I held my Roza in my arms. Her skin was so soft and every touch set fire to my being. She was mine, and mine alone. She belonged to me and I to her. Every touch was tender and gentle. I hadn't known how delicately my hands could touch something, someone. I didn't know how I had ended up with my beautiful Roza and it didn't matter. What mattered most was not hurting the precious goddess in my arms. I loved her so much it hurt. I needed her like air. It was cliché, and yes, very dramatic and cheesy for the stoic Guardian Belikov, but with Roza I was the Novice and she my mentor. She was a goddess, a Princess in some ways, and she was mine. It felt wrong for me to take her but right for her to take me. Tonight we would give in, hand ourselves over, and give up fighting the force pulling us together. The timing was right, the place was right, and the person was right. It was time, without a doubt. I leaned in... And my stupid alarm chose right then to wake me up. Shit!
I picked my phone up and turned my alarm off. Ugh. Time for my Novice dorm surveillance shift. Rose somehow had a knack for getting out when it was my shift. I had to wonder if she had a copy of my schedule. Who knew what that woman could do when she wanted.
Since the Spokane incident, I had eased up on showing our feelings around training times- mornings especially. I took full responsibility for her pain, and for the pain the other three survivors suffered. I had been a complete douchebag to her, blowing hot and cold and rubbing it in I could openly be with Tasha. It had led to an extreme reaction from her. Especially when her blind and idiotic mother had decided that she should be the one to tell my Roza about Tasha's offer.
I had toyed with her, played with her, and seemingly tossed her aside. So, in old Rose fashion, she'd decided to throw it back in my face. Double time. I didn't blame her for distrusting me when she discovered Mason, Eddie and Mia had gone missing. I wouldn't trust me either. My opinion mattered most to her. It always had and I had underestimated just how much. She wanted me to approve of her, to care about her, value her and a whole heap more. And all I did was throw it back in her face, did the reverse of what she wanted, and -quite frankly- needed. How she so readily took me back I would never understand. I guess love makes you do crazy things. We had already been through that.
And we were about to do it again, apparently. "Rose," I silently breathed when I spotted her. Escaped again, the gorgeous woman always found a way. I almost smiled at the fond thought and feeling welling up inside me. That was until I saw how she was dressed, and her posture. Something was wrong. Even so, she was beautiful and adorable (in that order), bed hair and all. The thought pulled me to her. That or that impossible-to-escape-even-though-we'd-tried magnetic force, which was constantly attracting my soul to hers. "Are you sleepwalking?"
She spun to face me, clearly startled, and I let my amusement and curiosity show. She ran a hand through her adorably messy, long, almost-black curly hair. How was she so self-conscious at this hour? And around me, no less?
"I was testing dorm security. It sucks." Hmm. Sure. Inside's? Maybe. Okay, inside's clearly sucked because my soulmate had just been caught by me. And I was outside security. Her response, and its delivery, told me she was hiding something. That something was likely the why she'd clearly been pulled from her sleep.
I let a hint of a smile show. She was staring at my duster and I knew she was likely remembering how warm it was from when she'd been wrapped in it on the way back from Missoula and on the ski lodge roof. It was an obvious courtesy- at bare minimum- to ask her if she wanted it. And I wouldn't be surprised if she took it and ran. Despite her teasing I knew she loved it. "You must be freezing. Do you want my coat?"
Shaking her head, she answered "I'm fine." She so wasn't. Simply turning down the offer proved as much. "What are you doing here? Are you testing security too?" Okay. She so wasn't not freezing, and redirecting the focus to me indicated something major had caused her to come out here. But what?
