Note: I do not own Sailor Moon : Enjoy! ^ _ ^
***************
Serena couldn't help but release a bout of laughter as Darien guided her behind cars and streetlamps, trying to dodge Andrew's prying view. He shushed her as they dove behind a bush with a gentle crash and steadied her as she grew dangerously close to toppling over, but his hands held on for longer than necessary as did the blush that graced her face. They both felt well aware of the heat that passed between them, making them numb to much of anything else—namely Andrew's frustrated entreaties, directed mostly at the night sky. Both men knew their futility, but each like the other, neither would end their persistence. Andrew knew who was winning this game. Darien had been running from him for nearly half and hour now. He should have known from the start that it was a waste of time to follow. It may have seemed like a child's game, but to Darien, it was the pursuit of a burning desire.
The fugitive felt possessiveness course through his body as he watched his friend turn left and right in the street. Andrew wanted to keep her away from him; he had seen it in his eyes and body language, heard it in his voice even before she arrived, and in her presence, he tried to stand closer to her and hover above her slight frame as to keep her near to him. Darien shook his head, sending his friend a mental note that he was sure was realized long ago. His actions only turned craving into necessity. Whether Andrew was concerned for her or felt genuine feelings toward her was irrelevant . Darien wanted most what he was made to believe he couldn't have. He had wanted Serena from the moment there was any mention of her, but he hadn't expected to be astonished, hadn't expected her beauty.
He looked down at her, at her face, which similarly directed itself to his. Her magnificent cheeks were flushed with the heat of excitement, and her lips were parted in a glorious smile that sparked a grin on his own visage. However, her eyes took him aback and surprised him with the intensity of the pure adulation they mirrored. Serena, for a second, unapologetically admired the man that stood above her. Even under the clean lines of his suit, she could imagine the chiseled cuts of muscle that graced his body. He encompassed a savage strength that flowed smooth and snapped into his wholeness like a puzzle piece, and there was a confidence in him that made him look and feel alive and strong with invincibility, a thought that sent an unexpected thrill up her spine. It excited her. He excited her, and she could only help but wonder, even as she looked intently into his eyes, what more lied behind them? She smiled at her enigmatic stranger, feeling the thrill of surprise, of not knowing what would happen next and relishing the thought.
"Is he gone? Do you think?" Darien whispered as he brushed away a soft strand of her hair, which had become wonderfully disheveled in their flight.
She nodded, denying the jolt of guilt that threatened to pervade her mind, a painfully conscious thought process that trailed all the unnecessary evils that she often plagued herself with. Sensing her discomfort, Darien gave her hand a gentle squeeze, his warmth permeating to her senses, but the floodgates had been opened, and for the first time in the night, she began to question herself. How had she been so willing to forsake her friend for a man so freshly met, and still, how could she know with such certainty that if he asked her to follow him to the ends of the Earth, she would do it? There was an inexplicable attraction that she held towards him, but the notion clawed desperately at her mind, trying to escape. Nothing based on such rash ideas could be solid, nor could anything good come of it. She knew that; she had experienced that, but there was a sliver of her heart that refused to let herself abandon what she was tangled in—not the look in his eyes or how right it all felt. He was as sincere in his emotions as she was; she knew it, and she would invest everything into the raw passion she felt between them if it meant she would be allowed his love. Her heart sliver hung out tenaciously and won. She wanted the world she found in his eyes, even if only for one night.
"Let's go," he breathed, smoothly making a break from the ground. His hands fitted expertly around her waist and provided her the same service. Both noticed, but neither minded as he lingered beneath the swell of her breasts for what would normally be a visit too lengthy for comfort. He extended a hand to her to be met with her own, and she smiled, relishing only the thought of skin on skin and asked no questions.
*************
"Are we there yet?" Serena broke the silence of their walk with timid voice.
"Close your eyes," he said, "I'll surprise you," but now they had been walking in, what seemed like, countless circles and through countless doors. He spoke to her every time he sensed her uncertainty to allay her worries. She was in good hands—his, and although they hadn't yet reached their destination, surprises came to her every second. The smooth baritone of his voice, the smell of his cologne, the warmth of his breath on her neck, and ultimately, the gentleness of the touch of such an inherently powerful man, everything about him brought a shiver to her body and drove the compulsion she felt towards him. He had told her so much left in the words unsaid, with his body and his eyes that she knew he shared the passion that stirred within her, and she did her best to answer him back. The heat, though the night air was cold, made her daring.
"Where are we?" she asked. Her eyes remained tightly closed although she felt a pressing urge to open them. She leaned heavily to the right as she felt his strong arm guiding her in that direction, and he left her for a moment in which she felt a swift chill to open a door.
"We," Darien replied, "are now entering—my masterpiece." Serena felt a rush of warm air as she entered the doorframe and heard her heels clack the hard, stone floor. The sound reverberated in the darkness, lingering before it disappeared. Even in the dark, she acquired a sense of the vastness surrounding her, feeding her curiosity.
Darien led her forward, gripping her hand and pressing it gently onto the smooth seat of a bench, he motioned for her to sit down. She felt the polished wood blindly, trying to make her transition as smoothly as possible, and in seating herself, she found, with alarm, that she could no longer detect his presence around her.
"Darien?" she called. Her body was suddenly clutched in the panic that he had left her, brought her here and left, and even while she realized the absurdity of the thought, she couldn't help thinking it and feeling it—right down to her core. She brought her fingers in to her palms as she felt them moisten, feeling old emotions resurfacing, feeling more vulnerable than she was comfortable with.
"I'm here," he whispered, and sensing her panic, although not to the extent to which she felt it, he gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze, "No need to worry."
His fingers followed along a tendril of her hair, feeling the softness of its length. He felt her body relax just to feel him near, even though her eyes remained closed, and she leaned back into him, acknowledging the hard chest that stood behind her. Her feminine smell invaded his senses, and he snapped his lids shut as well, allowing it to surround him. It was something he'd experienced a hundred times, but it invoked a response that was new. It was as if a switched had been flipped on within his body, and an energy began to pool inside him, pressing and pressing until he thought he would explode if he didn't take her and touch her right then.
"If she only knew what I was feeling," he thought. He was barely able to restrain himself. Women didn't do this to him. They didn't make him mad with desire; they didn't make him feel as if he would never be able to leave, that he would never want to. That was his position, and yet, here he was. His mind felt clouded, his emotions befuddled. He was confused, being driven into a frenzy by a woman he didn't even know. She made his pulse beat rapidly and his palms sweat, turning him into the awkward, gangly adolescent boy that he had never been. Only, it wasn't the role reversal Darien had imagined it to be. Serena felt her body responding to him in a heated manner she'd never known she was capable of, and she reached out for his hand, wanting to feel more of him. She noticed, but didn't care that her eyes were still closed. Her senses seemed heightened to a point that seemed foreign to her. She could hear the rustling of his suit and feel his body heave with every breath he took. Nothing was familiar, not even her own self, but as he wrapped his arms around her, she sensed an inkling of something that felt like safety—that felt like home.
He moved his lips close to her ear, and his breath tickled her skin with every slow syllable, "Open your eyes."
She did. Her eyelids fluttered open briefly but almost immediately closed, needing to adjust to the brightness of the light. Taking another look, she realized that it wasn't just the contrast that had stunned her. The room was filled with a brilliance she'd never experienced before. It bathed everything in a pure heavenly glow, distracting her from the very idea that she was inside, and not—in heaven.
"Oh my…" she breathed, her mind struggling to further find a single word but failed. Her hands pushed off of the bench to bring her to her feet, and she stepped gingerly off the stone path she had been walking on before, onto the springy grass that laid beyond as if she was testing its actuality. She repeated the process with the flowers and trees as Darien looked on amusedly, endeared by her innocent curiosity.
"What is this place?" she asked, wide-eyed, "I thought we were inside, but—this park, this light…"
He laughed as he walked to join her on the grass, "We are inside, just inside an illusion. Look." He directed her eyes up at the warehouse ceiling, which he had been unable to do anything about. The rest of it, however, all came together to fabricate a powerful mirage. It was the Garden of Eden in his mind. He had bought and restored the building a few years ago just for the purpose of owning it. At the time, he had had no intention of turning it into anything more whatsoever, but soon he realized that empty space was highly disadvantageous. It sat like dead weight at the back of his mind until eventually, it twisted and turned and contorted itself into something amazing.
"I had an idea one day," he explained, "to create a work of art that everyone could admire. Universal beauty—because I searched the world over and found I was empty handed." He turned to her, his hand pressing at the small of her back, drawing her nearer and nearer to him, and he caught his breath at the mere sight of her. "I hadn't expected to find it years after my search had ended, but then I realized that I was looking for beauty in all the wrong places—in art, in poetry, in prose and never—in women. Never in you."
Serena smiled, and he smiled with her, glad for how easy he found it to talk to her. The grin eased the severity of his deep, azure eyes and gave them an endearing quality that made them sparkle with romantic charm. She felt breathless in an instant, wanting to politely deny his flattery with the proper modesty but found she couldn't. Her words became lost as she realized the drawing closeness of their bodies and the advancement of his face on hers. His lips drew together seriously from their previous smile as they pressed on to claim their kiss. Serena felt desire pool in her body, but she soon found herself the victim of panic clutches as a familiar heat grew in her face. The devil on her shoulder had won, she discovered, as she found herself resisting their affinity and pulling away from him as gently as her warring emotions would allow, and when she looked up at him again, she saw in place of the enamored expression of a beautiful man, the hurt face of a broken angel. He had felt a tearing in his heart when she tore herself from his arms. It was the pain of reality as his spell had been broken, and he almost had to laugh at the irony. Sometimes it didn't make much sense to be anything but a cynic—the only woman who rejected him was the only woman he wanted. It had just been the proximity of their bodies, her heat mixed with his heat, her smell invading his nostrils had swept him up so vigorously that he found himself lost, unable to think or discern what was right and what wasn't. His heart had screamed, and he had followed it down the wrong path.
He shook his head, mumbling his apologies while trying to gather the pieces of himself that this woman had scattered. Usually cool and collected, he found his package disintegrated, and he struggled to reconstruct it. Serena watched his expression erase itself and his body straighten. Like a peacock primping its feathers, he became grand again, but lost in her own battle, she was completely blind to what lied beyond the exterior. She didn't see the wall rise in front of him or the hurt that lied clearly behind his eyes, the only visibility he had failed to mask. However, her senses became acutely aware of a coldness that replaced the tenderness she had seen before, and she realized that—in her one judgment, in that one second, she had lost him, lost this night. Her eyes, though keen as they were, saw only the end and not the means, and so, no ways to right the wrong that had taken place. She held her breath and pursed her lips as a burning filled her nose, hoping to stave off the onslaught of tears beyond this telltale sign and hoping he wouldn't notice.
He didn't. She hastily brushed her cheek as a solitary tear had escaped its pool and blazed its trail across her skin, her efforts having been in vain, but when she looked up expecting to find his deep, vigilant eye watching her, she saw that he had turned away.
"Darien," she started, taking care to keep her voice steady, "I should be the one to be sorry. I—."
"Perfectly alright," he interrupted, his tone still friendly, "You have nothing to be sorry for, and we should keep it that way. I was in the wrong."
She opened her mouth to interject, but he continued, "Come on, I'll give you a tour of this place. You haven't seen anything yet."
Serena felt her heart sink. His words were welcoming and pleasant, but he spoke to her like an acquaintance, too polite and too stiff. She imagined his muscles shifting beneath the black of his jacket like powerful clock tower gears as he started up his movement, painfully slow and fluid. He never looked back at her once.
"Wait!" she called, "Darien…" He stopped and finally turned. She had called out in the panic of the moment, but her words dug her own trap. What could she say to him now? She envisioned herself telling him. She could hear her own voice admitting her whole past and why she couldn't trust herself with an act that could bring sin and heaven, each as easily as the other. She saw him understanding and taking him into her arms, but only in her mind. If anyone ever found out—if he ever found out…She shuddered to think of what might happen.
"Where are we—exactly?" she forced.
He sighed deeply but kept it inaudible. The beseeching look he had seen in her eyes was gone. He had imagined it just as he imagined the desperate tone he thought he had heard in her voice. Her pale blue eyes danced with the light of curiosity and—not much more, but still they bore into him relentlessly. Every time he beheld her, she struck him with a power and intensity that continued to prove a shock to his senses and left him craving more, but his emotions still churned with the resounding force of her rejection. As gentle a push that it was, it was a push nonetheless and away from him at that.
"My garden," he replied simply. However strong the pull of desire, his pride still weighed heavily on his thoughts.
"My initial intention was to create a park—a public one," he continued, "but after time, I think I've put too much of myself into it to subject it to the wrath of New York. It's my Garden of Eden, and everything else wrapped into one, except you can eat the fruit."
In spite of herself, Serena chuckled, "After a day in here, I can see why anyone would be afraid to be banished to the smog outside."
Darien took four great steps to his right, motioning for her to follow, "This is my Willow, my favorite piece." He parted the leafy curtains to reveal a set of carefully carved seats in the shelter of the vast branches. "I modeled this part of the garden after the grounds on my grandmother's estate. Weeping Willows make great escapes for little boys. It was right on the edge of her property, but to get to it—" He lifted the opposite curtain, leading Serena over and around the seats, "You had to make your way through the maze."
Serena felt her eyes bulge as she found herself face to face with an immense topiary wall of epic proportions. It rose to nearly twice her height, and, to her dismay, she found it impossible to assume what lied behind it. She laughed nervously at the ominous hedge as it stared her down, and found although Darien behaved decidedly colder towards her, his heart still held compassion. His hand reached for hers and gave a tight, reassuring squeeze. She felt her entire being let out the breath it had been holding, feeling the danger was over, and her hand gently squeezed his in return, breaking down his barrier.
Darien felt his pride melt away when he had directed Serena through the Willow. The look on her face was one of a carefully controlled mixture of shock and fear, as if she were trying desperately not to reveal her emotions. He hadn't expected her to react as strongly as she did to the maze, an element of the garden he had added for mysticism, not to put off any potential visitors. However, he resisted the tugging urge to gather her into his arms, and instead, opted to grasp her hand. Even the slightest contact brought relief flooding back to his body, and he even smiled when she signaled her response, soothing the wound she had opened before.
"I built this garden in layers," he explained, "three in all. First is the park, then this maze. It grows in a loop around the heart."
"The heart?"
He grinned, "You'll see."
Serena nodded, silently eyeing the formidable wall, "How deep is this?"
"Ten minutes walking." Darien gingerly plucked a leaf from the hedge, and clipped it between his knuckles, making it seem fragile, almost endangered in his great hands. It was nothing.
"The path would take longer," he added, "If I hadn't walked it so many times."
'Many,' however, translated to once, and even after he had mapped it out, he still encountered a degree of difficulty. He kept his face nonchalant. It was nothing. Nothing at all—if he remembered the trail well enough to travel smoothly. The falsity paid for itself though, taking enormous measures to quell her nerves at the expense of his. The distress in her eyes that she had worked so hard to suppress flickered briefly, then waned to insignificance.
"I don't want to get lost," she said. She made an attempt to mask the seriousness of her words in frothy laughter, as if just hearing them spoken would safe proof her from harm. "I've always had a slight phobia of…getting lost."
"And never coming back," she thought, deliberately choosing not to voice her last words. Some things were best left for a rainy day.
"We won't get lost," he assured. False as it was, it gave her a great deal of comfort. Serena admired the strong cut of his jaw and the strength she could see in his shoulders and neck. She was overly glad of his masculinity and the calm that it brought to her, but still—she was like glass, wrapped twice in double plastic sacks as if that would keep her from shattering. Her eyes eagerly followed his strong arms, coveting the protection they might give her, and Darien—swept up in his own desire, read her mind and took her body next to his. Both their spirits fed off the other, their heat merging and building inside. Serena felt herself quake as his arms locked in front of her, excited merely by his strength.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
She nodded.
"I'm ready."
*************
"A right turn here," Darien said. He held Serena's hand loosely. Her grip was tight enough for the both of them, and to be honest, he was glad because in the last few minutes, he slowly came to the realization that he had lost his way. His mind silently screamed for a miracle every time they came to an opening or dead end. Which way should I go?! And all the while, he could feel Serena become more and more tense. Now he was only wondering how much more she could wind up before she snapped.
"I thought this was only supposed to take ten minutes?" It was a half statement, half question. Why had they run into so many dead ends and why hadn't they reached the other side yet? She tried to keep her tone as flat as possible, not wanting any trace of doubt creeping in. She trusted him; she did. She trusted the desirous look in his eyes and the tenderness of his touch. He wouldn't hurt her. That was out of the question, but his navigational skills weren't exempt from suspicion.
He didn't stop or look back, but he narrowed his eyes, making, for the hundredth time, a frustratingly futile attempt to recognize any of the uniform emerald walls as familiar. No such luck. He could only hope…
"We're not lost," he stated promptly, "It's taking a little bit longer than I thought though. I might have accidentally made a wrong turn—no problem. It shouldn't be long now." He gave her hand a tight squeeze with the little movement his own was allowed. He didn't have to look at her to know that she didn't believe him.
"Why don't we make some conversation on the way?" He continued.
Serena agreed silently, hoping it would give her a chance to take her thoughts away from—being lost. His effort was a valiant one, but for such a debonair man, he was a terrible liar. Even so, she didn't feel as panicked as she felt was necessary. He wouldn't hurt her. She was safe getting lost. So long as she was with him.
"Tell me about this light," she said.
"What about it?"
"Well, for starters—what is it? Everything glows like it's been covered in some sort of…glitter paint, but subtler. I've never seen anything like it, even here," she laughed, "I've never seen more gorgeous hedges."
He chuckled, making a left turn, "It's my light alchemy. Turns everything it touches into gold—figuratively of course. They discovered it a year ago in the labs. We're branching out beyond toys, into other markets like household items, food, clothing lines."
"That must be expensive," she said offhandedly.
Darien cleared his throat uncomfortably, "It's a way of ionizing the particles in the air to give them a glittering illusion. I don't know much more about it. Science was never a strong subject for me." He forced a laugh. Her comment had caught him off guard, and unfortunately, thrown him off his track. He knew that she hadn't meant anything by it, but it brought him crashing into a disheartening reminder of why she was even here in the first place—his contract.
"And it is expensive," he continued, "That's why—we were only doing some introductory research. We can pull out of it any time."
"Well, that's good."
He nodded silently, wondering what Andrew would say if he could hear their conversation. He would deck him for sure, pull him to the side in that easy manner of his, and send a fist flying to his chest. He remembered what his fair headed friend had said just a month ago. Visualize the goal. Saying you aren't going to get it—well, that's as good as murder.
Darien stuttered a little, his feet carrying them around another corner. He was stuck as the middleman. There was a betrayal on either side, just waiting for him to set it in motion.
"Wait," Serena said, stopping them both, "I hear something. It's like—water running." She walked ahead of Darien, never once relieving her tight grasp, but he followed faithfully, surprised that she had taken the lead. She peered around every corner with a childlike curiosity and hurriedly moved on to the next. It shot a sliver of wariness through him to be led through a topiary maze by someone who knew even less of it than he, who had not yet been able to reach the end.
"Come on!" she cried. Her eager feet guided them through a great series of turns. Now she didn't even bother to look over each corner. They walked by with such speed that Darien, still held tightly in her tender hand, nearly careened into a wall, not having had time to turn at the bend when she did.
"Where are we going?" he asked, half yelling now that Serena had pulled them into a quick jog.
"We're getting out of here!"
"But how do you know which way to go?"
She laughed, feeling oddly carefree—oddly detached. "I don't," she said, realizing her words just as they escaped her lips, and slowly, she stopped. "But we're close to the end. I feel it." Her legs started up again, pumping slowly towards the next opening in the maze of green. "It's right around this—"
She stopped, her sentence cut short, and her body stood motionless at the opening. Darien knew they had reached the end. The sound of roaring water only punctuated how slow time seemed to be moving. Neither of them said a thing or budged one step.
"Is this the heart?" she asked. Her voice was barely audible over the resonation of the world beyond the walls—the world that had managed to strike her dumb. How had she over-looked this? Even out in the garden. She thought, it was unlikely that anyone would have been able to miss this sight.
Darien nodded unthinkingly, calculating in his mind. Serena had managed to lead them through the maze seamlessly, but how was it possible when he himself was unable to produce the end? They arrived here in a fifth of the time it had taken him to lead them to who knows where.
"Perhaps," he thought, "A coincidence?" It wouldn't have hurt him to trust in a little woman's intuition once in a while, but—this was different. She had been so terrified. She couldn't have—not the way she did.
"Serena," he said, "How did you know how to get here?" It was a bit unnatural, the way it had all happened. He raised a suspicious eye, and she turned to him, surprised. She didn't seem to have realized the full significance of what had happened. How did she know?
"I—I'm not sure," she stammered, "I heard something, and it—called to me. I followed my ears; I wanted to get here so badly. We needed to be here….It's so beautiful." Her voice trailed away as she turned to look back out to the heart, and Darien felt his heart beat wildly just looking at her. Her voice resounded in his head and he felt the ground spinning from beneath him. We needed to be here.
He stopped, not asking why or for what. He was through asking questions. His body felt tremendously free as he stepped forward to join her at the opening, looking out, as though it was his first time—at the fruit of his garden. They stood standing comfortably together at a cliff's edge, easily wide and long enough to accommodate a large truck. The walls around them were no longer of leafy foliage but were made up of an authentic stone, dampened by the mist that floated liberally from the great cataract that stood directly opposite them, and Darien and Serena stepped tentatively closer to the edge of the cliff, revealing that the waterfall plunged deeply down into a wading pond nearly one hundred feet below them. She clutched his arm, and he pulled her body next to his, feeling an unparalleled passion swell in his chest. The mist drenched them both—her dress, his suit, but neither seemed to care. They only brought each other closer, and each felt the desire to touch, skin-to-skin, lip-to-lip. Darien beamed down at her, smoothing the long hair that now hung loose and damp around her face.
"Kiss me," she whispered, her reservations having been abandoned long ago. There was no mistaking the urgency in her voice or the fervent desire that danced heatedly in her blue eyes, and no sooner had the words reached his ear did he seize her waist with a force so wild that she was lifted bodily off the ground. His strong arms enveloped her firmly as his lips traveled up the length of her neck, marking the trail with his burning kisses. With one spare hand, he caressed the soft edge of her jaw line with such gentleness that it seemed he could only be attempting to counteract how roughly he had handled her before.
"I've wanted to," he breathed into her skin, "So badly." He felt his body ache, knowing how desperately he needed to feel her lips on his. His thoughts and emotions were consumed by only one thing. He kissed her. His mouth explored hers wildly, seeming to crash and explode and sing all at the same time. It did exquisite things to her emotions and made her world hurt in a rapturous way. She nearly gasped, shocked by how powerfully she felt it, but it didn't end; it couldn't have, not even if she had chanced to wish it to do so. To walk away was like living half a life—and leaving the end for never. And so she pressed herself against him with a new urgency, matching the passion with which he took her and the tenderness with which his spirit cradled hers. For the two, it was the kiss to end all kisses, passionate to an indescribable sense, and both their pent up desires finally let out, clashing in untamed release. Their souls met monumentally at their centers, dancing in the fire they created, and she was sure—that if they could, the heavens would sing for her.
*************
So what'd you guys think? How realistic was it? Because that was my goal…magical yet realistic. I don't know how well I hit the target, them falling in love…or in lust at least, so quickly. It's kind of an ode to love at first sight or soul mates or…fate, all the kind of things that skeptics hate but secretly believe in. I would know; I'm one of them. Haha. Review please, let me know what you think. I'd love you forever.