Still mesmerized, Ram asked if she would like his too, while thinking, "Great Mother of Paddy, let her say yes!" She was eyeing it longingly when she realized Storm and Kay were both chuckling. Looking around the table she got the distinct impression that she might have been overly demonstrative in showing her newfound appreciation for chocolate. Feeling her face heat and hoping she wasn’t blushing visibly, she decided a new subject was in order.
As they rose from the dinner table, Storm invited Elora to join them in the lounge for a drink. She declined, on the excuse of having already experienced a long and eventful day and being eager to finish unpacking.
Storm said he would see her back to her apartment and then join his friends, but Elora insisted that she find her way alone. He said he would like very much to give her a complete tour of the building the next day and help her finish settling in with such things as groceries. He would come by at ten and their first stop would be for coffee and muffins. When they reached the lounge, Elora said good night and continued to the elevator bank.
Ram watched her walk away thinking he must certainly be the mother and father of all idiots and scolded himself silently. Shit, Ram. You almost killed your own mate. That funny feeling he'd had in his stomach in the Chamber that day three months ago hadn’t been a harbinger of danger. Those bells and whistles clanging against his intuition and tweaking his c**k had been trying to signal that the one and only had arrived to change his life forever. How was he to guess that she would show up as a pile of goo that was unrecognizable as homo sapiens?
He had misread the instinct and f**ked up majorly this time. He'd left to go play for three months while Storm stuck around and spent every damn day becoming her anchor to this world. If that wasn’t bad enough, it looked like he had abandoned the scene and allowed one of his two best friends in the world to fall in love with the one female who was destined to be his. What a cluster! He was more than a moron. He was self-saboteur to a degree that any masochist would envy.
But he couldn’t be too concerned with that right now. He was too elated about having just met his future and finding out that she far exceeded any fantasy. She had to be the most potent wet dream ever conjured. The fates had seen fit to give him a beauty beyond compare, even if she was human; that hair that defied color description, those turquoise eyes, that gorgeous smile. And when he had leaned close to her to apologize he had smelled wild jasmine in bloom.
It was not completely unheard of for elves to mate with humans, but it was rare and not without its problems since elves mate for life and are naturally monogamous, while humans seem to struggle with fidelity. If she was elf, he could simply walk up to her, tell her she was his mate, and that would be that. This, on the other hand, would require some finesse, not one of Ram’s primary attributes.
Still, he wanted to focus on his good fortune because his natural optimism wouldn’t allow those details to be more than minor obstacles. He loved the fact that she was close to the same height, most beneficial for slow dancing and other romantic activities that thrive on the alignment of bodies. She was long legged, but curvy with a graceful, rolling gate that made his teeth clench with aching. He loved her contradictions. She was smart, polished, and charming, but had an appetite like a starving rugby player.
He smiled to himself remembering the way she moaned over chocolate and coveted Storm’s cake. He smiled even bigger when he relived her reaction to seeing his ear. He had barely suppressed a full-on shudder when her fingers had feather brushed up his ear and touched the tip. If his pants hadn't been holding his c**k down, it would have popped up at full attention. It made him wonder how his body would respond when she touched other places.
“What’s so funny?” Kay asked as they walked toward the lounge.
Thinking quick on his feet Ram said, “Just thinkin’ about how much cake she ate. I’ve never seen a body enjoy food so much.”
Kay just said, “Um hum.”
Storm didn’t like the idea of Ram walking along thinking about what Elora said and did. He was starting to think that maybe bringing her to dinner had been a bad idea.
***
CHAPTER 7
BLACK SWAN FIELD TRAINING MANUAL Section I: Chapter 13, #31
Vampire are difficult to recognize as such on sight. The vampire’s coloring remains the same as it was at the time of inception if it has recently fed. If not, it will be pale by comparison to most people. That is the main reason for the myth of walking dead. The only physical characteristic that is permanently altered is the color of the iris which suffers loss of pigment. The extremely pale eyes are striking in appearance and, unfortunately, that serves to add to their allure. This feature cannot be relied upon as the only indicator as humans are occasionally born with similar coloring.
Elora didn’t sleep much. The pleasure of privacy was too sweet. Knowing that she was not on view like an animal in a zoo, restored some dignity and gave her a more hopeful outlook about adjusting to this strange reality.
Putting her things away didn’t take very long. The Operations Office had been thoughtful enough to provide bottled water, clean sheets and towels, fresh fruit and a few high protein snack bars. By far the most touching thing was a vase of calla lilies with a card reading, “Welcome Home, Thelonius C. Monq.”
She knew that Thelonius M. Monq had taken a very big risk, no matter how well calculated, by sending her through an untested, purely theoretical device, but, if it had been a choice between that and certain death… The invaders were clearly determined to wipe out the Laiwynn Clan. She supposed that he did know what he was doing. If she had come through the portal anywhere but Jefferson Unit she probably wouldn’t have survived or wouldn’t have wanted to. Her heart softened toward Monq a little, especially since she supposed he must be dead.
She found the thermostat that controlled the temperature in the unit, turned it up a little, crawled between the sheets, and turned out the light. Lying awake in the darkness she played over and over in her head the incredible evidence that elves were real. Fairies, too, for that matter. She told herself to remember to ask Storm about fairies; if they were small, with gossamer wings. Again she thought it was odd that she received the great vampire revelation without missing a beat, but couldn’t get over the real life presence of elves. Of course, the elves of fairy tales were not six feet tall, but everybody was smaller back then.
Thoughts were a jumble in her head: multiple layers of similar, if not parallel dimensions, elves, fairies, modern day knights who protect the weak from their own blissful ignorance of things that go bump in the night. When she found herself unable to settle her thoughts and sleep, she turned the bedside lamp back on, located the Black Swan Field Training Manual, got back under the covers and started to read.
She woke to a knock on the door. She hadn’t thought to set an alarm because she didn’t think it would be possible to sleep later than seven. A quick look at the clock had her scrambling out of bed. She was decent in her yoga pants and cami and gods knew Storm had seen her that way many times, and worse. Much worse. So. No point in being shy.
The door flew open. Elora pulled him in and told him to make himself comfortable, that she’d just be a minute, then left him looking amused while she performed obligatory bathroom functions, splashed water in her eyes, scrubbed with the tooth brush, and untangled with the hair brush. She threw the mass of heavy hair up in a high ponytail, jumped into a pair of chocolate brown velvet leggings and donned a soft knit top.
She opened the bedroom door and said, “Ta daaaaa.” She had seen that on the TV show, “Dear Diana”, and hoped it meant “ready to go”.
He smiled, opening the door for her. “Late night?”
“How did you know?”
“Psychic.”
“Sorry to make you wait. It was exciting being out of the infirmary. I couldn’t sleep and was up late reading.” She squeezed past him while he held the door. “This is a big day for me. I’ve been wondering about the world outside my glass front box.”
When she said the word ‘box’, it made him wince a little. Of course he’d feel the same way in her place. That’s why it had eaten at him when she had asked if he thought confinement was harm.