Soul Bound (6 page)

"Oh God, Nathan!  I'm so sorry." I gave him back
my hand, ashamed that I hadn't spared a thought for what he might have gone
through. 

"My father had ruled for centuries and, if he had his way, I
would not have been told about the duties I would one day inherit until I
reached maturity on my thirtieth birthday.  But when he died, my training
began immediately, overseen by Elias."

"But if you are the one with the supernatural ability, why
did Elias need me?"

"My father's death was a timely reminder that our kind must
procreate, Jess.  Only the son of a High Priest can rule the Magi and
Elias sees it as imperative that I produce an heir soon."

"And I couldn't do that without being reborn?"

Nathan shrugged.  "Probably, but there are other, more
important reasons that a ruler needs a mate.  In the long and distant
past, many of our kind abused their power out of loneliness, driven half mad by
loving, losing and burying one wife after another."  His grip on my
hand tightened and his brow creased.  "I understand a little of that
now.  Staying away from you has been the hardest thing I've ever done and
the thought of spending eternity without you tortured me.

"But I refused when Elias told me it was time to claim
you.  I had no choice in whether I accepted the responsibilities that were
thrust upon me and I thought I could protect you from facing the same end as my
mother."

"How could they die?  I thought the Magi were
immortal?"

"There are ways our kind can die but not by any natural
means.  It takes a very special type of magic - a dark art that only few
have in their power.  Warlocks and Magi are natural enemies, both of us
gifted with supernatural abilities and engaged in a battle that has already
lasted for many millennia and will no doubt continue for many more - until one
of us is wiped out."

I felt like a pawn, moved around at will and without a second
thought, in a cosmic game of chess.  "So I've been living all this
time with a death sentence hanging over my head?  Don't you think I had
the right to know?"

"Nobody told me that my feelings for you were significant
until I reached maturity and finished my training a couple of years ago. 
And I was still a kid when I lived in Seattle.  How could I tell you what
I did not know myself?"

"You knew where I was.  Surely, finding me and telling
me what was happening was easier than saving me from a hail of bullets and
leaving me to explain to my colleagues how I was still alive."  I
warmed to my topic, getting to my feet and almost stumbling over the horrible
garment I was wearing when it wrapped around my ankles.  I bunched the
material in my fists and shook it at Nathan.  "Is
this
better?  Robbing me of the chance to decide for myself if I want to be
offered up as some kind of sacrificial lamb?"

Nathan surged towards me, grabbing my shoulders so I had no
choice but to face him.  "I only wanted to spare you from sharing my
burden.   I couldn't know that one day Elias would take matters into
his own hands and force me to save you."

I pushed him away, ignoring the flash of pain in his eyes at my
rejection.  "That's just it, Nathan.  You still influenced my
destiny, regardless of your motives.  You did just as much harm by not
telling me."

"There was a time, a couple of years ago, when I would have
tried.  But when I looked for you, I found you with someone else, someone who
seemed to make you happy.  I vowed then that I would let you live a normal
life."

"Normal?  Can my life ever be normal again?  Can I
go back to my job, my friends...my family?"

"You can, for a while.  Eventually, others will see you
are not aging and will start asking questions. You will outlive everyone you
know and love."

He delivered the words in a flat monotone as if trying to soften
their meaning, but they still shook me to the core.  I'd been given the
gift of eternal life, a gift I hadn't asked for and didn't want. 
"And what happens if I choose to go back to that life and don't want any
more to do with you?"

Nathan turned away, leaving me staring at his profile, and the
muscle ticking in his jaw.  "Then I will respect your decision and
you will be left in peace." 

I didn't know what to say, or even what to think.  I could
do nothing to put things back as they were before and, in his defense, neither
could he.  The silence hung between us for long minutes until he turned to
me again and the defeat in his tone tore at my heart.

"Is that it then?  You are leaving me?" 

I couldn't give him an answer. T
he
desire to stay with him was primal and powerful but it didn't diminish the
enormity of the injustice that had been done to me in his name.  His gaze
locked onto mine and the agony in his eyes told me he'd read my mind and knew
what I was about to say.  Tears blurred my vision but I scrubbed them
away, pain replaced by anger at the certain knowledge that even my thoughts
were no longer my own.

Chapter Four

I knew I was fighting a losing battle
to stay away from Nathan about a week after I got back to Seattle.  The
sense that I was hurting him deeply by my actions settled in my chest one night
and I just couldn't shift it.  I tried to muster up the anger that had
been protecting me from the pain of losing him, but suddenly it just wasn't
there anymore.

Five minutes on the Vegas hotel's web
site reassured me that he was dealing with our separation well enough to
perform his act. Social media sites contained recent images from people who had
been his shows in the last few days.  I could see he was ok, in human
terms, but it didn't make me feel any better.  Nathan was a Magi and I had
no idea if his outward appearance would tell me what I needed to know.

One picture in particular caught my
attention and I couldn't stop staring at it.  The camera had captured his
essence in a way that made me ache to reach out and touch him.  He had
stared down the lens at the moment the picture was taken and the feeling that
he was looking right at me left me breathless.  I slammed the lid down on
my laptop and backed away from it like I thought it might lunge at me. 
Then I laughed for the first time in a week, convinced that the cheese had
finally slipped off my cracker and I'd gone totally insane.

I crawled into bed even though I wasn't
tired but it seemed the only sensible thing to do in the middle of the
night.  The sound of a distant siren caught my attention and a surge of
adrenaline raced through me as the cop in me reacted to the alarm.  For
the first time in many weeks, I missed my job and I knew I was ready to go
back.  I rearranged my pillows and snuggled down in the bed, determined to
get a little sleep so my head would be clear when I called the captain in the morning.

But even as I closed my eyes, I knew
there would be no escape from thoughts of Nathan because I would only dream of
him again, the way I had every night.  At first, I thought he caused the
dreams but when some of them became nightmares about Warlocks killing him, I
knew he would never try to scare me in such a
way.     

My mind latched on to the topic of
Warlocks and even as it brought back the terrifying images from my nightmares,
something hit me like a ton of bricks.  If Nathan could die, then so could
I.  He'd said that Magi weren't easy to kill but it wasn't
impossible…which meant that in terms of fate and destiny, I would still die
when I was meant to.

I rolled onto my back and gave up
trying to sleep for the time being. It felt a bit weird to be so perversely
pleased by thoughts of my own death but I was, and not because I wanted to die
any time soon.  I'd been angry at Nathan for saving me but if Elias hadn't
put me in harm's way, he wouldn't have been forced to intervene.  
And if that made him guilty of interfering with fate, then I was just as
guilty.  As a cop, I'd stopped many situations escalating into violence
and bloodshed and I'd saved people from getting hurt. 

I groaned and buried my head under the
pillow, shame crawling over my skin.  Nathan hadn't done anything wrong.

Jess?

I surged upright, knocking the pillow
onto the bed stand and sending a glass of water crashing to the floor.  I
hadn't heard his voice in days. He had tried to get me to open my mind to him
just after I left Vegas.  Each time he'd tried to connect with me, my
brain screamed
leave me alone
- over and over - making it impossible for
him to get through. It didn't take him long to realize I wanted to be left
alone. I didn't want to speak to him until I was ready and treating me like a
computer terminal that he could
ping
any time he felt like it wasn't
going to make that happen any quicker.  

Yes?
  I scrunched my face up and clenched my fists,
uncertain how hard I needed to concentrate in order make him to hear me.

How are you?

My toes curled at the sound of his
voice and my body went into overdrive, attempting to wrench the decision about
what would happen next away from my brain, and send us all running back to the
man who had made us feel so good.

I'm ok...maybe a little embarrassed
that I acted like such an idiot but hey, what's new?  Where are you?

In bed…thinking how you should be
here beside me.

I could almost see him lying in his
massive bed in the room with the indoor borealis, his beautiful body sprawled
across the sheets while his eyes beckoned me closer…and suddenly, I longed to
be with him.

I wish I was with you right now.
  I got no answer but I didn't regret telling him how
I felt.  Maybe he was mad at me because I'd been so unfair to him? 
Or maybe he just hadn't heard me.  I squeezed my eyes shut a little harder
and tried again. 
Nathan?

"You don't have to do that you
know."   I felt his breath waft over my cheek and in that moment
I realized he was no longer just in my head, he was here.  I opened my eyes
and turned towards the sound of his voice to find him standing beside me. 
Nathan reached down and smoothed the frown from my brow as I stared at him in
confusion, too stunned at discovering him in my bedroom to understand what he
meant.  He gave me a lopsided grin.  "You don't need to
concentrate so hard.  You only need to think of me and I can hear
you."

"Oh," I said, wondering how
long he'd watched me pulling faces.  My cheeks got warm and I knew I was
blushing but I didn't really care that much.  I leapt out of bed and threw
my arms around his neck.

"God I've missed you," he
muttered into my hair and pulled back to cup my face in his hands as he pressed
his lips to mine.  I groaned the instant he took my mouth and I clung to
him, long after he tried to pull away.  Eventually, I let him go because I
could sense he wanted to say something and I owed him the opportunity. 

 "We should talk," he
said, grabbing my wrists in his hands as he took a step back.  "Jess,
I can't help what I am.  Do you think for one second that I want to steal
your love or force you to be with me against your will?  I could kill
Elias for robbing you of the choice, but it was my fault it happened.  You
are right; I should have simply told you. But what's done is done.  Is it
really so horrifying for you to imagine sharing your life with me?"

His words sobered me and although I
wanted him so badly I could hardly breathe; I needed to make him understand why
I'd been so angry at him. "No, of course not.  But the choice should
have been mine."

His laughter caught me by
surprise.  "Freedom to choose how our lives turn out is a luxury
denied to most.  Do you think I chose to fall in love with you? 
Nobody decides who to love, they just do.  And once they embrace and accept
the fact that they love someone else, don't they too give up their free will by
choosing to be with that person, no matter what?"

I couldn't deny the logic in his
words.  In a way, I
had
chosen Nathan, all those years ago. 
Our relationship hadn't followed a natural progression but, faced with the
knowledge of who and what he was, would I have turned him away?  Would I
have refused the chance of eternal happiness with the man I'd been in love with
for half of my life?  I knew the answer to that question and, as soon as I
thought it, so did Nathan.  The beaming smile adorning his handsome face
told me as much.

"That's gotta stop," I
warned, unable to resist his infectious laughter.  "I don't like you
knowing what I'm thinking before I do."

"I'll teach you how to keep me out
Jess, I swear."

His lips claimed mine in a soul rending
kiss that conveyed so much he hadn't said.  I pulled away with a sigh,
overwhelmed by what I was thinking and feeling.  Nathan gave me one of
those half-smiles I knew so well and I closed my eyes against the urge to fall
to my knees and beg him to take me to bed. 

"Don't you want to sleep?" he
said, for once annoying me by ignoring my unspoken plea.

I nodded.  "Yes, but I want
you more."

"You've already got me." 
He pulled at the tie holding my robe around me and pushed it off my shoulders,
sending it cascading down my naked body in a billow of white.

His gaze tore across my naked body but
before he touched me and made me forget what I wanted to do, I ripped off his
t-shirt and slid my fingers inside the elastic of his pants and shoved them
down over his hips.  Nathan kicked them off and stepped closer, gritting
his teeth and hissing when I wrapped both of my hands around his warm, hard
cock.  He grabbed my shoulders, dropping his forehead to rest against
mine, his breath coming in ragged pants when I tugged on him.