Dante fed me food from the basket Rosemary had prepared at his request. It was packed with odd things. Odd things for a Monère, but things I had acquired a taste for. Grapes and other fruits. Rolls of bread. Chunks of cheese, all kinds of cheese—smooth Gouda, sharp cheddar, smoked Brie. None of the others in the household ate this stuff. Only me…and Dante. He popped the cheese in his mouth and chewed with relish. When I looked askance at him, he said, “I grew up among humans, also.”
“This time. What about your other previous lives? Do you remember them?”
He took his time chewing, then swallowing, while he composed his answer. “My memories are most clear of my last incarnation, and of my first life. That, I never forget. I get random flashes of other lives, occasionally. I think it’s my mind’s natural defense, that selective memory. Remembering everything would probably be too much for one single mind to handle.”
The next day he drove us to New Orleans. We played tourist, ate dinner, and danced informally afterward in the carriageway outside of Preservation Hall, swaying to the music of the boisterous jazz band while Tomas kept an eagle-eye watch over us.
The fourth day, Dante drove me to the county fair, set up in the next town over, while Aquila trailed behind us in another car. At the fair, he bought me pink and blue cotton candy, and treated me to carnival games. We popped balloons with darts, bounced ping-pong balls along the rims of fishbowls, and won stuffed animals, lots of them, which he continued to trade up for a bigger prize until we ended up with a huge, stuffed, purple Scooby-Doo almost as tall as I was.
We twirled on the merry-go-round, the only ride I was permitted on. He stood beside me as I bobbed gently up and down on my carousel horse. It was on the down sweep, with laughter bubbling from my lips, when he kissed me. Our mouths clung, with the sweet taste of spun sugar and the even sweeter enjoyment of the day flavoring our kiss. Then my painted steed started its slow glide back up, and we broke apart with the warm taste and touch of each other lingering between us like fine, heady perfume.
The fifth night, he took me on a picnic again on the same grassy knoll, but this time it was different. This time we were alone.
“No guard tonight?” I asked.
“No guard.” Dante’s silver-blue eyes gleamed at me, reflecting the moonlight. “I promised that we would stay on the property, and asked them for privacy.”
“Why?” My voice came out husky, soft.
“Because I want to make love to you tonight. Will you allow it?”
He’d courted me these last few days. Courted me with laughter, with fun. We’d played among the humans for a few blissful, irresponsible days. He’d made me laugh, giving me a respite from my duties and burdens and fears.
“I want this memory of you and I,” he said softly. “Will you give me that to take away with me?”
The two remaining days until the next Council meeting loomed like a shadow before us. We hadn’t just played among the humans…we’d played at being human. As if he was a normal twenty-year-old boy, and I, a girl he was dating, with the prospect of a happy, finite lifetime together before us, with no other goal in mind than marriage, the 2.4 requisite kids, a house, and a nice-paying job to cover the mortgage. It was a sweet, brief illusion. A paper dream that would rip apart with the first tug of reality. But not yet…not yet. With deliberate choice, I continued to drift us along in that lovely illusion.
“Yes,” I said. “I will allow it.”
He fed me from his hand. Fast food—Chicken McNuggets, french fries, an apple pie—and I greedily ate it down. Food that no one else would have thought to buy for me. His eyes caressed me; he looked at me so tenderly. Why had I ever feared those eyes, I wondered?
Pushing aside the empty bags, he pulled me into his arms and kissed me with lips warm and gentle. He laid me down on the soft blanket, and I sighed at the feel of his body against mine. I pulled the tie from his hair, freed its long length so that it spilled over and around me like a shining curtain of silken honey. He kissed me as if he cherished me, as if he loved me, raining soft kisses down my face and neck to the gentle slope of my abdomen. He paused there and pressed trembling lips against my skin.
“May I?” His hand hovered above my shirt, asking permission. I nodded, and his hand slid beneath the soft cotton to lay gentle claim to what lay below it.
I watched him, no words, emotions held at bay. Just simply watched as he lifted my shirt over my head, tossed it away, as he carefully undid my jeans, pushing down the denim. I quivered beneath his heated gaze, beneath the reverent touch of his hand splayed protectively, possessively, over my belly where our child grew inside of me. My eyes fell on a ring I’d never seen him wear before. I felt the cool metal band warm as it touched my skin. Watched as the smooth, ugly gray stone flared with power, changing into a sparkling aquamarine color. With that pulse of power, two life forces shimmered into view—mine, a pale shimmering golden aura just above my skin, and below it, part of it and yet separate and distinct, was a tiny, delicate blue bubble, not much bigger than a tennis ball.
“Is that the baby? Its life force?” I asked in an awed whisper.
“Yes.” His eyes were moist and damp.
It hadn’t seemed real before, just a nebulous concept…a child. It didn’t even have a heartbeat yet. There were those that argued that true life did not begin until that very first beat. But seeing that little ball of energy centered within me, I could not deny the conviction that I carried life.
There’s a little guy or gal growing inside of me, I thought, stunned.
Dante took his hand away, and with the loss of contact our auras disappeared. “Forgive me,” he said. “I just wanted to see it once. To know it this way. You have no need to fear me.”
He thought that the stunned look on my face was from fear.
I shook my head. “I’m not afraid. It’s just…the baby suddenly became real to me just now. How did you do that, make its aura visible?”
“The ring I wear. Here. I want you to have it.” He started to remove it from his finger. I stopped him.
“No. Keep it, please.” It looked old and valuable, the ring band crafted from the same burgundy metal as his wrist bands—the same distinctive bands his ancestral father Barrabus had worn. They were heirlooms he had somehow managed to keep from another lifetime, I realized with a shiver.
He mistook my tremor as fear of him rather than as what it really was…fear of our past. His face closed down and he started to draw away.
I sat up, caught his hand. “Don’t go.”
He stilled, like a bird poised to take flight. “The mood is gone.”
I smiled. “You’re right.” I slid my other hand up his T-shirt, slowly revealing his sleek, lovely muscles. “Let’s set a new mood, then. Undress for me.”
With a perception that was new to me, I knew that he needed this moment…we both did. Another small step toward each other. Another knitting closure in our healing wound. As much as he needed this memory to take away with him, so did I.
“Love me,” I whispered.
He did. With gentle touches and blazing eyes, not that eerie phosphorescent glow but with the shattering intentness of a man about to join his body with a woman he greatly desired. He ran his mouth over me, down me. Worshipped me with his touch, his hands, his breath, his long hair that glided over me like a thousand silky caresses.
The four preceding days of poignant laughter, of fun escape, had laid the groundwork, and now I was like a flower that had been stroked open by the sun, unfurling my petals, welcoming his touch.
With simple strokes he readied me. The graze of his fingertips down the side of my neck. The light brush of his fine-grained beard, rough, over the upper slopes of my breasts. The snuffling of his warm breath against my belly. The feel of the cool tip of his nose running down my thigh, raising goosebumps along the sensitive skin. Laughing softly, he nuzzled his way to the back of my knees and set his hands upon my feet, pressing deep into my soles with his strong thumbs. A jolt ran up through me and I caught my breath at the stunning reminder of that previous time when he had touched me there. The memory of it blazed between us, burning laughter away. Leaving only humming anticipation in its place.