Rocked by Love (Gargoyles Series) (26 page)

She had to admit, it might have made her panties a little wet. Did that make her a bad person?

Now she watched the Guardian move through his paces in a warm-up routine he said helped to calm and focus him before his real training began. To Kylie, it looked like the katas she’d seen in movies and documentaries about the martial arts. Only, you know, with more giant iron weaponry.

When Dag finished his warm-up, he set the hammer head on the floor at his feet and turned to look at her, his expression intent and unexpectedly … hungry. She felt her eyes go wide.

“Um, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she offered, trying to keep the squeak out of her voice. “I just needed a break. From the screens. You know. I, uh, I can go if I’m disturbing you.”

She couldn’t call his expression a smile, but his face shifted and his mouth eased at the corners, while a slightly softer light entered his eyes. Right alongside the glint of lust.

Ei! Ei!
He’d already pounced on her once this morning, before she even got out of bed. Could he really think either of them had the energy for another round? Had he never heard of chafing?

She squirmed against the hard wooden stair tread, realized what she was doing, and bounced to her feet. “Right. I’ll just, uh, let you get back to it.”

He was on her before she could turn, closing the distance between them with a speed that only proved how inhuman he really was underneath all that yummy human muscle. His hand closed over hers and tugged her toward him. Standing on the bottom of the stairs, she didn’t have to crane her neck, but she still had to look up to meet his gaze.

“You have no need to hurry away, little one,” he rumbled in the voice she had come to think of as the big sexy. Ever since she slipped up and told him it made her shiver, he’d begun throwing it around with shameless regularity. “I have completed my warm-up, as you call it.” He leaned down to nibble on her shoulder. “Should I show you how warm I am?”

She wasn’t sure her heart could take it. She lifted a hand, intending to push him away. After all, she hadn’t come down here for this. No, really, she hadn’t. But her fingers ended up smoothing over his hot, damp skin of their own volition. Darned things could no longer be trusted. Traitors.

“I really don’t think that’s—ah!—necessary,” she mumbled, gasping when he closed his teeth gently over the tendon in her throat and swiping her skin with the flat of his tongue. “I’m fine.”

He leaned the handle of his hammer against the side of the stairs and wrapped both arms around her, trapping her against his bulk. One rough hand slid under the back of her T-shirt and rasped against the skin at the small of her back, causing an instantaneous reaction between her legs.

Sneaky male. He’d obviously paid attention recently and noted that the small of her back was an incredibly sensitive erogenous zone for her. The right caress there could have her begging in seconds. Especially when it came from his uniquely textured fingers.

She had become fascinated by his hands. Not only were they huge—more than twice the size of hers; she had measured—but they had a texture he claimed was unique to his kind. Instead of the whorls and ridges of a human fingerprint, the surface of his skin featured tiny microscopic pitting, like the surface of an unpolished stone. Not only did it make him immune to the identification procedures used by human authorities (which was handy when one occasionally had to kill people the human authorities didn’t always know needed to die), but it provided the exquisitely abrasive tactile sensation that made Kylie squirm.

In fact, the man was making her squirm right then and there. “I thought you had to train,” she half gasped, half moaned, as he shifted his grip to lift her off her feet and press her against the hard length of his torso. Things felt pretty hard slightly south of his torso, as well.

Kylie estimated she had approximately fifteen seconds to put a stop to his seduction attempts before they stopped being attempts and became a grand-slam home run. Did thinking it in her head count as a college try? A kindergarten putsch?

“A Guardian is always prepared,” he purred, “but what sort of mate am I to place your needs below my own.”

Kylie tilted her head to the side, giving him better access to the sensitive skin underneath her jawline. “Trust me, my needs are doing just fine, big guy. In fact—”

Whatever she intended to say disappeared into the raucous chime of the doorbell. Wynn and Knox had suggested she add it before they left, just so that future knocks on the door didn’t go unnoticed for long enough to encourage visual exploration.

Kylie knew Wynn was a witch, but was she a psychic, too?

Tearing herself from Dag’s embrace, she backed up a step, nearly fell over backward, and righted herself with a blush of embarrassment. “Yeah, I’d better get that.”

Dag replied with a low snarl and a flash of teeth.

She turned to jog up the stairs, throwing a hasty suggestion to him over her shoulder. “If you want to guard my back, you might want to put a shirt on first. You’ll give my poor innocent mail carrier a heart attack.”

Since her own heart still pounded in her chest, Kylie figured she knew whereof she spoke.

She hurried along the hallway to the front door and pulled the panel open to receive whatever package the mail carrier couldn’t fit through her door slot. That smile froze then fell into a gape of surprise when she saw who really stood on her front stoop.

“What? No hello? You were raised by wolves?”

“Bubbeh!”
The word squeaked out from paralyzed vocal chords as Kylie looked into her grandmother’s weathered and wholly unexpected face. “What are you doing here?”

Chapter Fourteen

Far vos hot Oden un Khave tsugedekt di mayse mit a blot, ven keyner hot zey nit geyzen?

Why did Adam and Eve cover their business with a leaf if there was no one to see them?

“I sensed a disturbance in the force,” Esther Kramer said, stepping inside and depositing her archaic brocade carpetbag on the entryway floor. “That’s how that saying of yours goes, right?”

Kylie closed the door slowly behind her grandmother and surreptitiously leaned back against it for support. Shock had turned her knees into chopped liver. “Um, yeah. That’s right. But
bubbeh,
I wasn’t expecting to see you. How did you even get here?”

Esther leaned back from the embrace she’d already pulled her granddaughter into and gave her a stern look. “I’m seventy-eight years old. You think I don’t know how to ride a train and hail a cab?”

“No, of course, I know you can do that.” Kylie attempted to soothe her. “It’s just that it’s such a long way. Did you come by yourself? All the way from Westport?”

Her grandmother reached up and gave her cheek a forceful pat. Just a reminder that if she needed some sense slapped into her, Esther was the woman to do it. “All the way? You live in the next state over, and you make it sound like I wandered the desert for forty years. What? Are you not happy to see me?”

Uh-oh! Minefield ahead! “Of course I’m happy,
bubbeh.
I love you. But—”

“Because you could forgive a person for wondering.” Esther unbuttoned her long, rose-colored wool coat and handed it to Kylie, following it with her smart black hat, gray scarf, matching gloves, and her small, much beloved Chanel handbag. “I mean, when your only granddaughter calls you on the telephone and tells you in a voice message that she won’t be coming for Passover seder, what do you think this does to a woman’s heart?”

“Bubbeh—”

“But we can talk about that later. First you can show me this beautiful home you bought for yourself and haven’t invited me to yet.”

Oy.

Vey.

Esther Rachmann Kramer was on a roll.

She sighed. “Yes,
bubbeh
.”

“Or, on second thought.” Esther looked over her granddaughter’s shoulder, her hazel eyes going wide and her lips curving in a smile that spelled nothing but trouble for Kylie. “Maybe first you should introduce me to the young man standing in your hallway. I’m guessing this is why you took so long to answer the door, with your hair all mussed and your cheeks red like borscht.”

Zol Got mir helfen!
Oh, God help me, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut for a brief moment and wishing she’d just wake up in the ICU at Mass General. That coma theory simply kept sounding better and better.

The elbow in her ribs, however, told her it was not meant to be. She had to suffer through this. People thought it was so nice that Jews didn’t believe in hell; they didn’t have to. Hell was right here on earth. In Kylie’s front hall.

“Bubbeh,”
she said very carefully, gesturing Dag forward. He was lucky she didn’t gesture for him to lift her up and fly out the nearest window. “This is my friend Dag. Dag, this is my grandmother, Esther Kramer.”

Esther held out her hand and looked from Dag to her granddaughter. “What, he’s like that Prince singer? He doesn’t have a last name?”

Before Kylie could manage to swallow her panic, Dag stepped forward and gently clasped her grandmother’s delicate, wrinkled hand in his own. He shook it carefully while simultaneously making a sort of abbreviated bow that on him looked not pretentious, but sort of old-world and chivalrous. “Dag Steinman, Mrs. Kramer. I am honored to meet you. Kylie speaks of you often and with great warmth.”

Stone man?
Kylie nearly choked on her tongue.

“Steinman,” Esther repeated, eyebrows rising toward her hairline. She looked him over more deliberately, not bothering to hide her interest. “Are you Jewish? Or just German?”

“Bubbeh,”
Kylie groaned.

Esther didn’t even bother to look away from the current target of her interest. “What? I’m just curious.”

Dag barely hesitated. “I am sorry, I am not Jewish. My, ah, my ancestors did spend a great deal of time in Germany, though. In the fifteenth century, I believe.”

Meaning Dag had lurked on the battlements of some castle there, no doubt. Desperate to change the subject, Kylie carefully linked elbows with her grandmother and attempted to guide her to the open doorway to the living room. “Come on,
bubbeh.
You said you wanted to see the house. Let me give you a tour.”

“All right.” Esther waved her free hand to Dag. “You can join us, Mr. Steinman. It looks like you’ve spent plenty of time here. You can help show me around.”

The older woman let Kylie lead her into the living room, took one look around, and dug in her heels. Then she threw up her hands and turned on her granddaughter like a rabid ermine.

“This is how you live?” she demanded, the New York accent she had sublimated with the softer tones of Connecticut after fifty-odd years reemerging with a vengeance. “And you invite people over to see you living like a
vilde chaya
? No curtains on the windows, no rugs on the floor! You have that gigantic television on the wall, and all the furniture you can manage is a single sofa and one measly table? Who exactly raised you, Kylie Tsifira Kramer? Because I know I did not teach you anything like this.”

“Bubbeh—”

“No!” Esther slapped her hands against the air, closed her eyes, bowed her head, and drew a deep breath. “Don’t speak. Just show me the rest. Go on.”

So Kylie did, wincing every time her grandmother hissed air in through her teeth and muttered under her breath in Yiddish. Since Dag didn’t speak the language, it went against Esther’s fundamental beliefs about good manners to use it in his presence, which only served to emphasize how heinous she considered Kylie’s transgression. She inspected the house top to bottom, mercifully leaving the attic and basement off the list, since no one outside of Kylie needed to see those.

When the tour concluded in Kylie’s bedroom, the old woman pursed her lips, drew a cleansing breath, then turned a steely gaze on her granddaughter. “Coffee,” she said flatly. “Then we can discuss this.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kylie said meekly, and followed the woman back to the kitchen.

Dag had watched the entire event quietly and with deep apparent fascination. His gaze moved back and forth between the two women like a spectator at a tennis match, even though neither spoke much after the first two or three rooms. At first, Kylie had been grateful to him for not calling Esther’s attention to himself, but gradually she had begun to pray he would do something drastic to save her from the obviously growing disapproval. Heck, if he’d stripped her naked, thrown her to the floor, and proceeded to ravish her in front of God and everyone, at least it might have made Esther think about something other than Kylie’s utter lack of homemaking skills.

At least his manners remained impeccable. When they moved up or down the stairs, he gallantly offered his arm to assist with the older woman’s balance, and as soon as he returned to the kitchen, he pulled out one of the chairs at the small table Kylie never used and helped Esther to her seat. Climbing onto one of the tall counter-height stools at the island would have been awkward for her.

She remained silent, but her sharp gaze watched Kylie’s every move as her granddaughter scrounged through cabinets looking for the cups and saucers and other hostessy items that she would consider necessary to properly receive a guest. By the time Kylie had brewed the coffee and set a tray with cups, saucers, cream, sugar, and the leftover almond cookies she had squirreled away after the Chinese feast (the only cookies she had in the house), she felt like she had just run a marathon.

On one leg. With a stab wound to the kidney.

Very carefully, Kylie poured her grandmother’s coffee, then turned to offer some to Dag. He shook his head, and Esther seemed to take that as some sort of signal.

“Pardon me for being unforgivably rude, Mr. Steinman—”

“Dag,” the Guardian insisted.

“Dag,” Esther conceded. “You’re very gracious. Forgive me, but I was hoping I might have a few minutes alone to talk to my granddaughter.”

“Of course,” Dag said at the same moment that Kylie’s internal voice screamed,
“Noooooooooo!!!!!!”
like a character in a bad horror movie who had just stumbled on the first mangled body.