Cursed (Book 1, The Watchers; Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (30 page)

Malcolm appeared
in front of me blocking my way.

“What are you
doing?” I asked, not in the mood for a delay.

“I’m not letting
you drive all the way out there this late at night.”

“Malcolm, you
really need to get out of my way,
now
.”

“If you insist on
going there, I’ll take you myself.  I’m sure after you have your talk he’ll be
more than happy to bring you back home when you’re ready.”

Malcolm touched my
cheek with a gentle hand.  “Well, it was nice to dream it anyway.  I promise I’ll
try not to fantasize about you like that again.”

“Thank you for
feeling that way about me, but the most we can have between us is friendship. 
My heart belongs to someone else.”

Before I knew it,
we were standing on Brand’s door step.

Malcolm leaned down
and kissed me lightly on the lips as if he were saying goodbye.  He was gone
before I could say anything.

The lights were on
in Brand’s house and his car was parked in the driveway.  I could hear music
reverberating against the walls of his home.  I took in a deep breath and
turned the knob on the front door.  The first floor was empty.  I could tell
the music was coming from the second floor so I made my way up the stairs.

The door to
Brand’s painting studio was ajar and I could see him sitting on a stool in
front of a canvas he was working on.  He was shirtless and barefoot, just
wearing a pair of dark blue jeans.  I opened the door just enough to step
across the threshold.  With the door out of the way, I could see what he was
painting.

It was a portrait
of me in the dress I’d worn to the Black and White ball.  My eyes wandered
around the room and noticed there were a few such paintings scattered
everywhere.  Each one was slightly different.  One even had me standing in the
middle of the rose garden near the Common’s.

“It’s beautiful,”
I said standing in the doorway waiting to see how he would react to my
uninvited presence.

His hand stopped
in mid stroke.  Slowly, he put the brush down on the paint table beside him. 

“What are you
doing here, Lilly?”

Why wouldn’t he
turn around and face me?  I walked into the room and stood behind him.

“I need to know
something.”  

He remained silent
with his eye cast down to the floor at his feet.

“What do you want
to know?” His voice sounded strained, almost weary.

I hesitated to ask
my question.  Mostly afraid I was wrong and wouldn’t hear the answer I so
desperately wanted to hear. 

“Do you love me?”

He sat there for a
long time without answering.

“Why are you doing
this to me?”  He finally said, shaking his head slightly.

“I need to know if
you love me.  Because…” I took a deep breath.  “Because I think you do.  I
think you love me more than you’ve ever loved anyone and it scares you.”

He remained
silent, unmoving.

“Do you remember
that morning after our day together when I woke up crying because of a dream
I’d had?”

“Yes.”

“I want to tell
you what I dreamt now,” I took a deep nervous breath.  “I dreamt about our
first kiss.  I dreamt of our wedding day and walking down an aisle of red rose
petals.  I dreamt about you making love to me in your bed and wanting to make
it a memory I would always treasure.  I dreamt about our child and watching her
grown into a beautiful woman.  I dreamt about us laying in a bed together in
our old age and dying in each others arms.  I felt the love you have for me and
you can’t sit there and tell me you don’t still feel the same way about me
because it was your dream I was seeing.”

“How do you know
what I dreamt?”  He asked breathlessly.

“It doesn’t matter
how I know.  I need you to tell me if the emotions I felt in your dream are how
you really feel about me.  I don’t understand how you can push someone you love
that much away.  Someone you want to share so much of yourself with.”

“Because you
aren’t safe around me.”  Finally, he lifted his head and turned to face me. 
His eyes were slightly red and puffy like he’d been crying.  “I can’t live in a
world where you don’t exist.  I’d rather live with you hating me.”

“I could never
hate you,” I said taking a step closer.  “What makes you think I want to live
in a world where we’re apart?  That’s not living.  That’s just existing.  I
love you.”

“What?” he asked
as if he were afraid he’d heard me wrong, searching my face for the truth.

“I love you.  I
love only you.  Don’t push me away.  Please, I don’t think my heart can take
the pain anymore.  I love you.”

He stood up slowly
as if not trusting the earth to be under his feet when he stood.

“This isn’t one of
my dreams is it?” He asked, coming to stand in front of me.

“I hope not.” I
went to him and tentatively touched his chest, reassuring myself that he was
real.  I let my hand travel up to his neck.  He slowly put his arms around my
waist pulling me against his body, watching my face intently.  I pulled his
head down toward mine, our lips almost touching.  The yearning and hope I saw
in his eyes mirrored my own feelings.

“I love you,
Brand,” I whispered against his lips looking into his eyes, making sure he
heard me.  “Never doubt that.”

As our lips
touched, I put my arms around his neck drinking in as much of him as I could. 
I felt like I would die from thirst if he pulled away too soon.  I remember
feeling my knees weaken but his arm was there to pick me up.  Our lips never
parted as he carried me to his bedroom and gently laid me down, climbing on top
of me.  The feel of his body against mine made my heart ache with joy. 

I’m not sure how
long we laid there in each others arms kissing away our earlier sorrows and
reveling in our love for one another.  Eventually, I had to come up for air.  When
I pulled away, he quickly pulled me back not willing to let it end so soon. 
Who was I to argue?

When he was the
one who pulled away, I looked up into his eyes and saw a mirror of my own
happiness there.

“Don’t ever think
you’re doing me a favor by pushing me away from you,” I said to him caressing
his cheek. 

“I won’t,” he
promised, planting small kisses on my lips like a hummingbird drinking nectar
from a flower. 

“Thank you,” he
said, touching his forehead to mine with his eyes closed as if in prayer. 
“Thank you for loving me.”

“How could I not
love you?”  I felt tears of joy fall from the corners of my eyes.  He gently
kissed them away.

“Don’t cry,
Lilly.  No more tears for either of us, only happiness.”

“I am happy,” I
declared still crying.  “They’re happy tears, I promise.”

Brand kissed the
side of my neck, “I never want to be without you again.  I felt like I was dead
inside.”

“You won’t have
to.  I’m not going anywhere.”

We stayed up the
rest of the night kissing, talking, kissing some more.  Never in my life had I
felt so content and happy.  It made me wonder if this was what my mother had
been searching for all her life.  With all the boyfriends she went through, was
she trying to find what I had found with Brand?  In that moment, I think I actually
understood her a little better because of what Brand and I shared that night. 
Surely a love like ours was only found once in a lifetime, if you were lucky
enough to find the one person in the world who could truly make you whole.

“I need to know something,”
I said as his head rested on my chest and I played with his hair absently,
twirling the strands between my fingers.

“All you have to
do is ask.  I don’t want us to have anymore secrets between us.”

“What was really
going on between you and Izzi?”  I was afraid I might be spoiling the bliss we
were experiencing but I needed to know where Izzi fit into the picture.

“Oh, that,” he
lifted his head up and looked at me.  He actually looked ashamed.

“I asked her to
make it look like we were together.  She tends to get over zealous when she
does things sometimes.”

“So you don’t have
feelings for her?”  I said relieved. “Nothing really happened between the two
of you?”

“No.  And I’m
sorry about her being naked when she answered the door the other day.  She’s a
fairy.  They don’t like wearing clothes.  They run naked whenever they can and
when they do have to wear clothes they wear as little as possible.  She just
thought that little stunt would add to the illusion that something was going on
between us.”

“She’s a fairy? 
Like Tinkerbelle?”

He chuckled. 
“They’re not exactly like that.”

He paused for a
moment as if considering whether or not he wanted to say something to me.

“I need to ask you
something too,” he finally said.  “Did anything happen between you and Malcolm
I need to know about?”

“Would it matter
if it did?”

“No, but I would
like to know the truth.  It’s probably better than what’s been running through
my mind the past few days.”

“You don’t have to
worry about Malcolm.  He’s just a friend.”

“Did you kiss
him?”

“No,” I said but he
could see I wasn’t telling the whole truth.  “Well, he kissed me when he
brought me here last night, but it happened so fast I didn’t have time to think
much less react.”

Brand’s eyes
darkened.  “What else did he do?”

“Nothing really.”

I could see he was
waiting for me to expound on what I wasn’t saying.

“Well, honestly we
owe him our thanks.  If it wasn’t for what he did, I wouldn’t be here right
now.”

That seemed to
soften Brand a little but he wasn’t going to let me get away with not telling
him the whole truth.

“Malcolm’s been
coming to my bedroom at night and sleeping with me in my bed.  I didn’t know he
was doing it until last night when I woke up and caught him.  It was because of
him I finally figured out the connection about the dreams.”

 “Did you
experience his dreams like you did mine?”

“Yes.  And please,
don’t ask me to describe them.  I think I’d die of embarrassment if you did.”

Brand had a slight
scowl on his face.  “I can well imagine what he was fantasizing about.  You
don’t have to tell me.”

“Are all humans
able to do that?  Share your dreams?”

“Not that I know
of, but I think we’ve already established you aren’t like other humans.”

“What do you think
is different about me?  I’m not anyone special.  I’m about as ordinary as they
get.”

“You are anything
but ordinary, Lilly Rayne Nightingale,” he kissed me then and I completely
forgot what we were talking about for the next several minutes. Or was it
hours?

The sun was coming
up when we finally decided I needed to get back to my bedroom.  We didn’t want Tara to worry about me not being there when she woke up.

“I don’t want to
let you go yet,” Brand hugged me close to him.

“It’ll just be for
a little while.” I said giving him a kiss he could think about while I was
gone.  “I just need to make an appearance so she doesn’t worry.  I’ll tell her
I decided to take her advice and talk things over with you.  She’ll be happy
about that.  I’ll be back here before you know it.”

Brand tossed me
onto my back, hovering over me on his hands and knees.

“Let’s play
hooky.  I don’t want to share you with anyone else, not today.  I just want to
keep you right here in my bed and kiss you all day.”

“Sounds like a
good plan to me.”

We laid there for
a few minute more and Brand eventually took me back to my bedroom.

“Don’t take too
long,” he pleaded.

“I won’t.  You’ll
hardly know I’ve left.”

He kissed me one
more time before forcing himself to pull away.

I couldn’t help
but laugh at the look on his face, like a puppy dog in a pet shop window
wanting you to take him home.   

After he left, I
laid down on my bed with a satisfied smile on my face. 

“There you are.”

I jumped to my
feet at the sound of the strange male voice in my room.

At the foot of my
bed, there stood a man in a black feathered cloak similar to the one Malcolm
had worn the night he came to kill me.  This man looked to be around fifty
years old with solid white hair and pale, ice blue eyes.

Before I knew what
was happening, he grabbed my arm. 

I’m not sure how
many times we phased or how many different people were phasing me after that. 
I was only vaguely aware of being passed around to a multitude of strangers and
phasing from one location to another.  It felt like over a hundred short trips
in a matter of seconds. 

Finally I was
deposited inside a room which looked like a stone dungeon with no windows. 
There was a small cot against one of the walls, a candle lit on a stool in the
far corner and a smaller room off to the side which seemed to be a bathroom
with a toilet and sink.

The older
gentleman from my room was waiting there for me.

“That should
confuse anyone who tries to look for you,” he said with a satisfied look on his
face.

“Who are you? 
What do you want?”  I demanded.

“My name’s Justin,
Lilly.  And you’ll be my guest for a little while.”

Before I could ask
anything else, he vanished.             

Time stood still
for me inside that room.  Even the candle sitting on the stool seemed suspended
in time.  I knew hours had to have passed but the candle kept burning brightly
with an unnaturally long life, never melting.  I was surprised I wasn’t
crying.  I think my fear over the situation I found myself in put me into an
instinctual survival mode I didn’t even realize I possessed.  Little good it
was doing me.  From what I could tell, there was no way to get out of my stone
prison: no doors, no windows, not even a single crack in the individual stones
surrounding me.  It seemed like the only way to get in or out of the room was
by phasing.