Stone Cold Lover

by Christine Warren

  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 tha
t 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.

  “Yes and no,” she answered, her attention on the brushes she was cleaning with a stained rag and a solution that stank to the heavens. “I paint, but it’s not how I make my living. I restore artworks for museums and private collectors. Occasionally, I take a commercial commission like my papa used to. My grandfather. He had a sign-painting business, and it’s not my thing, but I still do the odd favor for old friends of the family.”

  Felicity had changed out of the clothing she wore to the café and the hospital and now wore a pair of battered trousers that looked like the bottom half of a military uniform. Paint and other things stained them from waist to ankles, and Spar could see why when she began to stuff the multitude of pockets with tubes, bottles, cloths, and tools. Over the pants, she had pulled an equally stained tank top that might once have been black but now more closely resembled the color of aging asphalt.

  She kept the temperature in the room warm, obviously for comfort, but Spar felt the rise in his temperature had more to do with the sight of her slender arms bared by the sleeveless top. The way the fabric had hitched up at her waist around the rag she had tucked there didn’t help. Every time she shifted, he caught a glimpse of the pale, soft skin of her belly and his mouth watered with the desire to see if her taste there matched the one in her mouth.

  Dragging his eyes back to her face, he saw her frown at him and quickly cleared his throat. He required a distraction.

  “You said before that your grandfather raised you,” he said, thinking perhaps conversation would help. “Why did your parents not do so?”

  “Grandparents. Both my grandfather and grandmother.” She shrugged and began to squeeze pigments onto an oval palette. “My parents weren’t in the picture. I never knew my father. He was just a guy my mom fooled around with, and she wasn’t capable of taking care of herself, let alone of me. She had a drug problem. Leaving me with her parents was probably the best thing she could have done.”

  Her tone held no bitterness, which surprised Spar. He had always believed that humans harbored intense feelings of attachment to their parents.

  “Grandma and Papa were amazing. They raised me without a question. I belonged to them, and as far as I was concerned they belonged to me right back. I had the best childhood I could have asked for.”

  “Did your grandfather teach you to paint?”

  Her mouth curved in a smile. “Among other things. He taught me to paint, how to run a business, how to fix cars, anything with a motor really. The summer before my sixteenth birthday, he brought the Tiger home from a junkyard for me. We spent four months rebuilding it so he could teach me to ride in time to get my driver’s license.”

  Her voice glowed with affection. Spar found himself envying her grandfather for holding so much of her heart.

  “And Grandma taught me how to cook, cheat at cards, and swear in Lithuanian.”

  “Lithuanian?” Spar shook his head. “I had wondered at the words you use. I speak Russian, and I did not understand why you made no sense to me.”

  Felicity smiled as she feathered dark paint onto the blank canvas. “Lithuanian. Both Grandma and Papa were born in Canada, but their parents all emigrated from there back in the 1920s.”

  “Your grandparents sound like fine people.”

  “They were.” She dropped her brush in a jar half filled with solution and reached for another. “What about your family? Do Guardians have families?”

  She cast him a brief glance, but her attention was focused on her painting. Already the tension in her shoulders had eased, and Spar realized how much her art soothed her. He would be sure to bring her here regularly until the danger passed. The outlet would help her cope with the situation into which she had been thrust.

  “The other Guardians are my brothers,” he told her, pleased that she wanted to know more about him. “I have no mother or father because we are not born, but summoned.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I was never born, never a child. I was summoned into this realm as I am now.”

  “Summoned by the Guild, right?”

  He hummed a yes. “Indeed. Each of us was called when the need was great, so we had to be ready to go immediately into battle.”

  “I suppose that’s why you carry that ginormous spear, huh?”

  “It is a useful weapon, though not all of us use weapons. Our teeth and claws do damage enough to vanquish many foes.”

  Felicity made a face. “Yeah, nice image.” She layered more color on the canvas according to some pattern Spar could not determine. “So, when were you all summoned that first time? I mean, exactly how old are you guys?”

  “The first summoning took place more than
seven thousand years ago, according to human reckoning.”

  Her head snapped around and she stared at him, mouth agape, until he realized her thoughts and smiled. “I, however am not quite so ancient. None of my brethren has lived all those years unbroken. Three have lived since before the birth of your Christ, and they stand as the most ancient among us. Four of us were summoned later at different times in order to replace those who fell in battle.”

  Felicity’s brows drew together, and her expression turned serious as she looked back at her painting. “You can be killed in ways other than just destroying your statues, then.”

  Did she ask because she feared him coming to harm? He felt a warm rush of pleasure at the thought.

  “As Kees told you, our immortality simply means that we do not die of natural causes. Like any other creature, we can be killed. Destroying our sleeping form is the easiest way, because we cannot defend against such a cowardly attack, but we have fallen in battle over the years. The wounds that fell us must be grievous, though. We can fight on almost until our heart is destroyed. And of course, there is no creature who can survive for long if its head is removed.”

  She grimaced, and Spar had to remind himself that she seemed not to enjoy vivid descriptions of battle or bloodshed. He would need to remember to choose his words carefully.

  “Suffice it to say, we are a hearty bunch,” he hurried to assure her. “As Guardians we need to be. The enemy we fight is powerful, not to be taken lightly. You should remember that, Felicity. The foulest deeds of the nocturnis are like the games of a child compared with the destruction one of the Seven could cause with the smallest of gestures.”

  “I told you, don’t call me Felicity.” She pursed her lips and shot him a glance that tried to be sourer than she could manage. He could see the humor under the surface. “No one uses that name. Everyone calls me Fil.”