“Not any more than anything else.” I considered him for a moment. He didn’t seem any older than me. “So you’re immortal?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
Charles dropped his hands to his sides. “You are the nosiest woman I’ve ever encountered.”
“You didn’t answer,” I said pointedly, leading him down the hall to the living room.
“We can age if we stop shifting,” he said.
“Then why don’t you?”
“Me?” His voice faltered. “I stick around for my family.”
“Parents? Siblings?”
“Parents.”
“What about work?” I asked. “You can’t keep one employer for three hundred years.”
We stopped at the end of the hall, at the entrance to the living room, and Charles’ gaze panned the room.
“I have enough money without working.”
“I hate people who don’t have to work.” Crap. Did I have to say that out loud? “That doesn’t mean anything. I…well, I don’t mean you.”
Usually, I had no problem biting my tongue. With him, I apparently didn’t know when to shut up.
He leaned against the arm of the sofa, ankles crossed, not at all trying to hide his laughter.
“Glad you find me amusing.” I turned on the television and handed him the remote. “I didn’t catch if you wanted tea.”
“Because you fell,” he said, still chuckling.
“Want some tea or not?”
He nodded.
While the kettle brought water to a boil, I gripped the lip of the kitchen counter so hard the trim dug into my palms. What was I going to do with him? A man. In my house. In the middle of the night.
He’s just a man. A strange, ancient man—but still a man.
After I prepared some loose tea in an infuser of a small ceramic pot, I arranged a tray with sugar, cream, and two teacups. I brought out the tray and placed it on the coffee table before taking a seat beside him.
“Please, help yourself.”
He prepared his tea—three sugar cubes to my one, and no cream, like me. Not that I was keeping track.
“Is it okay?” I asked.
He took a sip, then set the tea aside. “I have a feeling you don’t like coffee.”
Somehow, my hyperactive nerves had overshadowed my distaste for the terrible stuff, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Maybe next time you’ll ask me out for tea.”
I shouldn’t entertain the thought of getting involved with him, but I couldn’t deny the increasing attraction between us, either. After tea, Charles helped me pack up my most important belongings. We would wait until morning to relocate.
We watched television for a bit, but I wasn’t taking in anything other than the glow and mumble of the screen and the warmth of Charles’ body. As the minutes passed, our bodies inched closer together. His arm rested around my shoulders, and I leaned slightly into him. He pressed his lips against my forehead, and I inhaled the clean scent of his skin and the fabric softener used to wash his shirt.
I was getting myself into trouble. Nothing could become of us—not if he lived forever. I would grow old. I wanted to. And immortality? How could life have meaning without death?
Charles caressed my arm with his thumb. “I was worried you’d be frightened of my nature.”
“The turning into an animal thing. I don’t find that scary. Weird, maybe. But not scary.” Not that part, anyway.
“Hey, watch it. We can be scary when we want.”
“You want me to be scared, or not?”
He laughed. “Not.”
“I don’t know,” I said, smiling. “Maybe I better be careful.”
He returned my smile with a grin. “One never can tell. I might be dangerous to your good sense.”
The eye contact lingered long enough for me to realize how comfortable I’d become. Too comfortable. Having him here felt natural. Like we were supposed to be together. I needed to shift gears and remind myself why that wasn’t true.
“Earlier today you were talking about ‘the Universe’. What’s that mean?”
“We don’t know who, or what, the Universe is. Our council communicates with them.”
Huh. So the Universe was a them.
“What’s it like?” I asked.
His eyebrows pulled lower over his eyes. “What’s what like?”
“Shifting.”
“It hurts,” he said emphatically. “Your bones grow or shrink or rearrange. Your skin stretches or snaps smaller. Every muscle explodes and every bone breaks and resets.”
“That’d be interesting to see.”
He chuckled. “I just told you how painful it is.”
“Right.” I pressed my foot nervously against the base of the coffee table. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” He nudged me away and stood. “I’ll show you.”
“What?” I leaned forward, my muscles tense. Now that it wasn’t hypothetical, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see.
I shoved my teacup aside, spilling a warm splash of tea onto my pajama shorts in the process. My eyes never left him as I blotted my pants with a napkin. “Really, you don’t have to.”
He shrugged. “If I trust you enough to tell you what I am, what’s the problem in showing you? It’s nice to—” He cut himself short.
“Nice to what?”