Forgotten

by Evangeline Anderson

  “I do, baby. The problem is, I want you a lot closer than you want to get right now.” There was a soft growl in his voice that sent a shiver through her.

  “So what…if I won’t give myself completely and go back to the way…the way you remember us being before, then you don’t want me?” Kate asked, challenging him.

  “No—it’s not like that. It’s…” He shook his head. “I can’t explain it. But I do want you. Kate. Please, look at me.” He lifted her chin gently when she wouldn’t and Kate looked unwillingly into his eyes. “I don’t just want you—I need you,” he breathed, holding her gaze with his. “And that’s all I can say right now. So please, can we just eat? Before your delicious sandwiches get cold?”

  Kate sighed. There was sincerity in his piercing blue eyes. Clearly something was going on with him but he didn’t feel comfortable discussing it yet. Well, she supposed she could wait. After all, he wasn’t the only one sending mixed messages. She felt like she’d never been so mixed up and confused about a man in her life and yet she still felt drawn to the big Kindred. Drawn in a way she couldn’t remember being drawn to anyone else.

  “Okay,” she said lightly, picking up half of a sandwich. “Open wide.”

  Rone opened his mouth obligingly and ate half the sandwich in a single bite.

  “Mmm…” His eyes rolled up in his head as he chewed and swallowed. “Just as good as I remembered. Gods, I’ve missed your cooking.”

  “And you said you weren’t hungry.” Kate eyed the decimated sandwich skeptically. “Also, I thought you said we shared the cooking.”

  “We do. But there are some things you make I just can’t seem to get right. This is one of them.” He took another bite from the sandwich she held. “I always burn them for some reason.”

  “You have to watch them,” Kate said, taking a dainty nibble from the half he was holding out to her. “The second side gets done way faster—”

  “Than the first side. I know.” He grinned. “You’ve told me that again and again but I somehow always forget and end up with a half burned sandwich.”

  “No burning the sandwiches on my watch.” Kate popped the rest of the first half into his mouth. “This is my specialty.”

  “I know. I’ve missed it so much. Missed you so much, baby.”

  His gaze was so intense, Kate had to drop her eyes. Forgetting herself, she picked up the second half of her sandwich and tried to take a bite without having him feed it to her. Her teeth clicked together hard and she gasped as she bit her tongue.

  “Ouch!”

  “Are you okay?” Rone looked down at her anxiously.

  “Fine.” Kate put a hand to her mouth for a moment but she wasn’t bleeding. “Just bit myself when I tried to take a bite.” She shrugged ruefully. “I forgot I couldn’t manage without you.”

  “I never forgot I couldn’t manage without you,” Rone said softly and she knew he was talking about more than just the meal they were sharing.

  “Well…” Kate gave him a shy smile. More and more she was feeling drawn to him, despite their weird circumstances and the warning her Knowing had given her. Now that the fear toxins were gone, she could understand what her past self must have seen in the big Kindred.

  “Here.” Rone held out the sandwich to her. “No need to go biting yourself when you made such delicious sandwiches for us to eat.”

  Kate smiled at him and took a cautious bite. This time her teeth bit into the crisp bread and melted cheese with no problem. As she chewed, words suddenly rose to her mind.

  “All that I have, I take from your hands. All that you take, I give from my heart,” she murmured.

  “What?” Rone looked at her, his eyes widening. “What did you say?”

  “I don’t know.” Kate shook her head. “Just something that came to me. Why—do you know it?”

  “Do I know it?” He put down the sandwich and looked away for a moment, blinking his eyes fiercely.

  “Rone…?” Kate looked at him anxiously. “Are you okay? Do those words mean something to you?”

  “They’re from our vows—they’re what you said to me at our Joining ceremony.” His deep voice was slightly choked but then he took a deep breath and looked at her. “Do you remember any more?”

  “Sorry but no.” Kate shook her head. “I’m really sorry I said them if it upset you so much.”

  “No—don’t you see? It proves that your memories are still down there somewhere,” he said earnestly. “Just waiting to be brought back.”

  “But brought back how?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said in a low voice. “Maybe just like this…doing things together that we used to do. Sharing a meal…me telling you about our past.”

  “Maybe.” Kate gave him a shy smile. “I do enjoy it. I mean—this is nice, you know?”

  “I love spending time with you too,” Rone murmured. “There’s no place I’d rather be than here with you now, Lalli.”

  Kate opened her mouth to ask once and for all what “Lalli” meant but just then a bored sounding voice echoed through the little apartment bubble.

  “Attention: this is your pre-sleep warning. You have two solar minutes to attend to your night time rituals. After that, Lights Out will be in effect. Thank you.”

  “Oh!” Kate looked around, as though she could find the source of the voice just by listening. “Lights out?”

  “Apparently it’s almost bedtime here.” Rone yawned. “Actually, it has been one long damn day.”

  “It certainly has,” Kate agreed. “But, um, what about sleeping arrangements?”

  “Well…” He frowned. “I guess we’re meant to share the bed. But if you’re uncomfortable with that…”

  “No,” Kate said thoughtfully. “No, it’s okay with me.” Even a day ago she would have been made uncomfortable with the idea—horribly so. But she was beginning to know Rone now and she found she didn’t mind touching him—in fact, she liked it. As long as he felt the same way. Which made her wonder exactly how much touching was going to be involved in sleeping together on the bed. “But…um…” She cleared her throat.

  “Yeah, baby? What is it?” Rone raised an eyebrow at her.

  “I’m just thinking…wondering…” Kate could feel her cheeks getting hot. “I mean, how much do you think we’ll have to be, you know, touching, for the bed to support us?”

  “I don’t know.” Rone frowned. Just then the lights flickered and went out, plunging them into complete blackness. “But I have a feeling we’re going to find out,” he finished dryly.

  “Oh!” Kate looked around uncertainly. “I can’t believe this! They barely gave us any time to get ready for bed and now I can’t see a thing.”

  “Well, I can. Here.” Rone picked her up again and she gave a little gasp of surprise and clung to him.

  “Don’t do that without warning me!” she exclaimed.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” He sounded contrite and in the darkness, Kate could see that his eyes were glowing a faint blue.

  “You just startled me—that’s all. I’m not used to being picked up and carried all around,” Kate said.

  “Yes you are—you just don’t remember it.” He moved confidently in the utter blackness, not bumping into anything though Kate was sure if she’d tried to go anywhere herself she would have been running into everything.

  “My, uh, friend, Emily said something like that. She said you were always helping me down from high places and carrying me all around.” She shrugged. “I didn’t think it sounded like me but maybe I got used to it.”

  “You didn’t just get used to it,” he murmured, his deep voice rumbling in the darkness. “You enjoyed it. Enjoyed being my Lalli.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Kate said. “What exactly does that word mean—‘lalli’? Is it some kind of pet name you had for me?”

  “Well…” He shifted a little and she had the feeling he might be uncomfortable or uncertain as to how she’d react to
his answer.

  “Go on,” she urged him. “I won’t get mad—just tell me.”

  “Lalli means little girl—little sweetheart—in my native language. It’s an ancient term of affection, so old even the translation bacteria has trouble translating it.”

  “Little girl?” Kate frowned. “How in the world did you start calling me that? I’m a grown woman.”

  He shifted again. “That’s exactly what you said the first time I called you lalli. But remember, you promised you wouldn’t get angry if I told you about this.”

  Kate sighed. “Yes, I remember. Okay, sorry—go on.”

  “I started calling you that because you’re so tiny—you reminded me of a little girl when I first met you. It just kind of…slipped out. And by the time I finally told you what it meant, it had already stuck.”

  Kate frowned. “Was I angry with you for calling me that when you explained what it meant the first time?”

  “At first,” he admitted cautiously. “You’ve always been fiercely independent—it’s one of the things I love about you. You don’t let your petite stature keep you from doing what you want.”

  “I can’t afford to,” Kate remarked. “Or I’d never get to do anything.”

  He made a noise of agreement. “Anyway, you were angry with me at first and you didn’t want me to call you that or treat you…the way I treated you. But after a while you liked it—we both did.”

  “What?” Kate was mystified and concerned. “How exactly did you treat me?”

  “I, um…” He sighed. “Look, we’re at the bed now. Do you mind if I try sitting down before we go on?”

  “No, I guess not. But I hope we’re not going to fall right through it.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping too. Hang on, baby. And don’t worry, if we fall, you’ll land on me,” he said reassuringly.

  Kate tried to brace herself as the big Kindred lowered himself to sit on the bed. She could feel all of the muscles in his big body tensing and for a moment she was certain they were going to fall. But after a moment, he seemed to relax.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s holding us—seems to work on the same principle as the couch.”

  “Oh, good.” Kate had been leaning into him with her arms wrapped around his neck as she held on for dear life. Now she relaxed and sat up so that only her bottom half was pressed against him where she sat on his lap.

  Immediately, they began to sink through the bed. It was a slower process than it had been with the couch, which had dumped them immediately, but it was definitely happening. Rone cursed in a low voice and she felt his body tense again under hers as they tilted downward.

  “Oh! Oh, my God!” Kate gasped. She leaned forward and grabbed for Rone blindly, wrapping her arms around him again in her panic.

  At once, they began to rise until they were in a stable position once more.

  “Well that was really fucking strange,” Rone muttered. “I could feel myself sliding down into the bed for a minute there when you sat up. Then something pushed us back up to the surface of the mattress when you grabbed onto my neck.”

  “Whew.” Kate gave a shaky laugh. “Apparently we need more, uh, contact for the bed to keep supporting us than we did on the couch.”

  “At least it didn’t just dump us,” Rone remarked. “Imagine if we were sleeping and lost contact with each other—we could get seriously injured if we fell straight through to the floor with no warning.”

  “Not that it would be much more pleasant to wake up sleeping with the dust bunnies under the bed,” Kate remarked. She shivered. “Ugh—what a thought! I used to be scared to death there was a monster hiding under my bed at night. I always wished I had a daddy just for that reason—to check and make sure there was nothing there. To make me feel safe.”

  “And you never asked your mother to check because you were afraid she’d get eaten by the monsters too, right?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Oh, I must have told you this story before. I’m sorry.”

  “Only once,” he murmured. “You told me you were afraid that if a monster jumped out it would eat you and your mother both. So you just went to bed frightened every night for years, didn’t you?”

  Kate gave a little laugh. “Yeah, in retrospect, it was pretty sexist of me to think that women couldn’t fight monsters as well as men. But I was a kid so what did I know?” She sighed. “Mostly I think I just wanted a father—somebody to protect me and cuddle me and just be there for me. Like the other kids in my class had.”

  “Uh-huh.” Rone’s big hand had somehow found her back and he was rubbing her up and down, caressing from the nape of her neck to the small of her back in long, gentle strokes that made Kate feel contented and soothed at the same time.

  “Mmm, that’s nice.” She leaned into him a little more, relaxing against his big frame. His warm, spicy scent seemed to fill her senses and she felt strangely at ease in his arms. Being held like this made her feel protected, cared for…loved.

  Kate frowned at the thought—the “loved” part made her a little uncomfortable. There was no doubt how Rone felt for her. The question was, how did she feel for him? It was true she was definitely drawn to him but she still didn’t feel like she knew him well enough to be head-over-heels. It just wasn’t her way to let her emotions run away with her like that. She was cautious about giving her heart, especially after what had happened in college…

  Kate pushed the bad memory away. She really didn’t want to think about that right now. She just wanted to relax and enjoy being held in a way she hadn’t been since she was a small child.

  “Kate?” he murmured in the darkness. His deep voice seemed to vibrate through her, since she had her cheek pressed to his chest.

  “Mmm-hmm?” Kate sighed contentedly.

  “Remember I told you that I treated you a certain way? When you were being my Lalli, I mean.”

  “Yes?” She perked up a little bit, interested.

  “Well…” He cleared his throat. “This is it.”

  “What? You held me in your lap?” Kate was mystified. “Why wouldn’t I like that?”

  “It wasn’t just this—it was everything.” He made a motion which she could feel even though she couldn’t see it. “You let me pick you up and carry you and cuddle you. Let me help you down out of high places like our shuttle. You even let me give you baths and wash your hair.”

  “I did?” Kate was caught by surprise all over again. “I mean, you did—really?”

  “Of course.” He sounded like he was smiling. “Sometimes when you were feeling tired and just wanted to be my Lalli, I would bathe you and massage you and get you ready for bed…” His voice dipped down into an even deeper register. “Before I kissed you good night.”

  Kate shifted uncertainly on his lap, remembering exactly which part of her the big Kindred had told her he most liked to kiss. She crossed her legs nervously and started to pull away from him but the minute she did, they started to sink through the bed again.

  “Oh!” Quickly, Kate leaned back against him and they resumed their normal position.

  “I guess I can tell how you feel about all of this.” Rone didn’t sound very happy.

  “I’m just…nervous, that’s all.” Kate gave a frustrated sigh. “And I don’t really understand what you’re saying. That I let you treat me like a child?”

  “In a way, I suppose. You told me before that you grew up without a father and always wished you had one, so…”

  “Eww.” Kate made a face. “Please don’t tell me I called you ‘Daddy’ and we pretended I was your little princess or something weird like that.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that.” Rone sighed. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Kate took a deep breath. “I guess I just get defensive when I feel uncomfortable and what you’re telling me makes me feel kind of, well…weird.”

  “It wasn’t though—it was wonderful.” He sounded so wistful it made Kate’s hear
t throb. “I’m just trying to tell you that you let me tend to you—in every way. Physically, emotionally, sexually…you gave yourself to me. And I took such good care of you, baby…until I let you get taken.”

  His words sent a painful wave of emotion through her which Kate didn’t understand. She caught her breath and felt tears stinging her eyes though if someone had asked her why she was crying, she wouldn’t have known how to answer. She didn’t know why herself.

  “It wasn’t your fault I was taken,” she told him, brushing at her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “It was.” He pulled her closer, wrapping her tightly in his arms. “I should have stopped it somehow—should have protected you. You trusted yourself to me and I failed you.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Kate protested. “I’m the one who’s failing. I don’t know how I got to be that trusting—how I became your…your Lalli, but I’m not anymore. I’m not the person you fell in love with.”

  “Yes, you are.” He stroked her back again, with that warm, caressing touch that made her want to purr like a cat. “Deep down I believe you still have those memories. They just have to be released somehow—brought to the surface.”

  “Well, I have no idea how that’s ever going to happen,” Kate admitted. “But I guess this will have to do for now.”

  “You’re right. This will have to do for now. And in time, we’ll get back what we lost. I know we will.” He sounded almost as though he was trying to convince or reassure himself of that fact.

  “I…hope you’re right,” Kate said awkwardly. “I’m sorry I can’t just…jump in feet first. That’s not the way I’m built.”

  “It’s all right, baby,” he said softly. “I know you’ve been hurt before. I know your past makes you cautious.”

  “You do?” Kate asked carefully. “Uh…how much do you know about my past, exactly?”

  “Not a lot of details—about what made you so careful,” he admitted. “But I know it made you not want anything to do with males for a good long while.”

  “Okay.” Kate felt better, knowing he didn’t have all the dirty details. “Well…” She yawned. “Maybe it’s time to be getting to sleep. So how do we do that?”