Michael (The Airel Saga, Book 2) - By Aaron Patterson Page 0,18
had seen his. It was honest, clean, rough and dangerous, and I wanted every bit of it. Regret for my rash words was already heaping itself on my head: hot coals.
“We really don’t have time for this, okay? I want to leave this place with you. At my side. I want to protect you from what is already coming for us. But you have to trust me.”
I looked at him, tears already clouding my vision. I shouted at him, “Do you have any idea how difficult that is going to be?! For me?!” I wanted to punch something.
He came closer.
“Keep your distance. I will hurt you.” I remembered Kreios’s teaching in the little training hut behind us, that mixing my abilities with raw and undiluted emotion, anything other than love, was very dangerous and almost impossible to control.
He simply said, “Go on. I deserve it.”
“No! Stay back. Please.”
He walked closer, his arms out, ready to enfold me in his embrace, I wanted to feel those arms wrap me up nice and tight, good and strong, smell his skin, feel the soft spikes of his hair as my hands and fingers interwove themselves in it. I wanted to surrender to all of the nameless feelings and potentials that cavorted within my written-back-together heart. But I felt the danger. It was coming at me from inside, deep. It was coming at me from outside, near, far.
He came still closer, within an arm’s reach.
“Michael!”
His face was inches from my own and I could smell the masculine cleanness of his breath on my lips.
I did what any girl might have done. I collapsed into a sobbing mess in the arms of my lover. He was flawed but strong enough. Filled to the brim with courage, and all of it for me. I let myself go, let myself cry for a good long time.
The gray clouds overhead then burst, drenching us both to the bone.
I thought of how horrible the world was to have given a place for people like Stanley Alexander to live and exist. I thought of how painfully dear to me my parents were. Would I ever see them again? I thought about Kreios and wondered why he would have abandoned me, even if he did think I was dead. Wouldn’t he at least have wanted to bury my body? Maybe he just couldn’t deal with it. I thought about Kim and how much I loved her, how sorry I was for how she had been caught up in all this nonsense with me and my drama. And I thought about Michael.
That’s when the storm within started to finally clear up.
We were soaked, our clothes clinging to our bodies.
I pulled back from him. I felt bad; his shirt was covered with rain, with my tears, slobber, and snot. I wiped my nose with my shirt front, revealing part of my stomach as I dabbed at my eyes with it.
He pulled me in close to him again, but not all the way—his eyes were locked on mine, the puffs of our breathing intermingling in the misty aftermath of the storm.
He leaned in, but off to one side, brushing the softest, gentlest kiss against my cheek and then pulling back. “Airel,” he said, his voice a husky whisper.
CHAPTER XI
THE MORNING SUN AND fresh after-rain smell of the woods turned to heavy sticky humidity as we walked back to the house. We had to get going, we had agreed. I looked up through the trees and saw dark clouds moving in quickly as they do at high elevations. It could be sunny one moment and snowing the next.
I was still shaking a little from the moment before, but the rain starting and just shutting off like that, like a faucet, pulled us into awkwardness. He had pulled away then. I wondered what it was that held him back from me. Was he scared that I would judge him; that he was not good enough or something?
“I think we need to cut each other some serious slack,” I said. Michael stepped over a fallen log and I followed.
“Word up, homie.”
I laughed. “Who are you?”
“Gangsta, girl.”
“That’s actually kind of true…” I thought of his late antisocial associations.
“Take it easy,” he said. “Remember: slaaaaack.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, giving him a little shove in the back.
He laughed.
How could we go from rain-soaked dream moment to adorkable in two seconds? I shook my head but realized that I liked his dorky side.