S,
You have taken a big risk in helping me.I know this.You are a good friend.Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
She turned to the memory version of Archer.“He was helping her.Not having an affair, not the father of her baby, but helping.”A little twine of doubt unfurled inside her, one she didn’t know she had.Pop’s evasiveness had only been about keeping Tara’s secret.
She and Archer were face-to-face.She glanced at Kirin and Ellie, still frozen.“They look solid, but you don’t.”
“Because I wasn’t in the original scene.”
She reached out to touch him, her hand going through his image.“I hoped maybe it wouldn’t bother you if I touched you here.”
“Why?”
“You weren’t bothered by my trepidation just now.Or my gratitude that you helped me solve a mystery.”
“I can’t feel emotions in a memory.”
“So youcanfeel them.”
They snapped back to present, standing in the same position as they had been in the memory.His expression was shuttered.
“You feel my emotions, don’t you?”she asked.“That’s why you back away whenever I feel something.Good or bad.”
“It’s the angel side of us.We pick up feelings.”
“But it’s more than that.”She stepped closer.“They’re painful.When my emotions are strong, you wince.When your fingers tightened on the steering wheel, you weren’t just thinking; you were affected by my feelings.”
His mouth tightened, as though he were going to refuse to answer.But his eyes took her in with a softness she hadn’t seen yet.“Yes.”
She put her hand to her solar plexus.“That’s…horrible.The man who connected me with you said Caidos had good reason for being reclusive.No wonder you stay in your ivory towers.I’m probably hurting you right now.”
Archer didn’t step back, but the tendons in his neck corded.She remembered his remark about her being a yellow Dragon, the most emotional type.
“No one is to know, Lyra.If you tell anyone, you expose us to great harm.”
She shook her head, the reality still bombarding her.And now the idea that someone would use it against them.“I won’t say a word.”
He brushed the back of his hand against her cheek.“I know you’re trustworthy.I wouldn’t have told you otherwise.But you must understand the need for secrecy.”
“I do.”She started to reach for his hand but stopped.“Is being touched painful, too?”
He hesitated.“It’s not the touch itself but the emotions behind it.If you touch someone, it’s often out of anger, comfort, or desire.”
“Desire hurts, too?”
“It hurts the most, your desire—for example—and my own.”
Her desire.Gawd, he'd been feeling it all along.“That’s what Kye was talking about, pleasure and no pain.What cruel irony, that people are drawn to you, and it hurts when they are.Who relegated you to this existence of pain and torment?Luca?”
“Luca punished the angels by making desire painful so they would never be tempted by humans again.Unfortunately, it carried through to their progeny.The rest is, I think, a result of the opposing natures of angel and human.”
Could he feel her compassion, the ache flowing through her?“So you shut off your desires.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth for just a second.“Out of necessity.”
“You do feel desire?Canfeel it, anyway?”She struggled against the pull to move closer.“When you see a beautiful woman, like those at the club, you must have to fight it.”
“I have spent the last fifty years unaffected by anyone.”Chagrin was clear in his voice when he added, “Until you, Dragon Girl.”
