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It's been over a fortnight since you were taken from me, faded from my life like an elusive dream. It was real, as real as anything could be, but you're now gone and continuing on without you is proving to be very difficult.
I've sequestered myself to my room finding I long for sleep, hoping to find what I lost in my dreams. But you aren't there, you aren't anywhere. To face a life without you, knowing that I will never again hold you, touch you, see you smiling at Nickie or laughing with Thaddeus causes a pain so severe sometimes I wish for the pain to take me, to release me from the prison that has become my life.
Where are you now? Do you even remember or do you believe it to all be just a wonderful dream? I need to remember every moment. I need to write it all down so in the years to come, when reality and fantasy start to blur, I will remember every moment that I was blessed to have shared with you -- from the first moment I saw you standing in my great hall until that day at the river's edge when you reached for me then disappeared before my eyes.
Your softly spoken vow haunted me then as it does now. I will remember you, I will miss you every day of my life, and I will love you even long after life leaves this body. Wherever you are, Quinn, know that there is a man who loves you, a love so strong that even the passing of time can not dim it.
The first time I saw her she was standing with her back to me, her chestnut brown hair hanging in long, curls down her back, and she was clothed in ice-blue silk. The moment she turned and those silver-gray eyes found mine, my heart was no longer my own.....
Quinn lost herself in their very poignant love story.
The banging wouldn't stop. Why wouldn't the banging stop?
Quinn tried to block out the noise as she settled more deeply into Archer's arms but the banging kept up, louder and more insistent. And then the shouting started, the worry and fear lacing through the disembodied voice calling her name. Archer held her closer, tighter, but she felt herself being pulled away. The harder he tried to hold her to him, the more she slipped away.
"I don't want to go."
"Stay with me, Quinn."
But even as he spoke the words she was yanked from his outstretched arms.
"Quinn, no!"
"Archer!" She reached for him but she felt herself being ripped away. His look of devastation was the last thing she saw.
"No!"
And then she felt familiar warm hands on her shoulders and when her eyes opened, she saw him standing over her. Quinn didn't think before wrapping her arms around Gabriel's neck and fusing her mouth to his.
Gabriel had been calling Quinn for days but she wasn't answering, not her cell phone or her house phone. After four days, he was mad with worry and so he climbed into his Aston Marten and drove the two hours to Quinn's cottage.
When he arrived, it was dark but no lights were on and her car was in the drive. Panic and fear gripped him as he rushed to the door and started banging and shouting out her name. After five minutes with no answer, Gabriel broke the pane of glass and unlocked the door.
When she screamed, he leapt up the stairs two at a time. He entered her room but he wasn't expecting to see her in the midst of what appeared to be a night terror. Her hair was plastered to her head and her light-weight nightgown was sticking to her heated, damp skin. She was thrashing about in her bed so violently he feared she was going to hurt herself so he moved to touch her, give her some kind of human contact to ground her. When her eyes opened, the flash of silver was breathtaking and before he said a word, she had her mouth on his.
It wasn't a conscious thought that had him wrapping his arms tightly around her waist and pulling her up against him as he lost himself in her. Sanity pushed at the haze of want currently burning through his brain and, with great effort, he pulled his mouth from hers and held her a safe distance from him.
It was then that he realized she wasn't awake. Her lips were swollen from his kiss and her face flush with passion. He knew he could take her in that moment, lose himself in her as he had wanted to do for so long, but that would make him lower than pond scum. He allowed reason to take over and gently eased her back onto the bed and covered her with the quilt. He settled onto the edge of the bed and stroked her hair until she fell back into a deep sleep.
He moved to the chair and stayed awake watching her and wondering what she had been dreaming about that caused her to respond so completely to him. But was it even him that she was responding to?
Quinn came awake slowly and though she had gone to sleep rather early the night before, she still felt very tired. She stretched as tidbits of her dream came back to her and she couldn't help smiling because some of her dream had seemed startlingly real. As she sat up she heard that deep baritone coming from across the room.
"Good morning."
It was instinct that made Quinn pull her blanket up to her chin as her eyes sought and found Gabriel. He was sitting as comfortable as you please in her bedroom.
"Gabriel? Why are you in my bedroom? Hell, why are you in the Cotswolds?"
The expression on his face was thunderous and when he spoke his voice was clipped with anger.
"I've been calling for days. No one could get a hold of you so I drove out here to make sure you were okay. When I got here, I heard you scream so I forced myself in only to find you in the throes of a very intense dream."
Quinn blushed because she knew very well what she had been dreaming about for the past four days and then she remembered how real her dream had felt. She couldn't bear to ask but she needed to know.
"Did I kiss you?" Quinn could barely make eye contact.
If possible, he looked even angrier at that question. "Yes," he answered.
