All helped flood me with the reminder of how desperately I had loved this man. Because these were the threads that had bound us together. Moments that had created the life we wove. His face became indelibly etched on my brain. I saw Leandro when I slept, when he was outside and I was in, when I was away on assignment and desperate to return to my simple existence. Everywhere I turned, he was there.
...All of a sudden, I yearned to take those emotions blazing in his eyes and wrap them around my lifeless heart. He could resuscitate it. I knew he could. The prospect both thrilled and terrified me.
Though my silence extended longer than I would have normally allowed it, Leandro didn’t push me to speak. He waited for me to catch up to where he’d been for centuries, and I knew, deep inside, he’d wait even longer if that was what it took.
And as difficult as it was to believe I’d ever be so foolhardy to do what he claimed, too many coincidences stacked in his favor.
I bent my head. I pressed my lips to the top of his spine. My eyes closed in silent supplication, and I prayed fervently that I could take this man and keep him for my own, without any of the retribution that seemed inevitable.
I knew it couldn’t be.
But even an immortal can hope.
“...If I’d had anything at all to do with sharing my design, I’d remember.”
The shake of his head could only be described as forlorn. “Not if you’d erased me.”
“If I’d erased you, you wouldn’t be standing right there, annoying me to death.”
“You can’t die.”
“How do you know that?”
The first caress was almost chaste, his ripe mouth catching on my lower lip where my skin was dryer than his. I smelled coffee on his warm breath, which inexplicably prickled my taste buds. I’d only just sipped my own, but this hinted at something richer, more sunshine like that created by his music beating down on the back of my neck. My lips parted for more of it.
He took that as an invitation.
I think, perhaps, it was.
Were it not for the instruction "fast," I could find it simple to indulge in the man’s allure before eradicating him from the terrestrial plane. His was a body that wouldn’t break easily. I knew that without even having seen it in all its glory.
But time was not a flexible mistress. I lacked it and would lack even more if I didn’t start moving.
The paper went into my pocket, unnecessary for now, but not forgotten.
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