Chapter 24

"Amelia, what's wrong?" He repeated when she had just stood there, for over a minute now.

She was speechless. In the surprise of what he had done, she forget to block out his thoughts and feelings. Amelia's mind was being flooded emotions from his mind. They were a swirling, confusing mass of pride and accomplishment for getting her 'something practical that she needed' and there was pure happiness at 'doing something nice for a friend'. She saw he little experience at buying and giving presents just for the joy it provided the giver. This act had given him a brief period of the normalcy he had always wanted when he was younger.

Amelia really didn't care what she wore, but conceded her light-weight dress and sandals were not very practical for the quest she was undertaking. She found the smell of so many people on the items upsetting though. But she could take care of that. She finally looked at Sam and smiled. "Thank you." She gathered everything he had set down on her bed and started for the bathroom.

"You want to eat first, while the food is still warm?" He asked as she was walking away.

"No. You go ahead. I'll be out in a few minutes." With that she closed the door behind her. She immediately set to cleaning everything enough she could stand to have them next to her skin. As she finished pulling things out of the bags she discovered he was both very thorough, he had remembered socks and underwear; and that his Hunter's eye had determined her sizes very closely. She had thought the images she had seen from his mind of her being naked had been from the other morning, but as she pulled out the lacy underpants she realized he had been visualizing her in the pretty garment.

She tried to clamp down on both his thoughts and the reaction they had caused in her, but it was too late. She was sure they would both need a tension relieving session before going to bed tonight.

After Amelia had ducked into the bathroom, Sam had sat down and dug out the food he had gotten. He had discovered a German village on his way back from the thrift store. He rarely had an opportunity to eat anything like this. If it didn't come from a drive-through window or from a mini-mart, well at least before the leviathans, Dean usually wasn't interested. As he was enjoying the food, his thoughts drifted to how Amelia would look in the clothes he had picked out for her. And then they drifted to how she would look out of them. 'Crap' he thought to himself. He was going to need to put a sock on the bathroom door for awhile tonight.

X

It took her an hour to clean and try on all the clothes Sam had bought. Amelia finally emerged from the bathroom wearing a pair of the jeans, a sky blue T-shirt and the shoes. The jeans were a touch too big and the shirt a little short, but they were comfortable. She had the rest of the clothes neatly folded and set them back on her bed. "I couldn't figure out what to do with this?" She said, turning to Sam and holding a hair clip.

"It's a hair clip, to gather your hair up on your head." He took the clip from her hand. "I can show you?"

"I guess. Why would I want to put my hair up?" She asked as he stepped behind her and started gathering and twisting her hair. The feeling of Sam running his fingers through her hair made it hard for her to concentrate.

"We need to change your appearance, make you harder to recognize." He said as he finished clipping her hair. "It was the other reason I picked up the clothes." She turned to look in the mirror, a frown forming on her face. "If you don't like it, we could cut, or even color, your hair."

"No!" She turned to look at him, utterly aghast.

She calmed down quickly. "Sam. Amelia Stone has leant me her body; but it is her body and I won't make any changes to it." As she was speaking she reached her arms up to remove the clip; as she did her shirt rode up and the jeans slid down exposing the top of the tattoo Sam had seen earlier. Amelia looked down following his gaze. A small smile crossed her lips. "Would you like to see the rest of it?" Sam just looked up, with a slight blush at being caught looking. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours." She said in a teasing voice.

Before Sam could answer, Amelia stomach growled reminding them she hadn't eaten yet. They looked over at the table and remnants of the lunch Sam had picked up. She turned an accusing stare on him after seeing only a few bites left. "Sorry. You took so long, and I was starving." He said looking very quilty. "Hey. It's cold anyway. How about we go for that walk you wanted to take, and get you something to eat."

Her beaming smile let him know he was forgiven. They started for the door, when she stopped and went back to the table. She picked up the rubber band that had been around the take-out container and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. "Does that help?" She asked him. She knew he was only trying to protect her when he said she should change Amelia's hair.

He studied her overall appearance. She really didn't look anything like the woman from the videos posted on the internet. "You're good." As if in agreement, her stomach rumbled again. "Let's go."

X

They were walking around the Topiary garden in downtown Columbus after they had found something for Amelia to eat. She was enjoying the warm summer breeze and the relaxing sensation of strolling through the greenery. She wasn't so sure about the drastic shaping of the topiary bushes but could appreciate the skill and humor of the gardeners. Even Sam seemed to be at ease and not bothered by the slight delay in their plan.

When they found a spot with no one else around, she asked. "Do you want to know about the tattoo? And why I can't, well, I won't change Amelia's hair?"

Sam realized she was offering him a look inside an ancient and secret culture. In all his years of hunting; he didn't know anybody who had heard about the families devoted to being prepared for Mother Nature. "Yes, if you want to tell me."

"She has given me her body to use as I desire because she knows I will take care of it; and will give it back the same way I found it. As I told you, Amelia spent her most of her life waiting and preparing for my possible arrival. Just as her mother and grandmothers before her. The tattoo is given to the girls who complete all the training and make the promise to commit their entire bodies to my service." She stopped, trying to think of a way to further explain the depth of the devotion of these women. "You could compare it to a nun taking her final vows." She turned to look at him, to see if he understood all that meant.

He didn't really have any questions; he understood devotion to a calling. And he also had a tattoo to prove it. So he just said. "Uh huh."

"Sam. I don't think you understand what that means to her." She looked at him intensely. "The tattoo is placed on the lower abdomen, over the uterus." She placed her hand over her lower abdomen. "The placement isn't random. It shows they are connected the original giver of life." His gaze had followed her hand. She brought her hand up and lifted his chin, to look at her face. "When she says she is willing to give her entire body, she means it." He just stared at her. "Making love while hosting the goddess is the greatest honor that can be achieved." She had closed her eyes and recited it like she had the incantation for the amulet.

Neither of them said anything for several minutes. Finally, Amelia had to make sure he understood the point of telling him something no one knew, except for the generations of women awaiting her arrival. "Sam, I understand why you thought it wouldn't be right to have sex with me, in Amelia's body; but she was 'prepared for the gig and it is what she signed up for'. " She smiled at him and added a final statement. "When, or if, you're ready."

They walked back to the motel without talking. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence; just neither had anything more to say on the subject. It didn't mean Sam didn't have a million different thoughts and emotions spinning through his head. Amelia had basically given him a written invitation of have sex with her. She talked about sex almost as much as Dean; but it there wasn't any other similarity between the two. When Amelia said things like 'beautiful and natural act', she meant it. There was no innuendo or lasciviousness. It was strange; Dean had always joked about him being repressed because he hadn't wanted to talk about sex. Amelia, and her honest and frank discussions about sex and her open declarations of her desire for him, made him feel at ease with a topic that he had always considered difficult. But nothing Amelia had said had changed his mind about sleeping with her either.