Return to Eden by G.P. Ching Page B

Tom helped her dismount, then led both horses to the barn, the white wig tilting awkwardly on the bones of his skull. She started up the steps, but paused when she noticed that Henry wasn’t following. She turned to face him.
    "Mara, in six hundred years, I’ve never met anyone like you." He approached her cautiously, as if she might go up in smoke at any moment. "You fit with my life here. Even surrounded by death, by what I am, you seem as comfortable as if you were made for this place."
    "I am comfortable here. I’ve never had a real home. This place feels like home."
    His toes hit the base of the step she was standing on. He ran his hand down the outside of her arm and entangled his fingers in hers. "I’m happy with you here. You don’t make me want something more than this existence. Instead, you make this eternity feel like so much more."
    She stepped down, her feet falling between his, the front of her jacket pressing into his chest. She slid her hands inside his coat, her palms settling on his hips. An earthy scent of dark spices with a hint of smoke filled her nose. She breathed him in. "What are you saying, Henry?"
    He lowered his forehead to hers, his eyelashes brushing softly against her skin. "I’m saying, Mara, that as impossible as it seems, I’m falling in love with you. I want you. I choose you. And nothing would make me happier than if you could stay." His voice cracked.
    As much as she knew their situation was hopeless, she couldn't stop herself from pulling him nearer. She tipped her lips up to meet his, her fingers sliding into his hair. Strong arms wrapped around her, tangled in her hair as his kiss grew deeper, more urgent. He kissed her as if he could breathe her in and hide her away inside himself forever. The way their mouths moved against each other said more than any words possibly could. Desperate, wanting, gripping kisses that tried to master the wind, that begged to hold the river of what was coming back with a shaking hand.
    She closed her eyes. At nineteen, Mara had some experience with love, but always from the sidelines, on the fringe of what was real. This was different. This was standing in the center of the ocean and burning brighter than the sun.
    When she opened her eyes, they were standing in his bedroom.
    "How did we get in here?" Mara asked into his lips.
    "Well, I didn’t do it."
    "Are you saying that I zapped us here just by thinking about it?"
    A smile broke out across Henry’s face. "Then you admit you were thinking about kissing me in my bedroom."
    Heat crawled from her neck to her ears. "Yes."
    Placing a hand in the arch of her back, he pulled her against him. "Mara, you’ve never felt embarrassed before to kiss me. For as long as you’ve been here, we’ve spent every spare moment in each other’s arms. Why the blush now?"
    "Because I think now it means something. I liked you before but the other part was, um, physical. Now, I think it means something. Henry, I think I’ve fallen in love with you, too."
    "My Mara." He kissed her again and the room started to spin. There was no more embarrassment. For Mara the planets aligned and everything she was and would be would always be about Henry. In some ways, knowing her life was over made everything crystal clear. She didn’t have time to take things slow or to analyze her feelings. Every part of her wanted this, wanted him.
    She snaked her hands between their bodies and franticly unbuttoned his shirt.
    He caught her wrist. "Mara, we’ve only known each other a short time—"
    "I don’t care. I don’t care. Who knows how long we’ll have together? I want you. I want to be with you before I die. I want this to be forever."
    "The right thing to do would be to marry you, Mara. That’s what I’d do if I were alive. I’d marry you in a church with all of our friends and family watching."
    "I have no family and neither do you. Who is there here to marry us? You’re immortal and I'm undead."
    He took a step back, his