Stone Cold Lover (10 page)

“Thanks, but my boyfriend will take care of me. We keep emergency snacks in the car. I’ll get something in my stomach quick, and then we’ll head home for some real food. Right, honey?”

Plastering on a glowing smile, Fil wrapped one arm around Spar’s waist and leaned against his broad chest. She snuggled against him like a lover and willed him to play along.

She saw confusion and hesitation flicker behind his dark gaze before she felt him relax against her. He pulled her closer with an arm around her shoulders and nodded, turning to smile at the hospital guard.

“Indeed, I will take very good care of my … girlfriend, sir,” he rumbled, and even though he wasn’t looking at her, Fil thought she caught a glimpse of mischief glinting in his eyes. “In fact, after I feed her, I will make certain to keep her off her feet for the rest of the day.”

The guard chuckled and relaxed completely, raising a hand to wave in farewell. “Glad to hear it. Just be careful, you hear. Next time, you make sure she eats before you leave the house.”

He turned to stride back to his post, and Fil made to pull away from Spar’s embrace. Instead of letting her go, though, his arm tightened around her, and when he looked down at her the hint of mischief in his gaze looked more like a spark of attraction.

Her stomach dropped before she could warn herself against letting her attraction to this man slip back into her consciousness. She’d been blocking out the way Spar set all her senses on high alert for most of the day, and damn it, she’d been doing a pretty good job, too. But now all he had to do was look down at her with the faintest bit of interest and her hard work went down the drain.

When his gaze dropped to her lips, she had to bite back a groan. Of course, Spar noticed, because she saw his own lips curve before the rumble of his voice raised gooseflesh on her arms.

“If we are to convince the guard that we are … what did you say? ‘Boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend,’” he murmured, “we should indulge in the typical human display of affection, no?”

Oh, that so wasn’t necessary, she wanted to tell him. In fact, she had a feeling it would be a really, really bad idea, but he never gave her a chance to protest.

Shifting his grip on her, Spar turned Fil until she fully faced him and gently drew her against him. She had an instant to marvel at the way he made her feel like a midget in comparison with his massive size before he bent his head. His kiss blanked her mind faster than the vision and just as thoroughly.

This time, Fil knew exactly where she was. Spar’s heat surrounded her. His broad chest pressed against her, his arms surrounded her, his legs parted just enough to made her feel cradled by his presence. Every inch of his body was covered in muscle as solid and hard as rock, so she’d almost expected his mouth to feel the same.

Wow, had she been wrong.

His lips skimmed across hers, soft and fleeting, like a butterfly testing for nectar. Once, twice, he brushed their mouths together before adjusting the angle and diving in for the kill.

It felt almost like a blow to the solar plexus, forcing the air out of her lungs in a heavy gust only to replace it with the feel and scent and taste of his kiss. He drank from her deeply, his mouth surprisingly clever and infinitely mobile. His tongue stroked, teeth nibbled. He consumed her, drawing forth an answering hunger that had her fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt, clutching desperately at an anchor in the maelstrom of sensation.

For an eternity, he possessed her with nothing more than the touch of lips on lips, and Fil could almost believe the world had ground to a stop. Until a shrill wolf whistle pierced the air.

She wrenched herself from his arms, stepping away and fisting her hands. It was the only way to keep her fingers from lifting to her mouth, to test the tingling of the swollen flesh. Damn him. She was not a way for him to distract himself during his waking hours. If he wanted a girl in this time-port, he could find someone else.

Shoving her hands in her jacket pockets, Fil dug out the keys to her bike and shot him a glare. “I think just leaving together would have been plenty convincing, Romeo, so next time keep your lips to yourself. Now let’s go. We’ll head back to my place, and I’ll fill you in on where I went during my little nap a minute ago.”

She turned and headed toward the hospital parking lot, knowing Spar would be hard on her heels. Of course, his legs were so damned long that with one stride he’d overstepped her heels and drawn up beside her.

“What do you mean, where you went?” he demanded. “You traveled nowhere, small human. I caught you when you fell and held you for almost five full minutes while you lay unconscious on the ground.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t unconscious.” Fil climbed on the bike and turned the ignition, waiting while Spar settled behind her. “I was having a vision?”

She felt him stiffen before she heard his growl. “A vision?”

“Yeah. I saw Henry die, and it wasn’t from his injuries. I think someone from the Order killed him, but not before they found out about me.”

“This is very serious news, Felicity. This confirms that you are in grave danger. If the
nocturnis
know of your existence, they will not stop until they have found you.”

“My name is Fil, but yeah, I’m beginning to figure that out. The thing is, that wasn’t all I saw.”

“Tell me.”

“I think I saw the Hierophant.”

Chapter Seven

Spar had no intention of letting Felicity out of his sight. Not for an instant. Hearing the story of her vision only made his determination stronger. He had no doubt that what she had seen had been real events. He knew how the Order worked, and he knew that having learned of Felicity, her powers, and her connection to a Guardian, the
nocturnis
would not stop until they destroyed her.

He worried they had already made a beginning.

His human had been very quiet since returning from the hospital and sharing her story. Once she’d related the vision, she’d spoken barely a handful of words. She seemed upset, which he knew to be reasonable, given what she had seen and what they had both witnessed upon returning to her home.

The mark on her hand had darkened.

Immediately after the bombing, Felicity had shown her hand to Spar and her friends, and all anyone had seen was a faint blush of pink across the pale skin. Then the next morning, in the bathroom, they had seen where the mark had appeared in shiny reddened areas, almost like a burn. This evening after the vision, there was no longer any doubt that her hand bore the mark of Uhlthor. The lines of the symbol had darkened to a rusty-brown color, like a henna tattoo, and Spar saw the way she rubbed at it unconsciously when she was distracted.

Felicity claimed the mark did not pain her, but Spar knew pain came in many forms, not all of them physical. He had intimate acquaintance with the Darkness, and he knew that even a sliver of it could weigh on a human soul like an anchor chaining one to the depths. Especially a soul as pure and sweet as Felicity’s.

The thought brought a smile to Spar’s face, almost made him chuckle. He had known his little female for barely a full day, yet he knew there were few of her acquaintance who would describe her as sweet. She prickled like a thistle on the outside, all sharp tongue and wary distance. Already he had seen the way she used humor as a shield against fear, and how she snarled when she felt unsure or off balance.

She seemed to snarl at him a great deal.

What surprised him was how she made him feel off balance in turn. The sensation fit him ill. Duty urged him to believe what he felt for her was no more than the protective instinct any Guardian naturally felt for humanity, a race he had been summoned to defend, but that did not explain the way in which his feelings shifted from protective to possessive every time she drew near.

He had not thought himself capable of such emotion. Guardians had been created as warriors with a single purpose. Not only did their commitment to battling the Darkness supersede all other concerns, but their very natures as fighters, hardened and vicious, made them disinclined to softer emotions. They needed devotion to their cause, loyalty to their brethren, and an intense hatred of evil in order to do their jobs, but nothing said they had to be able to care, especially not for one individual human.

It was the survival of the human species that mattered in the balance between Light and Dark, not each separate entity. Losses were inevitable, as any soldier knew, so to become attached to a human was to court pain.

After all, what good would it do to care for a human female? Even if the Guardians prevailed, the Order was cut down, and the Seven remained forever imprisoned, the absence of the threat would mean Spar and his brothers would return to their slumber. He and his heart would be turned to stone until the next threat from the Darkness, and a human like Felicity would live and age and die, lost to him forever.

Logic dictated a Guardian must not feel. It was the only way to ensure he performed his duty as the Light intended.

Knowing that did not make Felicity any easier to resist, especially not now, when he knew the flavor of her. He had relived their kiss a thousand times in the hours since. The gesture had been an impulse, a small revenge on the woman who had frightened him so deeply when she collapsed at his feet. He had wanted to rattle her, perhaps cause her embarrassment at being pawed by a man in public, in full view of any strangers passing by the busy hospital. The moment he touched her, however, his intentions dissolved, melted away by the deep, rich taste of Felicity.

Sweet like honey and spiced like thick, mulled wine, she had destroyed his senses with a single touch, and he knew himself for the architect of his own downfall. He had tasted her shock and then the heat of her surrender as he feasted on her tender mouth. Her body had fit against his like a fantasy, and her response had sent fire coursing through his veins. Before she had pulled away, he had been poised to ignore their audience and dive even deeper into her warmth.

Her withdrawal had likely saved them a great deal of trouble, including a likely arrest for indecent behavior in a public place. Spar had lost his mind, too far gone to care, willing to take to the skies with her if it would have meant continuing their embrace. It had enthralled him that completely.

So why had it not done the same for her?

Spar scowled and shifted on his perch in the corner of the storefront. The object of his musings moved around the space as if he weren’t even there, appearing oblivious to his presence, and he could admit to himself that her attitude irked him. He understood that her vision had disturbed her, shaking her out of the determination he suspected she had made to push him through her door and out of her life. He knew she tolerated his continued presence because she felt the threat of the
nocturnis
keenly. After witnessing it firsthand, how could she not? She did not, however, pretend to be happy about it.

For the first hour following their return from the hospital, Felicity had been absorbed with relating her vision, answering Spar’s questions, and discussing the need to share the information with Ella and Kees. Having seen the Hierophant, Felicity was in a unique position of having insight to offer into the highest ranks of the Order, no matter how little what she’d seen could actually tell them. They had agreed calling the other Guardian and his Warden had been necessary, but had been forced to leave a message when neither answered the phone.

Spar had seen her unease in the way she stiffened on the edge of her chair, even before she had risen to pace the floor of her apartment. Discovering the development of the mark on her hand had only added to her tension until he had asked if there was any activity she might pursue to take her mind off the troubles at hand.

Anything involving leaving the safety of her home had been immediately vetoed. Spar might prefer to have a well-made stone fortress to house them, but failing that, at least remaining in her home gave them a defensible position. He had thoroughly explored the two floors of the apartment and knew all the entrances and exits. There were far too many for his liking, but in knowing where they were, he could secure them to the best of his abilities and judge from which direction an attack was most likely.

He could have predicted Felicity’s reaction. It involved a tremendous increase in the volume of her speech, several violent hand gestures, and a number of curses, many of them in a language he only vaguely recognized. He was learning to, though, since she seemed to favor it whenever she lost her temper.

They had argued for quite a few minutes before she had threatened to escape his guard the very minute he turned his back. Not that he doubted his ability to stop her, since she would require sleep long before he did, but the threat impressed him with her seriousness. She meant it when she said she would not tolerate being held a prisoner in her own home. In the end, Spar had been forced to learn a very human skill—compromise.

Their agreement ended with Felicity promising not to leave the premises so long as Spar widened the area of her confinement to include the first floor of the building. It turned out that the apartment in which she lived sat above a storefront that had belonged to the grandparents who had raised Felicity from her childhood. She had inherited the building upon their deaths and converted the downstairs from her grandfather’s sign-painting shop into her own art studio.

Spar disliked the tall plate-glass windows that faced the street, but at least he could place himself between them and his charge. He had done so the instant they entered and now watched as his small female bustled around, turning on lights, arranging supplies, and setting a large canvas atop a stained and battered easel.

“You are an artist?”

The room was Spartan, filled with little more than finished and half-done works of art, supplies he could not have identified under torture, and a few pieces of furniture built more for utility than for comfort. His low voice nearly echoed off the bare surfaces.