaviors, like scratching constantly at her wrists, her neck, scraping the skin raw over her veins. She slept like the dead during the day, missing all her classes and activities, and snuck out of the house late at night to lord knew where, coming home only when the sun rose each morning.
She never told them anything about her midnight escapades, but her eyes glittered with something indefinable whenever she came home. Something wild and lustful.
It scared Jaimie and their parents.
Then, just as suddenly, Leila didn’t get up one night, lying still and silent on her bed, her eyes wide open but unseeing, no matter how Jaimie tried to rouse her.
They’d taken her to the ER, where she stayed in the semi-comatose state for the past few weeks, until this morning.
When her heart finally stopped beating.
“I have to take her to the morgue now,” one of the hospital staff that Jaimie didn’t notice had come into the room said from just beside her.
“Just a few more minutes,” she murmured, still holding Leila’s hand in hers.
An hour later, Leila’s body was to be transported to the funeral home. They’d decided to cremate her and take her back to Perth, Australia, where their grandparents still resided, to scatter her ashes over the Indian Ocean.
Except—
The body had disappeared without a trace.
Chapter Nineteen
Two days later.
“Everything is good to go,” Mrs. Lorena Gonzalez said as she stacked her papers together and secured them in a hard-case folder.
“I’ll put in your recommendation this afternoon. You should get the formal papers in a few weeks. If you don’t, let me know. I can provide any temporary certificates you might need.”
“Thank you,” Clara said by rote, her voice subdued, though she should have been jumping up and down with exuberant happiness at finalizing her adoption of Annie.
The two women got to their feet as the social worker prepared to leave.
Annie came up to hold Clara’s hand, leaning against her side as if trying to give her comfort.
“I can’t get over how alike you look,” Mrs. Gonzalez said with bemusement. “You could pass for Annie’s mother or older sister or aunt quite believably. You look great together. I wish you both the best.”
“We appreciate your support,” Clara murmured as her guest gathered up her things. “Please come back and visit sometime. We’d love to have you over for dinner.”
“I just might take you up on that,” the elderly woman smiled in response.
Then, she glanced over at the breakfast table that Clara had forgotten to clear before the social worker’s arrival. Clara had been busy cleaning up some broken dishes she’d carelessly dropped when Mrs. Gonzalez had climbed up the stairs.
She’d been doing that a lot lately. Forgetting things. Breaking things.
“Who’s the third place setting for?”
“It’s for Eli,” Annie chirped cheerfully before Clara could answer.
Mrs. Gonzalez gazed shrewdly but kindly at Annie.
“Who is Eli?”
Annie got a little shy at that and hid her smiling face behind Clara’s cotton maxi skirt.
“Is he by any chance the fine looking gentleman downstairs in the studio?”
Clara sucked in a breath at Mrs. Gonzalez’s words, until she added, “the one in the drawings I saw displayed on the walls?”
Clara released her shaky breath as Annie replied, “He’s Mommy’s friend, and he promised he’d be my new Daddy too.”
“Annie,” Clara said, her voiced filled more with hurt than rebuke.
“But it’s true, Mommy,” Annie insisted. “Eli told me so last night.”
“I’m sorry,” Clara started, trying to explain the wild imaginings of a wayward child to the social worker, who was probably wondering what was going on. If there was another parent in the equation, he’d have to be evaluated too. And while Clara wholeheartedly wished that were true, she’d begun to come to terms with the fact that Eli would only exist in the privacy of her dreams.
He wasn’t real.
“Well, let’s not keep him waiting,” Mrs. Gonzalez said rather enigmatically. “I’m sure he’s eager to embrace his family after his long trip away.”
What?
Clara just stood there flummoxed and immobile.
Who was waiting?
“Come on, Mommy,” Annie said excitedly, pulling on Clara’s hand.
In a daze, Clara followed the social worker and Annie down the curving stairs to her art studio.
Her feet refused to move when she was standing on the last step, even as Annie burst forth and launched herself at a tall, achingly beautiful man with double-lidded, wolf-like light green eyes and a shaved head shadowed by half an inch of black hair.
He caught the little girl in his arms and swung her high up in the air, laughing with her as she squealed and giggled and laughed a carefree, delighted, full-bodied laugh.
Music to Clara’s ears.
The two of them together the most beautiful thing in the world to Clara’s eyes.
Finally, he tucked Annie against his chest, holding her securely with one arm, and met Clara’s disbelieving eyes.
“I’m home, Clara,” he said in that smoky deep voice of his, making her shiver with awareness all over.
She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She stumbled down the last step of the stair and merely stared at him, holding Annie, the social worker beaming at the three of them.
“Are you…” she stuttered and swallowed her next words. She was about to say, “Are you real?”
Instead, she finished, “Are you here to stay?”
He held her gaze intensely and gave one slow nod.
“For as long as you want me to,” he said quietly.
“Forever, then,” she immediately returned.
Those familiar sensuous lips curved at one corner.
“Forever,” he vowed.
*** *** *** ***
Later that night, with Annie sleeping soundly and blissfully in her bed, having spent the whole day with her two favorite adults in the world, and after hours of insatiable love making, Clara finally paused in her reclaiming of her mate to prop herself up on his chest and look deeply into his mesmerizing clear green eyes.
“How is it possible? How are you real? How are you here?”
Eli smiled up at her.
He was doing a lot of that since he’d come home. He smiled so often Clara wondered where the ever solemn, emotionless dark warrior had gone. But she wondered only briefly, because she liked this Eli much, much better.
“Love later. Talk now?” he teased, echoing her demand of him in her dream world.
“You were real there too?” she said breathlessly, amazed. “You were with me all this time?”
“Yes,” he answered, though hesitantly, as if he didn’t know the full truth of it himself.
“I’ve been with you all along. I…I don’t know how it was possible. But after what happened,” after he’d been blown up piece by excruciating piece, “somehow my consciousness still remained. But I couldn’t pull myself together. I couldn’t take form. I was simply inside of you. In your blood.”
“Do you think it had to do with that night we…bonded?” she asked carefully, not knowing what to call what they’d shared that night. They’d essentially fused into one and combusted together.
He nodded. “I think so. It’s as if you absorbed my essence, my soul, inside of you. As long as you had your fire, I was the oxygen that kept it burning.”
“Why did you take
so long to come back to me? You broke my heart!”
She didn’t mean to rail at him. She was infinitely thankful she had him at all. But she couldn’t help the sob that escaped her, the anguish and frustration and bleakness that debilitated her over the past two weeks.
She buried her face in his neck as she gulped for breath, and he held her tightly, infusing her with his strength.
He’d wanted more than anything to return to her, but he’d been busy piecing himself together, particle by particle, molecule by molecule. The process of coming back together was even more agonizing than being blown apart, for he didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t know if he could take form again. And if he did, whether he’d be whole or merely a fragmented mess of his old self. The laborious process and the uncertainty had just about killed him all over again.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I tried. It was your fire that made me whole again.”
She looked at her left hand, her fingers splayed over his sternum beside her face. In the aftermath of their recent orgasms, her skin still tingled with pleasure, and when she stroked her fingers across his chest, the place where their skin met lit up with sparks.
“What is this?” she asked, bewildered. “Are you doing this?”
“No. It’s you, Clara. You have a special Gift.”
A burst of startled breath left her chest.
“I don’t have any special gifts,” she admonished. “I’m the most ordinary person you’ve ever met.”
“Not so,” he returned. “You’ve always had a brilliant fire that burns from within, as if you’re lit from the inside out. It’s what drew me to you when I’d first awoken. It was the only thing that kept me alive, I think, the drive to make your flame blaze hotter and revel in the inferno with you.”
“But…” she couldn’t wrap her head around it. “I’m just a human. I’m not like you.”
“You’re not like me,” he agreed. “You’re something other. You are human. But you’re also more. I have never met the likes of you before. But you remind me of the legends from old Britannia—of Elves and Fae.”