Remembered (30 page)

“Who owns that?” she asked.

“You do,” Sara replied. “I hope you like it.”

“What do you mean by that?” Annie questioned.

“I realized that you didn’t have a lot of clothes with you,
so yesterday, when you were out with Markum, I ran to town and bought this for
you. I thought the gold would compliment your brown hair and pretty brown
eyes,” Sara explained. “I thought that you’d want something extra special to
wear when you see Kellus again.”

Overcome with emotion, imagining Sara shopping for pretty
things to give her, and so moved by her kindness, Annie flung her arms around
Sara’s neck. “Thank you so much,” she mumbled into Sara’s neck. “This is just
like having a mother of my own again.”

“I’m not looking for thanks,” Sara replied, patting Annie on
the back. “And in a sense, I am your mother. I would have loved to make a fuss
for your wedding. This is the least I can do.”

Cora and Zifini appeared in the doorway, holding small
bunches of long strings.

“Sit down, Annie,” Cora demanded. “We’re going to do your
hair.”

The younger women set about tying strings to the top of
Annie’s hair, and wrapping individual strands around each one—chatting happily
while Annie’s stomach did somersaults—so that by the time her hair was dry and
the strings removed, tiny ringlets, more pronounced than usual, cascaded down
her back.

“I’ll just go get dressed,” Annie said, picking the skirt
gently off the bed.

“This is to go with it,” Sara announced, lifting the folded
white cloth from the foot of the bed and handing it to her daughter-in-law.

Annie slid into the skirt and looked at the top that Sara
bought to compliment it. It was a sleeveless, white, bodice-style top with two
panels of white satin down the front, held together with a white satin ribbon
threaded through both sides. She squeezed into it and adjusted it around her
slender waist, noting how pronounced her cleavage looked.

“You look so beautiful,” Zifini said when Annie walked back
into the bedroom.

“One last thing,” Sara said, placing a tight, white, satin
choker around Annie’s neck. She stepped a couple of feet back and inspected her
daughter-in-law thoroughly. “Absolutely stunning,” she mumbled. “Just in time;
Kellus should be here any minute.”

Her statement hit Annie like a ton of bricks. She bent over
clutching her stomach.

“What is it?” Cora asked.

“Nerves,” Annie moaned.

“Let’s get her downstairs,” Sara stated. “She needs water, I
think.”

They walked into the kitchen to find Markum and Max already
back from the farm.

“You look like a vision, Annie,” Max said. “I’ve never seen
you look so beautiful.”

“It seems fortune favors my brother,” Markum added. “If I
must admit the truth, I’m feeling slightly jealous of him at this moment.”

She managed a weak
‘thank you’
to both men.

She sat in silence, sipping on a glass of water, while the
rest of the family chatted and buzzed around her.

Sara suddenly stuck her head around the doorframe. “Tol and
Kellus are approaching. I see them on The Ocean Road.”

Annie choked on a mouthful of water.

Almost immediately, she heard the sound of a horse and
carriage, faint at first, but growing louder with each passing second until it
was right outside the front door.

Everyone walked outside to greet her husband—everyone but
her.

She stood frozen to the spot.

She suddenly had an extreme attack of self-conscious energy
and couldn’t think straight.

Luckily, Markum had noticed and took a step back. “Will you
be using your legs to go greet your husband, or do you need me to carry you out
to him like a small child,” he asked, clearly amused by her panic attack. She
gave him a pleading look that seemed to soften him, removing the smirk. He put
his hand on her back and pushed her forward gently. “His anticipation is no
doubt equal to yours. It’ll be fine,” he said kindly.

She walked through the front door, with Markum by her side,
to a view that was almost blinding.

There, standing next to Tol’s carriage, was the most divine
man she’d ever seen. He radiated beauty as though there was a light glowing out
from inside him.

He stood looking just as she’d seen him many times before:
wearing a blue apprentice uniform.

The sight of him brought back so many memories and with
them, so many intense emotions.

She gasped.

All of her senses began to shut down at once. Her head
filled with white noise and she could no longer hear the sound of the ocean, or
the breathing of the six other people that stood near, nor could she see
anything beyond the vision in front of her.

Their eyes locked and stayed that way for a lifetime, it
seemed.

She was vaguely aware of their audience growing uneasy at
the prolonged silence, though they seemed a thousand miles away.

Ages passed.

She could not move or think. She could only hold his gaze with
hers.

Finally, Kellus moved. He raised his arms and clasped his
hands together behind his head, pointing his elbows forward.

With his eyes still locked with hers, his face crumbled.

A sob burst from her throat.

His shoulders began to heave up and down quickly.

She stumbled forward, blinded by tears.

She drew closer; her legs were concrete, heavy. Time and
space began to slow, to lose their natural tendencies.

She moved until she was close enough to throw herself at
him.

He caught her, crushed her to his chest, and sobbed freely,
utterly unashamed of his emotions.

All the years of loneliness, all the wants, all the needs,
came pouring out of her through her tears, purging her, freeing her.

Kellus fell to his knees, buried his face in her belly,
gripping her hips tightly with both hands. His sobbing vibrated through her
entire body.

She looked up to the silent crowd to see that she and Kellus
did not cry alone. Cora held both of Zifini’s hands in hers; both girls leaned
into each other, crying along with them.

Sara held her husband with one arm and frantically dried her
eyes with her free hand.

Max and Markum looked down at the ground as though they
could penetrate the earth with their glares.

Kellus folded his arms around the small of her back, his
emotions intensifying.

She cradled his head in her arms, reveling in the feel of
his hair against her skin.

Only Tol moved. He approached them and put his hand on
Kellus’s shoulder. “Kellus,” he said gently, pulling him away from Annie. “Son,
take Annie to your bedroom. You should be alone with her now.”

Kellus nodded and jumped to his feet.

He turned to face her, but it was too much for them both,
the intensity of the reunion, the overwhelming emotions that blasted through
them equally.

They turned away from one another, both breathing heavily.

Then she felt a familiar hand on her face, an angel’s touch.
She turned to see his tear-soaked eyes on her, a hint of a smile on his lips.
“Annie,” he whispered so quietly that she barely heard him.

He touched her shoulder. His hand slid all the way down her
arm until his fingers found hers. Clasping hands, they turned to walk towards
the house, leaving the others to stare after them.

“Will you be joining us for dinner later?” Sara called out.

“Not tonight, mother,” he replied without looking back.

They walked up both flights of stairs in silence.

Kellus looked straight ahead. His face was stone,
expressionless.

They entered their room. His hand reached over her shoulder,
pushing the door hard, slamming it shut.

He brought his hand to the back of her neck, resting his
gaze on her. His eyes searched hers, his expression still blank. “Is this a
dream?” he asked quietly. He lowered his head until their eyes were even. “Is
this a demon playing mind tricks again because I can’t take any more?”

She shook her head, losing herself in his beautiful eyes.

“I can’t take any more,” he said again. “I can’t endure
another dream of you, only to drown in despair when I wake up.”

“This is no dream,” she whispered, turning her head to kiss
his wrist. She leaned forward, eager to taste his lips, but he pulled his head
back. A pain shot through her heart—rejection.

His eyes continued to search hers, darting around her features.
Then a beautiful sad smile broke on his face, his bottom lip quivered with
emotion. “Annie,” he said again, finally convinced that she stood before him.

He grabbed her head with both hands and pulled her face back
to his.

Their kiss was beyond anything she remembered.

Her legs weakened. She was at risk of tumbling to the
ground. She wanted to lose herself in him. She wanted every molecule of her
body to twist around his. She wanted him completely.

She tasted salt as he pushed his tongue into her mouth,
sobbing and moaning loudly, his tears of joy mingling with hers.

His kiss became almost violent, but she thoroughly
understood the urgency. His hands were roaming all over her, pulling at her
hair one second, digging into her hips the next, then riding over her breasts
and down to her thighs, trying to reacquaint with every inch of her body at
once.

He broke from her and ran his tongue up her throat. “Annie,”
he growled. “I can’t…” he trailed off, pushing his body against her, biting
down on her ear gently.

His hands were everywhere at once.

She felt his fingers tuck into the elastic waistband of her
skirt, then a split second later, the skirt was being yanked down to her
ankles, along with her panties. She kicked them off her boots awkwardly,
without breaking away from his mouth.

“Need you,” he moaned into her neck.

His left hand moved behind her knee and lifted her leg up
while his right hand pulled at the bottoms of his apprentice uniform.

She screamed out loud as he impaled her against the door.
With one thrust, he buried himself in her as deep as he could go. He wrapped
his right arm around her waist to hold her in place while he hammered
mercilessly into her.

She thrashed her head around, crying and screaming, digging
her nails into his back, losing her mind in the erotic sensation.

“Annie!” he cried out, almost lifting her off the floor with
the force of his thrusts.

She found his mouth again. She pressed her lips to his,
desperate for him to enter it, to be filled by him every way possible, to be
unreservedly ravished by him.

When her release finally came, she shock violently, grinding
her teeth, then collapsed forward onto his shoulder, feeling the aftershocks
course through her.

She felt his body relax after one last push.

He wrapped his arms tight around her back and held her
silently, breathing heavily into her neck.

He pulled away and adjusted his uniform, then walked across
the room and sat on the foot of the bed.

Annie quickly shimmied back into her clothes and sat down
next to him.

Without looking at her, he took her hand and rested it on
his knee, twisted around his own. “Sorry,” he said quietly, looking down at the
floor. “Sorry, that wasn’t—” he swallowed hard. “That wasn’t how I imagined
making love to you for the first time after six months, but…” he shook his head
and shrugged his shoulders. He looked at her sideways, his top lip sucked into
his mouth. 

She fully understood the lack of words. How could one
convey, even begin to articulate, the ordeal of being whiplashed with so many
intense emotions at once?

“It’s okay,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder.

He pulled the hand that still held hers across his nose and
sniffed hard. “I died—” he said quietly, his voice trembling. He sniffed louder,
“—a thousand brutal deaths without you. And the dreams…those fucking dreams.” She
heard a sob escape his mouth.

“It’s okay,” she said again, having lost the ability to
think coherently.

He shuddered. “Listen to me,” he said with a sad chuckle,
“telling you about my ordeal, when
you
were the victim here.”

“We were both victims,” she replied. “And I want you to talk
about it, to get it all out. That’s the only way we’ll heal.”

He nodded and turned to face her. He placed his hands on
either side of her face. “I love you so much,” he said, his face twisting in
pain.

“I love you too,” she replied, touching his cheek in return.

He leaned forward and placed several tiny kisses on her
lips. “I dreamt of you almost every night,” he explained, looking into her
eyes. “The dreams were so real that every morning I’d wake up feeling the
intense pain, the freshness of the loss all over again. It was like being
trapped in hell, Annie.”

“Kellus,” she sobbed, her heart breaking for him, her mind
boggling at what he had to endure. If the tables had been turned, she would
have gone insane months ago.

“But the one I had a couple of days ago was the worst yet,”
he continued.

“Tell me,” she coaxed quietly.

“I dreamt that you lay beside me in my bed, your back to me,
sleeping peacefully. I could smell your hair, the smell of lavender off your
hair. I picked up a handful and buried my face in it. I could feel it on my
lips so clearly. Then I took one ringlet between my fingers and felt it slide
through. The silky feel was so real. I was convinced that I was awake the whole
time. When I finally did wake up, it was agony. I was empty and alone…well, not
exactly empty…it felt more like someone had splattered acid on my insides.”

She grimaced at the thought.

“I pulled a pillow across my face and screamed your name
into it. I couldn’t bear anymore. I fell on my hands and knees and begged the Universe
to send you back to me.”

“It was just—” she stopped what she was going to say, the
truth flooring her. “You called my name three times,” she said with conviction.
“You called me Annella, not Annie. And then another time, maybe an hour later.”