Break Away (Away, Book 1) (27 page)

I don't know who closed the distance between
our faces first, but suddenly we were there, kissing and merging
our breaths into one symphony of low, deep sighs. It'd started out
slow, lips stroking each other languidly, even a little hesitant.
Then, the small flame that'd been sparked the moment our mouths had
touched turned hot and fierce, spreading a wildfire throughout my
body. I knew Ian was feeling the same unrelenting inferno because
his kisses became desperate, so desperate that the feel of our lips
was no longer enough.

He released my hand and pulled me to him. I
turned around and followed his motion, sitting on his lap and
straddling his waist snugly. He clutched my waist with both hands,
as if not wanting to let go, and pushed his mouth onto mine as I
wrapped my arms around his neck. This was no chaste kiss. My whole
body was a live wire. It was as if our lips were closing a high
voltage circuit. I'd lost control of everything—qualms, doubts,
judgments, and fears long forgotten.

I fisted my hands in his hair and pressed my
face tightly against his, deepening our kiss. A groan broke past
his mouth and I caught it, letting it roll down my tongue. He
tilted his head to the side and opened my mouth further, burying
his nose in my cheek. In that moment, all I could think of was how
a tongue that'd seemed so offensive and rude for so long could
taste this good. My body tingled every time his tongue found mine
and locked it in a sensual dance of power.

He lowered one of his hands to the small of
my back and slipped it past safe limits, down on my rear. Realizing
this, he pulled his hand back and with great effort stopped kissing
me. “I'm sorry,” he breathed, resting his forehead on mine, and
waited for his jagged breath to calm down.

I sighed, unwrapping my arms from his
neck.

Him
stopping shouldn't have bothered
me so much. In fact, I should've taken the chance to back off and
bring this to an end. I should've slapped away his hand when it'd
settled down on my behind. I should've done exactly the opposite to
everything I'd done. But a drowsy fog had fallen down on me,
pinning my focus on a single thing: him.

Tearing myself away from the warmth of his
body was the last thing in my mind. His kiss and touch had soothed
an ache deep down inside me, had filled, if just for a moment, the
gaping hole that my parent's death had left in my chest. I knew
that the lightning of remorse would strike with thundering strength
later, but in that speck of time, in that pinprick of eternity,
being next to his body and inside his arms felt...right.

As if sensing a change in me, he cupped one
side of my face and pulled back to meet my eyes. The smouldering
intensity of his stare burned with resolve, and I felt myself
nose-diving into that emerald green fire. I placed my hands on his
chest, feeling the need to make contact with some part of his body,
and looked at him once again. He dropped his gaze to my lips, which
were red and swollen from our previous kiss, and narrowed the space
between our faces. I closed my eyes, knowing his lips would be
kissing mine soon, but nothing ever came. Confused, I opened them
and found him staring at me with an adoring smile, as if he'd been
trying to brand an image of me like this in his mind. He fixed his
eyes on my mouth again, pushed his face closer, and finally sealed
our lips together.

My insides melted into a pool of warmth. This
wasn't anything like the other fiery kiss we'd had. Passion still
bordered its edges with need, but its soft and gentle core was what
took my breath away and what turned my bones to jelly. This kiss
was a caress, a very deep and slow brushing of lips. Instead of
reckless and unruly desire sharpening our motions, meticulous and
careful longing laced them. We were savoring every sensation,
sucking every breath, tasting every curve, and studying every
hollow.

I could feel the rapid beats of Ian's heart
under my hands, drumming his chest harder each time he glided his
hand through my hair, or each time I lingered on his bottom lip,
reluctant to leave its fullness. At one time, he stopped the
delicious, lazy movements and kept our faces pressed against each
other, his lips holding mine between them tightly. It was as if he
was feeling me, basking in the warmth of my skin against his, and
brushing my cheek with his thumb to make sure it was me who was
there next to him. No one had ever kissed me this way, like they
couldn’t get enough and were afraid of this coming to an end. Like
if I was some goddess who'd been found by his unconditional
love.

The intensity was overwhelming. My senses
reeled. Ian cocked his head to the side and retook the languid
kisses, parting my lips wide with every stroke. I slipped up my
hands to both arcs where his neck and shoulders joined, and held
him close to me. So this was what being kissed by Ian felt
like.

In all those weeks of seeing him plastered to
other girl's faces, locked on a rushed lip-action, as if he
couldn't wait to get them into bed, I'd never imagined he could
give such slow and sweet kisses. Even with Buffy he'd seemed to be
in a hurry, not because he'd been thinking of shaking the sheets
with her all the time—it was obviously different with her—but
because of something I couldn't quite put my finger on. She'd
always loved that about him anyways, saying he was a passionate
kisser. But weren't slow and deliberate kisses meant to give
pleasure to the other person, meant to tell that you cared, deeply
so, for the other person?

I pulled back with a frown, unlocking my lips
from his. What were we doing? He wasn't supposed to kiss me that
way.
We
weren't supposed to be kissing this way, in
any
way for that matter.

Noticing the dark turmoil in my eyes and the
sudden stiffness of my body, he opened his mouth to say something
but was quickly interrupted with the loud bang of a door.

“My dear fledglings, I have come to…” Comus
cut off his announcement, his eyes widening when he found me
straddling Ian in the loveseat. He whirled around in a flash and
cleared his throat. “Sorry to interrupt.”

I couldn't have been slapped away from the
drowsy haze any more efficiently. I bounded off Ian's lap and
backed up from him as far as I could. “No, it's—it's not what you
think it is. We were…I was feeling bad and…”

And what, Dafne?
I thought to myself
with an inward sneer.
Ian took advantage of poor little you and
kissed you against your will? Or are you such a bad person that you
have to go kissing people's boyfriends to lessen your pain?
Your
sister's
boyfriend to be exact.

I shook my head, trying to ease the pressure
in my skull. “It was nothing,” I said sharply and felt the need to
repeat it once more. “Just…nothing.” I didn't dare to look at Ian
and see his reaction. Actually, I wasn't planning on looking at him
for the rest of the night, or tomorrow, or…ever.

Comus turned around, his pale face flushed
pink. “Are you certain?” he asked, with an embarrassed grimace.

“Yes,” I insisted, uncomfortable, shifting my
weight from one foot to the other. “Please tell us what you were
going to say.”

Comus looked at where Ian stood and
swallowed, as if what he'd found hadn't been a friendly sight. “You
clearly have some things to talk. I better—”

“No!” I said before he turned away. “The, uh,
night is short and we've already lost a lot of time.”

He shot a quick glimpse in Ian's direction
and, finally, decided to stay. “If you insist, she-fledgling.” He
walked up to the bronze globe, sat down next to it on the floor and
patted the spot across from him. “Come here and join me,” he told
me, placing his feet on the opposite thighs. A lotus position I
think it was called.

I didn't have to think twice. I rushed to
where he'd signaled me to sit and dropped my bottom on the rug.

I heard Ian somewhere to my right, settling
down with a grunt. “Why can't we use chairs? Are they so offensive
to you?” he asked Comus a bit sullenly, and then, he must’ve turned
to look at me because I felt the weight of his full stare drilling
a hole in my face.

“What we're about to do requires a straight
spine, he-fledgling, and…”

“
Ian
. Just call me
Ian
,” he cut
Comus off, exasperated.

“…chairs don't provide a solid base for
that.”

I opted to pay no heed to Ian's strong
presence and asked, “What do we need a straight spine for? What are
we going to do?”

Comus twisted his mouth into a secret smile.
“Not
we
, she-fledgling,
you
. You are the one who is
going to need it.”

I puckered my brows in confusion.

“After my meditation,” Comus began to
explain, “Smooch paid me a visit. I told him about you and your
sleeping sister, and asked him if I could teach you how to drift
into Chimera. He said yes!” he yelled, eyes wide with excitement.
“But that's only because he thinks you won't be able to. For my
part, I like to believe in possibilities, and right now, you are an
exciting possibility.” I was expecting him to shake his hands like
maracas again, but he only remained there, staring at me with
bugged out eyes, waiting for an answer.

“Are you going with me?” I said, even if I
didn't know what “going” truly meant.

He fished out a strawberry lollipop from the
pocket of his frock coat and unwrapped it. He caught my questioning
gaze and offered me the other one he was carrying in his pant
pocket. I shook my head and he shoved it back again with a
shrug.

How many lollipops did this man eat per
day?

“I've never been able to go into Chimera
consciously,” he said, after he'd stuffed his mouth with strawberry
candy and licked it. “Despite all my preparation and knowledge and
savoir-faire, I haven’t been able to reach that dimensional veil
and get past through it.”

“You’ve never been to Chimera?” I asked,
taken aback. By the way he’d talked about this place, as if he was
familiar with everything that enclosed it, anyone would’ve said he
drifted
over there constantly. “If it’s so difficult to get
through that veil you say, then why do you think I would be able to
do it when I don’t know anything about Chimera? I don’t even know
if it truly exists…”

He bent forward and slapped his thigh. “You
must
believe, she-fledgling, or else it won’t work,” he said
fervently. “If you trust my words and believe…you will have your
sister back with you in no time.”

“Comus,” I told him with a look. “You
certainly believe Chimera is real and you haven’t been able to
reach it.”

He sighed. “Dimensional travel is more
complicated when you are conscious of what you’re doing. It takes a
lot of practice.”

“Exactly. I didn’t even know there were other
dimensions in our world until now. I clearly don’t have the
knowledge to do this, much less the practice. You’re the best
option to go in there and try to get my sister back—if that’s the
only way.”
And if all this is true
, I wanted to say but kept
the words floating in my mouth.

“You’re wrong,” Comus said softly. “Your
sister won’t recognize my soul but she may possibly recognize
yours. If you both have a strong bond, it will make finding her in
the garden easy.”

“What if she doesn’t recognize my soul?” I
asked. “What if
I
don’t recognize hers?”

“Then you could spend years looking for her.
Centuries even.”

Ian stepped out of his silent bubble and
said, “So you’re saying she could die searching for her
sister?”

“Seeing as time flows in Chimera as it does
here on earth, yes. If she doesn’t come back and stays there a long
time, our she-fledgling could die in the trying.” Comus wrapped his
thin lips around the lollipop and turned it inside his mouth. “But
this has never been done so I don’t really know how things might
turn out,” he mumbled around the strawberry ball. “These are only
theories based on what Smooch tells me.”

“All bullcrap if you ask me,” Ian said
bluntly. Now that his humor had darkened and turned bitter, his
mouth didn’t seem to know barriers of civility.

I struggled not to turn my head and cast him
a scolding look. “You said Smooch doesn’t think I’ll be able to
break away into Chimera,” I said, focusing on the conversation.
“Why do
you
think I have a shot?”

“If I remember well, she-fledgling, you were
the one who told me that you knew in your gut—I think that’s the
word you used—that all these coma cases weren’t mere medical
situations. Well, now is my turn to say that I know in my
gut
that you will be able to get through that dimensional
veil.”

I let out a deep breath. Whatever this was, I
had to carry on with it. I hadn’t travelled more than three hundred
miles for nothing. What hurt could it do to try, even if all this
sounded like sci-fi bull? The worst that could happen was me losing
a couple of minutes, or hours, of time I could’ve spent
investigating for a “cure” to Buffy’s comatose state. Anyway, until
now, this was the best thing I had.

“Tell me what to do,” I said to Comus. Out of
the corner of my eye, I saw Ian shaking his head. At least, he
restrained himself from doing snarky comments.

“With pleasure, she-fledgling,” he nodded
slowly, closing his eyes in a wise-Sensei manner. I rolled my eyes.
He really had a thing for the theatrics. “First, hold yourself
straight, your spine must be erect throughout the whole process.” I
shifted positions and did as told. “Good. Now, shut your eyes and
take in long, deep breaths.”

I opened one eye. “Nero won’t come around
while I’m doing this, right?”

Comus smiled. “I already told you Nero isn’t
allowed to come in here. He knows it,” he said. “Just relax and
forget everything that surrounds you. Listen to your
breathing.”