"After three months?"
I shrugged. "More or less." He turned away, but not before I saw the frown on his face. "What's wrong?"
He shook his head. "I'd rather not be with you if it's only going to last that long. I think in the end it would be too hard."
I swallowed, pulling away from him. He had a point. "You're an all-or-nothing sort of guy?"
"I'm all about absolutes."
My brows creased as I thought about it. Had I crushed those guys' hearts? I'd never let it get serious enough, and most of the times they'd shrugged it off and moved on. But I had a feeling that no matter what I told William and no matter how much I tried to prepare him for it, he wouldn't recover easily from me leaving.
He was right about this, and I had to stop pushing for it. He wanted something more than I could give him...and I couldn't demand that he expect anything less than what he wanted.
He wanted me. And as amazing and wonderful as that made me feel, I could not give him what he wanted. That was my failing, not his.
I was stuck in this endless cycle of momentary gratification. Of chasing the next shiny thing, following the wind. Of...running away.
Chapter 24
William
I'm feeling melancholy as I drive her home tonight, unable to shake the feelings we'd stirred up--a curious mix of happiness and sadness, of hopes and losses and strong desire.
This heaviness never seems to go away. Every time I look at her, the weight increases, twists and even makes me a little breathless. It's like I'm already losing something, and she's still right here. Not to mention, she was never mine to lose.
But I can't help it. I want her to be mine. And in those moments when I brought her to climax with my hands and mouth and tongue, she became my work of art. She became mine. For those few minutes when she surrendered herself to me, I'd readily claimed her. It felt powerful. And addictive.
The car is no longer moving, and neither is Jenna. She's looking out the window at her apartment building with her hands still in her lap. I keep my hands on the steering wheel at the ten o'clock and two o'clock positions as if I'm still driving. I'm staring straight out the windshield. I have no idea how to say the words I want to say.
"Are you worried?" I blurt suddenly.
Her head turns slowly until she's facing me. "About what?"
"About me losing the duel. About you not getting your tiara back."
She smiles weakly and places a hand lightly on my upper arm. I resist the urge to shrug off that touch, even though it's making my skin crawl. Because her touch is something I don't think I could refuse.
"You're not going to lose," she states. "I believe in you."
"The tiara is very valuable." It's not a question, but I have been wondering its worth for a while. Its personal worth.
She nods.
"Is it made of diamonds and precious gems?"
"Not diamonds, no. It does have monetary value, but that's not why it's important to me. It's more about sentimental value."
"What's the sentimental value, then?"
She licks her lips and looks at me for a long time. In fact, the silence stretches out so long that I think she's not going to answer.
After a long sigh, she clears her throat and speaks. "I've never talked about this to anyone outside my own family, so it's kind of hard to put into words. It's so rooted in emotion that I'm not sure you'll understand."
"I'm not a robot, Jenna. I have emotions."
She smiles. "I know you do." She winds a long strand of her bright angel hair around her index finger, then tucks it behind her ear. I'm transfixed by the gesture. Not only do I want to draw and paint that ear, I also want to feel that soft lobe in my mouth and between my teeth again.
"It's hard for me just..." She shakes her head and sniffs. "When I was little, I didn't want to come to the US. I told you that. It was scary, and my parents weren't coming with me. I also told you the story about my mom saying I'd live next to Mickey Mouse, but that isn't the real reason I agreed to leave."
I frown. "It isn't?"
"I mean, that actually happened, but what truly convinced me was my dad. He sat me down and made up this crazy story about how I was a secret princess and the tiara was my crown. It's true that tiara had been passed down in my family for a long time. It had been given to my grandma, who gave it to her only child, my father. My dad gave it to me on that day--the last day I ever saw him. He said he wanted me to be safe, so I had to hide in another country for a while and grow and learn and become educated so that I could come back and become the queen someday."
Now there are tears trailing out of the corners of her eyes, but she's laughing at the same time. I'm completely confused by this. Is she happy or sad? Or maybe both?
"You know how long I believed that story?" She hunched in her seat. "Far longer than I care to admit without dying from embarrassment."
"It makes sense." I nodded. "When we are little, we especially want to believe everything our parents tell us."
I'm trying to picture the events as she recounts them to me. I imagine her father, a man in his thirties, perhaps as blond as she is, or maybe dark-haired with a strong jaw. He's stroking her beautiful angel hair and telling her she'll be a queen someday, but his face is serious and he doesn't want her to know that he's afraid.
And suddenly I'm even sadder.
"The tiara was his last gift to you?"
She looks down at her hands, still folded in her lap. "I don't think of it exactly like that, but yes, that is true."
"I assumed it was valuable to you, but I had no idea it had that kind of personal value. I don't understand something though."
"What's that?"
"If it means so much to you, why did you put it up for the loan?"
Her mouth thins. "It was a last resort. I did it for Maja, my sister. She wanted to get married, but her fiance's family wouldn't allow it until the bride's family could pay for the wedding. She never asked for the money, but she also doesn't know what I had to do in order to get it. I'm never going to tell her. She is expecting me to bring the tiara with me to Bosnia so that she can wear it on her wedding day."
"Why didn't you tell her?"
She shrugs and leans forward, rubbing her hands over her face. "Why do you ask so many questions?"
"I'm sorry. I guess sometimes I just don't understand things that are easy for others."
She turns to me. "All this time you thought it was just some old, valuable piece of jewelry with no feelings attached to it. Yet you vowed to get it back for me without knowing why I did it or why it was important to me."
I have no idea what to say, so I don't answer her. It wasn't a question anyway.
"These past few weeks of training, of working with me..." She trailed off and shook her head.
I know she thinks these were unpleasant sacrifices for me, but I'd hardly call spending time with her a punishment.
She shakes her head. "You must have thought I was so shallow and frivolous to have just hocked it like that."
"It didn't matter what your reasons were, Jenna. What mattered to me was that you wanted it back and it was important to you. I didn't need to know why."
A look crosses her face--I can't tell what it means, but she's biting her pretty pink lip with her white teeth. "You're sweet."
"You say that a lot."
She smiles. "Because it's true."
"It might be true, but I do have a very good memory. Repetition isn't necessary."
She laughs. It's that beautiful, musical sound I love. "So what if I'm saying it to remind myself?"
Now I'm really confused. "You have to remind yourself that I'm sweet?"
She throws her head back, laughing, and I can't take my eyes off that long stretch of pale neck that I want to taste again.
"I guess I do." She turns to me again and leans forward, kissing me on the cheek. I turn my head to capture her lips with mine.
At first her kiss is unsure, tentative. Like she's
not sure if she wants to pull away or not. Before she can, I bring my hands up to hold her head to mine.
But she's resisting by keeping her mouth closed, and I get this weird idea in my head that if I can just get her to open up--open to me--that I can win her over and she'll be mine.
I need for her to be mine. I need her.
I'm tracing the line of her soft lips with my tongue, but she isn't opening fast enough for me so I decide to lay siege. To penetrate her defenses, my tongue pushes through the barrier of her lips with only little resistance. Then she sighs and relaxes against me.
I take her shoulders in my grasp and pull her against me. Suddenly, we are fused together, her heat and my heat. The feel of her against me is so, so good.
"Wil," she whispers. "Come upstairs with me."
I don't want to think about this or have this fight--and I know it will be a fight until she finally admits that I've won. Until then, I can't give in.
"Stay here and be my girlfriend," I reply.
I want to touch her again. All over her body. I want to make her moan. I want that painful tension in my body screaming for her to relieve it.
But more than anything, I want her to be mine.
Her hand presses against my chest and she pushes away, avoiding my eyes. Which is good because I really don't want to look into them. My stomach feels as if I've just swallowed eighty pounds of steel.
"I should go," she says breathlessly. Then she slowly leans back, opens the car door and then even more slowly climbs out, as if giving me the chance to change my mind.
I won't.
I can't.
Time is running short, but I can still make this happen
***
The following Sunday, Jenna and I go to the Santa Ana Zoo together in search of more crowds. Afterward, we end up at my dad's house for another family dinner. Kim has invited everyone she could think of, apparently. Along with our regular group, some of Mia's friends are here, including Heath--who mostly sits in a corner and drinks beer--Alex and Kat. Jenna is spending most of her time with the girls, and I'm stuck watching her from afar.
After a while, I feel the need to retreat, so I excuse myself to the bathroom and then slip into my old room at the back of the house. There, I take inventory of and dust my all-but-forgotten D&D figurines. It's been more than eight months since I've painted any. My job, blacksmithing and sword training have consumed the majority of my waking hours. I'm arranging the figurines on their shelf when Jenna enters and looks around.
"Mia was right! She said that you'd be back here."
"She knows me well." I point to the only chair in the room. "I was sitting in that chair when I first met her twenty-two months ago." Something I said amuses her because her smile grows wide and her teeth are showing. I can never tell if someone is finding me amusing or ridiculous, so I proceed regardless. "The night I met her, I knew that Adam was serious about her. It was the first time he'd ever brought a woman with him to family dinner."
"Well, seeing as they're getting married, I'd say you were right."
I turn back to the figurines. "I'm seldom right about stuff like that, but I'm glad I wasn't wrong about Mia and Adam."
"It seems you're not the only one. Not only did Adam find a fiancee, but your dad found a new wife when he met her mom. That's such a cool story. I think that Mia and Adam think so too--until Jordan brings up the whole step-cousin thing."
She watches me for a moment, then says, "I don't think you need to worry about them not getting married. They've been through a lot. If that didn't break them, nothing will."
"I just think it makes sense to make it official." I shrug. "I'm not an expert, but I like things finalized and settled."
"Well," she says with a small laugh as she reaches up to finger a button on my shirt, "there's always their bet--"
I tense, my face flushing with heat. "Do not talk about that bet!"
She laughs again but doesn't remove her finger. I grab her around the wrist and hold her hand there. She looks up into my eyes, and I have nanoseconds to escape her gaze.
"I don't like it when things don't go according to plan. Adam and Mia should get it over with if they know that's what they want to do. What's the point in waiting? I like to have everything figured out ahead of time. I like to be certain of the future."
She bites her lip. "Life doesn't always work out that way, Wil. I once thought I knew exactly what I'd be doing with my future, but..." Her voice trails off and it sounds sad again.
I can smell her hair as she turns to look at the figurines. I take mental note of the ones she admires. Maybe I'll give a few to her later. I realize that I'm still holding her wrist and she's not pulling away from me.
"Goddess, it's been ages since I've played D&D. I miss it. I never collected figurines like you do, but I have lots and lots of dice."
I glance at the dresser behind my worktable. "My old dice are in here too."
"Really? Can I see them?"
"You want to see my dice?"
She smiles. "Yes, like any self-respecting geek girl, I do have a dice fetish."
I move away from her to dig through the drawers to find my old bag of dice. Then I empty the worn velvet bag out onto my worktable. A pile of dice roll out across the scratched and stained surface. They are all different colors and--as they're Dungeons and Dragons dice--all different shapes and sizes as well.
By some weird coincidence, Jenna picks up my lucky d20. It's amber colored with black numbers on the faces. The twenty-sided die, the most famous of all the types of dice used in D&D, is an icosahedron--a symmetrical polyhedron with twenty faces.
She rolls it across the table and...a natural twenty. She laughs. "Nat 20. It's my lucky night. Too bad we aren't playing."
"You and I could play."
Her brows rise. "Right now? Like...we could role-play something?"
I shrug. "I wasn't a Dungeon Master--I could never come up with the storylines. But I could be an average character, perhaps a blacksmith who sometimes moonlights as a knight."
She looks me up and down. "You're far from average." She folds her arms across her chest in a way that makes her t-shirt tighten over her breasts. I instantly recall the vision of her spread out on my couch, making those noises of pleasure when I was touching and kissing her breasts. The memory alone makes me hard. Painfully hard.
I fight with myself to will that image away before it threatens to pull my attention completely away from the reality standing right in front of me. I tear my eyes from her chest, adjust the way I'm standing and hope she doesn't notice that I'm now sexually aroused when I shouldn't be.
"I could be a wayfaring fortune-teller and secret sorceress. We're at an inn somewhere, and we've run into each other in the pub. What do you say to me?"
I smile at her willingness to play the game. "I wonder what the chances are that you'll kiss me?"
Her brows rise again. Good, I've surprised her. With a smile, she turns back to my pile of dice and pulls out two ten-sided dice. A roll of these dice will determine a percentile score. If a character has a percentage chance of doing something, the score on the two dice will show their chance of accomplishing it.
"Let's say that right now you have a five percent chance of getting a kiss from me as a complete stranger. Do you wish to make that attempt?" she asks.
I think about that for a moment. "Can I do things to improve my chances?"
"Of course, we're role-playing!" She smiles. "But I'm not going to tell you what they are."
"Of course not. It wouldn't be a game worth playing if you did that. I'll offer to buy you a drink." I pause, thinking. "Then I signal the barkeep to buy the beautiful lady whatever she wishes to drink."
She considers that for a moment, handling the dice. "Okay...that's nice. Is there a limit on what you'll pay? What if I wish for the most expensive glass of champagne?"
"I'll order a glass of Dom Perignon for my lady," I say.
She smiles again, her teeth gleaming.
"That has increased your chance by fifteen percent. You now have a twenty percent chance of getting a kiss from me."
I frown. "That's only one in five. I don't like those odds. I'd like to increase them. What if I tell you how beautiful you are?"
"Hmm. I'm waiting," she says, cocking her head to the side. "What do you want to say to me?"
"That your eyes are the same blue as the water in the famous Turkish salt flats called Pamukkale. The water in the travertine pools is a pure reflection of the sky--pale and pristine. They are the exact color of your eyes." She swallows and I continue, "And your hair is shiny and golden like angel hair. And your skin is soft--"
"Wait, how do you know my skin is soft? We've just met."
"Because..." I hesitate, trying to think of what to say, other than the fact that I have stroked that skin. I've run my hands across her smooth belly, her rounded breasts, her soft thighs. These thoughts aren't making my erection any easier to handle.
"It looks soft," I say. "Like silk."
"Okay," she says with a nod. "And I had no idea about those--those Turkish salt pools."
"Pamukkale. It means 'cotton castle' because of the white calcifications. But the water is powder blue. Like your eyes. I've seen pictures of it, and whenever I look at your eyes, I think of those pools."
She blinks. "Oh..."
"In ancient times, people bathed in the water because they believed it brought them special blessings."
"Are you saying you want to bathe in my water?"
I frown. "Umm..."
She laughs. "Never mind." She fiddles with the dice in her hand again. "Your chances are getting better. Fifty percent now. Want to risk it and roll?"
I prefer to weight the odds in my favor, so I reach out and take a strand of that celestial hair and tuck it behind her ear. Her big blue eyes widen as she looks at my face. Our eyes narrowly miss as I shift my gaze lower, to where that t-shirt is covering a chest that is moving faster due to an increased rate of respiration. "You are so beautiful that sometimes it's hard to breathe when I look at you."
She sways toward me for a moment, as if she's being pulled against her will. I steady her, my hand on her shoulder, and her eyelids droop. She licks her lips. "Wow. You, um...you sure figure out what you're doing quickly."
We're standing very close now, and I can feel my heartbeat in my throat. Jenna swallows and clears her throat. "If you roll now, I'd give you an eighty-five percent chance of being able to kiss me."