The Red Wing Mansion

Chapter Twenty-Five

My gosh, you know what I think?

I think Claudius is in the heart attack business, not the heart break business.

My heart is racing so fast from before, thinking he'd cut me up into little pieces, I had felt like I might just drop like a stunned goat.

Now all of that was apparently just a delusion made up in my brain – or my handsome boss just knew how to come across as ultra menacing for no reason.

While his coolness presses against my back, I slip on the glove, unable to think in the present moment about what I could say after all that kerfuffle. I just think proper answers will come when I slip on this heirloom.

Claudius doesn't lie.

As the white glove slips over my hand, palm and fingers and thumb... without even a shock, every memory of our past slides into place, like a missing piece of a jigsaw.

For one second, as I realise what I've done – I quickly slip off the glove again, promptly forgetting everything I just remembered.

Claudius chuckles for a second, slightly hysterical himself, "Why did you do that?" he asks, quietly, intrigued.

"I can't remember," I blurt out – and he laughs loudly, "I must have been scared."

"Put it on again and talk to me," Claudius asks me, while trying to keep in a second bout of manic laughter, "I'll hold it on your arm, just for a moment, I need to speak with my wife if you please."

"Reasonable," I whisper, looking at the glove I just slipped off.

Feeling slightly mad, I slip the material back over my arm.

As soon as I tug it up, Fontaine's hand snakes around my arm and holds it in place.

"Alix," Claudius drawls into my ear, "...are you running away again?"

I remember everything again.

I gulp with his hot voice right over my ear, his hand so tight against my arm, refusing to let me slip away into peaceful blissful nothingness.

"Answer me... and I'll let you leave, so I can fuck your virgin naïve self. It's not like I want your old whore self around here. I just want to know why you left me," Claudius sounds so hurt. Fuck. I never meant to do that to him.

"Aelia," I answer him, quickly, "And don't call me an old whore. She wanted you, it was her time, your time – together. I would come later. Now, it's my time. Do you like my time? Look at the silver lining... please..."

"I like that you're at my mercy," Claudius answers, "I'm going to ruin her heart and make it bleed with the same anguish you left me with for centuries."

"Me?" I whisper, holding off a gasp, "Aren't you happy to have had Aelia stay?"

"She never stayed, she left," Claudius is pained when he says that, "She just wanted you gone. One argument a week later and she ran back to her travelling cult, regretting ever returning."

"That bitch, I gave her to you – to share," I growl, "Claudius, the other reason is that I had a family too, friends too... in my time, from which I was born... what I did was not to break your heart, as much as it was to return home. I love you, I do. But I was not from your time. If you truly wish to ruin me–"

"I do..." Fontaine still sounds pissed.

"Then she will know," I speak of myself in third person, fuck it, "I'll feel your ill will. I will leave."

"I won't let you leave again, even if I have to act the part of caring," Fontaine's second hand slips around my neck, his incubus powers are hungry – but they can't take my energy, not while I have my purity intact. Fuck, it's weird being a virgin again.