Chapter 1253: Water and the Stars

They explored the villa first because Melissa insisted Phei needed to appreciate what she called "the actual reason I brought you here," which apparently included an enormous living room opening toward the lake, bedrooms wrapped in warm timber and cream linen, a stone fireplace, an old-fashioned kitchen far more charming than anything one expected to find attached to property expensive enough to possess its own private shoreline, and an upstairs balcony where the trees grew close enough that branches almost brushed the railing.

Phei teased her about choosing somewhere that looked suspiciously romantic.

Melissa asked whether that was a complaint.

It was not.

They cooked together around noon, although together became increasingly generous once Melissa started slapping his wandering hand away from ingredients she had not finished preparing.

"Stop eating everything."

"I’m testing quality."

"You ate half the strawberries."

"I conducted extensive testing."

Melissa pointed a knife toward him.

Phei stared at it, then at her: "Violence? Against your beloved husband?"

"Touch another strawberry..."

He ate one while maintaining eye contact, Melissa chased him from the kitchen with a towel.

For the first time since waking, Phei laughed hard enough that nothing else fit inside his chest.

That became the strange rhythm of the day.

Melissa kept stealing him away from himself.

After lunch they walked beside the beach sometimes holding hands, sometimes simply walking close enough that their shoulders touched. She showed him a small path disappearing through the woods behind the villa and complained when Phei insisted the enormous tree near the top would make an excellent place for a hidden cave.

He tried skipping stones across the lake.

Melissa beat his hand into failing each time although he could control it to skip as much as he wanted but the normalcy would be lost but she made sure to win in the skipping while she beat his hand on his turn.

Phei accused her of using violence.

She looked deeply offended.

He demanded a rematch.

She beat him again.

By the third defeat he was prepared to launch an investigation.

They sat on the dock with their shoes abandoned behind them and their feet hanging over the water. Melissa leaned against his shoulder and told him old stories that had absolutely nothing to do with Danton, Althea, the Maxtons, death or the previous night. Some were stories about Phei himself, embarrassing things he had done as a child and apparently forgotten with the generosity of memory.

He threatened to deny all of them but Melissa had photographs and videos from all those incidents in her old phones and had transferred them all in her current one; they were fond memories of hers.

Phei considered the possibility of destroying evidence before remembering she probably had backups.

The afternoon softened.

So did he: At first in the car Phei had resisted her touch almost unconsciously.

Melissa noticed and sometimes when she reached for him and his body became faintly rigid, she never asked why. When she tried wrapping her arms around him from behind while they stood overlooking the water and he quietly slipped free after only a moment, she let him go without showing hurt.

His hands did not feel clean... was irrational.

Phei knew that; he had killed and he felt guilty for all of it although several people who had died the previous night would have happily watched his corpse freeze beneath Anarctica if circumstances had reversed.

But it was different in his cased he had felt them die at his hand.

Really die and their souls consumed.

Lives ending through him.

The sensation remained somewhere inside his hands no matter how many times he looked down and saw nothing there.

Melissa deserved softness.

He did not want those hands on her.

Unfortunately, Melissa possessed several decades of experience defeating Phei Ryujin Tiamat whenever his stupidity disguised itself as self-sacrifice.

She simply kept coming back.

Never forcing.

Never accusing.

Her hand would return to his.

Her shoulder would settle beside his.

Her fingers would brush through his hair while they sat on the couch.

Later, when he was standing near the kitchen window watching evening begin tinting the lake gold, Melissa approached from behind and wrapped her arms around his waist again.

Phei tensed.

She rested her cheek between his shoulder blades... nothing else: "Its okay, please hold me... hold onto me.’

Phei stood there for a very long time, then his hands slowly settled over hers.

Melissa hugged him tighter.

His eyes closed and something inside him cracked. Phei turned within her arms and hugged her properly for the first time that day.

Melissa immediately folded herself into him without hesitation.

Her arms went around his neck, his around her waist, and Phei buried his face against her hair as all the resistance he had been carrying since morning collapsed beneath the familiar warmth of her body and Melissa only held him.

That was the battle.

She won.

Afterward, keeping distance became impossible.

Phei began touching her as though making up for every hour he had denied himself. His hand remained around hers when they moved through the villa. He hugged her while she complained about him stealing pieces of dinner before they reached the table. He kissed her cheek while she was pouring wine and received an accusing look because he had nearly made her spill it.

Eventually cheeks stopped being enough.

Melissa kissed him first.

Softly.

Phei answered with everything he had spent the day refusing to feel.

Their intimacy never became hurried and there was no desperate need to turn tenderness into hunger and no reason to prove anything with bodies that already knew one another. They kissed beside the windows while evening gathered over the lake, lingered against each other on the couch beneath a blanket and let affection deepen until time became something happening elsewhere.

Sometimes Melissa simply touched his face.

That was enough to overwhelm him.

Phei had never experienced love quite like this.

He had felt desire until his brain occasionally resigned from responsible employment. He had felt infatuation, possessiveness, jealousy, lust, tenderness and that ridiculous thrill produced whenever a beautiful woman looked at him in precisely the wrong way.

This was heavier.

Rawer.

Every time Melissa smiled at him, something surged inside his chest with enough force to almost hurt. When she rested against him, he wanted to protect her from problems that did not exist yet. When she laughed, he caught himself memorizing the sound for no sensible reason.

The thought of losing her became unbearable.

So he stopped thinking about loss.

Melissa had apparently constructed the entire day around that principle.

Not forgetting forever.

Just resting.

For several precious hours, Phei forgot Althea was missing.

He forgot Elena waiting for answers.

He forgot the dark cavern, the dead Elves and the people whose lives had ended around him.

He forgot his own guilt.

Melissa filled the empty places with better things until his mind stopped wandering toward blood every time silence appeared.

By nightfall, the lake had changed completely.

The water became almost black beneath a clear sky, its surface disturbed only by slow ripples carrying silver reflections toward the shore. Stars spread above the villa in impossible numbers now that the city lay far enough away for its glow to stop competing with heaven, and their reflections multiplied across the lake until Phei could no longer tell where the sky ended and the water began.

He and Melissa sat together at the end of the wooden dock.

A thick blanket rested around both their shoulders. Melissa leaned into his side while Phei kept one arm around her, her head comfortably beneath his chin and their bare feet stretched toward the edge.

A soft wind travelled across the lake.

It passed through the trees behind them first, whispering among the leaves before crossing the water and brushing over their bodies with a gentle coolness.

Phei smiled faintly.

The breeze almost felt affectionate.

Which seemed somewhat unnecessary when he already had the finest woman the world had ever produced tucked against him.

He looked down at Melissa.

Her face was turned toward the lake, starlight resting softly across her features while the wind moved loose strands of hair around her cheeks. There was something profoundly unfair about how beautiful she looked after an entire day without trying.

Phei tightened his arm around her.

She looked up.

Their eyes met.

For a while neither spoke. Phei leaned down and kissed her forehead.

Melissa smiled.

Then something changed in that smile.

Barely.

Enough for him to notice.

She straightened slightly beneath the blanket and turned more fully toward him.

"Phei."

"Mhm?"

Melissa studied his face for a moment, and for the first time all day he sensed nervousness beneath her calm. That alone made him attentive.

She took a slow breath. "I have something I need to tell you."

Phei’s brows drew together slightly.

Melissa reached for his free hand.

She held it between both of hers for a moment, her thumbs brushing once across his fingers before she gently guided his hand beneath the blanket and pressed his palm against her stomach.