Stone Cold Lover (19 page)

“That is my assumption.”

“Then we have to find him.” Resolve and weariness warred inside her. According to what Onslow had uncovered, the force behind this plot appeared to possess both patience and cunning. He wouldn’t make an easy opponent. “It’s like a snake. That’s what the old saying says. The head is the dangerous part. Cut that off, and all you’ve got is dead snake.”

Spar gazed at her, looking bemused. “That is an old saying?”

“Close enough.” She raised a hand to stifle a yawn. “So that’s what we do. We find the Hierophant, and we stop him. Simple. We can start tomorrow.”

“Simple.” He chuckled. “As I said, I am grateful you choose to work with the Light rather than against us. I do not think you have set us an easy task.”

“We know where to start, at least. I’ve seen the Hierophant, remember. I know what he looks like. That’s something we can work with.”

“How?”

Fatigue had begun to tug on her eyelids, making them droop. “Can I figure that out in the morning? I could really use some sleep.” Another yawn threatened to crack her jaw.

If Spar nodded, she didn’t see it. She didn’t hear him agree, either. It didn’t matter. Nothing short of the hand of God could have kept her awake in that moment. Apparently, a road trip, a fight with a golem, and coming up with a plan to save the world could really take it out of a girl.

Who knew?

Chapter Thirteen

Fil slept like the dead. Not a dream, not a snore, not a minion of evil disturbed her slumber. Not for the first six hours. When the seventh hit sometime after three in the morning, the heavy blanket of unconsciousness lifted, and she stirred enough to roll onto her back. The wall there didn’t bother to protest.

Her eyes flew open, taking a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. She felt the bulk of another figure in the bed, but she didn’t need to turn her head to know who it was. She could sense Spar, could have picked him out of a crowd blindfolded and deaf. He called to her senses in a way she’d never experienced before.

The last thing she remembered was her sofa and her grand plan for hunting the Hierophant. She must have drifted off right there and left Spar to get her into bed. Her own mental phrasing made her snort. So far, the man hadn’t had a lick of trouble getting her to bed anytime he wanted. He was rapidly becoming an addiction.

Careful not to wake him, Fil shifted until she could look at the man lying beside her. He took up a good deal more than half the bed, but she had to give him credit for not being a cover hog. Surprisingly, that was important with him, since unlike the few other men she had slept with in her life, this one didn’t pump out heat like a furnace. She knew that if she touched him, his skin would feel pleasantly warm, but heat didn’t radiate off him the way it seemed to from her human bed partners.

Human bed partners.

Fil rolled her eyes in the darkness. Wasn’t that just a statement of the surrealist wonderland her life had become? Now she was thinking about her past lovers in terms of their species, because the latest was decidedly not a member of her own. She wondered: Should that bother her more than it did?

No, she had plenty of objections to the current situation that didn’t involve DNA. She just wasn’t certain she wanted to look at them too closely. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like what she found.

She knew she had been sending Spar mixed signals, and she sort of hated herself for it. She’d always hated the kind of person who blew hot, then cold, then hot again as if unable to decide on a straight course. As far as she was concerned, playing games should involve cards, dice, or little plastic timers, not emotions. Her grandparents had raised her to tell the truth, even when a white lie might be easier. Sparing a person’s feelings was one thing, but leading him on was quite another.

How she could lead Spar on when she herself had no clue what path she was following only added to Fil’s confusion. She could admit that she had made the first move between them. Well, the first sex move. Sure, he had kissed her outside the hospital, but when he’d had her naked in the shower, all he’d done was clean her up and tend to her wound. She was the one who had seduced him, and God help her, she couldn’t bring herself to regret it.

Spar made her feel the most amazing things. Every time he touched her, she felt electricity rage through her. It was like the strange magnetic energy she’d felt every time she’d seen his statue only amplified by a thousand. She would love to chalk it up to chemistry, but even the strongest attraction she’d felt for another man looked ridiculous compared with the feelings Spar inspired. Those feelings were so intense, they scared her.

Seriously. If she’d been wearing boots, she’d have been shaking in them. Spar was the first thing in her life ever to threaten her independence. From the beginning, her grandparents had taught her to take care of herself. They’d wanted her to be a strong woman, because they had known that their ages would take them from her before she was ready. Her love for them meant she could never have been ready, even if they’d lived two hundred years, but they had realized they wouldn’t be with her through adulthood, and they had planned for that.

When they had passed away during her first year of college, the pain of the loss had staggered her, but she had known how to make their final arrangements, manage her own finances, deal with her grandfather’s business, and basically do everything necessary to continue to build a life for herself. She had them to thank for that.

Now, eight years later, along came someone who not just wanted but
needed
to take care of her. She understood that for Spar, a Guardian’s duty could never be shirked; it was part and parcel of what made him who he was, the literal reason for his existence. Without that desire to protect her and her fellow man, he wouldn’t exist, and the question for Fil now wasn’t if she would be able to let him protect her, but whether she would be able to cope when he stopped.

She tried to picture her life after he left, when things went back to normal, and the gaping hole his absence created nearly stole her breath. How could the life she’d so enjoyed before look so empty now? It had only been three days, for God’s sake! Three days was not enough for him to become some integral component to her happiness. She had a career that challenged, fascinated, and delighted her, a hobby that qualified more as a passion, a comfortable home, and friends who made her laugh and do and think. Before she’d stepped into the abbey, she’d been happy, really happy with the life she had made for herself. Why did that have to change?

Okay, it made sense that she might see things a little differently than before. After all, until she’d met Spar and encountered the
nocturnis,
she’d had no idea there was some sort of ongoing war between good and evil being waged before humanity’s unseeing eyes; and of course now that she knew, it wasn’t something she was likely to forget. She also knew now that her ability to see the special abilities of others was only the tip of the iceberg as far as the existence of magic in the world was concerned. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to stop looking for it now, and every new person she met would face the scrutiny of her inner eye. Was he gifted? Not gifted?
Nocturnis?
Something else?

A new perspective she could handle—would have to handle, since she doubted she had much choice in the matter. What she didn’t know was whether she could handle watching Spar turn back to stone, knowing that by the time he awoke again she might be gone. A Guardian was immortal, but Fil knew she sure as heck wasn’t. If nothing else, the past few days had made that abundantly clear. One day, she would die, and Spar would live on.

Will he remember me the next time he awakes?
she wondered. Or would she be some vague shadow tucked away in the corner of his mind, a sense of déjà vu that never really made itself clear?

She watched him breathing, seeing the rise and fall of his chest in the darkened room. When she was a child, she’d spent more than a few nights lying awake in the dark and wondering similar things about her mother. As much as her grandparents loved her and as clearly as they had explained that her mother just wasn’t able to take care of her the way she deserved, she had occasionally wondered. What had it been about the drugs that made them more important than a child? Why had the money for a fix been more important than the money for rent or food or clothes? Why had Fil not been worth the sacrifice of an addiction?

She knew it wasn’t a fair question, had known it even before she’d spent several worthwhile sessions with a counselor coming to grips with the fact that none of her questions had answers. Her job was to learn to stop expecting any and to build her life around the empty places where the answers should have been. Eventually, she was reassured, she’d find other things to fill those gaps and she wouldn’t even notice them anymore. She’d thought she had done that, but now the idea of Spar winning his battle and slipping back into his enchanted sleep felt like a great big backhoe, digging up those spots in her subconscious all over again. She could practically hear the rumble of the engines in the quiet bedroom.

She wondered if Ella felt the same way about Kees. She’d seen the way the two interacted and knew there was something between them. Ella had called herself Kees’s Warden, and Fil knew by now that it was a lifelong position—but for the length of the Warden’s life, not the Guardian’s. According to Spar, a Guardian would have dozens of personal Wardens during his life, each one handing the position on to a successor at the end of his life. How would Ella bring herself to do that? How could she grow old, knowing exactly where her lover was but never being able to talk with him, hold him, make love with him; then have to teach someone else to care for him after her death? Didn’t her heart break just thinking about it?

Fil already felt a crack in hers. She knew that as long as the threat from the Seven existed, Spar and Kees would remain awake and on guard, but that wouldn’t last forever. Eventually, the Light would prevail, the threat would be eliminated, and the Guardians would return to their stony forms. If the opposite happened … well, at least Fil wouldn’t have to worry about missing Spar, because they’d both be demon chow. It almost made her wish the battle would go on forever, just because as long as it did, she could keep Spar at her side.

Hm, maybe she should give Ella a call soon, when Spar and Kees were otherwise occupied. If her friend was currently suffering from the same thoughts and anxieties plaguing Fil, maybe she’d have some advice to share on how to cope with it. If not … well, at least they’d each have a shoulder to cry on.

Sighing out a wry chuckle, Fil shifted to pillow her cheek in one hand and lifted the other to trace an invisible line down the muscles of Spar’s forearm to the back of his hand. She knew the soft touch would wake him, but she didn’t care. He’d have hundreds, maybe thousands of years to sleep during his lifetime. She had only now.

“You are awake.” His voice was low and quiet and still thickened by sleep. It rumbled through her like the purr of a great cat and made her shiver. If she hadn’t seduced him first, he could have had her with the sound of his voice alone. “Is something wrong?”

She shook her head and drew her fingertip back up to trail across his broad chest, stopping to explore the furrow that ran between the two sides of the hard, muscular plane. “I fell asleep so early that I just woke up. Then I saw you.”

Slowly, he reached for her, giving her plenty of time to refuse, not that she had any intention of turning him away. She wanted to wince at the evidence of how she’d confused him, but she didn’t want to kill the mood. She’d been pushing him away most of the day. Now she’d just have to make it clear that she’d changed her mind.

She arched into his hand, moving eagerly closer as he drew her against him. He made a much nicer shape to snuggle into than a spare pillow. He fit against her perfectly, hard where she was soft, angled where she was curved. Cuddling against him felt like coming home, yet filled her with longing for something more. She needed him to touch her.

Whether he read her mind or her expression, she couldn’t tell, but his warm, rough fingers stroked down her arm, over her hip, gliding down her thigh. Even through the covers, his touch heated her skin, and she murmured her pleasure, punctuating the sound with soft kisses pressed against his collarbone.

He made a low sound of approval and reached for the edge of the blankets. He tugged them away, his gaze following every inch of bare skin revealed by the slow retreat. She knew her skin was pale enough to glow in the moonlight, but Spar didn’t seem to think that was a flaw. His gaze ate her up like she was a big bowl of his favorite dessert topped with a healthy dollop of whipped cream. No one had ever made her feel as beautiful as he did, as desired. As cherished.

Bared completely, Fil shivered, not from cold, but from the heat his attention generated. Wherever his gaze touched her, she felt as if flames licked at her skin, and the thought of what it might do to her to feel his tongue follow suit had her eyes drifting shut on a moan.

Spar chuckled softly and leaned closer until his breath teased the rim of her ear. “I would pay more than a penny for those thoughts, little human, were I not filled with such vivid imaginings of my own.”

Her skin flushed as dizzying possibilities danced through her head. If the man’s thoughts were anywhere near as dirty as her own, he’d be moaning, too, but instead he growled and leaned down to take her mouth with his.

The taste of him thrilled her. Warm and rich and earthy, with the mineral tang of a French white wine and the clean softness of spring sunshine, she wanted to drink him down in fast, greedy gulps. She tried, but he made no secret of the fact that this was his kiss. He controlled it from the first moment, leading, directing, conquering … all she could go was grab hold of his shoulders and enjoy being swept away in the storm of his making.

She gasped like a drowning woman when his lips finally slid from hers to trail along the curve of her jaw, up to her plump earlobe. He lingered there for a lifetime at least, tugging the nub of flesh with his teeth, then soothing the sting with soft strokes of his tongue. Never in her life had she understood the allure of a lover playing with her ear, but when Spar did it, it might as well have been her clit. His skillful touch sent bolts of electricity straight to her pussy, making her clench with need.