A/N: Ugh... Again with my nervousness of putting out a chapter. Sigh.
"Don't ask for something you're not ready for..." He murmurs, watching me stalk towards him. When I was within arms reach his hand came out and fingers danced up my thigh.
"Who says I'm not ready?" I ask him with a raised eyebrow. "You've only been teasing me for months now." I add, making him grin. Both hands run up the back of my legs and cup my butt cheeks.
"I'm not ready to give it to you yet." He tells me. I let out a sigh, but I wasn't going to make him do something he wasn't ready to do. "I want you to know exactly who and what I am, which isn't as simple as it sounds... And after you know everything and you still want this and me, I'll give it to you like you've never had it before."
"Ok." I can only agree with him.
"You know I'll still keep you satisfied in the mean time." He growls into my ear, making me shudder against him.
"You'd better." I smirk.
"Come with me home tomorrow." He suggests. I furrow my brow, because now I was super confused. He smirks, "My other home. I'm only in this world because it's the one you're in." He states.
"You've lost me." I say.
"If you say yes, you'll see what I"m talking about." He rebuts.
"Am I going to regret saying yes to this? Where are you taking me?" I ask, narrowing my eyes at him. I was already a pretty distrusting person, and this whole situation kind of makes me nervous.
"I wouldn't take you anywhere that you'd be in danger." He chuckles, trying to reassure me. "You're never in danger while I"m around." He adds with a shrug. "It's not a place on a map that I can just point to and say that's where we're going. This is an occasion that you're just going to have to put trust in me." His blue eyes meet my own and I finally sigh.
"Ok." I agree.
"Who caused you to be so distrusting?" He asks curiously. I glower at him, and he only raises his eyebrows almost as if he was challenging me.
"Bad ex boyfriends." I shrug simply. I crawl up the length of his bed and use my cell phone to text Kelly, letting her know she had the house to herself tonight.
"Hey, not home tonight. Hope your date went well!" Text to Kelly.
"Are we going to bed or what?" I ask him. Not wanting to discuss my past boyfriends with him at the moment.
***...***...***
When I woke up the next morning and rolled over, he was still asleep. I took the quiet moments to study his face, his neck, his chest and everything else that I could see. There was no way that they made men this perfect. Shit, there was no way a man this perfect could even be remotely interested in me. Yet, here he was.
"Good morning." He yawns, stretching his body out next to me. An arm slips under my neck and pulls me up against him. I used the tip of my finger to trace the lines between his abdominal muscles, and the curve under his pec. He laid there quietly, perfectly content to watch my exploration as I did so. Every once in a while his thumb would stroke the skin on my arm.
"How old are you?" I ask curiously, because it dawned on me just then that I had no idea how old he was. There was so much I didn't know about him. He seems rather uncomfortable with that question, shifting nervously under my fingers.
"Again, I think that's a question better answered after you know everything." He finally answers. He'd chosen his words carefully, I could basically see him mulling them over in his head before he said them. I narrow my eyes at him, which didn't go unnoticed. "I'm older than you." He offers, hoping that I'd take it.
"Fine." I grumble and roll my eyes.
"Would you like breakfast? I'm sure Gertrude wouldn't mind making something." He says. His fingers were lightly running up and down the length of my arm.
"I'm not hungry." I say softly. I rest my head on his shoulder and snuggle myself against him more if that were even possible.
"You're very affectionate in the mornings." He comments. He took my hint and wrapped both arms around me, cocooning me against him.
"I'm affectionate all the time." I scoff.
"This is the first time I've seen it." I feel him shrug.
"WHen are we leaving?" I ask after a few minutes of silence. He sighs and his grip around me slacks as he pulls back to scan my face. "What?"
"I don't want to lose you because of what you may not understand, or fear." He answers. "Please go into this with an open mind, and whatever you may see or whatever may happen, don't be afraid. You're always safe with me."
"Ok..." I murmur. It was too late though, because after he said all that I was in full panic mode. He nods and slides out of bed, going to his closet for some clothes. I remember what he'd said from last night and basically did the same, walking over to his dresser and pulling out some sweat pants and a tank top. The sweats would be a little long and big, but I could tie the waist for now.
"You look better in my clothes than I do." He winks.
"I doubt that." I chuckle, shoving my phone into the back pocket. We drive through the bog for what seemed like forever but it was probably only about 15 minutes before he parked in the grass in a totally random spot. There were no buildings, there was no house, it was just woods. The trees in this part of the bog were ridiculous, they stood just as wide as they were tall it seemed.
"Come on then." He nods his head towards the wooded area. I take a deep breath and follow him through the grass until we finally come to a tree that was significantly larger than the others. "This is it." He says, motioning towards the tree.
"Ya lost me." I say, giving the tree another once over. "There's nothing here." I state in a bland tone.
"You're not looking hard enough." He tells me. He takes my hand and pulls me back a couple steps, looking hard at the roots of the tree. After about 30 seconds the roots began to tingle, and vibrate before they actually split apart. The other side was dark, and sketchy, and if we're being honest I didn't want to walk in there. "Come." He murmurs, lacing his fingers in mine. He literally had to give me a good tug before my feet finally moved and followed him into the dark. We walked about ten feet before it seemed to just open up.
"Holy shit..." I whispered, glancing back at the tree we'd came from. It looked exactly the same, but this place, it definitely wasn't the same.
"Welcome to Agartha." He smiles.
"What, the actual, fuck." Was all I could come up with in a soft whisper.
"Agartha is the land that much of the Irish folklore comes from. All those mythical creatures, all the things of your nightmares, they all live here." He tells me in a matter of fact kind of tone. "The land at the Earth's core." He'd hardly finished his sentence when I heard the distinct sound of hooves on the ground. Within seconds we're surrounded by a group of Centaurs, half man, half horse and all sorts of powerful. My eyes are golfball sized as they darted from face to face.
"You know the rules, even the one who wears the eye cannot bring an outsider to our land." The biggest one, who clearly was the leader of this 'heard', says to Finn, walking a few steps towards him.
"You'll find that I can." Finn basically growled at the guy, "She is my one promised." He adds. I make a mental note to ask him about that later, because it sounded like a piece of property to me. "Don't pick a fight you can't win Centaur." He tells him. In my peripheral vision I can see him fisting his hand, a few seconds later a perfectly round ball of flames formed in his palm. The sight made the blood drain from my face.
"We'll see about that." The Centaur replies. He motions to the rest of them, and they retreat, slowly, back into the woods. When they were finally out of sight, the flame seemed to just evaporate into thin air.
"I'd like to go back." I manage to squeak. He'd been focused on watching them retreat away, but his head turned and ice blue eyes focused on my face instead. His features instantly went softer.
"I've frightened you." He comments.
"Please take me back." I plead softly. I thought I was ready for whatever he was going to throw at me today, but I wasn't. This was way too much for me to handle, and I'd like to go home. He only nods, taking us back through the same tree we'd walked through before. I say nothing as he pulls open the car door for me, and slide into the passenger seat. We pull into my driveway about an hour later, the silence in the car was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
"I'm sorry if that scared you, I should have waited longer." He finally says, putting the car into park. I couldn't even look at him. It wasn't him that scared me. It was the whole situation, the whole completely different land... The flame that he'd easily conjured, made me realize that he's probably more powerful that i could have imagined. "If it makes you more comfortable you can just tell me when you're ready." He offers.
"I'll think about it." I finally answer him, glancing over at his form. I, on purpose didn't make eye contact which I'm sure didn't go unnoticed. "Please just let me sleep tonight." I say to him. I tried to ignore the hurt that obviously laced his features as I got out of the car, shutting the door behind me. I walked up my steps and into my front door without looking back. Kelly was in the living room, watching Ridiculousness. "You're right, I shouldn't be getting involved with him." I tell her, throwing my purse onto the couch.
"What happened?" She asks. She hits the power button and the TV screen goes black.
"It's complicating, and you wouldn't believe me if I told you." I tell her, pulling my vibrating phone from my purse. Thank god I had to work tomorrow, get my mind of this crazy stuff.
"I truly am sorry if I frightened you." Text from Finn.
I chose to ignore it. His power scared me, it did. The fact that a whole heard of at least 12, very large, Centaurs chose to retreat into the woods over fighting one 'man' told me he had more power than what I was capable of handling. And what in the hell did this 'one promised' mean?!
"Try me." She crosses her arms over her chest.
"I went through a portal in the woods today. Took me to a "mythical" land that lies in the Earth's core. It's called Agartha, and Finn says it's where your nightmares as well as fantasy creatures live." I rattle off to her casually.
"You're right, that seems a little far fetched." She chuckles, shaking her head. "You're sure you weren't just dreaming?" She asks me.
"I'm sure. It's not funny Kelly, junk was real." I insist, "And I don't want to talk about it anymore. He lit a fucking fire ball! And not the whiskey kind! Right there in his hand, and scared off a bunch of really big horse men." I exclaim, throwing my hands in the air. Her expression right now is priceless.
"Listen, I told you he was something you shouldn't mess around with." She finally says.
"I don't need to hear that." I grumble at her.
"I'm sorry." She shrugs, "It's just, hard to believe."
"I'm never telling you anything again." I roll my eyes, pushing myself up off the couch.
"I love you, and I believe you. I just don't know what to tell you, because let's admit that's a weird situation to give advice about." She calls to me as I walked into the kitchen. I pull open the fridge door and grab a beer, sucking down half of it right away. "I have zero advice to give. Maybe you should change your name though, like Xena warrior princess or something." She winks.
"Kelly..." I growl at her, getting annoyed.
"I'm just trying to lighten the situation." She says softer. "So what are you going to tell him?" She questions.
"I don't know. I thought I was prepared for whatever he was going to throw at me today, but clearly I was wrong. It legit scared the hell out of me." I admit. "I told him to just let me sleep tonight, AKA don't bother me tonight."
"Well that was shitty of you." She narrows her eyes at me, and I scoff my own disbelief of what she'd replied with.
"Me?!" I exclaim.
"Yeah, you." She states. "I haven't exactly been on the Finn Balor bandwagon but, he was opening up a part of his life to you and shit on it." She tells me, crossing both arms over her chest. "He clearly had enough trust in you to show you who he is, and you were a total bitch about it." I glower at her, because damn her that she was right. Yes I was scared, and I let it get the best of me.
"I hate you." I mutter, drinking the rest of my beer. "Now I have to go eat a bunch of crow..." I sigh, throwing myself down on the couch. "If there are fucking horse people in there, what else is in there? Vampires? Dragons? Animals that talk? Things of nightmares..." I murmur to myself.
"I think vampires and dragons qualify as things of nightmares." She chuckles. "Bigfoot, yeti's, werewolves, witches?" She questions, "It literally could be anything. What was he exactly again?" She asks me.
"I don't know, I haven't really gotten an actual legit answer. He's said that he's a decedent from a God, and an astral traveler. He hasn't explained the God part, but astral travelers can travel between dreams. That's how he is able to come into my dreams at night." I explain to her.
"Ugh." She groans. "Call your boyfriend and apologize." She tells me, tossing me my cell phone.