Exhale Page 3

  Brushing past him and collecting my backpack from where I'd dropped it on the floor near the bed, I half stumble my way out through the silent corridor to the living room and out the front door.

  I reach the street, noticing for the first time that my feet are still bare.

  With every inch of distance between us, the nausea gets better. But the pain, that gut-wrenching feeling of something not being quite right, is still there. A coiled ball of heat in the pit of my stomach that never goes away.

  5

  Three years later…

  I drag the suitcase up the short flight of steps of the bungalow in one of the most affluent suburbs of Bombay city. It's James' home. When he asked me to move in with him a year ago, I hadn’t refused.

  I had no reason to, did I?

  Finding the keys in my backpack I open the front door. Step inside.

  Tonight, I sleep in my own bed.

  The last week I've put in countless hours on the accounts with the Mayor's Finance Head, while also training with the Guardians - the elite team of soldiers who protect the city. Now, every part of me aches.

  When I signed on to work in the Finance Department at the Mayor's office, I hadn't realized everyone who worked there also had to learn to defend themselves. A security measure to ensure no one was helpless in case of attacks on the Council Headquarters.

  I don't mind it. Find I quite like the physical aspect of the training. Except, I hadn’t counted on spending so much time away from home. My work hours are often so long that during the week, I sleep in the bunkhouse shared by the Guardians.

  The thought of a long, hot shower and a glass of wine makes me moan with pleasure.

  Dropping my backpack on the little table by the door, I stagger to the kitchen. Barely stop to pour a glass of wine from the bottle chilling in the fridge, before stepping onto the patio. The wild flowers in the backyard dance blue and yellow, and the roses have bloomed while I was gone.

  I blink and the days just go by. Weeks—years—spent understanding the intricacies of the Mayor's extensive business and political deals. Breakfast meetings, fact-finding trips, hastily grabbed dinners. In between all that somewhere is a little bit of squeezed time with my boyfriend.

  It's what I wanted, right?

  If I keep this pace, I'll be a senior strategist in the Mayor's Finance Team.

  The youngest ever.

  Yeah, it's what I want. It is. Besides, I do have James, a man I love, who's comfortable to be with.

  He's a weapons trader who also has a sensitive side. Why, James even set up a fund that invests in the work of up-and-coming artists.

  Yeah, I’m one lucky woman.

  Draining the wine, I turn and step back inside, when a giggle floats down the stairs. I freeze.

  Then a low voice, a male voice. James' voice vibrates in the room above me. I can't make out the words, but it's followed by the sound of a woman's laugh. Cut off. She's being kissed. A female moan, followed by the unmistakable squeak of bed springs. They're making love

  Upstairs.

  In our bedroom.

  In our bed.

  I look around the kitchen, noticing for the first time that James' shoes and shirt lie on the floor near the dining table. Next to a half-empty champagne bottle on its side.

  Gripping the stem of the wine glass, I walk towards the stairs.

  The sounds get louder. A gasp, another moan, she cries out his name, and I shrink back. But I can't leave. There's a macabre pleasure in hearing your boyfriend of two years make love to an unknown woman.

  Is that how I sound? Do I moan his name like that too? Do I scream out when I am about to come? Does James groan like that when I touch him?

  He'd groaned when I reached out to him with my senses.

  And just like that my senses unfurl, reach for that place inside where I'd felt Kris all those years ago. A whisper brushes up against me.

  No!

  Where had that thought come from? I managed not to think of Kris all these years. And now, today, just like that, I feel him again.

  Pull back.

  I don't want him to feel me like this. Broken. Alone. Vulnerable. It'd only reinforce what he thought of me. That I'm fragile, can't take care of myself.

  I can.

  I retreat behind the wall I built around my thoughts, my emotions. Retreat into that part of me that not even Kris can reach.

  Silence.

  When I open my eyes, it's to see a couple lying entwined on the bed. The smell of sex ripe in the air, skin slick with sweat, limbs wrapped around each other, he nuzzles her shoulders, still inside her, her legs gripping his waist. Refusing to let go.

  My breath comes out shallow, breasts rising-falling as I try to make sense of what I am hearing. Know what I’m seeing.

  I accept it. Just like that.

  I don't have to pretend I feel something for this man. Not anymore.

  All I feel is a cold fist in my chest where my heart should be. The ice crackles out, slamming against that coiled ball of warmth in my belly, and I shiver as they collide. The impact shudders down my spine.

  The sound of bare feet hitting the floor startles me. I look down at the blood trickling down my palm. The snapped stem of the wine glass is still gripped in my fingers. The top half has rolled onto the carpet, staining it with the last remaining drops of red.

  Turning I run down the stairs. Grab my keys.

  Slamming the door behind me, I run out onto the street, up the road towards the ferry. As the boat draws in, I let the broken stem of the wine glass finally fall into the sea.

  6

  A week later

  The noise in Alex's bar pushes against my ear drums, pressing in on my skin, going right through me 'til I feel a pale shadow of myself.

  Picking up the shot glass, I down the clear liquid and welcome the hum of the alcohol as it burns its way down. My stomach churns, nausea lapping at the edges. I bite my lips, swallowing down the bile, and ask the bartender to top me off.

  Of course, this feeling of being physically sick has nothing to do with my walking in on that little scene of James and that woman. The details of it burned into my head.

  No, it's because I've been mixing my alcohol over the last few hours. Another glass of wine, then whiskey, and finally tequila shots. I'd come to this bar after work, intending to get plastered till I can't think any more. Then crawl into my narrow bunk.

  Since I left home that day, I've been staying at the bunkhouse at the Council Headquarters. Just till I figure out what to do next.

  What do I want to do next? For once I have no answers. All my carefully laid plans gone. Disappeared to nothing. Like Nana disappeared from my life.

  I swear aloud and let my eyes run up the hair-sprinkled forearm of the bartender who tops off my shot glass. I don't have to be alone tonight, though. I’m free. Can take any guy back to my room.

  My eyes continue their journey up, to where the muscles of his chest stretch his T-shirt. A gray T-shirt. Like the one Kris wore.

  This time, the nausea rises in a wave and hits the roof of my mouth. I down the tequila and gasp at the onslaught of alcohol mixing with the acid in my stomach.

  Why am I so queasy? That small ball of heat which had stayed dormant since my trip to see Kris years ago has been restless all week. Until that incident at home.

  Since then it's been leaping to life at intervals. As if waiting...waiting...for him. Still him. It always comes back to him.

  And this is what shattered me.

  More than the crazy hours on the job, more than the cheating boyfriend, this is what got to me. This growing confusion I felt only once before. When I saw Kris.

  Maybe it’s because I'm so tired. So, run down that any barriers erected between me and Nana’s words have been swept away.

  Somewhere over the past few years, the euphoria of finding a path for myself has drained away, to be replaced by a gnawing emptiness.

  When had the adrenaline of making a career been
replaced by a feeling of something missing? Of wanting, needing, to feel something more.

  Something that would push past the face I showed the world to touch the “me” inside? That part of me which I’ve managed to keep hidden from everyone.

  Everyone but Kris.

  He saw it right away. Connected with that light inside me that had recognized him too.

  And had been in anticipation since.

  Waiting for me to catch up.

  A raging thirst washes over me, and the hair on my forearms stand on end.

  The nausea fades to be replaced by a longing so intense, so powerful, I double over, clutching my womb.

  It's not a tug anymore, but a pull. That slim cord is now a heavy, silvery rope, grown stronger over the years, grown more powerful with time. It has used my hunger to feed itself.

  And I know, I just know he is here. Somewhere close by.

  His presence reaches out to me, brushes up against my mind, and I shiver. It's not even an intimate touch. Not half as invasive as it could be if he were to just slide that silver cord lower, down my chest, my waist, towards my womb.

  I feel it now, that connection. It vibrates, shimmers from me. Its real. I begin to follow it with my inner senses. Follow it.

  My eyes spring open.

  I jump off the bar stool and look around. At the couple kissing next to me, the thrum of bodies rubbing up against each other on the dance floor, at the haze of longing, desire that clouds me, pours over me, on me, through me.

  I need to find him, ask him what he's doing to me.

  Why, despite my turning him down, he's never left me alone. All these years of training, becoming the best in my field...all empty.

  I take one step, a second. I’m running now. Out of the bar. Eleven. Twelve. Onto the street, up the sidewalk, straight. Straight ahead. Twenty-five. Twenty-six. My breath comes in puffs. Forty, forty-one, forty-two. I stumble on the uneven pavement stones. Almost fall. Steady myself and keep running.

  All I feel is this crushing need to get to him, to see him. This time, I follow my instinct.

  Seventy, seventy-one, I hit the promenade near the sea. Cross it, walk onto the pier. Don't stop till I reach the far end. Step onto a thin strip of rocks that extends out to the sea. All the way 'til the end.

  Until there's just me, the waves and the horizon red and bleeding in the aftermath of the sunset.

  I stand there panting, sweat running down my neck and between my breasts. The breeze rises, cutting into my skin, and I shiver but can't bring myself to look around. Not yet. Not yet.

  "It's okay, Fia." It's him. His voice. It's as if I've carried those echoes in my head all these years.

  I shake my head. "No. It's not." I finally turn, tears running down my cheeks. "Why are you doing this to me? Why are you here?"

  "You reached out me. I had to come, don't you see?" Kris replies.

  "Don't you see? I can't just accept some so-called crazy prophecy, a prediction, a future all mapped out. I can't be what you want me to be."

  "And yet, there is this.” He gestures to the connection between us.

  The connection that I tugged on, calling out to him. I had reached out to him and didn’t even realize it.

  As if the part inside, the part which is truly “me” had grabbed the connection and gone after him.

  For the first time I see it, the bond that connects us. It shimmers and flows. Merges back into something stronger, more permanent, even as I watch. So strange.

  So right.

  It's all true.

  Everything: what he told me, what Sofia told me.

  Who he is. What I am.

  I turn sideways, looking out to where the waves dance, now darkened in the shadows of the setting sun.

  In the distance, the broken remnants of a once-elegant bridge stretches. It's not used anymore, yet it still demarcates North and South Bombay.

  Always divided, the two are, and it's funny how much people here identify with which half they live on, swearing allegiance to their geographical micro roots as if it defines their very existence. And to what, to whom, do I swear allegiance? To Sofia? To my life as I know it?

  To a prophecy which shattered me, rebuilt me, and somehow over the years has crept under my skin, clawing aside my disbelief, feeding on my emptiness?

  I lean into the breeze. Hanging out over the waves, taking a deep breath. His mind brushes up against mine, soft and yet firm.

  "Don't do it," he commands, voice hard.

  "You don't know what I’m going to do next. I haven't even thought about what I’m going to do next, so how can you know?" I ask, my voice torn away by the breeze which suddenly blows off the sea as if not wanting him to hear my words. But of course he does.

  "Are you going to jump in? Go over the side and think you will end it? You are wrong. It doesn't end here. There's no escaping destiny."

  Is he right? Will this prophecy haunt me, even in the next life? Will it shadow me ‘til it becomes a part of me?

  ‘Til I turn around and face it. Overcome it?

  I don’t want to give in. Not yet. Not when it feels I don’t have a choice. When it feels as if he’s coercing me, pulling at me, maneuvering me into a space from where I can’t return.

  Yet he did let me go. I soared and explored life. For what I wanted it to be. When I reached the goals, I set, I found emptiness.

  Dark.

  A nothingness, frightening in its isolation. All these years I built those walls until I couldn’t feel, see, or hear the world.

  Couldn’t feel myself.

  I failed to find myself on my own terms.

  And all through he’d been there, always there. Even in that nothingness, his presence whispered, always around the edges.

  Patient.

  Waiting.

  I bite my lips, my eyes darting from the river to his face. High cheekbones, blue eyes glinting.

  I lose a breath, the blood still zinging through my veins, the air sighing through my lips, turning to vapor in the cold air between us.

  "Sometimes facing your fears is the toughest thing to do."

  "You mean you want me to give in, to accept? Is that it?" My voice trembles with rage over not having a choice.

  "It's not about accepting or not, about giving in or not. This is about being, that's it. You just, have to be. Can you do that?"

  The turquoise flavors of his presence push up against my senses. Insistent. He’s pushing me again. Pushing me to accept.

  So far, I resisted, trying to make a choice, unable to decide.

  And now he stands here before me. His presence tugging, curling around my waist, wrapping itself around my shivering ankles, seeping into my skin. He's still waiting for an answer.

  I hesitate.

  Do I want him?

  I reach out with my senses. Brush up against his inner self.

  Tentative, just a touch. And it’s like a signal to him. He takes a step forward, then another, halting just an inch away; and that tug, the one that never went away since the first time we were bound, screeches up a notch. It's as if it’s found its notch inside me. Found its rightful place.

  I shiver.

  Trapped. No escape now.

  This time, the heat from his chest swoops over me, heating my cheeks, pulling that spark of desire so it soars a bright yellow inside. The heat rushes through me, drying my lips so my tongue flicks out and wets them.

  He leans in, his skin touching mine, and I gasp as light from him slams into me, whooshes over me. Above us, colors explode.

  Golden-silver.

  Vivid.

  Circles, triangles, hexagons, shapes so iridescent, so bright.

  Everything is so sparkly, touched by a clarity that’s unusual, yet so normal I wonder why I haven’t seen it before. Why I haven’t seen him before? Seen myself. What I want?

  I know what I must do.

  He places his hands on my shoulders. "You always have a choice."

  Do I? Will I meet Kris
again in my next life? Am I really what the prophecy foretold me to be?

  Only one way to find out.

  Turning, I float over the side, toward the blue-black waters of the Arabian Sea.

  To find out what happens next, read Kris’ story in Claimed, book 4 in the Many Lives Series. Here’s an excerpt

  Kris

  “We Ascendants mate but once, and I’ve already found the female, my mate.” I don’t look at her as I say this, don’t want to cause her grief. Yet, I cannot, will not deny her the truth. She deserves that much from me.

  “You found your mate?” Her voice is blank, but the keening edge of pain in it cuts me as if with a hot serrated knife. I curse myself, pushing back the instincts that want to gather her close,

  “When? Where is…she now?” she finally asks, sounding dazed.

  The grief in her reaches out to me and curls around my heart, squeezing it. I hate myself for causing her so much anguish.

  “She’s dead.” I snap my jaw shut.

  I’ve lived with this grief all this time, yet nothing prepares me for the sense of guilt that overwhelms me as I say the words aloud.

  Then a slim hand reaches out and grips my thigh. Her touch bleeds warmth into me. It reaches up through my blood, to my heart, seeping through the walls I’ve built around myself.

  “I’m reconciled to walking alone.” Am I reminding her or myself?

  She goes to pull her hand away, but I’m too quick. I grip it, keeping it in place against my thigh. My greedy skin drinks up her heat, reveling in the feel of her flesh on mine.

  When she tries to yank her hand out of my hold, I can’t bring myself to let go. “Please…” I let the words hang in the air, not sure what I’m asking of her. All I know is I want her. Need her in my life, to fill the emptiness I’ve carried inside for so long.

  Tell her. Tell her that.

  Yet I can’t.

  Something inside stops me from saying the words aloud. Can I give her the intimacy she deserves? A mate who’d cherish her, protect her? Be there for her when she needs me? But what if my dominance overwhelms her?