Guardian Demon (GUARDIAN SERIES) (14 page)

Her voice? “But I can’t sing.”

A smile bent the carved edges of his mouth. “She will not judge.”

No, but Caelum wasn’t going to look any better than this if the city depended on Taylor’s voice to bring it back. “Khavi said it fell apart because you did. Because of the torture. And the realm was a reflection of you.”

“Yes. I couldn’t hold on to her. So she chose another.”

Yet the realm was still in pieces. Taylor turned, her gaze sweeping over the city. Behind her, Michael’s own temple lay in a huge pile of shattered marble blocks, the columns toppled against each other like scattered matchsticks. The stairs had cracked and buckled. All of Caelum was the same. Just ruins and rubble, surrounded by an endless sea.

A great weight lodged in her chest, making it difficult to speak. “And now this is
me
?”

Broken. Shattered.

“No. This is what I have left you.”

That was for damn sure. Taylor started to laugh, but a sob emerged from the tightness in her chest. She sank onto the cracked stairs. Michael took a step toward her and she held up her hand, stopped him, but she couldn’t stop the devastation from overwhelming her, and there was no anger to hold it back now.

Tears burned in her throat. This was what she’d become. A ruin. What she’d already gone through hadn’t been enough. Now there was this, too. The most beautiful place she’d ever seen, a shattered mess—and she had no idea how to put it back together.

No idea how to put herself back together.

Chest heaving, she wiped at her eyes. Unable to bear looking at the broken realm, her desolate stare settled on Michael. He stood in front of her, his body rigid, head bowed and fists tight. God. She couldn’t even imagine what he was thinking. Caelum had been his for millennia. Now he’d been attacked by it.

She shouldn’t care. She should be glad.

She couldn’t be.

And it was time to stop crying. Taylor hauled in a deep, steadying breath. “Does it bother you—that you were rejected?”

“No.” His gaze touched her damp cheeks. “I do not like feeling helpless. To know there is nothing I can do or say to ease your pain. To erase the past.”

Taylor didn’t need an eraser. She chalked it up to lesson learned. “Tell me you’ll let me Fall.”

Jaw tightening, he looked out over the ruins. “Caelum will still be yours.”

“Even if I’m human?”

“Yes.” He met her eyes again. “Perhaps we can come to an agreement. Allow me to show you how to rebuild her, so that if you Fall the Guardians still have a home to call their own. A few weeks is all I ask. You may Fall afterward, if you wish it. But whether you are human or Guardian, after those weeks have passed I swear I will not trouble you again.”

He could swear on a stack of Bibles and Taylor still wouldn’t trust it. But she didn’t immediately reject his offer. It was a reasonable request.

And Caelum was worth a moment’s consideration.

She flattened her palm on the stone step beside her leg. Smooth and warm, the marble felt almost alive beneath her hand. Maybe it was just absorbing the heat from the sun. Maybe it was just the fancy of her mind. Savi would say that it was just some law of physics. Equal and opposite reactions. But when she pressed down, it felt like Caelum pressed back.

“All right. I’m not agreeing; I’m just agreeing to think about it. Give me a day or so.” She wasn’t feeling hollow now, or as ready to explode, but she wasn’t completely settled, either. “I know two and a half years is just a blink of time to you—but it was for me, too. Only yesterday, I was in Hell with you.”

And though her body had healed, those wounds were still raw—and the deepest had not been the spear through her chest. He’d hurt her worse than that weapon had.

Michael moved to the bottom of the temple stairs, where she sat on the third step. When he sank to his heels, his eyes were on level with hers, his expression grave. “Two and a half years is no time, it’s true. Unless the woman you need to apologize to more than any other lies in a bed. And you visit her almost every hour, hoping that she will wake, yet her mind remains silenced because of what you’ve done. Then two and a half years can be an eternity.”

Her breath stilled. Such pretty words. She didn’t want to believe them. But even if they were true, he’d probably only visited out of a sense of guilt or obligation—or to make sure her tainted blood was still safe from Lucifer.

And she knew what was coming next and didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want him to apologize; she just wanted to be angry. But there was no stopping him.

“I am sorry, Andromeda Taylor. More than I could say in ten years or ten thousand. But I will say it in every way I can over the next weeks.”

He sounded like he meant it. Closing her eyes, she planted her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. Her fingers speared into her hair. God. Was this manipulation or sincerity?

That she wondered at all told her what really mattered.

She looked up at him. “And perhaps I’ll accept that apology. But I’ll never trust you.”

“Or Khavi.” It wasn’t a question.

“No.”

“You told me once what she’d said about your brother. I didn’t know of the other prediction she’d made.”

About Michael loving her? Taylor’s cheeks heated. She shouldn’t have said anything. Angry, it hadn’t mattered. Now he probably thought she’d been upset by the loss.

“Forget it. I just mentioned it to explain why I wouldn’t trust anything Khavi says about protecting me.” Taylor shouldn’t trust anything Michael did, either. “And I don’t believe you didn’t already know. You were in my head for over a year.”

“But I didn’t know your every thought. I didn’t look through your memories.”

At least there was that, then. If it was true.

And why wouldn’t he stop looking at her? His gaze hadn’t left her face for a while. He watched her as if searching for some answer she hadn’t given.

Another giant hand needed to appear and push him away. Having him so close crossed wires in her head. He looked like one thing and was something else. That short toga should have been silly. It should have made her think of drunken frat boys. But she barely noticed the drape of cloth—only the width of his shoulders beneath and the strength of his thighs. The dark skin against the white linen, the sun gleaming over taut muscle. His body, so stable and solid, even as he crouched on broken pavers and with his weight balanced on the balls of his feet. A big man who sat perfectly still, yet he could rise up in an instant and kill a hundred demons. Just like some Greek god. Some ancient warrior hero, cast in bronze and brought to life.

But she knew some of those myths. All those ancient heroes and gods were assholes, and they treated the women around them like shit.

She didn’t need a Hercules in her life. Superman would be a better choice—a modern, nice hero. But right now, she’d just settle for any guy who didn’t make her second-guess his every intention. And if she never found one, staying alone sounded just peachy.

And Michael was
still
looking at her.

What was he thinking? She couldn’t tell. His face rarely gave anything away. Even people who were good at lying or hiding their feelings had more expressive features, but, like his body, Michael’s often remained perfectly still. No arching eyebrows or twisting lips or flaring nostrils. She’d seen him smile and laugh, she’d seen him frown, but that same dark stillness ruled the rest of his features. His jaw might harden or his eyes might change color, but that was it—and his body language was the same. Quiet, controlled. He rarely shrugged or emphasized his speech with his hands. Almost all of his emotion came through his voice.

But when he was quiet, like this, his face was all she had to go on. And she didn’t know how to read it, or whether to trust his features, anyway. He always looked dangerous, intense. The natural angle of his brows shadowed his eyes, so that every glance seemed more focused. Almost predatory. And when he looked at her, the very stillness of his gaze was unsettling.

She fought the urge to squirm. She needed him to move, so that she could get the hell out of here.

“Andromeda.” He spoke her name softly, like a gentle caress. “Do you want me to love you?”

Jesus. She rocked back a little. The impulse to surge to her feet and walk away hit her hard, but he might think she was hiding something. So she looked him square-on and gave him the truth.

“No. And I never even considered it before Khavi. I never even thought of it as a possibility.” She’d imagined sex with him, but in the same way she would an attractive movie star. Fun to look at, but never thinking that anything more was remotely possible, and every fantasy packaged with a dose of blasphemous guilt. Until Khavi had suggested that he would love her. And maybe the thought had given Taylor a little thrill. Then she’d realized the truth. “I didn’t know Khavi was such a liar, then.”

He gave a slow nod. “I knew she was. So when she told me that you would fear what you saw in me, that you would never trust me, I let myself believe it for a lie.”

Of course he’d prefer to believe that. If people trusted him, it was easier to manipulate them. “So Khavi said that I would see what you really were. And she was right. But how? She said her Gift stopped working after you became the dragon.”

“I interpreted it as you simply coming to know me. We had been spending more time together.”

No. He’d been lurking around her apartment and her job, watching her from the shadows. “Like when you showed up on my balcony after spying on me?”

“You invited me to join you.”

Kind of. She hadn’t known which Guardian had been out there when she’d called out the invitation. If she’d known the Doyen would show up, she’d have kept her mouth shut. “And the morning I woke to see you at the end of my bed?”

“You’d accepted the Guardians’ protection. I was protecting you.” His smile told her he knew how flimsy that was. “And being with you was a welcome distraction from the knowledge that I would soon be in the frozen field.”

Taylor didn’t like the picture that painted. He’d known about the torture ahead, and he’d preferred to spend his time near her? Was there no one else he wanted to be with?

“So you knew the field was in your future. Did you know we’d be linked?”

“I did not.” A sharp note emphasized the denial. “She only said that I would need to bind myself to the next person transformed.”

Taylor wasn’t sure she believed him. “I don’t need to ask if you would’ve linked us if you
had
known it was me. Because you did.”

“You are wrong. If I’d known when and how you would be killed, I’d have stopped it.” His gaze never wavered from hers. “But after it came to pass—”

“There was no reason not to?” A bitter smile touched her lips when he nodded. But she could see the sense of it. She was already dead. She would become a Guardian, and he’d needed to save the world. “Then why kiss me?”

“Many reasons. Taking the blood already in your mouth to complete the link was preferable to biting your neck or sucking on the bullet wounds in your chest.”

Amusement had lightened his voice. Taylor had to stop herself from laughing in accord. That
would
be disgusting. She’d have made the same choice.

“That’s only one reason,” she said. Not many.

“I also thought it might offer comfort as you were transformed. And I kissed you because there was little time to explain what was happening. I thought that it would be the most direct way to tell you that you weren’t just a body for me to use, that I cared for you and that I was sorry for what had happened.” He paused, and she tried to catch her breath, to remind herself that he used pretty words. But he didn’t give her enough time, and his gaze never let hers go. “And I thought it might give you pleasure. I think it did for a while.”

It had given her pleasure. It had made her wonder if he cared. It had comforted her. That kiss had done all of those things, exactly as he’d intended.

But she couldn’t understand what purpose her pleasure could serve, except as a promise that he never intended to fulfill . . . because her body didn’t tempt him. “But it couldn’t do anything for you. That’s what you told me in Hell. Or was that a lie, too?”

“No. I don’t desire sex for myself.” Glowing with sudden intensity, his amber gaze fell to her mouth. “But if you do, I’d like to please you in your bed.”

Her heart stuttered. “What?”

“You don’t fear me now.”

Because she was too stunned to feel anything. Except disbelief. “Why would you want to? To fill me with your seed?”

He shook his head. “I know I can’t make you mine.”

Damn right, he couldn’t. But it still didn’t make sense.

“Why, then? To eat me?”

His quick, laughing smile flipped her belly over.
Oh, God.
She hadn’t meant—

Heat flooded her face. “Don’t answer that.”

He did anyway. “I would, Andromeda. I’d take you with my mouth anywhere you liked. Long and slow, hard and fast—whatever pleased you most.”

But
why
? She shouldn’t care enough to ask. The answer was no. And she shouldn’t imagine sex with him now. She’d been there, done that. Khavi hadn’t just said he wouldn’t love her; she’d said that he’d take Taylor to his bed.
Many times.
That had fueled more than a few fantasies. That strong body, all that power, surging against her. Into her.

Long and slow, hard and fast. Oh, no, no,
no
.

She’d pushed all of those fantasies away before. She tried to push them away now. But his mouth was so close, and the only thing in her head was that he’d please her—and how many times she’d replayed that kiss, wondering if it had been half as good as she remembered.

Her head was such a mess. A total ruin.

Michael tensed. In an instant, his eyes darkened to obsidian. Taylor blinked and he suddenly towered over her, his body shielding hers and his sword in hand. Jake stood at the end of the blade, his arms raised high in surrender.

“Okay, I get it. Jumping in next to her was a pretty stupid idea.” Jake’s hands fell to his sides, his expression turning serious. “But you guys really need to see this.”