12-08-2018, 11:06 PM
The Opening Act
Her heart twisted when he dropped his hand from her so suddenly, knowing she'd done something wrong. The sudden lack of his touch nearly burned her as much as her thoughts had burned him, piercing with a sharp sense of fault. He would never force her to do anything, and deep down she knew that. Or wanted to know it, believe it. He was powerful and it was frightening, and she couldn't seem to help it. Not after what she'd gone through.
Powerlessness slips in so easily.
His thoughts crossed his eyes in dark swirls of shadow, but she couldn't read them. She would need to be able to read minds and stormy weather both for the torrent sitting there to make sense. He wasn't pleased, and that was clear enough. He was like a dark prince with an infuriating problem: her.
"Is that what you would be doing with me? Settling?" She blushed a deep scarlet, her lips pursed like a furious rose and fist curled tight at her sides, the other still wrapped possessively around his jacket.
In all fairness, she hadn't allowed herself to imagine anything with him. Or anyone. It was too impossible. It was a future that could never exist. How could she think otherwise? Why would she ever let herself even begin to hope and walk herself right into more heartache? But she still knew it for false that she'd be settling, and spat out a guarded, "No!" Something like what she wanted would be the greatest gift in her life besides her children.
He'd shoved his hands in his pockets and now they jerked out, wiping over his face in frustration and sweeping through his hair. Blood was left on his cheek, new blood, and her defiance broke. She reached out as if that could stop him somehow from doing whatever he had decided to do. Don't bleed anymore, not for her.
"So here—have everything."
A light illuminated between them and she jerked back, clutching her hand to her chest and staring at it. Everything about him, he'd said next. All of it, all of him, was there in offering to her. Her brown eyes flicked to his handsome face on the other side of the light, lit and shadowed in sharp contrast. She could reach out and know it all, everything about him. She wanted to. She wanted to know him, to know for certain she could trust him.
But that wasn't how this worked.
So again, her stubbornness defied him, and she dropped her fist to her side again and stared hard into his eyes. "I don't want it," she said firmly. "I don't need help. I can do it myself." If he'd let her. If he wanted her to. Her doubt shadowed her eyes again briefly. This was so impossible. She was nothing, and he could be everything. Why her? But she wasn't going to ask, wasn't going to frustrate him further with her instinct to immediately question his answer with suspicion and doubt.
Maybe she hadn't made it clear what she wanted. Maybe that was why he was still here.
Instead of telling him, just to be certain, she said instead, like a hard warning. "I am faithful." And she expected the same. Jealous, too. An ugly jealousy that lit her eyes on fire, a hissing cat at anyone who dared come near her man with their bedroom eyes and better beauty. "I'm no housewife," she warned further, stern and daring him to even imagine her caged in his house. She wouldn't sit at home like the perfect Barbie doll trophy wife, waiting to dote on an absentee husband. Not that they were getting married, she just wasn't the type was all.
"And my children will always come first."
Kerberos' children.