"What's down there? What did you find?" He asked.
"It's more like what found them." Malachi waved at the three men, who by then were being helped away from the door.
"What's down there?" Steve eyed the door, then stepped away from it.
"Something better left buried." Tamar growled. Standing, she walked away without turning around. "Come on Mal, remember your promise." It wasn't a question, and it hadn't been phrased like one, and Malachi knew it.
"You're going to just let her talk to you like you have to do what she tells you?" Steve looked over at Malachi as he turned to follow Tamar.
"No, I don't have to do what she tells me. But I will do what she asks me to do. You just have to know how she talks, that's all."
Steve shook his head. A man with that much power following a freak girl like a puppy, he'd never understand that, not for the life of him.
Malachi arrived back in their room a few minutes after Tamar. He'd planned it that way so he could give her time to compose herself. Trying to get her to talk about anything remotely personal was hard enough. Doing it when she wasn't ready would get him nowhere.
Opening the door with great care, he saw that the light was off, the room as dark and still as a tomb. Stepping into the darkness, he stopped and shut the door behind. Out of the onyx he could hear her breathing. It came hard and harsh, her emotion made manifest. Malachi went through his various vision modes until he could see her. She was huddled under the bed, curled into her ball, back away from the wall, her head pushed against it.
He walked slowly to the edge of the bed and sat cross-legged on the floor. Minutes passed with him in that position, within arm's reach of Tamar. He made no move to touch her, grab for her, or anything else. He had come to know her more closely than even he was willing to admit. She needed time to deal with her inner demons in her own time, at her own pace. Try to press and she would only withdraw inward. So he would wait until she was ready, besides it would give him to do his Bible reading.
"How do you do that?" He was only five verses into the chapter when he heard her small voice.
"Do what?"
"Put up with me. Anyone else would have left, I would have left, yet you've sat there for almost a half hour. How long were you planning on waiting for me?" He heard the voice, but Tamar made no move to come out from under the bed.
"As long as it took." He heard a brief scuffling a few seconds later, and like a wraith, she was in front of him, perched on the edge of the bed.
"Why? Do you have any idea what I've done? That thing back there could have been me, should have been me. She threw that thing away like someone else would throw away a bone from a steak. It had been down here for over five years, and you killed it like it was nothing, just nothing."
"If you hadn't noticed, it was doing its best to do me great bodily harm. I only did what needed to be done." He interrupted her.
"I know that, but do you know what that thing was?" before he could ask a question, she pushed on. "It was what I might have been, one of her many experiments. Each one getting her closer to a viable subject, me."
"You? But that thing didn't look anything like you." Malachi's hands came forward and, with the greatest of care, he pulled her to his chest.
"I told you you didn't, couldn't understand. When Hayworth started her little freak show, she was just getting into the field of genetic engineering. But then the Rougarians invaded, so she had to go underground. Being without all the resources she was accustomed to, she had to improvise. In her case, that meant experiment, lots of experiments. Each one brought her closer and closer to what she wanted, me. But it took her over three hundred tries before her process could produce a creature that would fit her needs, and even after she perfected it, she still grew five viable subjects before she created me. I don't know why. It was like I was a one shot deal so she wanted to make sure she could get it right." Tamar began to cling to Malachi's chest as she spoke. She couldn't understand it, but the more she talked, the firmer her grip became. "But I can't get over seeing that thing. It was created so I could be made, but it never had a chance to live, and I can't seem to shake the thought that it's my fault..." She was a few words from breaking down crying, but she wouldn't do that, she was stronger than that.
Then his one arm wrapped around her back, his other at the back of her head. He pulled her close and whispered.
"You never have to be ashamed to cry with me. Give me everything you have. I can take it."
And Tamar broke again. Her flood gates opened, and the sobs began, deep gut wrenching sobs, the kind that won't let you breathe, yet you can't stop. She cried into his chest, because of what she was, a thing, a lab experiment. No mother, no father. The closest to either was a mad woman who used people like toilet paper. Tamar had put what she'd heard so far back in her memories she'd forgotten about it. Seeing the creature had slammed those memories back into full focus, and now she couldn't forget no matter how hard she tried.
"I'm nothing, nothing!" slamming her fists into Malachi's chest. She vented her anger and frustration, and she had plenty of both. She'd never be good enough for him, no matter what he said. Deep down he thought she was a freak, just like everyone else, only he was too nice to tell it to her face.
"No, I don't," that was all he said.
"You don't what?"
"Think you're a freak."
Tamar smacked her forehead with her palm. "Would you stop doing that? Stomping around in my head might not be good for your mental health."
"Then let me show you something, something I've been saving for a while now. I think you need it as much as I do." He laid his right hand on the top of her head and Tamar froze.
She was in another place, looking at a scene she'd lived but from a different perspective.
"I'm pretty new at this, so I'm not sure how this works." A disembodied voice told her from out of nowhere.
From where she was, she could see the six men who had been tracking her formed in a semicircle around where she'd been hiding. Tamar realized at that moment that she was seeing through Malachi's eyes, that she was in one of his memories. Then she was standing in front of him, having just leaped out of her hiding place. Torn clothes hung off of her like rags, dried blood and gore dripped from her hands and her eyes had a hint of madness. She was ashamed of how she looked. This was Malachi's first glimpse of her? Why had he ever wanted anything to do with her?
"She's beautiful." Those two words resounded inside the world his memory had made and Tamar startled, her mind rebelling so hard Malachi couldn't hold the image.
Tamar threw herself away from him, pushing herself off his chest. There was no way she could have heard what she'd just heard. Only, it was a memory. There was no way it could have been a lie. She spun to stare at him, trying to find some shred of falsehood in him, but she couldn't. It caused her to begin to shake from head to toe.
Never, ever in her entire life, had anyone called her what he just had. Beautiful. It was a hope, a prayer, to hear that word being spoken when someone was describing them. Yet Tamar, long ago, had given up any hope of someone speaking that word about her. She was a thing, a construct, something to be used and then tossed aside when they were finished with her. And why would he consider her beautiful? She looked like a cat. The only things she was missing were the tail and long ears. No one could think her anything but what she was, a freak, a hybrid, a monster.
"You can't think that, no one can!" she growled. Before Malachi could respond, she forged ahead. "Look at me," she pointed to her chest. "LOOK AT ME!" she roared. "You have no idea what I am, do you? I'm more cat than human. I was designed, not conceived." She jumped back into his lap, pressed her nose to his, and hissed. "Why would you think I'm pretty, much less beautiful?"
"Because you're beautiful to me."
Tamar did her best to maintain her outward tough personal. She tried. But he had just hit her where she had no defense. He had just told her, without a hint of a lie, that he considered her not just pretty, beautiful. It shook her to her core. How could he keep doing this to her? It was as if he knew what she wanted, no, needed to hear, and wasn't shy about saying it.
"You're that most beautiful woman I've ever seen, Tamar. You're cunning, sharp, deadly, and on top of that, you take my breath away every time I look at you." When Tamar went to turn her face away, his hand swept up and caught her cheek.
"No, not this time. You don't have to be ashamed of your tears here. I want to see you, all of you. God does not make mistakes. You are not a mistake." He brought her face around again, gently, and this time she let him.
Her tears flowed down her cheeks, only this time they were tears of gratitude. For the first time in her life, she could just let her emotions overwhelm her. She bawled like a child and didn't care. She was safe here. Safe with a man who not only put up with her, but thought her beautiful.
They stayed that way for several minutes until Tamar was so exhausted she collapsed on his chest.
"Why do you put up with me?" She asked when she could talk again.
"Why would I not?"
"Because no one else has." Tamar snuggled into his chest and sighed the sigh of the content.
Then the fingers began their attack. She felt his hands resting on her back begin to move higher. They moved through her hair, with soft touches they untwisted knot after knot until they came to her head. His left stayed in her long flowing tresses, working to smooth them, while the other burrowed its way deep into the lush hair at the base of her neck and head. Tingle after shocks after jolt raced through her body. She twitched, shook, even flailed. It was as if she couldn't control her own body. Those fingers were everywhere, tickling her scalp, massaging it, pulling deep contented moans from between her lips.
Then she felt his fingers slide up to cup her head in them and press her to his chest. Her arms, which were already around his chest, clamped down hard and stayed that way. Tamar's body seized up. The sensations running through her were unlike any she'd ever felt. She felt flushed, her breath coming in fast heated pants, her legs wrapped around his and clamped there. Shuddering, she pressed herself down on him and raised her face to his.
"Grrrrrrrrr!" Her growl made the walls shake.
"Why won't this thing cooperate?!" she screamed when she realized she was looking into the two red eyes of his suit.
"I was kind of thinking the same thing." Malachi told her, his breathless voice sounding strange to her.
"Well, this is just great, isn't it? You get me going and I can't do anything to you." Tamar propped herself up on his chest with her elbows.
"You do plenty to me. All I have to do is look at you, trust me."
"You know what I mean. I'm about to blow a fuse and I can't do a thing about it."
"What, I was just trying to help you with your hair, that's all." The fingers began again and Tamar winced.
"Don...do...don't start t...tha...that again, or I'm going to explode." She shivered.
"Oh, so you enjoy that?" He asked, sounding as innocent as possible.
"Take this suit of yours off and I'll show you just how much I enjoy it."
They spent the rest of that evening clinging to each other. Their bond sharpening in the glow of their growing relationship.
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