Raphael's Captive

Chapter 17

"It's work." He chuckled. "I still have to do what I'm needed to do." 

"Don’t you have people for everything? This looks stressful." 

Tami was never a business person. Science was her passion. So, seeing this--business-looking work-- made her glad that she hadn’t chosen it as a career path from the beginning. Then again, everyone had their passions. 

"Yes I have general managers in each location who deal with everything in their particular branch, but I still need to check records and reports to ensure I'm not running my business in the ground," he explained, at which she simply nodded. 

He continued to explain other general things that she would like to know, and promised to take her with him to the head office one day. 

He hadn't been there since he came to The Bahamas, but he would have to soon.

She watched as he made a few more adjustments to the confusing document before he finally closed it and returned all his attention to her. He reached up and swept a tendril of her dark brown curly hair from her eyes, and she couldn’t avoid the butterflies that erupted in her stomach.
 
"Since we're already here, do you want to go down for breakfast together?" Tami perked up at the idea of venturing further than the halls of this floor, but she shook her head, no. There was something she had to do first. 

"Not yet," she said. "I need to speak to you about something first." He nodded once as his face fell serious after seeing hers. 

For a while, Raphael grew anxious. Had she been up all night thinking about their 'silent' reunion last night? Was she suddenly regretting it and reconsidering his offer about letting her free? 

But then, she reached up and cupped his cheek in her palms, and her eyes immediately dismissed his doubts. Tami had seen the fear in his eyes for a quick second, so she wanted to reassure him that she wasn’t leaving. In fact, it was the mere opposite. 

"I've considered what you said to me the very first time I woke up in this house. I want to make this work, Raphael. I feel for you as you feel for me. I would like to take it further with you." 

"Really?" Relentless joy. To hear her say it out loud was the greatest gift she could've given him. 

She nodded again before continuing. "Yes. When we were back in Nassau, seeing you did something to my heart that I couldn’t understand. Maybe I was too young sixteen years ago to understand it, but your return struck me as both a surprise and delight. The two nights I spent with you did even more, and I couldn’t deny my feelings for you." 

"I'm so glad you feel the same way." He smiled and she simply nodded as she gathered her thoughts. 

"I do. But when you took me, I was hurt, broken and I felt betrayed. I felt like this couldn’t be the Raphael I'd held dearly in my heart. But I see now that this could work. I want to grant you that wish and give us until the end of summer to know if we'll be compatible. I won't resist you anymore, so we can really get to know each other--as adults and as the people we've become. I know a nine-year-old Raphael, and you know an eight-year-old Tami, but we don’t know how much we've both changed. So I'd like to get to know you, Raphael, the real you. And you can get to know the real me." 

Raphael had no objections. This was what he'd wanted from the very start. He believed he already loved her with all his heart, but he couldn’t avoid the fact that he still had a lot to learn about her. 

"I wouldn’t want it any other way, Tami." He gripped her waist tighter as he started to lean in for a kiss, but she promptly stopped him, showing him that she wasn’t finished.