Hey all! Happy Valentine's Day! And a chapter, just as I promised!
Chapter 12
"I love you."
Her jaw dropped and her hands trembled as she heard those words come from Delemir's mouth. She had to be dreaming. She just had to be dreaming. Could he really love her? Was there a rule saying an Elf couldn't love a mortal? Anything? Nothing came to mind.
"What?" she managed, watching him watching her intensely. "How long?"
"A month, today," he told her, feeling completely powerful now. "Lissa, I—"
"Wait a minute," she said, swallowing hard and painfully, as if something were stuck in her throat. "Let me..."
Slowly, Lissa lifted her hand to his cheek, brushed away his long, blonde, beautiful hair and saw a soft point on the tip of his ear. "What about this?" She gently touched the tip and trailed her finger down the back of his ear to his neck.
"About what?" Delemir asked, fighting a chill from her touch.
"You're an Elf, Delemir!" she nearly yelled, wiping a tear that tried to crawl down her cheek away. "I'm a human. You're immortal, I'm mortal! You'll live forever, I'm going to die one day!" She swallowed the word 'die' like it was bad medicine, which it was.
"I'll die with you, then, so I can see you again," Delemir said simply, tugging on her hair to keep her gaze in his.
"I don't know if they have a place for Elves here, Delemir, when they die. When people die here, they either go to heaven or hell." Lissa took a deep breath and tried to tear her gaze away from Delemir's as another tear fell down her cheek.
"I will go wherever you go," he told her, kissing the tear away. "I love you, Melissa."
"Stop—staying that!" She brought her hands to her head to cover her ears as if it would help. She heard his words over and over in her head, though. 'I love you, I love you, I love you.' She just wanted to say the same thing over and over again to him. She just wanted to fall into his arms and kiss him like there was nothing wrong in the world, like there was no evil trying to kill them both.
"Why?" he wanted to know.
She winced. Why did she think she could tell him to be quiet? It was impossible. 'Just open your mouth and say I love you too,' she told herself. "Because I care for you, and it hurts to hear you say that right now," she said instead. She cursed herself immediately.
Delemir let go of her hair and stepped back like he'd been slapped. That hurt too, just hearing she cared. Only cared, he told himself. Why didn't she love him? Why did he need her to? Why did he expect her to feel the same way as he did?
'So much for trying to make him think marrying you was a good idea if all you're going to do is hurt him, Melissa,' she berated herself with her eyes closed, leaning against the closet door. 'Good luck recovering from this one.'
"All right," she heard Delemir say.
"All right what?" she asked, her voice slightly hoarse. She cleared her throat as he stepped forward and cupped her face in his hands.
"I can deal with you only caring right now, but later, you will love me," he promised.
'I already do,' she said to herself only, wanted to say out loud to him. "If you say so," she murmured.
"No, not only my saying. I see it in your eyes. You don't just care. There is something else there, and you know it. You only choose to keep it to yourself," he said. Biting his and Lissa's words off, he pressed his lips gently against hers in a mind boggling, sense-stealing kiss.
He poured himself, his heart, into that one kiss, wanting her to know how he truly felt. As he softened the kiss more to a gently coaxing of lips against lips, he also deepened it a level, for both of their sakes. He felt he would burst if he didn't feel her now, so he let his hands go down to her shoulders, trail down her arms, and rest at her waist. He brought her closer and felt her heart racing as fast as his.
Then he felt that throbbing in his heart, but this one was gentle and soft, like the kiss. When he felt her sigh into him, the throbbing increased and he wanted to push the gentleness he was trying to show her aside and let his mind take over. He wouldn't let it.
Lissa was shocked. Not only does he tell her he loves her, but he also gives her the best—the gentlest, softest, sweetest—kiss in the world that has even been known for record. She couldn't help but cling to him, unless she wanted to be lost to the fiery passion underneath to have her attention at one place only. As she let her hands knead the tension he'd worked up in his shoulders, she let him work the tension out of her mind.
"Delemir," she said when she drew away. She felt bare without his arms around her now. He had immediately withdrawn from her, a spacious two feet, when he'd realized how close things had become. "I have to finish packing. Emily's here. The hotel reservation. My promise to be there within the hour," she rambled off of her mental list.
"Yes, you're right." But he still came forward and took her hand, pressing a kiss to her palm. "I do love you still."
Oh, it hurt. "I know," she told him.
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Soon enough, Emily, Delemir, and Lissa were packing and almost done by the stroke of the hour. Lissa had been sure to check if there was milk, and that it was drank, or any spoilable food in the cabinets. She handed off Bennett and his supplies to Emily to take care of for the week—there were tears there, both woman's and cat's.
By fifteen after, Lissa and Delemir were out the door—to Lissa's relief—and going to the car. They tossed their bags in the backseat and hopped in the front seats. Lissa looked up at the window in the sitting room, on impulse, and could have sworn she'd seen Onaumbar moving away quickly, looking furious. That'd set her cranking up the vehicle and speeding away from her house like lightening.
"I need a new house," she said at an intersection. This was the first time she and Delemir had exchanged words since her room.
"What? Why?" he wanted to know. He looked at her as she took off slowly and drove along the straightaway to the hotel.
"Onaumbar is there in my house right now. If he doesn't leave after we figure this out, I'm going to buy a new house because I won't be able to live with that—" She muttered an oath "—living in my house. I doubt you'd want to, either," she said, lifting an eyebrow at Delemir.
"No, but Lissa, I doubt he will stay after we figure this out. But if he does, I also doubt he will let you be. He seems the type to hold a grudge and follow you," Delemir said.
"Thank you, Mr. Positive, for telling me just what I wanted to hear when I was fantasizing about living up town and out of the suburban area. See, I'd buy an apartment right there!" She pointed to a large building. "I could be alone when I wanted, or throw a party at my whim," she stated.
"Not with me around." Delemir smirked as the pulled up in the front parking lot.
"Who said you'd be around, huh?" Lissa turned in her seat as she pulled the keys from the ignition.
Delemir unhooked her seatbelt and in an instant, had pulled her over to him and captured her mouth. "Did you forget that I love you?" he asked her.
"No." She sighed. 'I love you, I love you, I love you. Just say it!' she told herself viciously.
Delemir let her go and they both climbed out of the car to check in at the hotel they would be staying at for the next week.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"One bed," Delemir pointed out as they stepped into the bedroom to unpack clothes.
"Your decision. Your fault," Lissa pointed out as well, tossing her bag on the floor and falling onto the bed.
"Not my fault." Delemir fell next to her and snaked his hand under her neck to rub at the tension he found out hotels could cause, and also being on the twelfth and top floor. "Yours for not telling me what it was about." He leaned closer to her and rubbed his lips over hers. "I love you," he whispered.
"That's the forth time you've told me that today," Lissa murmured, his lips still barely an inch away. "How many times are you going to say that until the day is over?"
"As many as I can without being repetitive," Delemir said, shifting so he was on his back, still rubbing her neck. "We have to unpack."
"I always just pulled clothes out of the bag when I stayed here. Of course, there were only eleven floors when I stayed here last," she said.
"When was that?"
"I don't remember. I was fourteen or something so about eight or so years ago. My dad would come up to Washington D.C. every three weeks because of his job for meetings and such. We'd go along with him sometimes. He retired from the military when I was almost fifteen. I don't remember," she said. "Hey, did you bring your swimming trunks we bought a few weeks ago?"
"I think you tossed them in," Delemir said as she sat up.
"This place has a great pool. And a hot tub and a sauna," she rambled on, opening up bags to check for it. "Aha!" She tossed it backward to him. "I take shotgun for the bathroom first." She opened up a pocket on hers and pulled out two peach colored pieces of material.
"What? I thought there were two!" Delemir said as she made way for the door.
"Nope. That cost me too much. Change in here. Close the curtains." She shut the door to change into her swimsuit to enjoy an evening swimming in a pool, relaxing in a hot tub, and unwinding in a sauna.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lissa opened her eyes around six in the morning, the crack of dawn. She yawned and stretched, feeling Delemir's arms around her waist. They were in the center of the hotel bed. 'So,' she thought, 'he was tired of the couch bed and came in here.' She grinned.
"Delemir," she said quietly. He made a man noise in his sleep by her ear. She laughed. "Delemir, you have to let me go, darling."
"Why?" he grunted. He nipped at her neck gently and sent a jolt in her system.
"I need a shower," she told him patiently.
"You took one last night," he said sleepily. He sniffed at her hair and her neck. "You still smell good to me."
She laughed harder. "I bet I do to you, but I feel icky. Let be go before I kick your shins to pieces. You'll need them since we're going shopping today," Lissa murmured.
"Fine." Delemir let her go, but sat up with her. "Lissa." She turned to him slowly, creaking and popping with morning sleep. He let his hands dive in to her hair as he captured her mouth with his for the first time that morning and tasted her just after sleep. "I love you," he said when he let her go.
"Yes, I know." Lissa stood, her senses fried now, and went off for her shower.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Where are we going?" Delemir asked as Lissa dragged him through the dimly lighted store they'd gone in yesterday. She dodged people expertly, saying that she often did that.
"A shop," she said simply.
"Where? There are thousands of shops here, Lissa, in case you have not noticed," Delemir observed, sounding harassed as Lissa dragged him through another crowd of people.
"Be quiet and follow me, Delemir," she said, turning to grin backward at him. "The shop contains that which will save both of our lives."
"That tells me nothing."
"Good."
Lissa steered them across the intersection of stores to a corner shop. Inside, there was a little display tower with chocolates on it; some in boxes or others wrapped. Around the other parts of the little shop were shelves and tables holding more chocolates in little baskets or little bears holding chocolates with the words I Love You embroidered across their chests. Lissa pulled Delemir inside, wary of other customers in the cramped store space.
"Wow," Delemir said, looking around as someone greeted Lissa by her first name.
A woman walked over to Lissa and they immediately began chattering. Lissa pointed over at Delemir, whispering lowly, and the woman gasped slightly. Then Lissa made an exaggerated motion while she raised her voice from the whisper to a quiet chatter, but brought it back down to a speeding, hissing whisper about this and that. The woman laughed, but stopped herself with a gasp. Lissa nodded.
"So, now we're staying at a hotel," Lissa finished, rolling her eyes and looking at Delemir. She pointed at the woman, who wasn't paying attention but telling the other woman behind the counter to clear out the back room, and then at her own head and made quick little circles at her ear. Delemir smirked. The action looked funny, but he hadn't the faintest idea what it meant.
Delemir turned to look around the shop to keep himself busy while Lissa chattered quickly, probably no less than one hundred miles per hour. When he felt a presence standing beside him, he looked up saw a woman standing next to him. He felt suddenly short now, since the woman towered over him, even.
"Can I help you, sir?" she asked expectantly.
"No, I'm just—" He pointed over to where Lissa had been standing with the woman, seeing she wasn't there anymore. Delemir turned back to the other woman, puzzled.
"Ms. Hogan is in the back. Would you like me to tell her you need her?" the woman offered, moving to go to the door to the storage room in the back.
"No, I'll just wait. Thank you," Delemir said, smiling and trying to hear any of Lissa's conversation from the back.
"So...he said he loves you," the other woman said.
"Yes." Lissa sounded very careful with her words right now, so stuck with monosyllable sentences.
"And?" the woman persuaded.
"And what?" Lissa nearly snapped, but kept that particular edge out of her voice. "There is no 'and' in this game, Laura."
"What did you say when he told you?" Laura wanted to know, sounding slight exasperated.
"I told him I cared for him," Lissa mumbled. That stung at Delemir still, knowing she just cared. Though he knew there was more, he couldn't tell if it was love or just really deep caring.
"Only cared? How could you not love a man like that? From what you told me a minute ago about how he told you he loved you, he sounds like every woman's dream!" Laura exclaimed.
"I only told him I cared, woman," Lissa corrected. "I—"
The rest of Lissa's sentence was cut off when someone bumped him by accident.
"Sorry," the person murmured. Delemir ignored it and immediately zoned in to Lissa's conversation.
"Oh," Laura was saying, very low and slowly.
"Well, we have a lot of other shops to hit today. Thanks," Lissa said and exited the back room. She flashed a smile at Delemir and laid two folded bills on the counter. The woman there rang up the bag and gave Lissa a receipt then she was on her way over to Delemir. "See you later, girls, when my chocolate supply dwindles to nothing and the very existence of the world is at stake!"
Lissa took Delemir's hand and they walked out of the shop together. They walked along first floor, above the metro level, to another shop with way too many people crammed in it. Lissa stepped around tables with little bottles of this and that on it. She picked up a bottle of perfume and sprayed it on her wrist. She sniffed it and grinned.
"What is that smell?" Delemir asked as she tried another bottle on. He dodged a slim woman with black hair. He turned and watched her walk away, then back at Lissa. There was a fire in her eyes and he only grinned.
"A mixture of scents. Why were you staring at that attractive woman with the mile-long legs and rail thin body and long, black hair?" she asked, running her sentences together.
"As you said, she was attractive," Delemir began as Lissa absently sprayed another scent on her neck and wrist again. "And she had very long legs. And she was skinny. And, she—" He lifted Lissa's wrist and sniffed the scent there, kissing her wrist as he did so "—had long, shiny black hair."
"Enough." Lissa's pulse was soaring as it was with him stroking her wrist as he was. She didn't need it going more with jealousy.
"You smell good," he said, sniffing her neck and nipping at it gently.
"Really," Lissa murmured, the attractive woman with the black hair forgotten again.
"Mm-hmm. I hope you buy that scent, as you called it." Delemir grinned as the earthy, feminine scent filled his mind. It was almost spicy, if he let it linger enough. He saw Lissa grinning, bemusedly, at him. "What?"
"I can't move, Delemir," she said, her grin spreading.
Delemir looked over her and saw that she was, indeed, immobilized. He had her pressed against one of the tables, his lips at her ears almost. Moving back from her, Delemir saw Lissa immediately shy away to find another bottle to inspect. She picked up a small phial and then moved to a counter to pay for it further in the store. When she came back, she was carrying a bag. And she looked infuriated by what she saw.
She'd left Delemir there at the perfume stands, thinking he couldn't put himself into any trouble. But what Lissa saw said he had put himself in almost all the trouble he could've. He was cornered by a tall—taller than she was and almost at eye level with Delemir—blonde woman. She was visibly and not so subtly flirting with her man.
Lissa nearly turned red with jealously and anger as she saw this. So, bringing herself up to her full height, Lissa cleared her throat and walked towards Delemir and the flirtatious blonde.
"Oh really?" the reedy voiced woman was saying. "I'm here all by myself. It's awfully dangerous for a woman like me to be by myself."
"I—"
"Delemir, darling, what do you think of this one?" Lissa sprayed something on her wrist at random and held it to Delemir's nose. Lissa tossed a dirty look at the blonde and grabbed Delemir's arm possessively. In woman's body language, that was like saying "Mine. Not yours, mine, and I won't share." Lissa saw the blonde give her a once over and sneer. Lissa returned the quick glancing over and the sneer, but it was more of a smirk as she saw that the woman was too thin, her skin was too pale and her lipstick too full. Her hair was flat and had hardly any style, but then again, most men found that alluring when it was too shiny.
Delemir looked at Lissa exchange a fearsome look with the blonde before she turned to glare at him. "It's...wonderful," he murmured, catching the evil death glare Lissa sent him. "Excuse us," he told the blonde as Lissa tossed the bottle on a table and yanked him out of the store hurriedly.
"What was that?" she demanded when they were in front of the shop they'd been in earlier with the chocolates.
"I beg your pardon?" Delemir asked. He didn't quite understand what he had done wrong.
"That blonde chick you had nearly crawling all over you in that shop back there!" Lissa said furiously, tossing her hand back towards the shop in question.
"What about her?" Delemir asked, lifting his eyebrow at her.
Lissa made an exasperated noise and shook her head. "Never mind. It's useless trying to explain it to you," she said, starting to walk away.
"Melissa, you don't just start something like this and then tell me to never mind. And why is it useless trying to explain something to me? I'm not stupid," Delemir told her, grabbing her arm and pulling her back to him.
Lissa glared up at him and didn't mind the icy feeling she felt towards him right now. "Fine. You don't just let some blonde crawl all over you like that one was when you love someone else, and when that someone else you love cares for you too," Lissa said hotly. "Now let me go." She knew it hurt him. That's why she said it.
Delemir let her go and then followed her over to the escalator. "Why not the elevator?" he asked when they took the moving stairs.
"I'll feel motion-sick and really dizzy later. But if you want to take it, go ahead." Lissa wasn't going to let her guard down right now, even if she did love the guy. She glanced at him quickly and lifted her eyebrow. "Didn't think so," she murmured as they walked to another store filled with little bottles of lotion and scents and soaps.
As Delemir and Lissa entered the shop, an onslaught of smells hit them, assaulting the Elf's senses. He was nearly taken aback, but Lissa walked straight in, seemingly unaffected by the smells catching his attention here and there. He watched her walk through the shop, stopping occasionally to pick up a bottle or two and smell what fragrance it contained, but all in all, she made a beeline straight to an area with bottles filled with blue liquid. She grinned at herself, he mused, when she moved to pay for it. She obviously found something amusing.
"What did you buy?" Delemir asked as she walked out and they started toward the escalators to go down.
"Body spray," she answered curtly. "It's the only thing I've really ever used that reminds me of an ex-boyfriend once upon a time."
Delemir made a distinct noise in his throat as they went down to the ground level then to the metro level. Time had seemed to slow, or at least to Delemir because he could slowly feel that throbbing in his heart coming. He surmised it was because Lissa was mad at him about—what? He still didn't understand. It was something about that blonde girl. What had she said?
'You don't just let some blonde crawl all over you like that one was when you love someone else, and when that someone else you love cares for you too.'
Lissa's voice echoed in his mind as her words came back to him. When they reached another shop, one with yet more scents in it, and mostly women inside, Delemir grabbed Lissa's arm and pulled her against him. He allowed himself the moment to see the look—deathly at first, then slightly frightened—in her eyes before he pressed his lips against hers firmly at first, but then going gentle so she fit more plaint against him. When he drew her back, he saw shock. He reveled in it for a moment, before reminding himself of what he'd done that for.
"Why did you—Why did you do that? In the mall? In front of thousands of people?" Lissa demanded, her voice slightly frantic.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly.
Lissa sent him an inquiring look then smirked. She turned and started to go into the shop, but Delemir grabbed her arm and kept her with him.
"I'm sorry for upsetting you earlier. Something about that blonde woman upset you," Delemir continued the obvious.
"Nah, duh," Lissa said, bored and intrigued at the same time with this certainly different way of Delemir's acting.
She saw him roll his eyes slightly then bring her close again. "Shall I have to kiss you again to quiet you so I can apologize correctly, or will you be quiet on your own?" he said quietly, his voice soothing and gentle.
Lissa thought a moment. "I'll be quiet on my own as long as you promise that kiss for later," she bargained.
"Fine. I'm sorry I upset you. As you know, I'm not exactly all too familiar with all of this and the women back where I used to live weren't as forward. I thought nothing of it because I love you," Delemir said.
There was a slight shock and understanding on Lissa's face as she processed the words. When she reached the part about 'where he used to live,' she stopped, not wanting to think of that now.
"What is it?" Delemir asked upon her softened look and mournful eyes. He knew she was slightly troubled right then. He took her hand in his gently and waited for her to speak.
"Nothing, forget it," she said at last, about thirty solid seconds later. "I'm fine, you're fine, we're both fine. Case is closed."
Delemir nodded, only dropping it now since they were in public. They he'd only known Lissa for a few months, he knew that when someone pressed her to talk about something she didn't, she either gave you the cold shoulder then exploded with her anger, or just skipped the cold shoulder and blew up at you.
He watched her walk into the shop and browse, declining any help offered her. He slowly stepped in behind her, finding it was another shop that sold perfume, and walked over to her just as she picked up a bottle. She made a shocked and amused noise before glancing up at him.
"What?" he asked.
"Expensive," she murmured, pointing at the twenty-dollar bottle of perfume. "I may like this scent, but not enough to pay this much." She kept her voice low, quieter than the soft, seductive music playing.
Delemir grinned and picked up a similar, only smaller, bottle. "Is this the same one?" he asked, letting her see it.
"Yes. Miraculously, you found a smaller, cheaper bottle of it, but will keep me stocked for a good while," she grinned. "Come on."
They paid for the scent, then walked out. They walked a little ways, passed shops and people. Lissa stopped in front of a dress shop and looked at him.
"Is there any place you wanted to stop and look at? I mean, I was steamed upstairs and was walking fast enough down here that we could have passed a place you wanted to look at," Lissa said, leaning against the threshold of the shop's door.
Delemir looked passed her and saw a slinky black dress. It was spaghetti strapped, he remembered the term, and slightly low cut in a V-neck. The dress had slight frills at the bottom where sheer pieces of material overlapped and gave it that dangerous, weathered—or slightly tattered if need be—look as the small fullness slightly rippled when a woman walked by. Delemir couldn't help but think about Lissa wearing it.
"Delemir?" he heard her voice cut through his thoughts, slightly amused and puzzled.
"Nope, I'm, ah, just fine following you around," he said, grinning. He couldn't stop his mind when, with the image of Lissa wearing it still, it began to weave little fantasies about Lissa and the dress. He leaned over to see the black piece of material better.
"Are you sure? We could go elsewhere if you like. I have a few more stops to make if you wanted to walk around." Lissa watched Delemir for a moment before she leaned over to be in his line of vision. "Delemir?" she asked, her voice slightly singsong.
"Hmm?" Delemir replied absently, forcing his eyes to meet Lissa's.
"What were you doing?" she asked warily, almost afraid of the answer.
"Ah, nothing. Are you going in there?" Delemir asked, suddenly aware of her original intentions.
"Yeah," Lissa replied slowly. "Were you—"
Delemir raised his eyebrows innocently, as if she were accusing him of slander, once again, of one of her favorite things.
"Thinking about...something strange?" Lissa took a step forward, closer to him and away from the store.
"Me? Not at all," Delemir replied, smiling as if there were a halo above his head, which Lissa could have sworn she'd seen. A very undeserved halo, none the least.
Lissa raised her eyebrows, though, as well in a familiar manner. "If you say so, Delemir." She stepped passed him, glancing at him with a peculiar look on her face. Then, either to Delemir's horror or his manly, perverse delight, she walked over to the slinky black dress. She looked at the price tag and Delemir could hear her whistle lowly.
"Excuse me, ma'am," a worker at the shop said, coming up to Lissa. "All prices are half off today." The woman looked at Lissa with the hope of her buying something evident in her eyes.
"Thank you," Lissa said as pleasantly as she could with all of the excitement bubbling inside of her. She looked at the tag again and began to do mental math. "Okay, half of one hundred and eighty-five dollars is..."
"Ninety-two dollars and fifty cents," Delemir said, looking at Lissa sheepishly under her penetrating gaze.
"Go outside for a minute, Delemir, before I kill you," she said lowly and stared blandly at him, the price tag still in her hand.
Delemir snickered slightly and went out of the shop. He stood there, watching all of the people. He was a good few inches taller than some of them, and some others were about his height. That made him think of Onaumbar, for some reason, and how he had grown in his anger in the dreams Delemir had experienced. Then, he also remembered Lissa mentioning something about them occasionally and how Onaumbar had always been really tall. She'd gone on about being short as it was anyway, but he had just seemed really tall.
"Hey," Lissa said, tapping his shoulder. "Zoned out?"
"Did you buy that dress?" he wanted to know and offered to carry the bag.
"Maybe," Lissa grinned, keeping the bag in her arms. "Like I'd tell you."
Delemir rolled his eyes slightly and followed her as she went on a more extensive journey of the mall. He wondered why her feet didn't hurt, because—strange as it seemed—his feet were feeling a little tired. He thought why that had never happened before, and this was the first time he ever remembered feeling his feet throbbing.
As Lissa stopped in front of another small shop, she grinned at him. "Last stop, I promise," she said. This was a very quick trip, seeing as she walked to one corner of the room, picked up a bag with green wrapped things in it, then went to pay for it.
"Anything new?" Lissa asked the cashier.
"Nope," the young, most likely teenage boy answered, handing her a receipt. "Not since last time."
"Hah, thanks," she offered a radiant smile then walked out with Delemir.
"What is in the bag?" Delemir asked as they made their way back to the ground level to go out to the bus stop.
"More chocolate," Lissa said simply. "I'm staying in a hotel, I'm stressed. I eat chocolate when I'm stressed." Delemir grinned at her logic.
"If you say so," he replied as they walked out into the waning afternoon. When they reached the benches for the bus stop to take them back to the hotel, Delemir sat down and watched Lissa rearrange the bags she had. She stuffed the smaller bags inside of the bigger bags, and the medium bag inside of the biggest bag from the dress shop. They ended up with two full bags.
"Lissa sit down please," Delemir said when she only stood in front of him, facing the street.
"No," Lissa said, continuing to go up on the balls of her feet for about ten seconds, then back on her heels for another ten or fifteen seconds.
"Please?" Delemir pleaded, watching her with growing, avid interest.
"No." Lissa kept her eyes toward the road and continued the 'exercise,' Delemir guessed, as she waited.
"Why not?"
Lissa turned around to stare at Delemir in an odd manner. "If I sit down now, I'll be feeling terrible for ballet later this week," she told him and turned back around.
"Ballet?" Delemir asked, this having been the first time she'd spoken of it. He knew that classes had started up again because she'd left the house around five o'clock on Friday nights to go there, and was back late, around ten.
"Yeah. I almost forgot it was tomorrow, too," she murmured, mostly to herself. She sighed loudly as the bus pulled up. "Finally."
"Tomorrow?" Delemir asked as they stepped on with the bags.
"Yes, tomorrow. We have to go by the house and find my shoes and all," she said quietly, her voice quivering.
"You don't want to go back there," he murmured.
"Heck no," Lissa said ironically. "Not until that moron Onaumbar is g—"
Lissa sighed audibly again as the bus went over a large bump in the road. There were 'oohs' and 'ahhs' and nonchalant hoots about this or that from the back. She turned her head and saw a man coming up to the front at a stoplight with a stained white shirt.
"Hey, man, you made me spill my hot coffee all over my new shirt!" he shouted, holding out his shirt to show them.
"Sorry," the driver said quietly and in a thick Asian accent.
"What?" The other looked as though the driver had called him a nasty name.
"He said he's sorry. Would you like a written contract of it with fancy big words and a check to the mall to buy another one?" Lissa said, looking at the man with a steely gaze.
The man turned to face Lissa slowly as if she'd slapped him. "Stay outta this, woman, or else I'll pull you and your boyfriend in it in a way you won't like!" the man shouted.
"Excuse me," Lissa said, standing in her seat, irony and shock in her eyes. "Did you just call me 'woman'?"
"Lissa, my love, please don't—"
"Delemir, be quiet. That was considered an insult, and I don't tolerate being called 'woman' by anyone out of my circle of friends," Lissa said, not letting her gaze away from the man's.
"To answer your question, woman," the man began, enunciating and inflecting on the word 'woman' more than one normally would have, "I did. What're you gonna do about it?"
Lissa looked ready to think of a very nasty retort when the bus stopped in the hotel parking lot. "I loathe to disgruntle you on this eventuality, but I am indisposed to disregard your solicitation to make an article of this unscrupulous event considering this particular sector of the urban area is my locale to disembark the transit vehicle," Lissa said after a moment. She grinned at the puzzled look the man gave her, then shoved Delemir off of the bus and into the hotel.
"What was that?" Delemir asked, remembering her line with the 'Blonde' incident. He watched her they went to the elevator. She didn't answer until they were in the elevator.
"An exercise of my vocabulary and if I could confuse someone besides you in one day," Lissa said, grinning at him. Delemir smirked back at her as the last person on the elevator stepped off at the fifth floor.
"Thank God. Hope it doesn't stop, okay?" Lissa said, slightly breathless.
"What?" Delemir was the one she'd confused now. She was good at that.
"Never mind," she said and kissed him suddenly. "I had to do that—for some reason."
Delemir looked down at her, stunned. He couldn't think of anything to say as the elevator stopped at their floor and two people were waiting to ride down. Lissa pulled him and the bags out of the elevator and off toward their room. When they stepped in, Lissa dropped one bag on the floor and took the other one from the dress shop back with her into the bedroom.
"You take the bathroom and change into this," Lissa said some minutes later, opening the door a little and thrusting her arm out with clothes in her hand. Delemir reached out to take the slacks and shirt when she suddenly took them back. "Wait, wait, wait. I need the bathroom. Um, go into the living room and don't peek while I stumble into the bathroom half- dressed."
"What?" Delemir, shocked, couldn't believe his pointed ears. "The Valar forbid I peek if you are only half-dressed, Melissa," he said, turning to stuff his nose in a corner.
Lissa grinned as she hobbled, clad in the black dress she'd bought from the shop in the mall and impossibly high shoes, to the bathroom. She sneaked a glance at Delemir, staring at the door with avid interest. She hummed a tune that came to her mind automatically as she shut the door.
All Delemir heard was the soft scuffling of her feet as she walked from one room to the other and then the highest of high notes from an opera she listened to regularly. Then the bathroom door shut and he could hear audible and coherent words from the opera during the main thematic song.
Walking to the back bedroom where the clothes were, he wondered what she had in mind for him to do that night instead of swim and sit down at the bar for happy hour, as she had blatantly and colorfully put it.
"Oh boy," he murmured, letting out a long breath.
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Hehehe, cliffhanger. *says in a radio announcer's voice* Stay tuned after this disclaimer for a special note from the author! DISCLAIMER: Okay, I don't own the Valar, Lothlórien, or anything else I failed to remember here that I wrote in this chapter that has a copyright. The stores in the Pentagon City Mall are real ones, of which they include (in order that they appeared) Godiva; Macy's; Bath and Body Works; Victoria's Secret Beauty (hehehe); Ellie; and Lindt. In Ellie, the dress shop, there really is/was a black dress like the one Lissa bought. I remember what it looked like. It really was $185 and it was half price that day I went a few weeks ago in December. I sketched it and even wrote little notes down about how it looked to remember better. It is/was a very beautiful dress and I plan on hoping to sew it one day. ^-^ Anyhow.........
SPECIAL NOTE!! *radio DJ's voice again* What does Lissa have in store for Delemir? Why was she wearing the black dress that she'd bought from a shop in the Pentagon City Mall? What's better than swimming and happy hour in a hotel? Find out in the next installment of Love's Philosophy! LOL!
Chapter 12
"I love you."
Her jaw dropped and her hands trembled as she heard those words come from Delemir's mouth. She had to be dreaming. She just had to be dreaming. Could he really love her? Was there a rule saying an Elf couldn't love a mortal? Anything? Nothing came to mind.
"What?" she managed, watching him watching her intensely. "How long?"
"A month, today," he told her, feeling completely powerful now. "Lissa, I—"
"Wait a minute," she said, swallowing hard and painfully, as if something were stuck in her throat. "Let me..."
Slowly, Lissa lifted her hand to his cheek, brushed away his long, blonde, beautiful hair and saw a soft point on the tip of his ear. "What about this?" She gently touched the tip and trailed her finger down the back of his ear to his neck.
"About what?" Delemir asked, fighting a chill from her touch.
"You're an Elf, Delemir!" she nearly yelled, wiping a tear that tried to crawl down her cheek away. "I'm a human. You're immortal, I'm mortal! You'll live forever, I'm going to die one day!" She swallowed the word 'die' like it was bad medicine, which it was.
"I'll die with you, then, so I can see you again," Delemir said simply, tugging on her hair to keep her gaze in his.
"I don't know if they have a place for Elves here, Delemir, when they die. When people die here, they either go to heaven or hell." Lissa took a deep breath and tried to tear her gaze away from Delemir's as another tear fell down her cheek.
"I will go wherever you go," he told her, kissing the tear away. "I love you, Melissa."
"Stop—staying that!" She brought her hands to her head to cover her ears as if it would help. She heard his words over and over in her head, though. 'I love you, I love you, I love you.' She just wanted to say the same thing over and over again to him. She just wanted to fall into his arms and kiss him like there was nothing wrong in the world, like there was no evil trying to kill them both.
"Why?" he wanted to know.
She winced. Why did she think she could tell him to be quiet? It was impossible. 'Just open your mouth and say I love you too,' she told herself. "Because I care for you, and it hurts to hear you say that right now," she said instead. She cursed herself immediately.
Delemir let go of her hair and stepped back like he'd been slapped. That hurt too, just hearing she cared. Only cared, he told himself. Why didn't she love him? Why did he need her to? Why did he expect her to feel the same way as he did?
'So much for trying to make him think marrying you was a good idea if all you're going to do is hurt him, Melissa,' she berated herself with her eyes closed, leaning against the closet door. 'Good luck recovering from this one.'
"All right," she heard Delemir say.
"All right what?" she asked, her voice slightly hoarse. She cleared her throat as he stepped forward and cupped her face in his hands.
"I can deal with you only caring right now, but later, you will love me," he promised.
'I already do,' she said to herself only, wanted to say out loud to him. "If you say so," she murmured.
"No, not only my saying. I see it in your eyes. You don't just care. There is something else there, and you know it. You only choose to keep it to yourself," he said. Biting his and Lissa's words off, he pressed his lips gently against hers in a mind boggling, sense-stealing kiss.
He poured himself, his heart, into that one kiss, wanting her to know how he truly felt. As he softened the kiss more to a gently coaxing of lips against lips, he also deepened it a level, for both of their sakes. He felt he would burst if he didn't feel her now, so he let his hands go down to her shoulders, trail down her arms, and rest at her waist. He brought her closer and felt her heart racing as fast as his.
Then he felt that throbbing in his heart, but this one was gentle and soft, like the kiss. When he felt her sigh into him, the throbbing increased and he wanted to push the gentleness he was trying to show her aside and let his mind take over. He wouldn't let it.
Lissa was shocked. Not only does he tell her he loves her, but he also gives her the best—the gentlest, softest, sweetest—kiss in the world that has even been known for record. She couldn't help but cling to him, unless she wanted to be lost to the fiery passion underneath to have her attention at one place only. As she let her hands knead the tension he'd worked up in his shoulders, she let him work the tension out of her mind.
"Delemir," she said when she drew away. She felt bare without his arms around her now. He had immediately withdrawn from her, a spacious two feet, when he'd realized how close things had become. "I have to finish packing. Emily's here. The hotel reservation. My promise to be there within the hour," she rambled off of her mental list.
"Yes, you're right." But he still came forward and took her hand, pressing a kiss to her palm. "I do love you still."
Oh, it hurt. "I know," she told him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Soon enough, Emily, Delemir, and Lissa were packing and almost done by the stroke of the hour. Lissa had been sure to check if there was milk, and that it was drank, or any spoilable food in the cabinets. She handed off Bennett and his supplies to Emily to take care of for the week—there were tears there, both woman's and cat's.
By fifteen after, Lissa and Delemir were out the door—to Lissa's relief—and going to the car. They tossed their bags in the backseat and hopped in the front seats. Lissa looked up at the window in the sitting room, on impulse, and could have sworn she'd seen Onaumbar moving away quickly, looking furious. That'd set her cranking up the vehicle and speeding away from her house like lightening.
"I need a new house," she said at an intersection. This was the first time she and Delemir had exchanged words since her room.
"What? Why?" he wanted to know. He looked at her as she took off slowly and drove along the straightaway to the hotel.
"Onaumbar is there in my house right now. If he doesn't leave after we figure this out, I'm going to buy a new house because I won't be able to live with that—" She muttered an oath "—living in my house. I doubt you'd want to, either," she said, lifting an eyebrow at Delemir.
"No, but Lissa, I doubt he will stay after we figure this out. But if he does, I also doubt he will let you be. He seems the type to hold a grudge and follow you," Delemir said.
"Thank you, Mr. Positive, for telling me just what I wanted to hear when I was fantasizing about living up town and out of the suburban area. See, I'd buy an apartment right there!" She pointed to a large building. "I could be alone when I wanted, or throw a party at my whim," she stated.
"Not with me around." Delemir smirked as the pulled up in the front parking lot.
"Who said you'd be around, huh?" Lissa turned in her seat as she pulled the keys from the ignition.
Delemir unhooked her seatbelt and in an instant, had pulled her over to him and captured her mouth. "Did you forget that I love you?" he asked her.
"No." She sighed. 'I love you, I love you, I love you. Just say it!' she told herself viciously.
Delemir let her go and they both climbed out of the car to check in at the hotel they would be staying at for the next week.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"One bed," Delemir pointed out as they stepped into the bedroom to unpack clothes.
"Your decision. Your fault," Lissa pointed out as well, tossing her bag on the floor and falling onto the bed.
"Not my fault." Delemir fell next to her and snaked his hand under her neck to rub at the tension he found out hotels could cause, and also being on the twelfth and top floor. "Yours for not telling me what it was about." He leaned closer to her and rubbed his lips over hers. "I love you," he whispered.
"That's the forth time you've told me that today," Lissa murmured, his lips still barely an inch away. "How many times are you going to say that until the day is over?"
"As many as I can without being repetitive," Delemir said, shifting so he was on his back, still rubbing her neck. "We have to unpack."
"I always just pulled clothes out of the bag when I stayed here. Of course, there were only eleven floors when I stayed here last," she said.
"When was that?"
"I don't remember. I was fourteen or something so about eight or so years ago. My dad would come up to Washington D.C. every three weeks because of his job for meetings and such. We'd go along with him sometimes. He retired from the military when I was almost fifteen. I don't remember," she said. "Hey, did you bring your swimming trunks we bought a few weeks ago?"
"I think you tossed them in," Delemir said as she sat up.
"This place has a great pool. And a hot tub and a sauna," she rambled on, opening up bags to check for it. "Aha!" She tossed it backward to him. "I take shotgun for the bathroom first." She opened up a pocket on hers and pulled out two peach colored pieces of material.
"What? I thought there were two!" Delemir said as she made way for the door.
"Nope. That cost me too much. Change in here. Close the curtains." She shut the door to change into her swimsuit to enjoy an evening swimming in a pool, relaxing in a hot tub, and unwinding in a sauna.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lissa opened her eyes around six in the morning, the crack of dawn. She yawned and stretched, feeling Delemir's arms around her waist. They were in the center of the hotel bed. 'So,' she thought, 'he was tired of the couch bed and came in here.' She grinned.
"Delemir," she said quietly. He made a man noise in his sleep by her ear. She laughed. "Delemir, you have to let me go, darling."
"Why?" he grunted. He nipped at her neck gently and sent a jolt in her system.
"I need a shower," she told him patiently.
"You took one last night," he said sleepily. He sniffed at her hair and her neck. "You still smell good to me."
She laughed harder. "I bet I do to you, but I feel icky. Let be go before I kick your shins to pieces. You'll need them since we're going shopping today," Lissa murmured.
"Fine." Delemir let her go, but sat up with her. "Lissa." She turned to him slowly, creaking and popping with morning sleep. He let his hands dive in to her hair as he captured her mouth with his for the first time that morning and tasted her just after sleep. "I love you," he said when he let her go.
"Yes, I know." Lissa stood, her senses fried now, and went off for her shower.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Where are we going?" Delemir asked as Lissa dragged him through the dimly lighted store they'd gone in yesterday. She dodged people expertly, saying that she often did that.
"A shop," she said simply.
"Where? There are thousands of shops here, Lissa, in case you have not noticed," Delemir observed, sounding harassed as Lissa dragged him through another crowd of people.
"Be quiet and follow me, Delemir," she said, turning to grin backward at him. "The shop contains that which will save both of our lives."
"That tells me nothing."
"Good."
Lissa steered them across the intersection of stores to a corner shop. Inside, there was a little display tower with chocolates on it; some in boxes or others wrapped. Around the other parts of the little shop were shelves and tables holding more chocolates in little baskets or little bears holding chocolates with the words I Love You embroidered across their chests. Lissa pulled Delemir inside, wary of other customers in the cramped store space.
"Wow," Delemir said, looking around as someone greeted Lissa by her first name.
A woman walked over to Lissa and they immediately began chattering. Lissa pointed over at Delemir, whispering lowly, and the woman gasped slightly. Then Lissa made an exaggerated motion while she raised her voice from the whisper to a quiet chatter, but brought it back down to a speeding, hissing whisper about this and that. The woman laughed, but stopped herself with a gasp. Lissa nodded.
"So, now we're staying at a hotel," Lissa finished, rolling her eyes and looking at Delemir. She pointed at the woman, who wasn't paying attention but telling the other woman behind the counter to clear out the back room, and then at her own head and made quick little circles at her ear. Delemir smirked. The action looked funny, but he hadn't the faintest idea what it meant.
Delemir turned to look around the shop to keep himself busy while Lissa chattered quickly, probably no less than one hundred miles per hour. When he felt a presence standing beside him, he looked up saw a woman standing next to him. He felt suddenly short now, since the woman towered over him, even.
"Can I help you, sir?" she asked expectantly.
"No, I'm just—" He pointed over to where Lissa had been standing with the woman, seeing she wasn't there anymore. Delemir turned back to the other woman, puzzled.
"Ms. Hogan is in the back. Would you like me to tell her you need her?" the woman offered, moving to go to the door to the storage room in the back.
"No, I'll just wait. Thank you," Delemir said, smiling and trying to hear any of Lissa's conversation from the back.
"So...he said he loves you," the other woman said.
"Yes." Lissa sounded very careful with her words right now, so stuck with monosyllable sentences.
"And?" the woman persuaded.
"And what?" Lissa nearly snapped, but kept that particular edge out of her voice. "There is no 'and' in this game, Laura."
"What did you say when he told you?" Laura wanted to know, sounding slight exasperated.
"I told him I cared for him," Lissa mumbled. That stung at Delemir still, knowing she just cared. Though he knew there was more, he couldn't tell if it was love or just really deep caring.
"Only cared? How could you not love a man like that? From what you told me a minute ago about how he told you he loved you, he sounds like every woman's dream!" Laura exclaimed.
"I only told him I cared, woman," Lissa corrected. "I—"
The rest of Lissa's sentence was cut off when someone bumped him by accident.
"Sorry," the person murmured. Delemir ignored it and immediately zoned in to Lissa's conversation.
"Oh," Laura was saying, very low and slowly.
"Well, we have a lot of other shops to hit today. Thanks," Lissa said and exited the back room. She flashed a smile at Delemir and laid two folded bills on the counter. The woman there rang up the bag and gave Lissa a receipt then she was on her way over to Delemir. "See you later, girls, when my chocolate supply dwindles to nothing and the very existence of the world is at stake!"
Lissa took Delemir's hand and they walked out of the shop together. They walked along first floor, above the metro level, to another shop with way too many people crammed in it. Lissa stepped around tables with little bottles of this and that on it. She picked up a bottle of perfume and sprayed it on her wrist. She sniffed it and grinned.
"What is that smell?" Delemir asked as she tried another bottle on. He dodged a slim woman with black hair. He turned and watched her walk away, then back at Lissa. There was a fire in her eyes and he only grinned.
"A mixture of scents. Why were you staring at that attractive woman with the mile-long legs and rail thin body and long, black hair?" she asked, running her sentences together.
"As you said, she was attractive," Delemir began as Lissa absently sprayed another scent on her neck and wrist again. "And she had very long legs. And she was skinny. And, she—" He lifted Lissa's wrist and sniffed the scent there, kissing her wrist as he did so "—had long, shiny black hair."
"Enough." Lissa's pulse was soaring as it was with him stroking her wrist as he was. She didn't need it going more with jealousy.
"You smell good," he said, sniffing her neck and nipping at it gently.
"Really," Lissa murmured, the attractive woman with the black hair forgotten again.
"Mm-hmm. I hope you buy that scent, as you called it." Delemir grinned as the earthy, feminine scent filled his mind. It was almost spicy, if he let it linger enough. He saw Lissa grinning, bemusedly, at him. "What?"
"I can't move, Delemir," she said, her grin spreading.
Delemir looked over her and saw that she was, indeed, immobilized. He had her pressed against one of the tables, his lips at her ears almost. Moving back from her, Delemir saw Lissa immediately shy away to find another bottle to inspect. She picked up a small phial and then moved to a counter to pay for it further in the store. When she came back, she was carrying a bag. And she looked infuriated by what she saw.
She'd left Delemir there at the perfume stands, thinking he couldn't put himself into any trouble. But what Lissa saw said he had put himself in almost all the trouble he could've. He was cornered by a tall—taller than she was and almost at eye level with Delemir—blonde woman. She was visibly and not so subtly flirting with her man.
Lissa nearly turned red with jealously and anger as she saw this. So, bringing herself up to her full height, Lissa cleared her throat and walked towards Delemir and the flirtatious blonde.
"Oh really?" the reedy voiced woman was saying. "I'm here all by myself. It's awfully dangerous for a woman like me to be by myself."
"I—"
"Delemir, darling, what do you think of this one?" Lissa sprayed something on her wrist at random and held it to Delemir's nose. Lissa tossed a dirty look at the blonde and grabbed Delemir's arm possessively. In woman's body language, that was like saying "Mine. Not yours, mine, and I won't share." Lissa saw the blonde give her a once over and sneer. Lissa returned the quick glancing over and the sneer, but it was more of a smirk as she saw that the woman was too thin, her skin was too pale and her lipstick too full. Her hair was flat and had hardly any style, but then again, most men found that alluring when it was too shiny.
Delemir looked at Lissa exchange a fearsome look with the blonde before she turned to glare at him. "It's...wonderful," he murmured, catching the evil death glare Lissa sent him. "Excuse us," he told the blonde as Lissa tossed the bottle on a table and yanked him out of the store hurriedly.
"What was that?" she demanded when they were in front of the shop they'd been in earlier with the chocolates.
"I beg your pardon?" Delemir asked. He didn't quite understand what he had done wrong.
"That blonde chick you had nearly crawling all over you in that shop back there!" Lissa said furiously, tossing her hand back towards the shop in question.
"What about her?" Delemir asked, lifting his eyebrow at her.
Lissa made an exasperated noise and shook her head. "Never mind. It's useless trying to explain it to you," she said, starting to walk away.
"Melissa, you don't just start something like this and then tell me to never mind. And why is it useless trying to explain something to me? I'm not stupid," Delemir told her, grabbing her arm and pulling her back to him.
Lissa glared up at him and didn't mind the icy feeling she felt towards him right now. "Fine. You don't just let some blonde crawl all over you like that one was when you love someone else, and when that someone else you love cares for you too," Lissa said hotly. "Now let me go." She knew it hurt him. That's why she said it.
Delemir let her go and then followed her over to the escalator. "Why not the elevator?" he asked when they took the moving stairs.
"I'll feel motion-sick and really dizzy later. But if you want to take it, go ahead." Lissa wasn't going to let her guard down right now, even if she did love the guy. She glanced at him quickly and lifted her eyebrow. "Didn't think so," she murmured as they walked to another store filled with little bottles of lotion and scents and soaps.
As Delemir and Lissa entered the shop, an onslaught of smells hit them, assaulting the Elf's senses. He was nearly taken aback, but Lissa walked straight in, seemingly unaffected by the smells catching his attention here and there. He watched her walk through the shop, stopping occasionally to pick up a bottle or two and smell what fragrance it contained, but all in all, she made a beeline straight to an area with bottles filled with blue liquid. She grinned at herself, he mused, when she moved to pay for it. She obviously found something amusing.
"What did you buy?" Delemir asked as she walked out and they started toward the escalators to go down.
"Body spray," she answered curtly. "It's the only thing I've really ever used that reminds me of an ex-boyfriend once upon a time."
Delemir made a distinct noise in his throat as they went down to the ground level then to the metro level. Time had seemed to slow, or at least to Delemir because he could slowly feel that throbbing in his heart coming. He surmised it was because Lissa was mad at him about—what? He still didn't understand. It was something about that blonde girl. What had she said?
'You don't just let some blonde crawl all over you like that one was when you love someone else, and when that someone else you love cares for you too.'
Lissa's voice echoed in his mind as her words came back to him. When they reached another shop, one with yet more scents in it, and mostly women inside, Delemir grabbed Lissa's arm and pulled her against him. He allowed himself the moment to see the look—deathly at first, then slightly frightened—in her eyes before he pressed his lips against hers firmly at first, but then going gentle so she fit more plaint against him. When he drew her back, he saw shock. He reveled in it for a moment, before reminding himself of what he'd done that for.
"Why did you—Why did you do that? In the mall? In front of thousands of people?" Lissa demanded, her voice slightly frantic.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly.
Lissa sent him an inquiring look then smirked. She turned and started to go into the shop, but Delemir grabbed her arm and kept her with him.
"I'm sorry for upsetting you earlier. Something about that blonde woman upset you," Delemir continued the obvious.
"Nah, duh," Lissa said, bored and intrigued at the same time with this certainly different way of Delemir's acting.
She saw him roll his eyes slightly then bring her close again. "Shall I have to kiss you again to quiet you so I can apologize correctly, or will you be quiet on your own?" he said quietly, his voice soothing and gentle.
Lissa thought a moment. "I'll be quiet on my own as long as you promise that kiss for later," she bargained.
"Fine. I'm sorry I upset you. As you know, I'm not exactly all too familiar with all of this and the women back where I used to live weren't as forward. I thought nothing of it because I love you," Delemir said.
There was a slight shock and understanding on Lissa's face as she processed the words. When she reached the part about 'where he used to live,' she stopped, not wanting to think of that now.
"What is it?" Delemir asked upon her softened look and mournful eyes. He knew she was slightly troubled right then. He took her hand in his gently and waited for her to speak.
"Nothing, forget it," she said at last, about thirty solid seconds later. "I'm fine, you're fine, we're both fine. Case is closed."
Delemir nodded, only dropping it now since they were in public. They he'd only known Lissa for a few months, he knew that when someone pressed her to talk about something she didn't, she either gave you the cold shoulder then exploded with her anger, or just skipped the cold shoulder and blew up at you.
He watched her walk into the shop and browse, declining any help offered her. He slowly stepped in behind her, finding it was another shop that sold perfume, and walked over to her just as she picked up a bottle. She made a shocked and amused noise before glancing up at him.
"What?" he asked.
"Expensive," she murmured, pointing at the twenty-dollar bottle of perfume. "I may like this scent, but not enough to pay this much." She kept her voice low, quieter than the soft, seductive music playing.
Delemir grinned and picked up a similar, only smaller, bottle. "Is this the same one?" he asked, letting her see it.
"Yes. Miraculously, you found a smaller, cheaper bottle of it, but will keep me stocked for a good while," she grinned. "Come on."
They paid for the scent, then walked out. They walked a little ways, passed shops and people. Lissa stopped in front of a dress shop and looked at him.
"Is there any place you wanted to stop and look at? I mean, I was steamed upstairs and was walking fast enough down here that we could have passed a place you wanted to look at," Lissa said, leaning against the threshold of the shop's door.
Delemir looked passed her and saw a slinky black dress. It was spaghetti strapped, he remembered the term, and slightly low cut in a V-neck. The dress had slight frills at the bottom where sheer pieces of material overlapped and gave it that dangerous, weathered—or slightly tattered if need be—look as the small fullness slightly rippled when a woman walked by. Delemir couldn't help but think about Lissa wearing it.
"Delemir?" he heard her voice cut through his thoughts, slightly amused and puzzled.
"Nope, I'm, ah, just fine following you around," he said, grinning. He couldn't stop his mind when, with the image of Lissa wearing it still, it began to weave little fantasies about Lissa and the dress. He leaned over to see the black piece of material better.
"Are you sure? We could go elsewhere if you like. I have a few more stops to make if you wanted to walk around." Lissa watched Delemir for a moment before she leaned over to be in his line of vision. "Delemir?" she asked, her voice slightly singsong.
"Hmm?" Delemir replied absently, forcing his eyes to meet Lissa's.
"What were you doing?" she asked warily, almost afraid of the answer.
"Ah, nothing. Are you going in there?" Delemir asked, suddenly aware of her original intentions.
"Yeah," Lissa replied slowly. "Were you—"
Delemir raised his eyebrows innocently, as if she were accusing him of slander, once again, of one of her favorite things.
"Thinking about...something strange?" Lissa took a step forward, closer to him and away from the store.
"Me? Not at all," Delemir replied, smiling as if there were a halo above his head, which Lissa could have sworn she'd seen. A very undeserved halo, none the least.
Lissa raised her eyebrows, though, as well in a familiar manner. "If you say so, Delemir." She stepped passed him, glancing at him with a peculiar look on her face. Then, either to Delemir's horror or his manly, perverse delight, she walked over to the slinky black dress. She looked at the price tag and Delemir could hear her whistle lowly.
"Excuse me, ma'am," a worker at the shop said, coming up to Lissa. "All prices are half off today." The woman looked at Lissa with the hope of her buying something evident in her eyes.
"Thank you," Lissa said as pleasantly as she could with all of the excitement bubbling inside of her. She looked at the tag again and began to do mental math. "Okay, half of one hundred and eighty-five dollars is..."
"Ninety-two dollars and fifty cents," Delemir said, looking at Lissa sheepishly under her penetrating gaze.
"Go outside for a minute, Delemir, before I kill you," she said lowly and stared blandly at him, the price tag still in her hand.
Delemir snickered slightly and went out of the shop. He stood there, watching all of the people. He was a good few inches taller than some of them, and some others were about his height. That made him think of Onaumbar, for some reason, and how he had grown in his anger in the dreams Delemir had experienced. Then, he also remembered Lissa mentioning something about them occasionally and how Onaumbar had always been really tall. She'd gone on about being short as it was anyway, but he had just seemed really tall.
"Hey," Lissa said, tapping his shoulder. "Zoned out?"
"Did you buy that dress?" he wanted to know and offered to carry the bag.
"Maybe," Lissa grinned, keeping the bag in her arms. "Like I'd tell you."
Delemir rolled his eyes slightly and followed her as she went on a more extensive journey of the mall. He wondered why her feet didn't hurt, because—strange as it seemed—his feet were feeling a little tired. He thought why that had never happened before, and this was the first time he ever remembered feeling his feet throbbing.
As Lissa stopped in front of another small shop, she grinned at him. "Last stop, I promise," she said. This was a very quick trip, seeing as she walked to one corner of the room, picked up a bag with green wrapped things in it, then went to pay for it.
"Anything new?" Lissa asked the cashier.
"Nope," the young, most likely teenage boy answered, handing her a receipt. "Not since last time."
"Hah, thanks," she offered a radiant smile then walked out with Delemir.
"What is in the bag?" Delemir asked as they made their way back to the ground level to go out to the bus stop.
"More chocolate," Lissa said simply. "I'm staying in a hotel, I'm stressed. I eat chocolate when I'm stressed." Delemir grinned at her logic.
"If you say so," he replied as they walked out into the waning afternoon. When they reached the benches for the bus stop to take them back to the hotel, Delemir sat down and watched Lissa rearrange the bags she had. She stuffed the smaller bags inside of the bigger bags, and the medium bag inside of the biggest bag from the dress shop. They ended up with two full bags.
"Lissa sit down please," Delemir said when she only stood in front of him, facing the street.
"No," Lissa said, continuing to go up on the balls of her feet for about ten seconds, then back on her heels for another ten or fifteen seconds.
"Please?" Delemir pleaded, watching her with growing, avid interest.
"No." Lissa kept her eyes toward the road and continued the 'exercise,' Delemir guessed, as she waited.
"Why not?"
Lissa turned around to stare at Delemir in an odd manner. "If I sit down now, I'll be feeling terrible for ballet later this week," she told him and turned back around.
"Ballet?" Delemir asked, this having been the first time she'd spoken of it. He knew that classes had started up again because she'd left the house around five o'clock on Friday nights to go there, and was back late, around ten.
"Yeah. I almost forgot it was tomorrow, too," she murmured, mostly to herself. She sighed loudly as the bus pulled up. "Finally."
"Tomorrow?" Delemir asked as they stepped on with the bags.
"Yes, tomorrow. We have to go by the house and find my shoes and all," she said quietly, her voice quivering.
"You don't want to go back there," he murmured.
"Heck no," Lissa said ironically. "Not until that moron Onaumbar is g—"
Lissa sighed audibly again as the bus went over a large bump in the road. There were 'oohs' and 'ahhs' and nonchalant hoots about this or that from the back. She turned her head and saw a man coming up to the front at a stoplight with a stained white shirt.
"Hey, man, you made me spill my hot coffee all over my new shirt!" he shouted, holding out his shirt to show them.
"Sorry," the driver said quietly and in a thick Asian accent.
"What?" The other looked as though the driver had called him a nasty name.
"He said he's sorry. Would you like a written contract of it with fancy big words and a check to the mall to buy another one?" Lissa said, looking at the man with a steely gaze.
The man turned to face Lissa slowly as if she'd slapped him. "Stay outta this, woman, or else I'll pull you and your boyfriend in it in a way you won't like!" the man shouted.
"Excuse me," Lissa said, standing in her seat, irony and shock in her eyes. "Did you just call me 'woman'?"
"Lissa, my love, please don't—"
"Delemir, be quiet. That was considered an insult, and I don't tolerate being called 'woman' by anyone out of my circle of friends," Lissa said, not letting her gaze away from the man's.
"To answer your question, woman," the man began, enunciating and inflecting on the word 'woman' more than one normally would have, "I did. What're you gonna do about it?"
Lissa looked ready to think of a very nasty retort when the bus stopped in the hotel parking lot. "I loathe to disgruntle you on this eventuality, but I am indisposed to disregard your solicitation to make an article of this unscrupulous event considering this particular sector of the urban area is my locale to disembark the transit vehicle," Lissa said after a moment. She grinned at the puzzled look the man gave her, then shoved Delemir off of the bus and into the hotel.
"What was that?" Delemir asked, remembering her line with the 'Blonde' incident. He watched her they went to the elevator. She didn't answer until they were in the elevator.
"An exercise of my vocabulary and if I could confuse someone besides you in one day," Lissa said, grinning at him. Delemir smirked back at her as the last person on the elevator stepped off at the fifth floor.
"Thank God. Hope it doesn't stop, okay?" Lissa said, slightly breathless.
"What?" Delemir was the one she'd confused now. She was good at that.
"Never mind," she said and kissed him suddenly. "I had to do that—for some reason."
Delemir looked down at her, stunned. He couldn't think of anything to say as the elevator stopped at their floor and two people were waiting to ride down. Lissa pulled him and the bags out of the elevator and off toward their room. When they stepped in, Lissa dropped one bag on the floor and took the other one from the dress shop back with her into the bedroom.
"You take the bathroom and change into this," Lissa said some minutes later, opening the door a little and thrusting her arm out with clothes in her hand. Delemir reached out to take the slacks and shirt when she suddenly took them back. "Wait, wait, wait. I need the bathroom. Um, go into the living room and don't peek while I stumble into the bathroom half- dressed."
"What?" Delemir, shocked, couldn't believe his pointed ears. "The Valar forbid I peek if you are only half-dressed, Melissa," he said, turning to stuff his nose in a corner.
Lissa grinned as she hobbled, clad in the black dress she'd bought from the shop in the mall and impossibly high shoes, to the bathroom. She sneaked a glance at Delemir, staring at the door with avid interest. She hummed a tune that came to her mind automatically as she shut the door.
All Delemir heard was the soft scuffling of her feet as she walked from one room to the other and then the highest of high notes from an opera she listened to regularly. Then the bathroom door shut and he could hear audible and coherent words from the opera during the main thematic song.
Walking to the back bedroom where the clothes were, he wondered what she had in mind for him to do that night instead of swim and sit down at the bar for happy hour, as she had blatantly and colorfully put it.
"Oh boy," he murmured, letting out a long breath.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hehehe, cliffhanger. *says in a radio announcer's voice* Stay tuned after this disclaimer for a special note from the author! DISCLAIMER: Okay, I don't own the Valar, Lothlórien, or anything else I failed to remember here that I wrote in this chapter that has a copyright. The stores in the Pentagon City Mall are real ones, of which they include (in order that they appeared) Godiva; Macy's; Bath and Body Works; Victoria's Secret Beauty (hehehe); Ellie; and Lindt. In Ellie, the dress shop, there really is/was a black dress like the one Lissa bought. I remember what it looked like. It really was $185 and it was half price that day I went a few weeks ago in December. I sketched it and even wrote little notes down about how it looked to remember better. It is/was a very beautiful dress and I plan on hoping to sew it one day. ^-^ Anyhow.........
SPECIAL NOTE!! *radio DJ's voice again* What does Lissa have in store for Delemir? Why was she wearing the black dress that she'd bought from a shop in the Pentagon City Mall? What's better than swimming and happy hour in a hotel? Find out in the next installment of Love's Philosophy! LOL!
