TimeBound (Time Tells #1) (COMPLETED)

Chapter Four

Now...

My mind reels. He didn't remember.

It takes me several moments before I can coach myself to realize that...that it was alright.

What was not alright was if he hadn't been the one at the altar waiting for me. But he was.

I look down at my left hand and a breath eases its way into my constricted chest. My ring was proof that we were married. This was real.

He was...he was mine. I was his. We were man and wife.

I can breathe again once more, not as easily, but still able. It didn't matter if we shared memories of the past or not, we were sharing a future together. It doesn't get more sacred, more intimate, more real than that.

I turn my gaze to him. His elbow remained on the arm rest, but he was now resting his hand on the thigh of the leg propped at the ankle over its twin.

I lean my head back, letting out a breath as I gaze at his profile. My fingers ache to trace the line of his nose, along his jaw, over his cheek bones... I swallow, fisting my fingers against the urge.

He turns then, perhaps sensing he was being watched. His icy blue eyes lock on mine and I can't move. My lips part, a single breath passing them as something akin to painful love and desire fill me.

His gaze flicks over my face. His expression turns thoughtful.

"You kept your word." He says.

Confused, I tilt my head at him.

"Fifty eight point twelve seconds." He says. He somehow sits utterly still while within me a storm rages. A storm centuries old.

Finally understanding what he was saying, I smile.

"You timed me." I say.

His gaze drops to the smile and he seems to trace it with his eyes curiously, before meeting my gaze once more.

"I wanted to see if you would keep your word."

With that, he turns away, back to facing the window. And somehow, despite sitting less than a foot away from me, within the distance of my reach, I felt a gap between us as wide as a lifetime.

I wasn't used to this .. distance from him. I was always the one person allowed within his space. I could come and go and take and give as I pleased. He's always given me the freedom and right to him. Anything of his and himself was mine for the taking.

I look away, swallowing the bitter taste at the back of my tongue and remind myself...that he didn't know about us. As far as he knew, he was a Yade married to a human woman to help his kind. A marriage of obligation. A marriage for benefits.

Husband to a stranger.

He was still where I was this afternoon. And all of last week.
Having been there myself, I know...I know how I would like to have been treated. With respect and space.

Suddenly a thought occurs that shocks my panic into place. What if he was in love with another?

My gaze snaps to his face. Pain unlike anything other, jealousy like I'd never felt before, sorrow to my deepest vein all consume me at once. Intermingled with sorrow for him. What if he had been in love with another? And he had...and he had been forced, like I had been, into this union.

The only thing that had turned my whole situation on its head was him. But he hadn't had that.

I trace my gaze over his face. I don't see him looking sorrowful. His expression is smooth, his dark skin cast into glow by passing streetlights.