by S. L. Naeole
“Ugh! Why does he affect me like this?” I growled angrily. “I don’t want him. You know that I don’t, but he makes me so…so mad! He just shows up and he says things and does things that make me…ugh!” I swung at the air, too furious with myself and with what I’d heard to care what I looked like. I turned to look at Robert and saw his amused smile.
“What’s so damn funny?”
“You. You’re adorable when you’re angry.” He stepped closer to me and pressed his thumb against the indent between my brows. “Your face puckers up and you look like an imp.”
My jaw fell. “A what?”
“An imp. A cute imp. A very, very, attractive imp.”
I knew my nostrils were flaring with my dissatisfaction at this pathetic explanation. Robert chuckled, and replaced his thumb with his mouth, kissing away the furrow. “He was right, though.”
“About what?” I scoffed.
“About the lovemaking part. I’ve been very neglectful when it comes to doing my husbandly duties.”
“I-I…I…”
I stuttered like a dummy, my eyes turning to see Stacy still sitting in the kitchen, her eyes filled with amusement. She had heard everything.
“Yes, she heard everything, and she agrees with me.”
“B-b-but I’m not…I’m not turned yet.” I don’t know why my mouth blurted out something that I knew would hinder what I wanted, what I had been wanting for so long, but it did and I couldn’t pull those words back.
Robert’s mouth lowered to kiss the tip of my nose and I felt my eyes cross as I tried to look into his. He tipped my chin up and then his lips covered mine. This was how Lem had kissed me. This was what I had wanted with Robert. But this was different. This was more. So…so much more.
“Come, wife,” he said smiling.
“Where?” I asked breathlessly.
“I’m about to make my dream come true.”
“What about mine?” I sulked before he kissed me again.
“Making it come true is my dream.”
SUPERNOVA
“Where are we going?”
“Where no one can see us.”
I gripped his shoulders with tight fingers. The air was getting colder the higher we flew, and the lights below us had dimmed considerably until they looked like stray flecks of glitter scattering the darkened ground. Pale wisps of clouds wrapped around us until finally they were all I could see. Robert stopped ascending and smiled at me when I gave him a questing look.
“We’re here.”
I gulped, and felt my eyes threaten to leave their sockets. “Here? But there’s…there’s no bed here.”
“We don’t need a bed, Grace.”
A nervous giggle left me as my knuckles turned white against his shoulders. “I-isn’t that how it’s normally done, though? On a bed? In a room, with walls and…walls?”
“Yes. For two humans,” he replied thickly, his hands at my back moving lower, his grip growing tighter.
I closed my eyes and waited, unsure of what to do now that the one fundamental thing I knew about making love was removed from the equation. When I felt Robert’s body shake with laughter, embarrassment burned at my face.
Are you afraid?
His voice was warm and hazy in my head, and I nodded. “What if a plane flies by? What if…what if another angel decides to go…angeling or whatever it is you guys do up here. What if I fall? I don’t have wings…I can’t fly.”
“Shh,” he said, pressing a heavy kiss against my forehead. “There are no planes flying here, and no angels will come flying by—I’ve made sure of it.”
“And,” he said in a husky tone, “You don’t need to have wings. You don’t need to be able to fly in order to be near the stars. All you need to do is be with me. Just trust me. Love me, Grace.” His hands flitted over my body until the chilled air touched skin that had not been exposed before. My eyes flew open in a gasp when I realized that I was naked.
“Clothes are also not necessary,” Robert whispered into my ear.
I looked down at myself and then at him, and then my eyes flew to his, the image that I had seen burned into my mind forever. “You’re naked, too,” I squeaked.
“Well, it wouldn’t have been fair for you to lose your clothes and I remain with mine on now would it?” he said with a soft chuckle. And then his eyes turned dark. It was like watching a storm roll in, quickly and hungrily. My stomach twisted inside of me as my heart began its dance of excitement.
“Are you sure? I-I mean, you’ve always been so against this.”
His hands at my back squeezed, and I yelped. He chuckled. “I’ve never been against this. You and I being together is the second most important thing I’ve ever wanted.”
My head tilted to the side, my voice tinged with confusion. “The second most important thing? What’s the first?”
“Having you love me.”
“But I already love you.”
“I know.”
He smiled just seconds before leaning in to kiss me. The way our lips seemed to meet at just the right angle, with just the right amount of pressure, should have reassured me that what was happening was right, that this was the right time. Instead all I felt was nervous.
“You’re not ready,” Robert realized.
“I-I don’t know. This is all happening so suddenly and…so differently from how I thought it would that I don’t know how to wrap my head around it.”
A cold burst of air surrounded us and I shivered. Robert’s wings emerged from behind him, slowly, almost like art. Even in the dark, they seemed darker, blacker than any shadow. And like two dark curtains, they closed in around us, sealing us in and blocking out the chill.
“Is that better?”
I nodded.
His skin began to light up, the pale white glow filling up the small space between us and illuminating his face so that I could see every expression, every smile, every crinkle of his eyes.
“You must think I’m such a baby,” I mumbled.
“Why would I think that?”
A snort slipped through me at his question. “Really? I whined and complained like a brat about this, even left you because you wouldn’t…give it up, and now look at me. We’re naked, we’re alone, and I’m chickening out.”
A tiny puff of mist appeared between us, and I looked down and sighed with a mixture of relief and disappointment when I realized what he was doing. “You don’t have to do that.”
“You’re uncomfortable with our nudity—I don’t want to make you feel anything you don’t want to.”
“I know, but…it’s not that I don’t like the way you look naked. I…I like seeing you…like that. I just…”
His lids narrowed as he sifted through my thoughts. “You’re worried that I don’t approve of you.”
I nodded sheepishly and shrank inward at his exasperated sigh. “Grace, I know that you’ll probably never fully accept the fact that I find you unquestioningly beautiful and attractive, but, for one moment, please believe me when I say that I could never disapprove of you.”
Robert shifted, releasing one hand and leaning me back against the folds of his wings while his free hand now began to roam my body. “You forget that your skin was the first I’d ever touched. The way it felt, that first time, it was like every dream I’d ever had came true at exactly the same time.”
His fingers trailed up and down my arm, dipping to my armpit and going lower, disappearing into the black smoke. “I don’t know what life was like before that moment; not anymore. Every person I’ve ever come into contact since you gets compared to you, and no one has ever measured up. No one, Grace; not even angels.”
“You’re just saying that,” I told him, my doubt clear.
“You should know by now that I never just say anything. Your skin is like the freckled petal of a lily, soft and delicate, but it smells-” he pressed his nose against my heart “-like every hope I’ve ever had and every promise I ever wanted to make to myself.
“I want you to hear me tell you these words and believe them, not because I say them, not because they come from an angel’s lips, but because they’re the truth. I would do everything in my power to make you believe me. How can I do that, Grace? Tell me.”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.
Robert brought his hand to my face and stroked my cheek. He lowered his head and kissed my eyes. “You know, angels don’t have brown eyes, which makes yours unique.”
His fingertips stroked my ear before his mouth found my lobe and he nibbled it. “You’ve listened to me with these ears. You heard me tell the worst of lies and yet you stayed with me. These ears are precious.”
I heard my breath shake when his lips pressed light kisses down my jaw, moving their way to the corner of my mouth and gently licking at the smile I was unable to prevent from forming.
“When you said my name with these lips, it was as if I’d never heard it spoken before, and I never wanted to hear it spoken by anyone else but you. And when you told me you loved me, and that I didn’t need to say it back, I was blown away; I’d never been given so much by anyone. You gave me everything in those words, Grace. Everything you had, your trust, your heart, your faith—and I didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
“You gave me back.”
“Huh?”
I laughed softly at his confusion and pulled back so that I could see his face completely. “When I met you, the only thing I wanted to do was disappear. Do you know how frustrating it is, to not only not be able to do that but I couldn’t even disappear into my own head?”
“Well…yeah, actually, I do,” he said, laughing with me.
“I never wanted to be anything but Graham’s friend, and when I didn’t even have that, I didn’t have me. Who I was had been based on my friendship with Graham for pretty much my entire life, and I didn’t know that I could be anyone else. But you…you gave me myself. You helped me to be someone on my own, and I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Is that why you could go to prom after you thought I was dead?”
I was stunned. This was the first time he’d mentioned that, and I could detect a hint of something in his voice; something that sounded a lot like irritation and hurt.
The timing of the question caught me off guard the most, though, but I knew why he asked it: he needed reassurance. He needed confirmation that he was not replaceable.
“I spent a month crying over Graham after he dumped me. I cried every single night after Dad and Janice’s wedding when you told me the truth about Sam.
“But when I thought you were dead, I felt the most empty, the most weak I’d ever been. But I was also the most whole I’d ever been, and that’s because of you. I couldn’t just sit at home and do the same thing, cry until I couldn’t move, because I wasn’t the same person anymore. I wasn’t Grace the freak, unloved and unwanted. I was Grace, who had been loved so much by someone that he gave his life for me.
“That changes everything; that changes how you view life. God, it hurt so much to pretend that I was happy, that I was enjoying myself, but I couldn’t waste the time you gave me; I knew that I didn’t have much of it. You said that it was what we did when things were at their worst that really mattered—it might not have been what others would have done, but I knew that I couldn’t ruin Shawn’s prom.”
Robert nodded and then smiled. “You didn’t want to go with him, but you did anyway because you didn’t want to ruin his night.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t fair to him; he had nothing to do with what had happened with us, or with Sam, and I couldn’t have another person be touched by that. You understand…right?”
Again, his head bobbed up and down, and then his mouth was crushing mine, my body now fully supported by his wings as both hands held my head immobile, my mouth opening beneath his. I felt nothing for a moment, because I was so surprised by what was happening. One moment of blank space in my mind and body. And then, the mountain of feeling slammed into me.
My hands that had been simply holding on were now pulling at him, forcing him to pull me in even closer. My fingertips searched for his hair, and I protested when he eased away from me, my lips feeling far more naked than my body did.
“I want you. I want to give you everything,” he panted, his breath hot and sweet against my skin.
“I-I don’t know what to do,” I said meekly.
“Then let me do everything,” he replied before his mouth returned to mine.
This time, when the dark hint of smoke crossed over my skin, it was joined by a hand that touched every curve. The gentle grazing against my heart wasn’t just mist, it was flesh.
“Your heart is racing.”
“Everything’s racing,” I said, my breaths quickening when Robert’s lips pressed against my shoulder.
He chuckled and nodded, his kisses going lower. “Your heart sounds like a freight train. It’s distracting.”
“What you’re doing is distracting,” I breathed as the swirl of something wet brushed at my navel.
Robert’s mouth found its way back to mine and I couldn’t believe how hot his lips were. I wanted to look down again to see if my skin was on fire, but I already knew the answer. I was on fire. We both were.
“I want you to tell me to stop if it gets too…scary, or painful.”
Robert’s voice was a healthy mix of concern and need, and I knew that when I answered him, my voice would sound exactly the same. “I’m not afraid of anything. Nothing you do to me will hurt.”
“I love you.”
“Show me,” I told him.
***
He was right. There had been no need for a bed. I lay on him comfortably, his back facing the city below us, his eyes staring up into the stars. His hand traced patterns on my back, causing shivers to run up and down my spine and reminding me of the moments that led up to this.
My mind replayed over and over again the sweetness of it all, the gentle touch of each finger, the sweeping emotions that never seemed to find an end when I’d finally let go of my fear of falling and allowed it simply float away from us. Robert’s voice had flooded my mind, telling me how I looked, how he'd never felt so free.
My heart still possessed its off-beat rhythm as I recalled each touch that turned my skin into its own storm of feeling. With the cool air wrapping around us, it felt like a war had started between the fire we created within us and nature’s need to cool us down. I was almost sure that if I listened close enough, I’d hear the sizzle of steam.
But one moment above all others captured my breath and held it hostage, forbidding anything to surpass its significance. Even Robert, seeing it replay in my mind, seemed unable to contain his emotions and my skin grew prickly at the heat that he sent into me. “You were so brave,” he said with soft reverence.
“Brave?” My voice felt far away, as though I still couldn’t believe it was happening to me, and that it was someone else he was speaking to.
“Yes. With all the danger that the two of us being together means, the consequences that we’ll face because of this, and the…pain, you didn’t show any fear.”
“I told you, nothing you’d do would hurt,” I said with a secret smile.
“I know, but I only understand that for a human, their first time can be…terrifying.”
“Where did you hear that?”
His eyes turned down in embarrassment. “Lark.”
“You asked your sister for advice?” I shrieked. “Ugh—you know, she’s probably laughing right now, thinking of all the different ways you freaked out about this.”
“She’s the only other person I know who’s been with a human, G
race. I had no one else to turn to.”
I exhaled in irritation at his explanation. “You could have asked me! I’ve had sex-ed. I’ve seen that pie movie like, four times! And besides, when a guy loses his virginity, it’s not really…painful.”
“That’s not what Lark said.”
“Well, that’s because Lark probably broke Graham in half! I can’t believe you’d ask your sister.”
The way Robert’s feathers ruffled, I knew he was becoming irritated as well, but then my body shifted, and suddenly I groaned at what that movement did between us.
“You know,” Robert whispered, his eyes closed, his face pinched as though caught between pain and pleasure, “Being with you makes me understand why the Grigori were willing to give everything up. I didn’t know that I could feel hot, cold, fiery, frozen, light, and so heavy all at once.”
I swallowed and hushed out as his hands took a hold of my waist and pulled me down. “I felt only you.”
I heard fluttering beneath us, and Robert growled, his wings unfurling from behind him to spread wide, covering us and sealing off the light from anything save the steamy glow of his skin. “I’m afraid that you’re about to feel only me again.”
FIELD TRIP
We returned back to the unassuming house before the sun rose. Robert shielded my nakedness from invisible eyes with a blanket of mist and carried me into his room where he laid me down and covered me with the white comforter. “Sleep, my angel,” he said to me before pressing soft lips against my forehead.
“Where are you going? You’re not leaving me again, are you?” I asked in a panic.
“Only for an hour. Stacy is downstairs, and Lark is right across the hall. Everything will be fine. You sleep and when you wake up I will be here.”
I nodded, but I knew that doubt was plain on my face as he disappeared. How could he leave me so soon after what had happened between us? This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, was it? We were supposed to snuggle, cuddle up to each other and fall asleep in each other’s arms, then wake up and begin the cycle all over again.