Irish Fiction: We Come Back: Vol. 1: Chapter 5.4- Deadly Sweet
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Deadly Sweet
“Get off me!” I struggled, throwing myself back and forth,
trying and failing to throw him off me... continued...
“No. Not until you calm down, and tell me what the devil you are talking about.”
I was silent for a moment before responding in a restrained
voice, “Miss Delaine explained to me this evening that you are in fact engaged to be married. That I need not waste my or your, oh so precious time, as you are inevitably spoken for. Now had I been aware of the fact, I would not have made such a fool of myself going to the extents I went to just to see you. Parading myself around your mixed company, thinking myself somehow important to you, whilst all the while you are spoken for! Now please, let me up.”
He let me up, standing up as well, offering me his hand
which I in turn refused, slapping at it with as much irritation as one swatting at an insect.
“I do not know who you will believe, Miss Astraea, but I am not engaged. If you had of just asked me, I would have told you so. Miss Delaine is a jealous, competitive snake of a woman, seeking to gain me by destroying you. Do you think so little of me, that I would keep that from a woman I have spent every breath thinking about, since the moment I met her?”
He had stepped right up against me.
I didn’t know how this made me feel, whether it was intimidation or protection. I forced myself to look into his eyes. The truth of what he was saying was revealed within them.
“I am not comfortable feeling this way about you Rae. It makes me nervous. I do not like residing in a place of vulnerability with an outcome I do not have complete control over.”
I looked down, away from him; the moon was coming out now.
As I started to walk away from him, he reached out for me.
“But, it is how I feel, and when I thought I might never see you again, it was too much for me to bear. I ran here to stop you from leaving because I do not want to go back to my life before you were in it… Don’t you see?”
He kissed my hand and wrapped his arms around me in an embrace. Perhaps it was the sheer passion of the moment, but the longer he held me, the more my breath became intoxicating. He brought his hand down to my chin, and lifted it into a beautiful passionate kiss.
The smell of his skin, as my face pressed against his chest
and leaned into his neck, covered my body like a blanket of fireflies gently shocking my system. I needed him, I felt, far more than he needed me, and in these moments, it did not matter. I felt myself tugging at his clothes and the more he touched me, the more my senses sharpened like that of an eagle’s eye, to view things which I could not have seen before.
Jack noticed that my body, so warm and soft, seemed to be radiating passion and excitement. He found himself losing his clothes, and removing mine. He had been so cold before, and yet now heat pulsed through his veins, a controlling, all consuming heat that thirsted for an endless supply.
He found himself feeling as if he was in a dream, a fantastic, lovely dream that of which would never end.
My hands traced his body, my lips muttered sweet nothings into his ear, and my hips seemed to meld into his, but that which enchanted him the most, was the vision of our future together that lay openly within my eyes.
I loved the way the whiskery hair on his chin felt
against my neck and collarbone. I felt myself watching, and memorizing every inch of his body and every second of its interaction with mine. I was so enraptured in fact that I only remembered where I was and where I needed to be when a full beam of moonlight came across his face, causing his eyes to sparkle as he smiled at me. I was relieved now that I knew that Miss Delaine had lied to me, and I was uncontrollably passionate about Jack, but I still had to go.
I couldn’t tell him the truth, but what could I tell him?
I gently stood up, and loosely put my clothes back on, sneaking glances at Jack as he did the same. We hadn’t spoken as we dressed, but the silence was a most comfortable one. As if these acts were more natural to us than that of a pair of rabbits. Jack now felt fully confident that I would remain in his life forever, and prepared to walk me back to Farenton with him. As he started to walk away, he realized I was holding back.
He stopped and reached out his hand to mine saying,
“Come along my darling, you must be hungry and exhausted. Why not stay the night here, as we had planned?”
I was tempted to stay, if only to spend more time with him, but at the same time, a lot of events had occurred, and I felt I needed to be home in a familiar environment in order to move forward with a clear head.
“Jack, I do not want to go back to my life before you either and I won’t, but right now, I really must be going home,” I laid my hand softly on his arm as he opened his mouth to argue, and continued on, “I will however come back, tomorrow.”
I looked up at the moon and knew I was almost out of time, and therefore could no longer stand around convincing him. So, I laid out an ultimatum.
“I will return tomorrow, if and only if, you love me enough to turn around and walk back down the trail the way you came, back to your guests, immediately, and let me on my way Jack.”
He wanted to stop me, he wanted to argue, but the intensity in my eyes restrained him, “Do you swear, on everything you hold dear, on your life, that you will return tomorrow?”
He had his hands on my cheeks, his eyes on my eyes, looking for any sign of devotion to him, any truth behind my words.
“Yes, now go. Go!” I pushed him gently away from me, holding his hand to the last possible second, never for a second letting go of his eye contact.
He had seen it within me, he had seen my heart,
and now turned and walked down the trail. He started to turn around once, but forced himself to keep going, lifting each leg in front of the other like eight hundred pound hammers, holding his arms tight against him, as he pressed his way forward.
When he was far enough out of sight that I could be sure he couldn’t see me, I hopped on the bridge and allowed myself to be swept home by the wind. Before he knew it, he was passing the fountain and entering through the front door. He had no idea where I could possibly be going from the middle of the woods, but he trusted me to come back. I had to come back.
The smell of my breath on his skin would not last forever.
Upon returning to Farenton, he asked Fareus about his guests, only half listening to his response. It seemed his guests had all retired for the evening, having eaten dinner and having lost their host. If Fareus was at all suspicious of Jack’s absence, a hint of such thoughts were certainly well hidden, therefore Jack asked him to send up a tray of dinner to eat in his room.
Then he climbed the stairs stopping once on his way to his room to scold the tapestry of an ancestor said to have left a dreadful curse on Farenton, for it seemed she always looked at him with such fury, as if he was doomed to ruin everything.
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