Blakeshire (Insight #9)(15)
What was even odder was that I felt Drake’s emotions in my core; he was concerned, jealous, and in some way terrified that something irrevocable had happened to me tonight.
I glanced behind him to Olivia and Chrispin. I felt nothing from them, I mean, maybe if I weren’t distracted by Drake at the moment I could have focused hard enough to feel something. Olivia sighed once, then pulled Chrispin away to give the three of us privacy.
“Am I interrupting something?” Drake teemed just before he locked his jaw.
The first time I saw Drake in real life, I knew he was different. Others always had so many hues of colors around them that their bodies were the last thing I focused on. With Drake, the colors were still there, mostly a deep purple, but his image was in focus. It was like my mind was forcing me to focus on him. Forcing me to conceive the idea that he was real.
Whatever reprogramming my mind had gone through, it didn’t change the way I saw Drake or the way he made me feel. My heart was skipping every other beat. Breath was something that I could not remember to take.
At least I didn’t feel like fainting around him anymore. That could be due to the fact that last night, for a few hours, he was not a king and I was not a look-a-like. We had managed to escape our hell for a few minutes. I got him to take me home, to meet my mom, to see the town I was raised in, some of my art. We listened to music and watched I Love Lucy DVDs until we fell asleep.
A mischievous grin echoed on the corners of my lips as I remembered this stoic prince laughing. It was as if he never had before; even he seemed surprised by the simple act. I adored it simply because that emotion of bliss was overshadowing all the other harsh ones that were stabbing my soul at the time.
“Seriously, dude? She’s my cousin. Might as well be my sister. We used to take baths together, for God’s sake.” Aden gave him a once over. “If anyone should be ticked off right now, it should be me. You want to give her a chance to get dressed?”
“Not leaving my sight,” Drake said under his breath as he ignored Aden and stared at me through the long, dark strands of wet hair that had fallen over my green eyes.
I would swear I could feel his essence reaching out for me and surrounding my soul. Devotion. Yeah. I felt devotion emanating from his soul.
Before I was broken, I would see this in his energy; his essence would morph into a deep crimson, the smell of fresh cut roses would fill the air, and next to him, against his skin I would smell mint, a deep, powerful, cleansing aroma. I was too nervous to focus and try to see his energy, but I could smell him. I could sense the silent claim he was making on me.
“Let me give you a tip, buddy: smothering will get you nothing but a one-way ticket to ‘get the hell away from me.’ Trust me,” Aden said as he relaxed a little. Apparently, he had found a way to trust Drake.
“We had a deal,” Drake said to me.
I felt that burning sensation bloom in my core once more. He had asked me countless times to come and stay at the palace with him. I didn’t have the nerve to tell him that I was terrified of some ghost that only I seemed to be able to see, so I played it cool. Told him he would have to stay at my house first. I never thought he would do it. I mean, don’t princes kinda have to stay in their kingdoms? At least the dimension said kingdom is in? Drake decided not only to take that challenge, but also exploit it for all it was worth.
My eyes dared to travel down his tall, lean, firm body. This boy was dangerous, in more than one sense.
“Do you own a boat?”
Aden threw a nasty glare over his shoulder at me. He knew at this point I had set my intentions on figuring out that childhood drama and that I was crazy enough to head out to sea and not come back until I found what I was looking for.
Drake just smirked. “Fleets of them.” He glanced over me once, furrowing his brow. “You’re afraid of water,” he said, almost to himself.
I felt myself draw a sharp breath. I hadn’t told him that.
“Draven tell you that?”
“No,” Drake said in a ghost of a whisper, which made that burn intensify. I’d only known him a few days, but I was already picking up on his tones, his unspoken body language. Right now, he wasn’t remembering anything from this life, but ones that were lost in the past.
You see, priests invoked dreams and memories in Drake in order to convince him that Willow was made for him, but they managed to invoke more of me than they did of Willow, but that was kind of hard for Drake to figure out at face value. Now he didn’t know what was me and what was her. I really didn’t care because as far as I was concerned, there never should have been a her.
If this were just a few hours ago, I would have been awestruck that he had pulled a memory of me forward. Then I would have analyzed every single thing about his expression, body language, tone, and memories to understand without a doubt that he was seeing me and not wishing I was Willow. But not right now, with those emotions at bay, I was more intrigued that this phobia of mine had been with me for longer than one life.
“I’m not afraid of anything right now.”
A wry grin came to the edge of Drake’s lips. “Maybe there is an upside to this.”
“I told you I wasn’t afraid.”
Drake is insanely blunt; must come from being raised as royalty. He’d told me last night that I was afraid of him, not because of who he was or what he had the power to do, but because I knew deep in my soul that I was a half to a whole. He told me I was afraid of losing my independence.