He inhaled sharply and took a step back, finally seeming to look at me without his normal hatred. "You need to sleep. So does she. Let me get her to bed, and I promise you can come see her again," he assured me gently.
I didn't want to trust him. There was nothing trustworthy about him. He was a snake, if nothing else, and deserved to rot in hell for all I cared. But he was also my only way to see her. I nodded sadly, reluctantly agreeing to his terms.
Carefully, he removed her from my arms, this time forcing me to reluctantly turn her over to him. He put her down wherever she was sleeping and came back for me. "You promised you would sleep also," he said in the same calm and patient way he had given me my ultimatum.
I was shaking from exhaustion or maybe adrenalin, but almost as soon as I put weight on my legs, they gave out on me, collapsing under my not-overwhelming weight weakly. My knees never hit the floor because I was instantly swung up in his arms, cradled safely despite my exhausted protests.
"I can walk, I'm fine!" I whined even though I didn't know if that was true. He ignored me and carried me easily through the confusing maze of halls. I sighed and leaned my head against his shoulder, exhausted from the long and tiring day. He was wearing a suit, obviously from his meeting, and looked nothing like a bookworm and everything like a dashing gentleman.
His cologne was just enough for me to smell as I drifted off in his arms. It was a light scent of cedar and spices that I couldn't quite place, yet it enticed me and pulled me deeper against him in an almost magnetic way. The last thought I had before falling asleep was that I could understand why I fell in love with him based on that scent alone.
James's POV :
I tried to focus in the meeting, desperately needing to absorb the information they were throwing at me. In most meetings, I could pretend that I was listening, and I didn't really need to since the level at which they spoke was so far below my comprehension I didn't really need their input. I was in the boardroom with the high-ranking officials, though, and the C.I.A. Director on Zoom. I had to focus on the virus. It was a matter of life or death for millions of people.
The virus was a mutation of the typical AIDS virus but on steroids. It was unlike anything we had ever seen before. It attacked the immune system, leaving us entirely unable to combat it as it wreaked havoc on our bodies. A bloody nose was the first sign, followed by a crippling headache. Organ shutdown would follow soon after their death. We only had three cases so far, but it had a hundred percent mortality from what we knew. Our bodies were just entirely unable to fight it off, much like the AIDS virus, only this one was transmittable by shaking hands, coughing, and simply breathing in the same air together.
Saving the world from the next pandemic, which was my very literal job, was important.
My mind was an unfocused mess focused on Anna even though I hadn't seen her in days now. Our marriage was the epitome of a happy life. We had the same sense of humor. The same interests. Such a deep connection it seemed just made in heaven. I wasn't necessarily proud of how we met.
I was her professor at Harvard before I started my position with the C.I.A. investigating new possible infectious diseases.
**Flashback**
She was one of the younger students there, though I had no idea how young she was then. She was my star pupil, and she surprised me so many times with her abstract theories on D.N.A. and R.N.A. changes that I took her on as an apprentice even though she wanted to go into pediatrics and not infectious diseases. The wrong lighting from the lab was evident during the late night hours, and I rubbed my eyes, exhausted from the long day of research and teaching.
Anna was excitedly leaning over her telescope and intermittently writing on her notepad, clearly in love with her work on studying viral replication in various mediums. It was boring since I had learned that years ago, but her excitement breathed light into an otherwise monotonous night.
"Are you ever going to finish, Anna? You have classes in the morning?" I asked, coming to look at her notes. She had been my apprentice for so long that I had forgotten the normal boundaries and didn't think much of it when she leaned back against me instinctively.
"Well, I was just working with some basic viral D.N.A. and working on different ways to break up its D.N.A. using different parts of the immune system, and you wouldn't believe it, but this mutation SARS 1022 seems to have some self-healing properties and keeps replicating no matter what I try. It is just fascinating!" She explained that she had more energy than she should have this late at night.
Her notes were scribbled, but she always knew what they said, so I didn't comment.
"Just make sure to sanitize that plate fully, then. We don't need a mutant virus escaping and wreaking havoc on civilization," I joked teasingly.
She laughed a bit, brushing some of her long hair out of her face. Her smile was infectious. She looked at me puzzled and ran her hand over my cheek curiously as if I were her next research article.
"You should smile more. It serves you well," she said simply, not realizing she was why I smiled.
She was like that, though, sweet and so naïve that I felt a horrible guilt for the intrusive thoughts I had every time I saw her. I would never cross that line between teacher and student, though, and had always kept her far more distant than my mind would have preferred.
"You should remember yourself. Distance, Anna. You're brilliant. You don't want rumors of an inappropriate nature surrounding your work," I reminded her curtly, stepping back unwillingly, knowing I couldn't hurt her.
She smiled more gently this time, taking a deep breath as if steadying herself before stepping back to me.
"I won't tell if you won't." It wasn't a flirtatious statement, but fact.
"Don't suggest such a thing, Anna. You are playing with fire and will end up burned," I warned her seriously, yet still not backing away this time. For months, we had danced around each other, the connection lingering in the air, teasing us, taunting us, and pulling us together. I needed to deny myself, or I would destroy her. She was so young, and while brilliant, she had no real-life experience. She couldn't handle me and my many flaws.
"Maybe..." She started, removing my glasses and setting them gently on the counter.
"Maybe you've been missing what's right in front of you this entire time. Perhaps I like fire more than you realize." She trailed her fingers curiously and gently down my chest, teasing me and enticing me to ignore my mind and go with my instincts.
The way her blue eyes sparkled with mirth, realizing the effect she had on me, angered me in a strange way that made me want to take back the control she had on me. I was always in control in the bedroom. Never the women. She clearly was entirely inexperienced. Who the fuck did she think she was? She had no right to try to be the assertive one.
She had a point, though. I was holding back from her...after all, who would know? She was not the bitchy type to gossip about me or kiss and tell. I knew her better than that.
I was being a coward, ignoring what was clearly between us. I wanted to protect her from me, yet she didn't want that protection.
"Leave now, Anna. You have no idea who I am. I have humored your advances long enough. I won't be so generous as to let you leave unscathed next time," I ground out, physically pushing her away, perhaps a bit too harshly.
She had the audacity to laugh, flipping her hair nonchalantly before grabbing her things and finally listening to me. It took everything in me to stay still and not stop her as she obediently gathered her things to leave.
"Touchy, touchy. Who knew you were so violent, Mr. Lightfayre?" she teased, smiling, clearly enjoying baiting me.
Don't touch her. Don't touch her. Let her leave. She's way too young for me. I repeated these words to myself, holding back and forcing myself to watch her walk away despite every inch of me wanting to show her exactly who she was messing with. Her arrogance and enjoyment of teasing me was something I wanted desperately to correct but knew I shouldn't.
She paused at the door, hesitating for a brief moment before turning back to grin at me one more time.
"What a shame. So weak." The words were muttered under her breath with a condescending amusement that broke my self-control. Who the actual fuck did she think she was?
**End Flashback**
She was my light, my world. She was my equal and the only one who saw my strength and laughed, entirely trusting that I would never hurt her. She was short, but she threw herself at me fearlessly and never wavered. Watching her lean over Sera in fear of me the other night had been heart-stopping. How could someone who had been so fearless and trusting of me just crumble at my feet, consumed with fear and shaking with terror?
I had never seen her weak before. I had just assumed she had no weakness, but obviously, it had always been there, just so well hidden it was as if it didn't exist.
I had been frustrated with her for refusing to hand over Sera, but we had the same argument so many times when she fell ill before. One thing working in pediatrics did was make you get every virus under the sun, and she always wanted to snuggle with Sera.
**Flashback**
"Give her here, Anna!" I demanded for the umpteenth time, her flu shot clearly having failed her. She was covered in blankets and wet tissues from her running nose, but she snuggled Sera defiantly.
"She's FINE, Jason. Come on, back off. She already got over the same thing I have now, so she's good. She wants to snuggle with mommy, don't you?" she said, using my daughter's cuteness against me. Sera giggled and snuggled up to her mom, clearly enjoying being fought over and all the attention.
"I know she's fine. I'm worried about you. You're never going to get better if you don't rest. Give her here!" I said with more force, my patience being tested yet again. I tried to snatch Sera up, but Anna was faster and leaped off the bed with the baby.
"You'll have to catch me," she said defiantly, clearly enjoying herself. The playful grin weakened me, and she knew it. Not enough, though. I snatched Sera in one quick motion and placed her in her playpen, then picked up Anna just as easily, tossing her onto the bed with anger, daring her to get back off.
She laughed, grabbing my shirt and pulling me to the edge of the bed, but obediently not getting out of bed this time. "Fine. You can have her. But just for the day. Tomorrow, though, you'll pay," she teased, kissing me and intentionally infecting me with her illness. I didn't mind. Any reason to kiss her was good enough for me. I didn't care if I got sick. It was worth it.
"Gladly," I responded.
**End Flashback**
That's what I expected from her when I tried to grab Sera. Foolish me had forgotten in my moment of annoyance that Anna wasn't my wife in anything more than a legal sense. She wasn't the same person at all. This Anna was bloody terrified of me and seemed to think I wanted to kill her, though death would have been easier for me to process.
She cradled Sera still, ready to die at my hands to protect her. My wife was never scared of me. It was someone I didn't recognize at all. Yet the fact that she felt such a fierce protectiveness over her baby was exactly what my wife would do. An echo of her former self that haunted me.
I had been ready to give up on her and let her move on with her life until that moment.
The hope that my wife was still there in some way was lit, and it was a flame that I couldn't just put out. When I carried her to her room, she held my shirt instinctively in just the most odd and natural of ways as she fell asleep. She didn't know it, but that's what she did anytime I kissed her when I would lay down next to her after a long day at work.
She was terrified of me now, yet deep down, she seemed to want me there. Wanted me closer. I doubt she even recognized what she was doing or thought out why she did it. Just like she probably hadn't mused why she was protective over a baby she just met.