Healer

Chapter 28

     They stayed like that for a few minutes, his wings arched around them in darkness. When she stopped trembling, he lifted her off of him and laid her down. He could go the rest of his life satisfied now that he had seen her this way, color in her cheeks, hair clinging to her neck and face with sweat. She laughed again, just as breathless, as he laid down beside her. He leaned over and kissed her, wanting to feel it, to taste her smile, and she let him.

Talia faced away from him and he pulled her into his body, holding her close. She was the first to speak as their breathing slowed. "Let's stay here." For the night or forever, she wasn't sure.

"I'd like that." He said from behind her, his voice so low she felt it more than heard it.

She stared at the window across from them, barely able to see out because, she realized, his shadows still hung around them. She reached out with one hand and they curled around her fingers like they had his in the kitchen the night before. He watched her quietly. This moment felt so fragile and yet so deeply resolute. He could lose this image at any moment but the feeling was written on his heart for eternity. He had imagined her so many times, the way she would sound and taste and feel wrapped around him, but this was what he had longed for most. The quiet moments in the afterglow, when there was no burden, no consequence for what you had just done. The freedom of it. Of being with the one you were meant to be with. But his happiness was cautious, guarded because of her lingering hesitation, her questioning of herself and of fate. And it was fair, he thought, since he had railed against it in the beginning, too. He scented her tears before he felt the catch in her breath against his chest.

"What is it?" He asked as gently as he could, brushing her hair from her face. She shook her head, not wanting to tell him how lonely she had been all her life, how she had never dared to hope she could feel something like this again. He took his hand from her shoulder where it rested. "Did I hurt you?" Physically, he was sure he hadn't, but emotionally she was raw.

"No." She said, her voice steady. "Never." She stayed silent and he waited for her to continue. She turned on her back and looked up at the ceiling. "I just never thought I'd feel like this again."

He watched as a tear left the corner of her eyes and dripped in to her hair where it lay across his arm. "Like what?" He asked.

"Safe, I suppose." She looked at him, her green eyes big and deep. "And seen."

"I know the feeling." He said, a slight smile gracing his face.

She took him in. She had vowed never to give herself so easily to a male again but he....he was not just another male. And it had not been easy. She had given much of herself to him already, her gift, her trust, her story. Very nearly her life. And now he had her body as well, and she had liked it, lost herself in it too easily, as she had known she would. She searched and searched her heart for that familiar regret, for the comfort of her usual guilt but none came. If she never touched him again, then she might feel regret. She reached to him, cradling his cheek in her hand, running her thumb over his perfect lips as his eyes, golden even in the softest moonlight, searched hers. Suddenly he pulled his arm out from beneath her and climbed over her to stand.

She pushed up onto her elbows. "Where are you going?"

He reached a hand to her. "We should clean you up."

She had forgotten the mess of the mixture of them, how it had dripped down her legs when he unseated her, and nodded. When her feet hit the floor, he scooped her up and carried her to the bathroom where he sat her on the edge of the tub. She watched him, content to relieve her mind of any thought at all and instead take in every inch of tan, lean, muscular, tattooed, long, hard...