~Fantasy Lover Part 21~
Grace swallowed at the first true smile she'd seen from him. A smile that softened his features and made him even more devastating.
What on earth was he thinking?
For the umpteenth time, Grace felt her face flood with warmth as she thought about her crude words. She hadn't meant to let that slip out. It wasn't like her to betray her thoughts to anyone, especially a stranger.
But there was something so compelling about this man. Something that reached out to her in a most disturbing way. Maybe it was the thinly masked pain that flashed in those darkly stunning brown eyes when she caught him off guard. Or maybe it was just her years of psychology training that couldn't stand the thought of having such a troubled soul in her home and not helping him.
She didn't know.
The grandfather clock in her upstairs hallway chimed one. "Goodness," she said, shocked that it had become so late. "I've got to get up for work at six." "You're going to bed? To sleep?" Had his mood not been so dour, the stunned look on his face would have made her laugh. "I need to." His brow drew together in... Pain? "Is something wrong?" she asked.
He shook his head. "Well, then, I'll show you where you can sleep and-" "I'm not sleepy." She started at his words. "What?" Michael looked up at her, unable to find the words to tell her what he felt.
He'd been trapped in the book for so long that all he wanted to do was to run, or to jump. To do anything to celebrate his sudden freedom of movement.
He didn't want to go to bed. The thought of lying in darkness another minute... He struggled to breathe. "I've been resting since eighteen ninety-five," he explained. "I'm not sure how long ago that was, but by the looks of things, it has been quite some time." "It's two thousand and two," Grace supplied for his information. "You've
been 'sleeping' for one hundred and seven years." No, she corrected herself. He hadn't been asleep.
He'd told her that he could hear anything said around the book, which meant that he had been awake and locked up all this time. Isolated. Alone.
She was the first person in over a hundred years that he'd been able to talk to, or be with.
Her stomach tightened in sympathy. Even though her prison of shyness had never been tangible, she knew what it felt like to be somewhere listening to people and not be a part of them. To be on the outside looking in. "I wish I could stay up," she said, stifling a yawn. "Really I do, but if I don't get enough sleep, my brain turns to Jell-O and I can't think for squat." "I understand. At least I think I get the gist of it, though I'm not sure what this Jell-O and squat is." Still, she could see his disappointment. "You could watch TV." "TV?" She picked up his empty bowl and rinsed it off before leading him back to the living room. Switching on her set, she showed him how to flip channels with the remote. "Incredible," he whispered as he surfed for the first time. "Yeah, it is kind of nifty." Now, that should keep him busy. After all, men only needed three things to be happy-food, sex, and a remote. Two out three ought to satisfy him for a bit. "Well," she said, heading for the stairs. "Good night." As she started past him, he touched her arm. Even though his hand was light, it sent a shock wave through her.
His face impassive, raw emotions flickered in his eyes. She saw his torment, his need, but most of all she saw his loneliness.
He didn't want her to leave.
Licking her suddenly dry lips, she said something she couldn't believe. "I have another TV in my room. Why don't you watch that one while I sleep?" He gave her a sheepish smile.
Michael followed her up the stairs, amazed that she had understood him
without his speaking. That she would consider his need not to be alone
while she had her own concerns.
It made him feel strange toward her. Put an odd feeling in his stomach.
Was it tenderness?
He didn't know for sure.
She led him into an enormous bedchamber with a large four-poster bed set before the middle of the far wall. A medium-sized chest of drawers was set opposite the bed and on top of it was, what had she called it, a TV?
Grace watched as Michael walked around her room, looking at the pictures on her walls and dresser-pictures of her parents and grandparents, of Selena and her in college, and the one of the dog she'd owned as a child. "You live alone?" he asked. "Yes," she said, moving to her Jenny Lind rocking chair by the bed where her nightgown was draped over the back. She picked it up and looked at him, and the green towel still wrapped around his lean hips. She couldn't very well let him join her in bed like that.
Sure you could.
No I can't.
Please?
Hush, self, let me think. She still had her father's pajamas in her parents' bedroom where she kept all their possessions enshrined. Given the breadth of Michael's shoulders, she was sure the tops would never fit, but the bottoms had drawstrings and even if they didn't fit in length, they would at least stay up. "Wait here," she told him. "I'll be right back." After she darted out the door, Michael walked over to the large windows and pulled back the white lace curtains. He watched strange boxlike things that
must be automobiles move past her house, making strange droning noises that ebbed and flowed like a tide. Lights lit up the street and other buildings all over, much like torches had once done in his own homeland.
How strange this world was. So oddly similar to his and yet so very different.
He tried to associate the sights with all the words he'd heard over the decades, words he didn't understand. Words like TV and light bulb.
And for the first time since his childhood, he was afraid. He didn't like the changes he saw, the swiftness with which they had come to this world.
What would it be like the next time he was summoned?
How much more different could things become?
Or even more terrifying, what if he was never summoned again? He swallowed at the thought. What would it be like to be trapped for eternity? Alone and alert. To feel the oppressive darkness closing in on him, squelching the breath from his lungs as it lacerated his body with pain.
To never again walk as a man? Never to speak or to touch?
These people had things now that were called computers. He'd heard the shop owner talk about them with a lot of customers. And one of those customers had said that they would one day, probably soon, completely replace books.
What would happen to him then?
