Page 139 of Gift from the Source
I need to see my handprint on her heart.
Anytime her hand grazes her mark, alerting my own, I have to hold myself up. The feeling is still new and it damn near brings me to my knees every time. I’ve repeatedly had to remind myself I can’t run my fingers across it all the time like I do my ring. It’s more difficult for me to keep my hands off it than it should be.
“Let’s go so we can beat them to the foyer,” I say and the damn dragon sprints to the door, leaving us all behind laughing.
Cas chuckles while muttering ‘idiot,’ then he casts out a huge cloud of shadows. Draken doesn’t have time to stop for them. The moment he runs into it, Cas snatches them back.
“Shit.” Draken laughs as he stumbles out of the darkness. “That was so fucking weird moving without you.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have left me behind then,” Cas says right before he cloaks the four of us and moves us to the central foyer.
The other three Nexuses, Keeper, and Gaster didn’t hang around for our horseplaying and are already standing here, staring around at the transformation that’s been made.
The foyer has been cleared of all my parents’ furniture and the grand spring decorations are everywhere. The wall that would normally separate this room and the one used for parties has been removed. It nearly triples the space in here and expands out toward the gardens. There’ll be plenty of room for an overwhelming number of people.
Unfortunately.
“Any minute, boys. This is always my favorite part,” my dad, Dyce, says as he rubs his handstogether.
All four of them stand tall together. Their eyes on the hallway our Primaries are going to walk out of. Their smiles are large, loving. Each feature is etched with a devotion that makes my fidgeting fingers freeze.
We’ve stood beside them like this before waiting for Mom, but this is the first time in my life I see through the same lens they have on. That reality seems to hit me like an earthquake.
“Yeah,”Tillman says softly, squeezing my shoulder as he steps to one side of me, Cas and Draken on the other.
I swallow roughly when the sound of Mom’s door shutting echoes down toward us. The first giggles float through the air with it and I pinpoint the sound of Willow’s out of the group like it’s nothing.
The small sound causes my heart to halt.
The seconds morph into hours.
The pattering of feet and laughing grows closer.
The air stalls in my lungs.
Then silence.
Everything ceases to exist the moment my whiskey eyes fall on her. Everyone other than the men my soul connects with fades from the room.
The mirth falling from her lips stops, but the smile she wears lights the room brighter than my gift ever could. Her shine doesn’t dim, but her face does transform as she starts her appraisal of the four of us.
The longer her gaze lingers, the more her lips part. Each quick breath falling from her chest steals what little air I’m able to intake. The silver tie around my neck that matches her eyes, her dress, the crown on her head pulls tighter. Suffocating me.
None of us can move.
We’re trapped in a stasis of staring at each other like this is the first time we’ve ever laid our eyes on one another.
“Fuck, she’s breathtaking,”Tillman whispers.
“She’s the light,”Cas declares.
“She’s truly a fucking goddess amongst us men,”Draken purrs.
My feet are moving before my mind even pushes out the words.
I need her. I need her touch.
“She’s more than that. She’s where it begins and ends. She’s life.”
