I switched back to reality. “Sorry, I’ve been funny lately.” I tried to cover up the fact that I was becoming like a guy and blood was starting to leave my head. I felt ashamed. I had decided he was a bad guy and there I was, falling for the bad guy, when I had a very good guy who was falling for me. I was becoming Alise.

He looked distracted by me too. His eyes were burning as he watched me. I realized he was waiting. He had to have asked me a question and I had missed it. I shrugged at him, hoping that would satisfy his question and we could move on.

He leaned in very close, I was taken aback but I never budged. His hot breath tickled my lips. I gulped, knowing what was about to happen.

He never closed his eyes, even though he was an inch from my face. My eyes went blurry, as he got close; I could imagine the taste of his mouth. He smelled like Heaven. It was the smell of fresh air mixed with something I couldn’t place. I wanted to fight my body and my urges and pull away from him, but I was a snake caught in the music of his pungi. He had charmed every inch of me—inches I didn’t know existed.

After a very long moment, he moved in the last inch and his lips brushed mine. It was so soft, I couldn’t stand the torture. I leaned in, but he seemed to pull back, keeping our touch light. His soft lips brushed mine, caressing them like a lover. His tongue slowly grazed my lips, sending a shiver up my spine and then down again. I didn’t know what was happening, but the control I worked everyday to maintain was gone. I wasn’t in charge. I had no sarcasm for the moment; it was raw emotion. I understood ragged breath, as mine had become inconsistent. I didn’t need air; I needed his kiss to deepen and relieve me of the build of tension.

He pulled away though, leaving me hanging there.

I watched him smile, like a light had switched on. I felt my face curl into a frown, and I wanted to cry. I understood crack addicts’ need for their addiction. I needed his skin to touch mine again. I wanted him to crash onto my face, crushing me with a powerful kiss, but instead he started talking.

“Aimee, I'm cursed.”

I didn’t care. Bad luck had rained down on me for so long, it didn’t matter if he brought more into the relationship. To be completely honest, it was probably me that made him feel cursed.

He continued softly, “I am like an angel of tragedy and accident.” His words never made their way to my brain. They stopped at my ears. I could hear him talking, but I couldn’t comprehend, as I was still in a cloud of wanton lust.

He grabbed my bare shoulders and gave me a slight shake. “Aimee, I am an immortal. Do you understand?”

I nodded, watching his lips move. My brain was freaking out. I could hear the thoughts panicking in there, but no one responded to their demands.

He smiled. “What’s your name?”

I nodded again.

He stood up, taking the sudden warmth away from me. I began to shiver, as all of the light inside of me went to the other side of the room with him. It was still attached to him.

He stood there by my door and held his hands out. He smirked at me one second, and in another, he was across the room. It was not a big room, but I didn’t even see him take a step.

He knelt at my bed again and smiled. “I am not like you,” his voice was a whisper.

I didn’t know what to say. He had lied to me about so many things. I didn’t understand why he had to go to such extreme places to make up stories. Not when the plain truth was there in front of me. He was a conman. I was cool with it.

"I don't know how to be with you, but I can't seem to be without you."

The disappointment and severity of the feelings I was having was too much to take. I felt angry hatred filling me, no doubt from the physical reaction I had to him every time I saw him. I lashed out at him, hitting whatever I could make contact with. I hated him. I had such ardent feelings for him and I didn’t even recognize what they were. I was able to go from love and adoration to despicable hatred in between the beats of my heart.

As I clawed out at him in my fit of rage and screams, I felt the wet, hot tears pouring down my cheeks. He pulled me into him to muffle the screams and picked me up. I tried to fight him, but his face had grown stone hard and stern looking. He looked at my open window, and before I could properly talk him out of a murder suicide, he jumped.

I saw the ground in a flash and then I didn’t see anything. My grip on him was hurting my hands and I felt like I would throw up any second. We moved so quickly, I couldn’t see anything. The motion was too much for me to bear. I closed my eyes, screaming into his laughing chest. I couldn’t believe he would laugh at this moment.

I felt a hard bump and then I felt myself being lowered to the soft sand. Lastly, as the fear and terror started to subside, I heard the ocean. I looked around me. I was at the hidden beach. I knew it instantly because it was a sandy beach. On the Northwest Coast, we did anything we had to in order to find one. It was the only one I knew of.

It had taken seconds for us to get there. Or had it? Had I blacked out? I knew it was a forty-minute hike through the roughest terrain from the side of the highway on the outskirts of town. Had he hiked with me in his arms? Had we driven? Had he drugged me again?

The night air was cold against my panties and tank top. The cold sand sat firmly beneath me, but I still had to touch it to be certain I was really there. A million thoughts flashed through my head, mostly they were warnings.

I looked at Aleks, who stood with his arms crossed, watching me silently.

He stepped one small step closer. Before I could even decide if it was what I wanted to do or not, I jumped up and started to run from him. My bare toes hit the sand and dug in as I screamed, “Someone help me. Please someone help me. It's Aimee James. Please help me.”

Aleks was in front of me somehow, like he was toying with me. I ran back the other way but again he was in front of me, somehow. Defeated, I dropped to my knees and started to cry.

He walked to me slowly with his hands out, as if he were approaching a crazed person with a gun.

I wished for a second I had a gun, but I wasn’t entirely sure whom I would shoot, him or me. My body shook with sobs.

He dropped to his knees in the sand. His hand reached out to my face and lifted my chin slowly. “Aimee, I told you this once before—I could never hurt you. I am here for you.”

I cried harder. “Oh my God. It's like City of Angels. I’m dying. You’re here to take me to Heaven, aren’t you?”

He pulled his huge, blue sweater off and put it over my head. I pulled away from his grasp, but I was dressed in it before I could argue. The warmth of the sweater was relaxing.

He put his arms around me and pulled me into his bare chest. “You’re not dying. I’m here because you’re not coping. You and your family, in a way, called to me when your mom died in the accident.”

I sobbed; I couldn’t control myself. I understood what he was saying, but it contradicted everything I knew in life to be true. Well, except for the fact we weren’t coping. That part was true.

“I lied to you about being a social worker, because I couldn’t tell you what I was. In my defense though, you should never have seen me. Your mom’s death has triggered a series of events that never should have happened. It wasn’t her time. Just like the night you choked and I saved you, it wasn’t your time. I was called to stay with your family, making you feel safe, and ensure nothing happened that had been caused by her death.” He held me tightly, not giving me an inch of space to struggle or flee while he told me a fairytale.

“I got to you too late that night. You saw me because you were a spirit. That changes the whole thing. Once you see an immortal, it gets easier. Shane’s bloody yard was not making it easy on me, either. That shaman's blessing makes it impossible for my kind to cloak properly. I was at the party, but when you saw me watching you, I left to stay with your dad. I felt you cross into the otherworld, and I got there as fast as I could.”

I had stopped crying and started to laugh uncontrollably. He pulled me away and gave me an alarmed stare. It made me laugh harder; I couldn’t stop myself. My right ribs hurt so much where my liver was, but even the pain couldn’t make the laugh stop. I fell over into the sand, rolling as I laughed.

He started to smile and laugh at me. “You’ve lost it—haven’t you? This was the straw that broke the camel's back, and I’ve pushed you over the edge to insanity.”

I didn’t know how to cope with anything he told me and laughing was making me feel better.

Tears rolled down my face as finally I was able to get a hold of myself. “The stupid shaman story was true?”

Of all the things in his story he told me, that just seemed too ridiculous.

He nodded, smirking at me. “Shamans are very powerful, Aimee. A being nearly as powerful and equally supernatural caused your mom’s death. Nothing in the world will ever be the same for you. You’ve seen the other side, which means you’re stuck now with visions from the in-between.”

I shook my head. “No, it hasn’t happened, except for seeing you.”

He laughed. “You could see past my cloak, Aimee. That’s a bad sign.”

He shuffled forward on his knees to me, getting sand all over his jeans. I looked at him, trying desperately to see something other than what I saw. The sexiest man I could even imagine, crawling on the sand toward me in jeans that hugged him nicely and no shirt. His stomach flexed under his silky skin. I wanted to touch each ab muscle. I wanted to run my hands down his stomach, possibly dragging my fingernails a little.

I shook my head. "You're a hallucination brought on by the drugs and the stress of yesterday."

"You saw me before you were drugged." he grinned.

I blushed looking at his lips, trying desperately to remember that the man had weird powers. My brain argued that even with the creepy things, he was sexy. I sighed, giving up, and resigned myself to the fact I was a dirty-freak, flag-waving pervert.

His smile reassured me. Even though my whole world filled with questions, I wasn’t sure I wanted the answers to them.