Page 2 of A Memory Not Mine (Sanguis Amantium #1)

Chapter two

Mira

T he house was dark when I came in through the back door.

I flipped on lights as I moved from room to room, trying to chase off the weight that had followed me home from the bank in Boston’s Back Bay.

The drive to Marblehead had me gripping the wheel so hard my fingers ached.

I kept my eyes on the road. I couldn’t— wouldn’t —look at the tote bag in the passenger seat.

Buried among the expected contents of my parents’ safe deposit box—titles to the boat and my mother’s car, a few pieces of her jewelry I hadn’t found in the safe in the house—was a small, dust-covered box.

The name Garvie was scrawled across the lid in unfamiliar block lettering.

I hadn’t opened it yet. I didn’t need to.

Whatever was inside, I could feel it—humming with energy, pulsing like a heartbeat just beneath the surface.

It was going to trigger one of my visions the moment I touched it. I knew that much.

When I reached the dining room, I unceremoniously dumped the contents of my tote onto the table.

I’d never felt a reaction like this—not without even opening the box.

Whatever was inside, it was already working on me, a thunderstorm on the horizon, buzzing just beneath the surface.

I took a deep breath, bracing myself for whatever was coming, and sank into one of the chairs.

I dragged the cardboard box across the tabletop to where I was sitting, and the same sense of dread I’d had at the bank hit me again.

I was right—this was the source. Dust rose from the surface as I lifted off the lid, and ancient scents of stone, petrichor, and peat moss assaulted my nose, mingled with other scents I couldn’t pinpoint.

Inside, a smaller box waited. It was made of red leather, worn dark with age, its corners trimmed with gold leaf, the brass latch on the short edge corroded by time.

The size struck me as just right for a necklace—about four by six inches.

But when I flipped open the box, I found something unexpected: a finely painted portrait miniature of a young woman, delicately perched on a bed of red silk.

The hammering thud of my heart against my ribcage made it hard for me to concentrate on the painting, but as I tried to study the face more closely, a jolt of savage clarity hit me.

The face in the portrait was so strikingly familiar, it felt as though I was looking into a mirror.

Her ivory complexion was kissed with a soft flush on her cheeks and nose, a light dusting of freckles scattered across high cheekbones.

Dark brown eyes, heavy-lidded and framed by thick black lashes, seemed to hold some unspoken thought.

Her ripe-berry lips were slightly parted, as if she were about to speak.

Then my gaze fell to the dimpled chin, exactly like my own—the one my dad always called the ‘Garvie cleft.’ It's the feature I'm never quite sure whether to love or hate, yet it's undeniably a part of me, the one that always comes up when someone describes my face.

I knew it was unwise to touch the fragile painted surface with bare hands, but I was compelled by a force I couldn’t control, my peripheral vision dimming at the edges with each second.

I poised the tip of my finger near the subject’s exposed collarbone, the skin there so flushed with passion it almost seemed to glow, reminding me of the same way my own skin reacted when I was aroused.

As I pressed my finger to the surface, my heart was beating so erratically, I knew the blackout was inevitable.

I made one final attempt to fill my lungs with air, but it was as if a wide leather belt was wrapped around my chest and pulled to its tightest notch.

The crushing sense of panic was followed by a jolt of electricity through my body, and then the room went black.

I feel him and recognize his scent before I see him.

Cocooned in his arms, my head rests perfectly against the middle of a wide chest, wind blowing my hair, my eyes closed.

My feet are firmly planted on a wooden surface, but the earth is gently rolling, and when I hear waves lapping against the sides of a boat, I know why.

I inhale his scent deeply, unusual and somehow familiar all at once—sea salt, cedar, and leather touched by the sun.

Encircled by these strongly muscled arms, I feel safe.

This feeling is one of “belonging,” and it is entirely foreign to me.

After a lifetime of feeling I don’t belong, anywhere or to anyone…

I feel like I belong right here. God, this feels so perfect.

I don’t want this to end. This man makes me feel “whole,” like he is some long-lost part of me.

But I also feel longing, and there is an ache inside me, in the deepest part of my belly that I know only he can fill.

I don’t even know how to deal with these sensations.

I’ve never been more than an observer in all my previous visions, but here I am part of it, and these emotions are my own, not someone else’s.

His strong hand reaches up from my back to the nape of my neck, and then drifts between us to my tucked chin, fingers curling under my face to lift it gently to the light and toward his lips, the pad of his thumb resting in the dimple on my chin as if it were made to be there.

I open my eyes, and a halo of warm sunlight blocks me from seeing his entire face, but I catch it in fractured glimpses; thick dark chestnut hair falling over his forehead, streaks lightened by time in the sun, soft lips on a wide mouth, lowering to meet my own, his breath warm against my skin, and then he whispers a name, like an incantation, desperate with longing…

“Agnes.”