Half of Forever by Genny (Genteel Rebel)

When you love someone, you want to give them the best that is in you.

Tessa Noel knew that the best thing she had in her was her art. Duncan liked to argue with her—he said that her greatest possession was her heart—but Tessa knew he was wrong. She had been born to create, to make dead metal and empty canvases sing with life, and she knew that her creations constituted her sole useful contribution to the world. Everything else that she was…the heart and the mind and the body that Duncan admired so much…existed only to serve that one purpose. Nothing else mattered.

So, the moment that Tessa realized she was in love—and it took almost an entire week for this realization to make its way to her brain, although her heart had known from the moment Duncan MacLeod first set foot on her tour boat—Tessa started drawing Duncan.

The first time she sketched him, they were in bed together. Duncan was sleeping with his arms flung wide over the pillow, a satisfied smile on his face; he had certainly earned his rest that evening. Tessa supposed she deserved it too, but she couldn’t make herself settle. Her body was still thrumming with the excitement of the love they’d made, and there was no way she could follow her new love into sleep. So she picked up a sketch pad and began to draw, fascinated by the curves and angles of Duncan’s face, loosing herself in recreating the exact way his hair spread over the pillows until she looked up from the paper and was startled to see soft brown eyes regarding her thoughtfully. “I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed to be caught. “I couldn’t sleep, and I thought…”

“Let me see,” he said, holding out his hand for the pad. She handed it over, even though her artist’s instincts screamed that it was too early to show the drawing to anyone. Duncan looked at the page for a long time. Then he held out his arm, beckoning for her to come closer. “You have a wonderful gift, Tessa,” he said.

Tessa found herself blushing, something she hadn’t done for years. She snuggled under his arm, eagerly wrapping herself in Duncan ’s strength and warmth. “It’s not very good,” she said. “It’s just a sketch, and it’s been a long time since I’ve done any portrait work. I’ve been working with abstracts almost exclusively ever since I left the Sorbonne.”

“It IS good,” Duncan corrected her. “You don’t have to make excuses, Tessa. It’s one of the nicest portraits I’ve ever seen. You make the lines come alive.” Tessa felt her cheeks turn even pinker and she snuggled still further under Duncan ’s arm, grateful that she didn’t have to meet his eyes. “Funny,” Duncan said, his fingers lightly toying with her hair. “Nobody’s ever drawn me asleep before. I never would have guessed that this is what I looked like.”

Tessa twisted to face him, embarrassment forgotten. “You’ve modeled before?”

“Once or twice.”

“Really?” Tessa was fascinated. She told herself that she shouldn’t be surprised. Her lover had one of the most beautiful bodies she had ever seen, completely worthy of being immortalized in paint or the world’s finest marble. It was just that she still knew so little about him, and Duncan seemed very reluctant to talk about his past. She drew a finger threw his chest hair teasingly. “Am I going to find this torso in the Louvre?”

“Hardly.” Duncan shifted and pulled her forward, effortlessly lifting her so that she was sitting astride his chest, his wonderfully soft body hair tickling her thighs. Tessa giggled happily, another girlish thing she hadn’t done in much too long. “I’ve never modeled for anyone famous, Tess. Mostly I’ve just sat for good friends, people who knew me. You’re not going to find me in the Louvre. But—“ his hands started to roam over her hips, fingers seeking and lifting the edge of the silk chemise she wore. “I *have* seen myself represented on canvas more than once, so you can trust my opinion of your work.” He pulled her down for a quick kiss. “Your pencil sketch is one of the best portraits I’ve ever had.”

This time Tessa’s flush was much less about her embarrassment and much more about the sensations Duncan was sending through her body. He started to rise and fall underneath her, teasingly rubbing his chest against her most sensitive places. Tessa closed her eyes and rode the movements the way a surfer would ride a wave, letting the pleasure course through her body. When she opened her eyes again Duncan was watching her with tenderness, and an open admiration that still took her by surprise. “I could do better,” she offered. “If you’re willing to pose, I could paint you. Maybe even make some sketches for a sculpture.”

“Really?” Duncan took her hips in his hands and shifted yet again, causing Tessa to cry out. His voice was soft with love and need. “And how would you want me to pose, Tess? Like this?”

Images of Duncan painted the way he was now…lips slightly parted, skin slightly shiny with sweat, beautiful brown eyes wide open and dark with lust…floated through Tessa’s brain. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Really? I think that was too easy, Tess,” Duncan said, the intensity in his eyes belying the teasing tone of his words. “I thought artists were all about options. Trying out new things.” Once again he lifted her, shifting himself into a sitting position so that she was now straddling his lap, her lips only a few inches from his forehead. “How about like this? Would you like me like this, Tessa?”

Heat flared. “Yes.”

His mouth sucked at her collarbone, his hand gently pushed her shoulders back. She went with the movement and fell back onto the mattress, ending up with her head resting on the covers at the foot of the bed, her backside balanced on Duncan ’s lap and her legs curled around Duncan ’s waist. He bent over her, his lips ghosting over her stomach. “And what about like this?” he murmured, kissing the skin around her navel in between each and every word. “Would you like me like this?”

Tessa could no longer remember what it was they’d been talking about. “Yes,” she said. And “Yes, yes, oh yes,” when his tongue found a sensitive spot just below her navel, letting her voice degenerate into a helpless chant of “yes’s”. Duncan smiled, rubbed his chin against the hollow of her hip, and delved even lower. And the rest of the world disappeared.

***

In the days that followed, Tessa was amazed at how quickly her life began to revolve around three things: talking with Duncan , making love to Duncan , and drawing Duncan , more or less in that order. She still went to work every day, still woke up and ate breakfast and did all the normal things she’d always done, but Duncan was now an inextricable part of her every waking moment. If she wasn’t actually with him, she was thinking about him, anticipating their next encounter. Her friends and coworkers all teased her about her level of distraction, saying “She must be in love” in mock whispers Tessa was clearly intended to overhear. The day Duncan arrived early to pick her up at the docks a chorus of “Oh! So that explains it” rang out, along with two or three appreciative whistles. Duncan simply grinned and whisked her away to a very romantic dinner, and much, much later, when the clock on the sideboard had chimed out 3 am and Tessa was still bent over the pair of masculine and feminine torsos she was sculpting out of clay, he slipped out of bed and padded barefoot to her side. He took one look at her cramped posture and frowned, sitting down on the floor by Tessa’s feet. “You need a real art studio,” he said. “Or at the very least a bigger apartment.”

She smiled at him, completely unconscious of the fact that her hands were both covered in clay from fingernail to wrist, that a full two thirds of her hair had escaped from her ponytail and was now hanging around her hair in a wild halo, and that her nose was smudged where she’d rubbed it with the backs of her hands. Duncan was looking up at her as if she was the most beautiful thing in the world, and that was all it took for Tessa to feel as lovely as a queen. “It’s not so bad,” she said. “The light in the morning is very good here. And it’s warm in the wintertime, and…”

“And you’re about to burst out at the seams,” Duncan said. He nodded at the piece taking shape on Tessa’s lap. “How can you work in clay if you don’t have a kiln? How will you fire that, when it’s finished?”

She shrugged, her cramped shoulders protesting painfully. It *was* awkward, trying to sculpt clay on what was essentially an old kitchen cutting board balanced precariously on her knees. But the one room apartment was small, and Tessa’s tiny desk was already covered in half-finished paintings she didn’t want to disturb. “I still have some friends who teach at the Sorbonne,” she said. “They’ll let me…how do you say it in English? ‘Snark’ it in with one of their class projects.”

“Sneak it in. I see. And what about this?” He picked up an old sketchbook, which Tessa had left open to a daydream sculpture she hadn’t been able to make herself forget, great big pillars and circular donuts of made of hammered stainless steel. Duncan tapped his finger pointedly over the measurements she’d roughly penciled in. The smallest piece in the work was more than six feet tall. “Don’t tell me you’re going to make this here.”

Tessa made a helpless gesture. “I can’t afford the tools, anyway,” she said. “To make that, I’d need welding equipment, cranes…” Duncan just looked at her knowingly. Tessa colored. “It’s just a dream, Duncan . A fantasy. Something I would make if I could, but I can’t. So it’s unimportant.”

“Right. So unimportant that you look at this sketchbook practically every day, writing notes, making changes. It’s clearly not important at all.” He set the book aside, looked up at her earnestly. “Tessa, you have to move. You’ll never realize any of your dreams if you stay here.”

“I don’t know about that,” Tessa said, looking tenderly at her lover. “I think I’ve realized one or two.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Duncan said. “Tessa, you have a tremendous gift. You need to do everything you can to develop it.”

Tessa sighed. She understood where her Duncan was coming from, and she appreciated his concern. But having a studio of her own was one dream she simply couldn’t fulfill right now, and having him remind her of that was just opening up old wounds. “ Duncan , I can’t afford anything better,” Tessa said, calm but firm. “I’m lucky to have found a place of my own at all. Most of the other tour girls are stacked like firewood, three or four to a room…”

“I can afford something better.”

“Don’t be silly.” She shook her head fondly. “You’re an out-of-work American who has been living in different youth hostels for the last two years. I can’t understand how you can afford to keep bringing me flowers, let alone take me out for such expensive dinners almost every night.”

“I’m an out of work American *antiques dealer*, Tessa.”

“So? Out of work is out of work, Duncan .”

“You don’t understand.” He straightened up, looking at her earnestly. “Just because I’ve been living like a poor student doesn’t mean I *am* one, Tess. My business was doing very well before I decided I…needed a change of scenery. I still have plenty of things in storage with my cousin Connor in America . I can wire him, have him sell a few of them. It should be more than enough to get us a place of our own.” Tessa stared at him. “I’m not talking anything major,” Duncan continued. “Just a nice flat with an extra room for your studio. We can hold off on getting anything bigger until we decide what we want to do.”

She blinked at him cartoonishly. “Until we decide to do what?”

“Until we decided to open a gallery to showcase your work, or a school if you want to teach, or maybe even another antiques store…” The incredulous look on Tessa’s face finally got through to Duncan . He smiled sheepishly. “Uh-oh. Looks like I missed a step.” He took a deep breath. “Tessa Noel, do you want to live with me? Everything else can wait.”

“Of course I want to live with you,” Tessa answered. She didn’t have to think twice about that. “I was about to ask you if you wanted to move in with *me*.”

He grinned. “Were you really? I’m flattered…but I think it would be a little crowded. Especially when you get around to sculpting the larger-than-life-size version of that I know you’ve got planned.” He nodded at the sculpture taking shape in her lap. Tessa blushed. Duncan got up on one knee, looking into her eyes. He lifted her hand and curled his fingers around it, not caring in the slightest that her fingers were still covered in clay. “Say you’ll move in with me, Tessa. Let me help make some more of your dreams come true.”

Throat choked, Tessa nodded. And was promptly rewarded with the sweetest kiss of her entire life.

***

Things happened very quickly after that. Tessa quickly discovered that a determined Duncan MacLeod was a force of nature. Three days later he took her on a tour of available flats, and the day after that they’d moved in: taking possession of a lovely second floor apartment with terrific views of the city. It had wonderful morning and evening light, and a spare room for Tessa’s studio that was bigger than her old apartment all by itself. “Now, I want to see you get to work, young lady,” Duncan said, mock serious, when he’d carried up the last box of her supplies. “If these walls aren’t completely covered by sketches by the end of the week, I’ll want to know the reason why.”

Tessa raised an eyebrow, eyeing her lover from head to toe. He was wearing a short sleeved shirt which showed off his muscular arms to perfection. “It *could* be because I haven’t set foot out of the bedroom all week,” she said innocently. “I’ve never had a king size bed before. It could take quite a while to get used to.”

Duncan looked thoughtful. “You might have a point,” he said, and pounced…sweeping Tessa off her feet and into his arms. He paused only long enough to rifle in one of the boxes for a pencil and drawing pad… “Can’t have you slacking off, even if I don’t let you out of the bedroom for a week”… before he carried her to the new king size bed and tossed her onto it. Several very eventful hours later, he sleepily inquired: “Got used to it yet?”

Tessa shook her head, luxuriously stretching, reveling in the wonderful and completely new sensation of being in a bed so big she didn’t have to bend her knees to keep her feet from sticking off the edge. “Not yet.”

“Too bad. Start drawing.” And Duncan began to snore.

Dutifully, Tessa drew. Over the next few weeks she drew, painted, and sculpted with a passionate abandon that might have scared her if she hadn’t been so happy. It was like she had been a flower that had been forced to remain tight in the bud until the sun came out and she could blossom. Having her own studio was magical; with all the space, glorious space, Tessa’s talents were finally free to unfurl. She quickly fulfilled Duncan’s edict and covered every vertical surface in the studio with her art, most of which was images of Duncan—Duncan standing, Duncan sitting, Duncan smiling that particular smile he reserved only for her. “Hmmm. I’m beginning to sense a theme here,” Duncan said one morning when she’d been too engrossed to come to breakfast, and he’d knocked on the door to bring her a cup of coffee and a croissant. “Whatever happened to the abstracts?”

Tessa twinkled at him. In truth, she really hadn’t been neglecting her other work. A few of the sculptures that had been haunting her dreams for years were beginning to take shape on paper, and she’d even gone so far as to build a scale model of the abstract piece Duncan had noticed in one corner. It was just that drawing Duncan was so much more fun. “It’s all your fault,” she teased. “If you weren’t such a tempting subject…”

Duncan gave her a quick smile that acknowledged her teasing, but his handsome face quickly sobered, telling Tessa he had other things on his mind. “Why don’t you ever sketch yourself, Tess?”

There was a seriousness in the question that took Tessa aback. “I’ve never had a gift for self-portraiture,” she said, and flashed him a smile of her own, trying to lighten the moment. “Besides, I’m not the one who turns heads whenever we walk down the street together.”

“That’s not true and you know it.” Duncan shot her annoyed look. “Stop trying to weasel out of the question, Tess. I want to know why you never draw yourself.”

“Why should I want to draw myself? I already know what I look like.” Duncan frowned, so Tessa took his hand and tried again, groping to explain something that was so fundamental to her, she had never before bothered to put it into words. “I’m not like most artists, Duncan.,” she said. “It’s not about taking what’s inside me and making it visible for the rest of the world to see. It never has been. Instead, my art is always about the world outside myself. Seeing those things in the world that are beautiful and trying to borrow a bit of that beauty for myself.”

Duncan nodded slowly, although he still looked slightly puzzled. “What about the abstracts, then? Do you find them outside yourself, too?”

“Just because something is intangible doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Look.” She drew him over to the model of her dream sculpture. “Everything here is something I’ve seen around me. This—“ She touched a tall pillar. “This is Strength. This—“ she touched a round donut, one that would gleam softly with a matt finish if it was ever constructed. “This is Beauty. And this…” She indicated the final piece of group, a mirror-like circle that would pool like a pond of water in front of the other two sculptures, reflecting everyone who looked into it… “is Peace… the inner peace it takes to see the other two without distortion. Do you see? When I make something like this, it’s not because I want to show these things to other people…it’s to show them to myself. Learn about them. Make them a part of me.” She dropped Duncan ’s hand. “So you see, there’s no reason for me to sculpt myself. I already know what *I* am.”

“I see that you do.” Duncan gave her a considering look, one that was half admiration and half awe. “Do you know what an unusual woman that makes you, Tess? That you already know yourself that well?” Tessa shrugged, uncertain as to why he was so surprised; she was what she was, and saw no reason to marvel. Duncan walked away, moving to study a picture of himself that was hanging on the wall with new interest. “So when you draw me, you’re learning about me? Making me a part of you?”

She shivered, thinking about the hours she’d spent memorizing all the different textures of his skin, until all she had to do now was close her eyes and she could feel him under her fingertips. “Oh, yes. Yes.”

“Really?” He cocked his head curiously. “What have you learned?”

She smiled a smile only a strong woman secure in her love life could wear, a knowing smile, tantalizingly seductive. “Bravery,” she said, standing up and putting her arms around him, feeling the heat of his body through his clothing, smelling his intoxicating scent. “Gentleness…” She reached for his belt buckle. He let her undo it without complaint, allowed her to draw the leather out of his belt loops and drop it to the floor. “Beauty—“ she said next, reaching up to undo his shirt buttons—“and the humility to carry that beauty without arrogance, neither denying its existence nor using it for your own advantage.” One last button and the shirt was completely undone. Tessa pushed the fabric off his shoulders. “Passion…”

“Passion?”

“Oh, yes.” Tessa let her hands wander around his torso, caressing here, teasing there. Duncan made no move to either stop or guide her, and she gloried in the power he was giving her. “Tell me,” she said. “Have you ever made love to an artist in her very own studio before?”

“I think I better not answer that for fear of incriminating the not-so-innocent,” Duncan said. “But I know I’ve never made love to this one. An oversight that shall be corrected at once.” He scooped her up, lifting her with ease; Tessa laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Hmmm,” he said, looking around the studio and noting the complete absence of furniture comfortable for two. “I can see I forgot to furnish you with at least one piece of essential equipment. Remind me that I need to buy you a couch. In the meantime…” He cast an appraising eye at her new desk, which despite all the new space was just as buried under papers as the old one had been. “I suppose you’d kill me if I swept all that onto the floor?”

She hid a smirk against his neck. “I wouldn’t kill you,” she said. “But…after I caught my breath…I might be tempted not to speak to you for the rest of the day.”

“Well, I can’t have that. Hold on for a minute.” He put her down and disappeared, reappearing a moment later with the thick, luxuriant duvet that normally covered their bed. “Spread that on the floor. I have another idea.” He disappeared again, and this time when he came back he was dragging yet another of their bedroom furnishings…this time the antique freestanding mirror he’d purchased the day after they moved in, a lovely Victorian piece framed in mahogany. It was heavy. Duncan grunted as he maneuvered it through the studio door, at last managing to set it up by the wall. Tessa eyed it, her expression…expressive. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said. Tessa’s expression grew more expressive still. “Well, all right, it *is*,” Duncan admitted. “But not for the *reason* that you’re thinking.” He picked up a pencil and drawing pad, held them out. “I want you to draw yourself, Tess.”

Her eyebrows arched. “While we’re making love?”

“Can you think of a better time?” He pulled her to the middle of the duvet, settling her on her knees in front of the mirror while he caressed her shoulders “I’m not talking about the true heat of the moment, Tess. All modesty aside, we’re usually athletic enough to make holding onto a pencil very difficult.” She giggled. He sobered. “But now? Now, when all I want to do is look at you? Undress you slowly, touch you more slowly still?” His voice became very seductive. “I think you can capture that, Tess. For an artist of your skill, it should be no problem at all.”

She shook her head, unsure as to why this was so important to him, even more unsure when he began to unbutton her artist’s smock and slip it off her shoulder, baring her breasts to the mirror. She closed her eyes. “Damn it, Tess,” Duncan said, tone surprisingly kind in spite of the harsh words. “Stop looking at yourself like an insecure woman and start looking at yourself like an artist. You once told me that the whole secret of drawing realistic portraiture was to look at your subject and draw what was actually there, not what your mind’s preconceptions told you was there. Don’t just look and see the Tessa you’ve always seen. See what’s actually there. Look at the angles…” He traced the line of her cheekbone. “The lines…” His fingers brushed the edge of her hair. “The curves.” His broad hand settled on the now-naked skin of her waist, right where the straight lines of her midsection gave way to the swelling curve of her hip. “Look at the beauty, Tess. And draw it. Draw it for me.”

She didn’t want to do it. As she had already told Duncan , she knew what she looked like. There could be nothing *new* in the mirror to inspire her, nothing worth immortalizing in her art. But an artist’s hands don’t always listen to an artist’s brains, and Tessa’s hands had suddenly developed a mind of their own. Maybe it was something to do with the way Duncan kissed her fingers as he wrapped one of her hands around the pencil…the handsome prince kissing a sleeping princess to life. Maybe it was that Tessa had never really looked at herself when in Duncan ’s company before, and his presence made all the difference. When he settled down on his knees behind her, the bronze skin of his chest made a perfect frame for her paler, slimmer torso, and she suddenly knew that this was metaphorical as well as artistic fact. She drew a single line, the line of her waist just above where his hands now rested, and shivered when Duncan lifted his hands to trace a reverent finger over the skin her pencil had just sketched. “Yes,” he said. “That’s it. Draw for me…”

She did.

They soon developed a system. Duncan would touch her, outlining a specific body part with his hands. Magically, the moment his fingers lifted she would see the familiar skin with new eyes and draw with restless passion, hurrying to capture what she saw before it faded away. They spent the longest time on her face, and Tessa would never have guessed how incredibly erotic it could be to have a man’s fingers, butterfly light, trace the delicate folds of skin at the corners of her eyes, or linger caressingly on the tip of her nose. By the time Duncan got to her lips Tessa was shaking with repressed desire, but also shaking with discovery; her pencil moved in a whirlwind over the paper even as she captured his fingers in her mouth, desperate to have some small part of him inside her. Duncan smiled, letting her suck long and hard, and when he removed his hand to lightly stroke down one breast Tessa’s saliva left a trail that she captured in the drawing, erasing and re-sketching until she got the highlights perfect. Perfect. It was all so perfect…

When she finished, she could hardly believe what she saw. There, on the paper, was a beautiful drawing of a woman sitting cross-legged with a sketchpad in her lap, exquisitely aroused. Duncan hadn’t allowed her to draw so much as one line of his own body, and so the pencil-woman sat alone, but the marks of her phantom lover were everywhere: in the fullness of her lips, in the flush on her cheeks and her collarbone, in the way her swollen nipples pointed up and out, begging to be touched. Tessa shuddered, remembering the way Duncan had teased and stroked her nipples into fullness, shaping them for the portrait the way a sculptor would shape clay. “ Duncan ?”

“Yes, beloved?”

“It’s me.”

“Yes.”

“I mean--it’s…really me. Tessa.” She couldn’t get over that. The woman on the paper should have been a stranger, but it was also incontrovertibly, unarguably, herself. Herself as she’d never seen. “This is the me you see all the time.”

“Yes.” He nodded, taking the pad from her hand. “And it’s the you I always will see. Tess, you have no idea how precious this picture is to me. How precious it will always be.”

She smiled shyly. “You could have just taken a photograph, you know.”

He shook his head. “No, I couldn’t have. To have a picture of my beautiful woman, captured by her own hand…it’s a truer portrait of you than any photo could be. It’s more precious than gold.” He stroked her arm. “I’ve got you for forever, now. For the rest of eternity, I’ll be able to look at this and have both your heart and your body in front of me.”

She laughed softly. “Hardly ‘forever’” she said teasingly. “Someday we’ll both be too old to see this drawing without glasses ten inches thick. If the paper hasn’t crumbled into dust first.”

He considered this for a long moment. When he did speak, his voice was soft. “Maybe not forever,” he said. “But this drawing will live for as long as I do. Beyond, if I can help it.” He lay the pad gently, tenderly aside, then returned to her, pulling her close. “Now,” he murmured into her skin. “Shall we complete the picture?”

“Yes.” His lips descended to her neck. Tessa shivered. “I love you, Duncan MacLeod.”

“I love you, Tessa Noel.”

***

Tessa was sitting in front of her mirror, but she wasn’t drawing. Instead she was just staring intensely at the sketchbook in her lap. It was open to the first drawing of Duncan she’d ever done, the one of him in bed with his eyes closed. Another dozen of the much more detailed, much more developed drawings she’d completed during the last two years hung all around her on the studio walls. Tessa looked back and forth between them, hardly believing her eyes. Surely, in those two years, there should have been some changes apart from hairstyle…surely there should have been some subtle deepening in the lines on his forehead, some small receding of the hairline. But try as she might, Tessa could see nothing. Which was…natural. Normal . The way things should be. The way things would always be, from now on.

Because her lover was Immortal.

He’d asked her if she trusted him, told her not to scream or call for help, and then promptly shot himself through the heart. In that second Tessa’s entire world had collapsed. She knew, absolutely knew, that this man was everything to her. When…impossibly… he’d come back to life before her eyes, it hadn’t seemed so surprising—their lives had become so closely linked that she’d known if he died she would too, and since her heart was still beating it just seemed right that his was as well. Her love was so strong. How could it have failed to call him back?

Then Duncan explained the rest. That he was Immortal. That he had lived for nearly four hundred years. That no normal means could kill him—he could not die. That his life would become a living hell, hunted and persecuted and studied, if his secret ever became known. And that he loved her, Tessa Noel, and trusted her enough to break his secrecy…

Tessa’s first reaction had been wonder. She’d always known her beloved was a most unusual man. The fact that Duncan could defy death itself was only an intellectual surprise, not an emotional one. She saw only the magic, the blessings of knowing that she would never again have to worry about Duncan falling victim to a heart attack or random act of street violence. Duncan ’s Immortality seemed to be the crowning miracle of the incredible stream of miracles that had flooded into her life ever since he first jumped aboard her tour boat. It wasn’t until Tessa had walked into her studio and saw her latest family portrait, a huge painting of herself and Duncan walking hand in hand along the Seine , that it had hit her. All the time she’d spent memorizing every inch of his body, every curve of muscle and bone, had been wasted; the effort she’d put into discovering that the smile lines on the left side of his mouth were ever so slightly deeper than the ones on the right had been pointless. There had never been a need for her to capture him in paint. The Duncan that was looking back at her from the walls would never change. His face and body were already caught for all time. Frozen.

Immortal.

Unlike her.

She tossed the sketchbook across the room. It hit the pile of newly-fired ceramics she’d had balanced on her desk, sending them to the floor with an unholy crash. Tessa couldn’t find it in herself to care. She rather relished the sound, and got to her feet, searching the studio for other suitably noisy things to destroy. But the door opened, just as she picked up a jar of pencils and pen. Duncan looked around the room, from the sketchbook lying with its pages scattered to the ceramic smithereens to Tessa, frozen in mid throw. He looked…and then he nodded, his handsome face resigned. “Oh,” he said. “I see. I was wondering when this was going to happen.”

“When what was going to happen?”

“When it was finally going to sink in that I might not be able to die, but you still can.”

Tessa crumbled. She literally crumbled, knees giving out as the sobs erupted. Duncan caught her before she hit the floor, cradling her in his arms. The jar in her hand hit the floor and rolled away, scattering pencils as it went, but neither of them cared. Duncan made soft soothing sounds, brushing Tessa’s hair out of her eyes as she cried, but he didn’t attempt to say words. Perhaps he knew there *were* no words, no way to sooth away the tragedy that Tessa had only just discovered went along with the miracle. When the first furor of her emotional storm had passed, Tessa sniffled loudly, wiping her eyes roughly with the back of her hand. “It’s not the dying that bothers me,” she said. “Baring accidents, I’m not planning to die for a very long time…”

“I’m very glad to hear that.”

“Stop that. This isn’t a time for teasing.” Duncan nodded, sobering at once. “Like I said, it’s not the dying that bothers me. It’s the fact that you’re never going to change.” Still sniffling, Tessa sat up and reached for another sketchbook…this one containing the first sketch she’d ever made of herself, in the process of being made love to by Duncan . She knew Duncan recognized it, by the way his gaze locked on the page and his pupils ever so slightly dilated, but it wasn’t the past Tessa was interested in. She waved the sketchbook under his nose, than gestured at the half-completed painting of the two of them hanging on the wall. “Look at my face,” she said. “Only two years, and you can already see the difference. It’s not a big difference, but it’s there. While you…” She gestured helplessly at all the Duncan on the walls. “While you are already…finished. Unchanging. Perfect.” Her voice lowered. “What can I possibly have to offer the perfect man?”

He was astonished. “That’s what’s bothering you? You think I’m perfect?” She nodded slightly. “Well, that’s a new one. Nobody has ever accused me of being *that*, Tess.”

She blushed. “I chose the wrong word,” she said. “Not perfect as in without flaw. Perfect as in…finished. Complete.” She nodded again at the portraits. “I am going to change a lot over the next few years, Duncan . Not just my body. My heart and mind as well. How can I…how can we continue to love, if I change while you do not?”

“You think I can’t change? You think I’m still the same person I was before we met?” She nodded sadly, looking down at her feet. “Tessa. Look at me.” A quiet word of command that made her look up again, to see brown eyes that were shining and earnest. “You’ve been confusing what I look like on the outside with what I really am. Look at me. Not my body. Me.”

She did. And, rather miraculously, saw exactly what he meant. Reflected back in those eyes was every moment of the last two years, laid out as clearly as if she was reading book. Tessa could see every laugh, every kiss, every argument, as well as the making up that made those arguments worthwhile. And she saw other things, too. The pain of not being able to tell her exactly who and what he was. The hope and careful watching for the day when he could. Wordlessly, Duncan crooked a finger at the line of canvases on the wall, and if Tessa looked carefully she could see the same story written there as well. Duncan ’s face may not have changed over the years, but his expression certainly had. “Your eyes,” she said softly, not believing that in all her careful scrutiny she’d missed something so important. “And your smile. The way you carry yourself. It’s not the same.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Duncan said. “When I met you, I was lost, Tess. Not unhappy, not in pain…but I wasn’t happy either. I was pretty directionless, just drifting. Look.” He picked up the sketch book Tessa had thrown across the room, smoothing down the pages. “You can see it here, if you look. I know I have my eyes closed, but it’s still there. I’m relaxed…much too relaxed. Indifferent. I was pretty much a man who didn’t care about anything, Tess. You changed that.”

Tessa took the book with trembling fingers. Duncan pulled her up off the floor and walked her to the latest portrait. “Now look at me,” he said. “Happy. Confident. Ridiculously in love. With a definite direction to travel in.”

“And what direction is that?”

“Whichever one you’re pointed in.” He smiled, taking her hands so they were mirroring the position depicted in the portrait. “So you see, I’m not frozen. I can still change and grow…and I will. As long as I have you at my side.”

“I’ll be at your side,” she said, knowing she was making a promise more solemn than a wedding vow. Then the pain of their reality once again rose up to hit her, and she shook her head painfully, regretfully. “As long as I can.”

“That’s all I ask.” She looked up at him, still not entirely believing. He sighed. “Tessa—I can’t give you my kind of forever. I would if I could. It’s just not possible. But you can give me yours…and if you do, I swear to you I’ll make it worth your while.”

“You already have,” she said softly. “ Duncan ?”

“Yes, Tessa?”

“It’s enough?” She looked at him curiously, hoping, but needing to be sure. “My kind of forever…it’s really enough?”

“More than enough.” He drew her close, and kissed her on the forehead. “It’s the most precious thing in the world.”