The Soul Mate

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Xan reached for me, with a look on his face that had my stomach fluttering. I watched his fingers intertwine with mine. Painstakingly slow, he began to rub the palm of my hand with the pad of his thumb. I snatched my hand back.

“No,” I told him, shaking my head.

He gave me a crooked smile, his eyebrows rising. “No? So you don’t want to understand magic then? Fine, let’s just get started on practice.”

I sighed. “No. I mean yes. Yes to the magic but no to the hand flirting. Practice later.”

Xan’s eyes sparkled dangerously. “You want to understand magic you need to understand connection. Everyone is connected to each other through magic, through Nature, through sex-”

“Okay Don Juan, just forget I asked.” I uncrossed my legs and readied myself to stand.

“It was just a joke Trin. Relax.” He leaned back on his elbows.

“Smoke?” Xan pulled a cigarette from behind his ear. I nodded. Why not? It’s not like there was anything better to do these days than get lung cancer. It seemed like one of the more pleasant ways to go.

He sat up and pulled a lighter out from one of many pants pockets and lit it for me. Digging around in another pocket he emerged with a pack of cigarettes and shook one loose for himself.

“Drink?” He asked, pulling a flask out of another pocket.

I started laughing.

He frowned. “What?”

“You just remind me of the guy in prison who can get whatever you need or something.”

“Oh yeah, been to prison fată?”

I blushed. “Yeah, I was a bad, bad girl.”

He snorted. “Who can’t shoot a gun.”

I scrunched up my nose at him and made a face. He responded by snapping his teeth at me, a gesture that had my heart racing.

“So you think I got it all in my pants, huh Trin?” He grinned.

Blushing again, I looked away.

Instead of teasing me more, he lowered his voice. “Explain this all to me one more time Trin, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it. You say Gerik has some sort of power over you?”

I swallowed. “I can’t control myself around him. He calls all the shots, it doesn’t matter if I don’t want anything to do with him, the second he touches me I turn into....” I lowered my eyes, embarrassed.

“A sex crazed porn star,” I whispered.

Xan rolled his eyes. “You don’t need to understand magic to understand what’s happening. It’s real simply fată. Gerik is one powerful Roma and he’s been given every natural blessing there is. He’s using magic to get what he wants and what he wants right now is you.” The bitterness in Xan’s voice wasn’t hard to miss.

“There has to be more to it than that,” I told him. “I get the feeling he knows what I’m thinking sometimes. And the way he smells, why doesn’t anyone else smell it? And why does it hurt when I kiss you?”

“Alright, say there is something magical going on between the two of you that Gerik had nothing to do with.” Xan looked skeptical. “That leaves Natural magic. Something no one can fight against.”

I threw up my hands in exasperation. “I wouldn’t know, would I!”

“Alright Trin, what if I were to tell you that Natural magic is just as paramount to life on this world as the sun? That magic has its dirty little hands in everything and everyone. That it’s in the air you breathe, the food you eat and without it you wouldn’t have ever even been born. None of us would have existed, humans and animals alike. What if I told you all of that Trin… what would you do? Succumb to Gerik’s twisted version of love?”

My mouth did a dying fish thing.

“I… is uh, is everything you said true?”

“Before I say anything, I want you to know that I’m breaking a whole lot of rules by discussing this with you. Jericho would kick me outta here without a second thought if he knew.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

He shrugged, then gave me a lazy smile. “I want something.”

Of course he did. This was Xan after all. The guy should just start handing out his price list.

I sighed, “What do you want?”

“A kiss.”

My stomach leapt into my throat. The kiss outside of Drina’s to prove to him that something was off about me had gone very wrong, which of course had been the point except it had been even worse than the first time. Not only flat out repulsed, my entire body had ached with the need to get away from him. Tears had even formed. Yet I persevered, for about one whole minute, until I felt like my body was going to explode from fighting with itself.

“What? Why a kiss? You saw what kissing you did to me.”

He lifted a shoulder and muttered, “Maybe I can make it better than the first two?”

I wasn’t inclined to believe that was going to happen.

“Forget it.” I stood up to go. I made it only maybe ten or twelve steps when I was suddenly grabbed, swung around and slammed against a pair of warm and wet Roma lips.

I cringed away from him. “Please don’t, it feels terrible Xan.”

“Prove to me that breaking this law, the most important one my people have, will amount to something,” He whispered, running the tip of his tongue along the seam of my lips.

His dark eyes sparkled dangerously. “Show me it will be worth it fată.”

His fingers crept under my top and began to dance along my spine. I shivered underneath his touch. Nothing he was doing was causing me any sort of discomfort; in fact, it was the opposite I was feeling.

When he cupped my bottom, squeezed hard and pulled me flush against him, my eyes shut involuntarily as an onslaught of brand new feelings poured through me.

Gods, what was happening to me?

Anticipation. Anxiety. Excitement. Complete and utter terror. So many unfamiliar emotions hit me at once.

He growled against my ear. “Open your eyes fată. Look at me when I touch you.”

My eyes fluttered open to meet his own. His eyes gave away everything he was thinking. Deep, dark, need that felt dangerous, but right. It wasn’t hard to see how Xan became addictive to the opposite sex.

“I want you Trin,” He whispered. His body moved tempestuously against mine.

The butterflies in my stomach amped up the Scottish jig they were already doing. Without thinking I grabbed unto his biceps and dug my fingernails into the roughened, scarred browned skin wrapped around solid muscle. He groaned against my mouth.

Oh gods. My body turned butter soft, my brain melted into girly mush.

Not yet sure exactly what I felt for Xan didn’t matter, his words had yielded me. Pulling my lips apart with his teeth, he found his entrance. A heartbeat later, a blast of frigid cold air tore through me at the same time the resistance to Xan kicked in. Startled, I pulled away. I looked up at Xan confused, but he was peering over top of me. I followed his gaze toward the creek where Gerik stood.

My heart dropped.

“He’s going to kill me,” I whispered, inching around Xan to take cover behind him.

He turned toward me, his face grim. “No fată he won’t, take a good look at him.”

Shielding my eyes to block out the sun, I peered across the front lot. Gerik, legs spread apart, arms crossed, wore a very satisfied smile on his face. He knew. He’s always known I could never be with anyone but him.

“He knows I can’t kiss you,” I whispered. “That’s why he smiling.”

Xan made a dismissive noise in the back of his throat. Then, in a move that could only be considered either stupid or bold, Xan flipped Gerik off and stared defiantly back at him.

I stretched out on the grass that night, staring up at a star filled sky. My heart was aching for the simplicity of my life before magic.

I wiped away an errant tear.

If magic can’t save us, if it can’t fix the world and strips people of their free will, then what’s the point in any of it? I didn’t even want to acknowledge its existence let alone be a pawn in one of its games.

Xan had said there were two kinds of magic. The four elements represented light magic, consisting of Earth, Air, Water and Fire. Dark magic, the fifth element, is Spirit. Spirit is the opposite of light magic. If life was light, than death was dark. Spirit could only occur if light magic is corrupted, in turn disrupting the balance of Nature.”

“What constitutes as disruption?” I’d asked. “Who get’s to decide? It there some magical judge and jury?” Xan had shrugged.

“It’s Nature fată. She gives the gifts and she doles out the consequences too. Like I said before, she’s everywhere, got a hand in everything, there isn’t anything that happens that she didn’t make happen herself or doesn’t know about.”

If that were really true that would mean none of us had any real power here, magically capable or not. We were human, specks of dusts really. Ultimately expendable. It didn’t make sense that such a great force of power like Nature would have allowed such an incredible devastation to befall our race if we really mattered to her.

“Is that what this is about?” I’d asked as a horrifying thought crossed my mind. “Is Nature trying to rid the world of us for something someone’s done wrong?”

Xan’s face took on a surprisingly serious look. “I have no idea Trin. It’s one damn scary thought though.”

Then he had shrugged again, and his humor returned. “Or maybe it has nothing to do with magic at all. Maybe this is some weird experimental disease gone awry that the government accidentally released.”

“Thank you, captain x-files,” I’d said sarcastically, saluting him.

“Okay fată, maybe it was all just a terrible coincidence then.”

I doubted that. I was beginning to think there were no such things as coincidences anymore and was really leaning toward magic…er Nature having her creepy hand in getting Gerik and I together.

Xan had somehow honed in on my thoughts. “Gerik?” He asked. I nodded.

“You’re still you Trin. You always will be. No matter what’s happening with Gerik. Nothing can change that, not magic, not Nature, not anyone.”

I’d thought of Gerik and what happened every time he touched me. “No.” I’d shaken my head sadly. “I think you’re wrong. Gerik can change me. I’m not myself around him. He has the power to change me completely and I have no way to fight it.”

Just like Nature, he has all the control.