Epilogue Darius
Epilogue
Darius
Three months later
I’m spellbound. I stand in Monika’s crowded gallery surrounded by peons staring up at my favorite portrait.
I find them much less irritating than usual, because today, even though they are sycophants, they are Monika’s sycophants, and here for her.
These artsy-fartsy types are hardly paying me attention.
“Do you see her use of light here?” some idiot wearing a beret says to his human companion as they shuffle up close and point at my picture.
“Astounding. It renders the composition so much more accessible, despite the subject matter. Would you excuse us?” she huffs, irritation lacing her tone, until she looks up.
When she sees me, her eyes widen, her lips part, but instead of the usual Ooh, Taranis, can I have your autograph?
she rolls her eyes and tuts. “That’s the subject.
I don’t know what she sees in him.” The woman is whispering to her friend, but I can still hear her clearly.
I give her a little zap as she edges past me, and she jumps and rubs her ass, glancing over her shoulder suspiciously before disappearing into the crowd.
“Mein Gott, what are you smiling like that for?” Monika’s voice pulls my attention down. She looks fucking radiant tonight, dressed all in dark-green satin that hugs every one of her delectable curves.
I slip my clawed fingers around the back of her neck and pull her toward me. “I’m so damn proud of you,” I tell her, leaning down for a kiss.
She pulls back, denying me. “That’s not your I’m so proud of you smile. That’s your I’m going to hurt someone and enjoy it smile. I thought we talked about this?” Her pink-painted lips are drawn into a tight circle—one of my favorite looks she gives me.
I love when she’s irritated with me. It usually means I get to beg her forgiveness in the only way I know how. My hand on her ass, which is where I place it now. “I didn’t hurt anybody.”
“Promise?”
“Sort of.”
She groans. “Is this what I get? Half-truths? I thought we were done with the lies after your last secret plan almost backfired and got me killed and my last secret plan definitely backfired and almost got me killed?”
I smirk. I don’t know that I’ll ever outgrow the lies entirely. After all, Monika still hasn’t noticed the trackers I’ve placed in her phone, car, wallet, camera bag, and two of her cameras.
I lift her feet from the floor and hug her against my chest. I’m in a gray suit with a dark-green shirt and green silk pocket square to match. Despite the clash with my blue coloring, I don’t want there to be any mistaking who I’m here with tonight.
I kiss her gently on the mouth, then kiss each of her cheeks. “How much?” I whisper in her ear.
I feel her body tense up against mine. So responsive. I crave her. “How much what?” she asks.
“For the picture?”
“This one?” She laughs. “You really are full of yourself . . .”
She pulls back and takes a look at the image that’s got me so entranced.
She’s right. It is a picture of me, of my face, but it’s so different from all the rest. The title of her exhibit is Aliens Among Us.
As predicted, it’s a gallery of images of superbeings, but in positions and poses that aren’t conventionally shot.
My least favorites are the images she was granted permission to use from the battle at the ports.
A single shot of a dart in focus, with a woman hanging from the ceiling behind it, blurred, is the one I hate most. That dart is headed straight for the camera and she still has the scar on her face to prove it.
But my favorite of the images is this one here, and not because it’s of me—many of them are.
This is a picture she took of me at her dad’s barbecue.
Her parents came into town and hosted a barbecue with members of their family from New Jersey, mostly Malian Americans, but also blended and ranging in age from two to eighty.
There must have been about forty of them—cousins, cousins, cousins, and cousins who I’m pretty sure weren’t even technically related.
In the photo, I’m standing at the grill, wearing an apron.
I don’t have a shirt on underneath, so you can see my blue skin shimmering in the light, patterns drawn across it in glittering white swoops and swirls.
They match the patterns on my weapon. But it’s not my alienness that matters at all in this photo.
It’s the light, the way it hits my chin and chest, illuminating the stains on my apron, the charcoal smears on my arms.
I’m laughing like an idiot in this picture.
I just look so . . . silly. So stupid. So much like a peon.
I can’t even remember what I was laughing at anymore—maybe something one of her drunk-ass uncles said, I can’t be sure.
But I do know that I’ve never seen me like that, and I like it more than a proud male like me probably should.
“This isn’t even my favorite,” she says. “Why do you like it?”
“It’s not that I like the way I look in it,” I say against her lips.
Staring into her eyes, I can see the light from my own reflected onto her cheeks.
And it’s bright white. A color that I now know means total and utter infatuation.
It’s sickening. “I like the way you see me. Nobody’s ever seen me like that. Not even me.”
She grins. “That might be the nicest compliment I’ve received all evening.”
“Well, I take that as a compliment, considering how many compliments you’ve likely received tonight. After all, you are the Monika Neumann.”
A gloss covers her eyes and she bites her lower lip.
She reaches in between her breasts, confusing me for a moment until she withdraws a piece of jewelry, simple and so perfect a platinum that it shines nearly white.
She holds it out between us and swallows hard.
“I was hoping you might consider becoming Mr. Darius Neumann, if you’ll have me. ”
It hits me like a brick, and I forget to breathe. When she gives me a slight laugh and nudges me with her knee, I realize she’s expecting a response. “Are you . . .” But I can’t speak.
She withdraws something else from between her tits. A folded square that looks badly beat. It’s the same marriage license I threatened her with all those months ago.
“Holy fuck, are you asking me to marry you?”
“Yes,” she laughs and then chokes up. “Am I allowed to say it now? Now that it’s all finished?”
She’s been asking and I’ve been telling her to wait, unsure of what the words would do to me. But I nod now.
“I love you,” she tells me.
“You’re fucking insane,” I growl. “But you’re the only one crazy enough for me, baby. I love you too.”
“So does that mean you’ll marry me?”
I dip Monika low to the ground and kiss her deeply enough that the peons around us start to whistle. I give them all a collective zap that will undoubtedly earn me a punishment I deserve, and I couldn’t be more ready for it. A lifetime of it.
Against her parted lips, I whisper, “I do.”