Chapter Four
Alexandra
“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because, without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
- Maya Angelou
Michigan,
Present…
A little over an hour after I sent Portia away, Child Protective Services authorized Carlos to stay at one of my facilities, while my friend, police officer Diego Sanchez, collected Portia and promised to pick up her brother as well. However, Diego didn’t pass up the opportunity to ask me out on another date.
I had been dating him over the last four months, and I could tell from his lustful thoughts that he was hoping that we would finally be intimate. However, I had never been able to be intimate with anyone.
Given how primal my abilities were, how animalistic, one would be forgiven for thinking that sex would not be an issue for me. In truth, I had never understood what all the fuss was about. I certainly hadn’t felt any passion or even mild interest in being intimate with anyone. Even Diego, with his resemblance to a dark-skinned Adam Rodriguez, who I thought was super fine and had a bad-boy swagger that was certainly appealing to most females, had yet to inspire my sexual interest.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked him. I thought he was a great guy, and I loved going out with him, but there was no passion there. For one, I knew that deep down, I couldn’t respect a normal male. I could too easily crush them with my gifts. And for another thing, every time a man tried to initiate intimacy with me, I felt repulsed by it. Thankfully, I was usually able to redirect their interest with a slight whisper in their minds.
So, I had been using him and my previous dates with men for other purposes, which they had known nothing about.
How did I explain to Diego that it wasn’t him that was holding me back? Diego was everything that I would want in a partner. He was trustworthy, dedicated, and met my physical taste in men perfectly. He was a dark-skinned Hispanic, several inches taller than my six-foot-nothing height, with tightly packed lean muscles, and he was ruggedly handsome. By all counts, I should be over the moon with such a boyfriend.
Too bad there was this other man who ruined things for me. At least I suspected that it was him who had caused my aversion to other men. This man came to me in my dreams. I had been dreaming of him since Ireland but had no idea who he was until recently.
My knowing who he was hadn’t made him any more attainable or probable though.
Ever since Father Petrov came for me, this stranger had been appearing in my nightly dreams. There hadn’t been a time since I’d closed my eyes to sleep that he hadn’t been the central point of my sleeping moments.
A huge blond male with well-defined, corded muscles, tree trunks for legs, and looking so much like a Norwegian Viking that I couldn’t help but be alarmed by my unusual fascination of him. Even in my awake moments, I didn’t give white men even a passing glance. I wasn’t attracted to them.
As far as I could deduce, my father, a white man, thought my mother, a black woman, was a disposable sex toy and an easy source for nourishment, and my mother thought that he was a quick income transaction. Despite their being in a relationship for over two years, with my mom barely a legal eighteen-year-old, their interaction was toxic. And given that relationship was an interracial one, I was determined to only date men of my race and color. Irrational? Yeah, I knew that, but I didn’t need the headache of adding even more diversity into my life. I wasn’t even sure what a sexual relationship with someone like me would be like. Would a human partner be safe?
I was what you would call a “whole lot of woman.” I accepted that I was a bit curvy, but curvy in the way of Amazon women like Xena, Warrior Princess. I’d always been tall, at six feet, and with a love for high heels, I towered over most men. Still, men wove all kinds of erotic ideas around my height and abundant curves. I had gotten enough glimpses of their unguarded, explicitly sexual thoughts to have me blushing in shock at their imaginations. Often, my long legs, bountiful breasts, generous hips, and darker skin tone featured greatly in their fantasies.
With unusual two-color eyes, dark brown at the top of the iris and golden-brown on the bottom, framed by thick long eyelashes, and thick black bone-straight hair, which I wore to the middle of my back, it was hard for me to go unnoticed.
I had no idea if my size had anything to do with my gifts, given that my mother had been average height and my father not a particularly large man.
My natural genetics may also have had something to do with my eating habits as well. I tended to eat more meat and vegetables, and I also had a thirst for something forbidden, but I couldn’t talk about that. I didn’t even want to think about it. It was too shameful.
I loved to run, although I tried to do that late at night in secret where people couldn’t see me. That was the main reason why I lived so isolated on the outskirts of town with a large, wooded property around me. I needed my space to be who I was with no chance of discovery.
It didn’t make sense that I would still be dreaming about Blondie. I knew that his name was Xander, but I call him Blondie to try minimizing his impact on me.
I had vivid, detailed dreams of him working at a massive dark oak office desk and of him practicing fencing or wielding a sword. I’d seen him surrounded by his family, which I sometimes envied. But it was the sight of him in combat that intrigued me. The sword he wielded looked huge, ancient, and lethal, but he handled it as though it was another limb. He was skilled and deadly. Whatever he was into, it wasn’t innocent. In the years that I had been dreaming about him, I had seen him in so many battles. His impressive strength and swiftness stoked a sensual dark urge in me that I refused to explore.
No matter which scenario I saw him in, he never seemed happy, but then he wasn’t sad either. It was hard to decipher what he felt.
He had been easy to ignore when I hadn’t known who he was.
With a simple Google search of Father Alexi when he came into my life after Ireland, I became aware of the three important men in Father Alexi’s life. He had three sons.
Once the shock of that wore off, the shock of a Catholic priest being a parent three times over, Father Petrov’s younger son had held my attention. Yes, I had already been dreaming about him, but it was the absence of emotion in his eyes that drew me. Made me think that he was so much like me. He called to me at a basic level that I couldn’t help taking note of.
Even with his brothers around him, Xander looked lost and alone.
I had been tempted to ask Father Petrov about Xander so many times on his weekly visits, but I was too embarrassed to admit my fanciful thoughts about his illusive son. Not that Father Petrov ever discussed his sons. Yes, he mentioned his family’s numerous interests, but he never discussed his sons.
From day one, Father Petrov had always been interested in everything happening in my life. He questioned me endlessly about my gift. I told him only the psychic part, which he had guessed at. He still seemed puzzled by the strength of my gift, but I didn’t elaborate. Hell, as soon as my father realized how strong I was after my mother sold me to him, he tricked me, drugged me, and I woke on an auction block in Bangkok.
It seemed that instinctively I had been hiding ever since. Even without my memory, I had known that I needed to hide.
I love Father Petrov. He has done so much for me, but I trusted no one with my secrets after my parents’ betrayal.
Who I was wasn’t normal, and I couldn’t pretend to be. So, my dreaming about Xander had to mean something. What that was I couldn’t even guess at.
My life and my work were fulfilling. That had to be enough because I couldn’t dare ask for anything else. I couldn’t dare do anything to reveal my secrets for any man. Not even someone as intriguing as my mentor’s son.
About six months ago, I started seeing glimpses of him in my awake moments too. At first, I wasn’t sure that I was seeing right. I mean the sightings were so brief that I doubted my eyes. Although, if I had normal human eyes, I wouldn’t have been able to see him at all. And then, about a month ago, he started coming more frequently and stood in place longer, as though he was finding it harder to leave.
Although I had been dreaming of him for years, I was still unprepared for his visual, physical presence. There was no scenario where I would not have noticed him stalking me. I didn’t dare approach him. How would I explain my ability to notice him from that far of a distance? But then again, how was he able to watch me? And I had no doubt he was watching me.
What was he? Was he like me?
He was never close enough for me to breach his mental walls. It was so damn frustrating. Whenever I finally meet him, I was going to kick him where it hurts for messing with me like this.
After the draining day I’d had, tonight I needed that date with Diego. Sure, I could have fed from the hospital supply, but I needed live prey tonight. And I was determined to ignore the blond giant who was even now lurking in the shadows.