16. Those eyes, Though
16
THOSE EYES, THOUGH
SAYAH
T he fog from the night is still thick within me as I climb the stairs to bed. Even though I’m not worried about the fainting—which I think I should be—it’s more so the uneasy feeling I’m getting that surrounds the night.
Dominic is a seemingly perfect package. He's sexy and strong, tall and tattooed, and radiates independence. He's funny and sweet, as evident with his gestures of chivalry and all that encompassed our date tonight. Buying Gauge a candy bar was the cherry on top of a perfect evening. But there is something in his eyes that has me feeling as though I should run - and far.
Escaping out of my heels and slipping into my nightclothes, I try to grasp at something that I think should be there as part of our date, something that has me shaky and uneasy and the energy all around me shifts.
Something happened and I feel it like a lost thought that I can’t quite grasp.
Eyes.
That’s all my brain will tell me.
Was it his eyes?
The way they had looked after we kissed, it was as though all the hazel had drained out of them and they were just white, like Halloween contacts.
The phone dings as I flip the switch in the bathroom while opening the message.
Thank you for escorting me out tonight. It was as wondrous as you are. I can’t wait to see you again.
The feelings he gives me are such a weird mixture of what I’m used to. I’m used to either butterflies, or hesitation and the red-flag feeling I get when I’m about to ghost a guy from Tinder. This is a perfect mixture of the two. On one hand, I’m attracted to this guy, and in any other circumstance, I could see a future bloom with him. On the other, something awkward and strange is niggling at the back of my mind. I don’t know if it’s just me being scared of new relationships, but it feels deeper than that. There’s something that I can’t put my finger on. Something happened on our date that gives me the terrors. Like something I lost and can’t find but need and yet don’t remember what it is. I fight the feeling of blocking his number and ghosting him right now.
It makes me sad, and I ponder what to do; if I should walk away now and not speak to him again, or to give him a chance and see where it goes.
Climbing into bed, I open the message again and look at the letters, fighting something within myself on what the answer is.
Finally, I text back.
I had a really good time tonight too. Sorry if I seemed distant at the end, I’m just worried that I fainted. I can’t wait to see you again, either.
A few minutes later, he responds.
Please don’t be worried about that. I feel that you are fine and just got lightheaded. When is your next free night? I want to take you some place special .
This is my weekend that’s free, so my next free night is actually tomorrow night.
Well, I am free tomorrow night and then not again til Wednesday.
Okay. Tomorrow it is! I’ll pick you up at 7.
Okay. Can’t wait!
The two contradictions of feelings are still swarming my mind as I plug the phone in on the nightstand and turn to go to sleep.
As I drift, the excited feeling wins.
T he mist is thick this time, and I can’t see in front of me. I’m walking, although I don’t know where I am. The fog is so thick, it’s as if the clouds have landed on earth, and I’m walking among them. I may even be up in the clouds, but then I can feel the soft soil of the Earth beneath my bare feet.
I feel him, even before I see him. His presence drenches me and the energy around me shifts again, I feel him like you would feel the wind.
But where is he?
The danger’s present, I know it’s life or death if he finds me, and yet all the same I begin looking for him, wanting to find him, wanting to know more about him and why he’s haunting my dreams.
Those blue eyes pierce through the fog, and they’re all I see at first. The black hair comes next, and then his handsome face.
He’s wearing all black in the sea of white mist, although it’s twilight and the clouds themselves have an effervescent glow.
The danger grows worse as he approaches me. I stand still, knowing I should run, knowing that his bite will kill me every time and not caring all the same .
“Who are you?” I ask, frozen in place as he draws nearer.
“I told you. I’m Sebastian.”
“But why are you haunting my dreams?”
“Who said I’m in your dreams? I think you’re the one who is in mine, princess.”
Chills run up my spine and down to my fingertips, yet my blood runs hot against the surface of my skin. “Regardless, why are we in each other’s dreams?”
“I don’t know,” he responds. His enhancing gait has me edging to a type of cliff in my being, knowing I’m doomed but wanting despite it.
Those blue eyes.
Bright with something else. They’re something not of this world. Even though he’s to be the death of me, I still need him more than I need the sustenance my existence relies upon.
He smiles a crooked smile, the left side of his mouth curling up as the right side stays flat. I want to bottle that wicked grin and drink it down like an elixir.
There’s something about that smile that yanks at me, something about his world that I need to be in, regardless of what it costs.
He’s inches from me now and I still don’t move, knowing it’s gonna hurt like hell when he bites me but wanting the rush, his lips, those eyes, that smile, all of him. I will take every part of his damned existence if it means I get to feel those poisonous lips on mine.
“Why do I burn each time you touch me?”
“I don’t know that either,” he replies, reaching me as a look of desire tinged with menace passes over his expression. “All I know is that I need you. And when I can’t resist you anymore, you burn and it kills me. I don’t know who you are, but I need you in my life. Your blood calls to me, makes me completely helpless to the thirst and blinded by passion. Every time I see you, I must drink from you. It’s programmed into my mind.”
“You’re a vampire?” I utter, although I know the answer already.
“I am,” he states, his voice silky with peril that settles into my bones.
The beat of my heart is rhythmic against the black backdrop of our reverie. The pulsating begins dancing down my sternum and as he inches closer and closer, it moves further south—between my legs. His face is inches from mine, and I can smell the midnight and ruin on him mixed with winter. Fresh and dark. The heat from him being so close to me nearly makes me moan in anticipation, and the exquisite torture of not having him all over me almost pushes me off that edge that is surely behind me. His breath is hot; he’s almost to me and his breathing intermingles with mine, tangling our breath together, causing a stressed exhale that’s I’ve been holding back to escape. It comes out as a whimper that I can no longer control and that sends him over that same edge.
His sultry soft lips suddenly land on mine and It. Is. Magick.
The danger mixed with magick and paired with an all-consuming love has me feeling like an avalanche, gaining momentum and strength as it topples me to my doom. Even though I feel it down to my bones that I should run. . . I cannot. There’s something keeping me here locked with him that I can’t ignore.
Knowing what’s going to come next is something that should frighten me to my core, but I welcome it and will him to bite me.
I want to feel that fire, I like the way it burns.
His breath on my face is hot and the heat between us is intense on its own, without the flames. He kisses me with his whole body, and it feels like falling off a cliff. He offers his tongue to me and I embrace it, deeper into my own mouth he goes, and it isn’t close enough for me. I need to feel him inside me. He is searching my body with his hands and I welcome it, my own fingers wandering up to his black locks, entangling them within the short silky tresses.
He kisses my cheeks, down the front of my throat, to my cleavage as he caresses one of my breasts. Another moan escapes at the pleasure it incites. This makes him fiercer in his expedition of me and something sparks that rage within him; for he looks at me while his eyes go icy white, his lip curls up, revealing the blinding glint of sharp ivory as they elongate out of his cuspids.
As the sharp pricks of his fangs pierce my carotid artery, the fire engulfs me. The sensation of him sucking my blood, draining me yet filling me up at the same time as the fire spreads from where he bit, explodes outward from my clit to the tips of my fingers and toes. The intensity of the fire consumes me and I continue to want him, the taste of him lingering on my lips.
This time he burns with me and is still drinking from me as the flames consume us both.
M y phone dings, waking me.
I roll over and grab at the cord.
Good morning, beautiful. I hope you slept well.
Smiling to myself, I write back.
Good morning to you, handsome. I slept well. I hope you did too.
The dream covers me and I remember the way I’d felt with Sebastian, my midnight mystery vampire, all over me. My clit is still tingly at the thought of him.
The way he makes me feel in my dreams is something that I want to feel in real life. Granted, he’s a bad kind of good, a dangerous sort of love. But whatever the reason he’s infecting my dreams, I don’t mind it and welcome him to keep visiting me. I crave it.
As I meander throughout my productive Sunday—cleaning the house, doing my homework, and some light yard chores—Dominic is in constant contact with me via text about my day and what I’m up to. I like that he’s interested in me and regardless of the weird feelings I get with him, I keep up with the excited butterflies that I also feel with hesitation.It keeps the sad memories of my parents from plaguing me.
During my shower, I wonder what Dominic has planned for the night and begin to feel hot flutters surrounding the date and what it’s going to bring.
Running a brush through my hair one last time, the doorbell sounds, and I spray a spritz of one of my many perfumes as I leave the bathroom.
Dominic is looking dapper as ever, even if he is only wearing a t-shirt and some jeans. His hair looks nice, spiked in the front as usual and his eyes are bright and hazel green this evening.
“Hey you,” he says, kissing me on the cheek as I open the door to greet him.
“Hey,” I answer, moving aside to let him enter.
“Did you get all your stuff done, beautiful?” His arms are around me, sliding around my waist and pulling me to him. I let him move me again, just like he did on the dance floor.
“I did, thank you.”
His lips are on mine and the quivers are soft and feathery. I kiss him back but before it can get as heated as it did last night, he lets my lips go.
“Ready?” he asks softly.
“Yes,” I answer.
He grabs my hand and I let him pull me to the car.
Of course he opens the door for me, helping me in, and then we’re off, heading toward the highway.
“Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise,” he responds, the sly glint shining in his eyes.
Surprisingly, we drive to the Windsor exit, which is where he mentioned he lived the first night we met.
“Are we going to your house?” I ask.
He looks at me almost deviantly and says, “No” with a smile.
I’m leaning back in the passenger side, admiring the city of Windsor pass us by through the closed car window. The streets are crowded and bustling, people meandering from shop to shop or from restaurant to the square. Dominic seems at ease as he drives us this way and that, to the twisty roads on the outskirts of town that lead to the richer neighborhoods. As we turn into Pelican Lakes, a gated community on a golf course with a beautiful lake that’s popular for weddings, I take in the sights. Having been here a few times for company picnics, I love this area and hope to one day live here—when one of my books makes me millions, that is.
Massive houses sprawl along the road we linger on, each covered in ivy and divided by expansive lawns and wrought-iron gates. I know if I were to open my window here in the summer, I would smell the oleander, lilac, and honeysuckle come from the sprays of trees and bushes spotting the scenery.
“Is this your neighborhood?” I ask as we continue to the end of one street and then turn onto a dirt road.
“If I said ‘yes,’ would you judge me?” he asks and his tone has a playful hue, but I’m still not sure if he’s serious. I watch as the tendon in his hand flinches a bit as he grabs the black steering wheel, nervous.
“Of course not,” I answer honestly.
He lets out a small laugh, relaxing somewhat, and continues down the dirt road until we come to a small parking lot on the edge of the beach.
“Here we are,” he says, pressing the button to kill the engine and escaping out of the driver’s side.
First he lets me out of the passenger side and then, as I look around, he runs to get something from the back.
The sun has set already, but the sky’s in its vanilla stage, where it’s not dark yet and not quite light. The moon is just a sliver in the sky, a sky that reminds me of cotton candy. A rainbow of melted colors sits on the lake, looking like a box of crayons has tipped over and melted into the water. The trees surrounding the lake are just beginning to get their leaves, so they are a bright color green, and the light makes them seem like they’re glowing neon.
I love this time of year; when the grass is starting to come back from the long winter and is as green as you could imagine it should be, still healthy and not burnt yet by the summer sun. It reminds me of a fairytale land. Some magickal place between winter and summer where everything is fresh and new and ready to be awakened from their slumber. Even though it just snowed a week earlier, it’s nearly spring in Colorado and so the seasons often blend together.
Dominic appears with a picnic basket and a bottle of sparkling cider with two champagne glasses.
“A picnic in my favorite place in the world right now.”
“That’s amazing. It’s beautiful here.”
“It’s where I come to find peace in this place. The only place I’ve found that remotely lives up to where I’m from in New York.”
“This reminds of you of New York?” I ask, scrutinizing the gorgeous scenery. “This is not what I would picture when thinking of New York.”
I follow him down by one of the boat docks, and along a path that lines the lake.
He sniggers a bit. “I am from Upstate New York. It’s called Lake George.”
“Oh my gods! I love Lake George!” I exclaim as he stops and sets the picnic basket down.
Opening it and retrieving a checkered blanket, he looks at me with a surprise. “You know the area?”
“Oh yeah! Well, I was there a few times when I was a kid. My family was from New Jersey, and we used to drive to Lake George in the fall and stay in some cabins there.”
“Wow, what a small world,” he says, sitting down on top of the blanket and patting the place beside him.
“I know, right?” I respond, obliging him.
Pulling out a few votive candles, he lights them and sets them up around us.
After the candles are lit, he gathers the food from the basket and hands me a sandwich in a clear sandwich baggy.
“I didn’t know what you liked, so I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, with chips.”
I let out a small laugh. “That’s perfect. I actually have a new found affinity for them now that I’m a mom.”
“I was hoping that you wouldn’t be sick of them.”
“Gods no! PB&J is amazing! Gauge loves them. ”
Dominic chuckles and hands me a bag of Lay’s.
“So, I noticed in one of your pictures that he’s in a wheelchair. Can I ask why—if you don’t mind me asking.”
“Not at all,” I say, finishing my bite of sandwich before continuing. “He has a rare muscle condition called Congenital Myopathy. No one knew what it was until he was a year and a half. Nearly killed him at birth.”
“And what is it exactly?” Dominic asks, the sounds of a bag of chips opening pierces the moment.
“It’s in the same family as muscular dystrophy, but it doesn’t get worse over time. He just has muscles that work differently from ours. What is five pounds to you is thirty to him.”
“So he will be able to walk one day?”
“I did some research while getting my associate’s degree. It seems the kind he has can get better with hard work. He just has to work out every day if he wants it. And if he’s anything like me, one day that fire in him will consume him and he will get what he wants.”
As I talk of my son, I cannot get over how he’s looking at me. He hangs on every word that I say and he wants to know all about me and my child.
That’s one of the hard parts about dating for me. Before, it was just me. Now that I’m back in that world, I’m dating for two. Every guy that I meet I have to do a screening of and make sure that they like kids, that they’re cool with kids, that they understand that my child will always come first.
It’s exhausting.
My ex didn’t seem to have taken the same caution of who was around Gauge at first and was just not wanting to be alone, no matter the cost.
On the other hand, I am doing everything I can to make sure that whomever I decide to bring home and introduce to him is going to treat him as though he’s theirs. That they’re going to be good to him and make sure that he’s safe and loved and never put second.
It’s why I haven’t brought anyone home to meet him yet.
No one has leveled up that far .
We talk of life and home and places as we eat the sandwiches and once they are gone, Dominic eagerly digs in the basket for something else.
“Here.” He hands me an envelope with a red seal on the front. “This is for you.”
Wondering what’s inside, I look at him questioningly.
My fingernails are just about to tear it open when he says, “Wait. First, I want you to lie back with me.”
Nothing in his eyes tells me to worry. I lie back with him and look at the sky that’s starting to show twinkling stars through the clearing clouds.
“Okay, now open it.”
As I tear the envelope open, inside is a card that says:
Be it known that star number HIP 53043 with the Celestial Address of 10 hrs. 36 min. 49.0 sec and Declination of + 52° 15’23.0” Epoch 2000, in the constellation Ursa Major shall henceforth be known by the name of
Frances Cartwright
To the one star that shines so bright in my eyes, I give you this one in the heavens.
My nose burns as tears sting my eyes. I’m blown away that someone would be so sweet as to dedicate a star to my mother.
That’s the reason he had asked Mama’s full name during our texting earlier.
He looks at me and his green eyes soften. The corners of his mouth quirk up and he reaches out, wiping a tear that stubbornly escapes with his thumb.
“On the map in there,” he replies, unfolding the accordion paper, “if you look, it shows you how to find the star.”
Looking on the map, I see the constellations that will help me find the location.
My chest tightens and hot tears keep stumbling down my face.
He’s pulling me to lay in the crook of his arm, where I clutch the certificate and sob quietly. It’s not like me to cry in front of people, especially in front of a man I’ve just begun dating, but this is something else entirely.
It’s so fitting to me that Mama has a star and this man, who barely knows me, did something so incredibly sweet and charming that truly touches the depths of my soul.
In this moment, he becomes something more to me and whatever hesitation I’d been having, melts away with the tears flowing down my cheek onto his shirt and into the ground.
“Thank you, Dominic. This is amazing.” I sniffle. “Sorry about your shirt.”
There are little tear stains on the front and going down the side. “Hey. It’s okay. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“It’s just so sweet.”
He wipes more of my tears. “I just had a feeling that this would be the perfect thing to get your mom. I didn’t know her, obviously, but I can feel from you how special she was. And, witches like nature,” he chuckles softly, and it’s an easy laugh. I like the way it sounds—it’s soothing and comforts me deep within my bones.
I bend my head upward to look at him and he strokes the side of my face gently, his hands soft and strong at the same time.
He pulls my chin toward him.
There’s nothing rushed or erratic about this kiss. It’s genuine, loving, and romantic.
The butterflies erupt from my stomach and flutter to the tips of my toes.
He changed the game.
“There’s more,” he whispers, once he lets my lips go.
“More?” I wonder, letting him sit us up.
“Yeah, something small. I found this—” he digs out one more thing from the basket.
It’s a small box, one that jewelry would come in, and my mind begins to wander.
He passes me the gold box, and I eye him questioningly .
“Don’t worry, it’s not a ring.” He smirks.
Something in me relaxes a bit. Although I knew that it couldn’t possibly be an engagement ring, as we’d only been on two dates, there’s something in his eyes that tells me it’s still something very special.
“Remember when I told you that my sister is a witch?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“This was hers. She has been practicing a long time and this is thought to be enchanted. I thought it would help you with your own magick.”
I open it, revealing a bracelet.
The gold bracelet, though shimmering, still looks very old with darker age spots. There are intricate designs in the metal and the stone that’s at the front is a gorgeous moonstone. It’s iridescent and pearly, taking up the whole front of the bracelet and looks like there’s another galaxy within it.
“Oh, Dominic, it’s gorgeous.”
He takes the bracelet out of the box and puts it on my wrist, making sure the clasp is secured.
“The bracelet is very old. I have no idea where Scarlet got it from. But she put her own special magick in it as well, and then gave it to me for protection when I moved out here.”
“I can’t accept this, Dominic. It’s a gift from your sister, to protect you.”
“I have other things she gave me,” he says with a smile. “I think that this will help you with your own magick.”
I admire the bracelet on my wrist. The place where it touches my skin seems to glow a little, and although I know it’s a trick of the moonlight, something dances up the back of my spine saying that I’m about to see more magick in myself than I ever thought possible.
It chills me.
I kiss him this time.
The whole night has affected me so strongly, the thought and detail he put into the gift for my mom and giving me the bracelet.
I’m swooning .
We spend the rest of the night talking and laughing and, quite simply, falling for each other. It’s around four in the morning when the birds begin to sing, that I realize the time and that I have to work in three hours.
As he kisses me goodbye on the porch, I want nothing more than to invite him in, get twisted up with him in the sheets, but I know I’m already going to hate life all day tomorrow.
He leaves me, and as he drives away, he also leaves me with the lingering sense that there’s something so incredibly special about him that I need to become more familiar with.
I cannot wait to see him again.
“ A ll right baby,” I say to Gauge the next evening as I tuck the blankets up around his chin, “sleep good.” I kiss his forehead and close the book we’ve been reading, setting it on the nightstand by his bed.
“You too, Mama.”
“See you in the morning. Love you.”
“Love you,” he says, and I close the door behind me.
It has been a long sleepy day at work, but I still feel compelled to try something with this new bracelet.
I pull down one of my mom’s grimoires from my spell cabinet.
I’m unsure of what I want to do with the bracelet, but I can feel its power and want to add to it, add a piece of my own magick to it and see what it would do.
There’s a spell of gathering power, and what harm can come from that?
Collecting the ingredients it calls for, I move over to the altar and set them up one by one.
A few herbs, some stones, a candle or two, and my small cauldron that’s the size of a little bowl .
After lighting the candles, I sprinkle the herbs into the cauldron.
Whispering words of magick from the book, I close my eyes and recite them repeatedly.
There’s a rush of heat that encompasses me like a shower. I feel it start from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. Keeping my eyes closed, I can still see through my lids that the bracelet begins to glow, as if whatever power within it escapes and enters into me. It swims through my veins and gathers my own essence, and pools somewhere in the deepest, darkest parts of myself. The new power finds a lock within me, a cloak that has been draped over me, and like the feeling of something clicking into place, the lock snaps open and the cloak dissolves.
For a long time, I’m unsure how long, I recite the magick words, with my arms outstretched, willing the power to take over me. I feel it like one would feel a powerful drug taking over, pooling warm in my extremities, almost hot in the crook of my arms and backs of my knees. It pulsates throughout my entire body. Then I shift the energy and push it back into the bracelet, commanding it to take whatever part of myself that’s magick and enter this stone.
The stone lights up as brightly as the sun, and though my eyes are still closed, I feel the power, the heat. It’s the most powerful spell I’ve ever created.
As the stone dims and takes on its normal hue once more, I open my eyes and stare at it.
There’s something new and powerful lingering in me. I can feel the shift more than I know anything else at the moment.
I want to try something.
Arising from the ground and walking over to the cabinet, I gather petals from a dried rose that I put in there a long time ago.
Walking them back over to the altar, I set them neatly in front of me on the floor.
Concentrating as hard as I can, I hover my palm over the petals and will them to rise.
Something that’s stirring deep within me heightens and the buzzing I feel in my soul reverberates into my bones. Power that I’ve never known before gushes out of me, almost as though I am sweating, but I’m not hot.
That’s power.
The petals shift and shake, each one rising from the ground one at a time.
I remain hovering above the petals and lift my hand further and further away, until all the petals are six inches from the floor.
Arising from the ground again, I pull the petals up, higher and higher, until they are level with my eyes. In utter dumbfounded amazement, I watch as the petals float in front of my eyes.
Thoughts clutter my mind in an overwhelming, thunderous uproar. The power that I behold is only in its infancy and thinking of what will unravel from it staggers me.
Walking away from the petals and letting them float there, I glide over to my phone on the table and snap a picture to send to Dominic.
The power is still dripping off me as I sit on the couch, eyeing my nascency and try to wrap my mind around what the hell is happening.
The sound of the phone dinging wakes me out of my trance.
I knew you would be able to harness that power!
The magnificent pride succinctly wraps around me as I look at the message along with my new bracelet that’s now blazoned with my power. Not only am I dating an ostensibly charming new man, but one that is wending me to build on my magick.
This has to be some sort of dream.