Rocked by Love (Gargoyles Series)

by Christine Warren

  A fresh wave of energy flooded him, strength reinvigorated his body, clarity at once settling over his mind. It felt as if Fate had simply been waiting for him to see the truth, and now that he had admitted it, he could once again become everything he had always been meant to be.

  Guardian, protector, warrior.

  Mate.

  A smile of satisfaction crept over his features, then just as quickly drained away. He had just accepted the fundamental truth that Kylie Kramer was meant to be his, but one question still remained.

  How was he going to break the news to her?

  Chapter Nine

  Az men est khazer, zol khotsh rinen iber der bord.

  If you’re going to eat pork, get it all over your beard.

  It took the security company a good half hour to regain consciousness and another few minutes for their brains to reset so that none of them spent too much time wondering where the last hour or so had disappeared to. Plus, Kylie needed some time to come up with an explanation for the scratches and puncture marks all over the face of the one who had attacked her.

  Scattering pieces of broken glass beside him and leaving an exposed electrical wire hanging out of his hand turned out to be the best she could come up with. She explained that he had accidentally electrocuted himself, knocking over a vase that fell on his head and accounted for his wounds. The fact that he accepted this at face value made her wonder if the hex the nocturnis had put on him had left the poor fellow with permanent brain damage.

  Even with the delay, the crew managed to finish the installation in one day, if you didn’t bother to note that it was full dark by the time they cleaned up behind themselves, loaded up their van, and drove off into the night. Whatever the bill turned out to be, Kylie figured she still wouldn’t be paying them enough.

  Did they have a bonus clause in case of attack by evil Demon-worshipping magic users? If not, they might want to look into that.

  Dag’s first reaction to having the house empty again had been to prowl through every inch of it—from attic to basement and everywhere in between—checking the locks on each point of entry, be it window, door, or (probably) magical portal. Honestly, she wouldn’t be surprised if he reacted to finding a mouse hole by demanding the rodent inside provide proof of identity and swear an oath that it was not now, nor had it ever been, a member of the nocturni party.

  Kylie left him to it and took a few hours to play with the new toy, experimenting with camera feeds, security settings, and alarm tones before finally calling it a night. Another attack meant another early bedtime. At this rate, someone was going to take away her membership card to the UberGeek Society of Night Owls.

  Of course, she wound up waking early, and by eleven found herself shuttling boxes out of the second guest room and into the smallest of the four. It was bad enough making an unwanted visitor sleep surrounded by the detritus of her long-ago move, somehow she couldn’t live with making people she had technically invited—and one of whom she actually liked—do the same.

  Dag found her there, shoving a stack of boxes into a corner where it would be out of the way until she felt like dealing with it. Which at this rate, should be right after her retirement.

  “What are you doing?” the Guardian asked. “You are normally asleep at this time, or in your office working.”

  “Early to bed, early to rise.” She shrugged. “I’m clearing the boxes and stuff out of Wynn and Knox’s room so they don’t feel too crowded. Once I set up the mattress in there, it started to feel pretty cramped.”

  That was the truth. Luckily, she’d had the forethought to order a bed for the couple as soon as they confirmed they would be visiting. It had been delivered the other day, before the security-installation debacle. At the time, she’d been preoccupied with combing through Dennis Ott’s thumb drive with a fine-tooth comb, so she’d had them lean the mattress and box spring up the against the wall and hurried them outside just to silence Dag’s grumbling. It had mostly worked, but it meant she had to deal with setting it all up today, since Wynn and Knox would arrive later in the afternoon.

  Just so Dag didn’t think she was a complete jerk, though, she added, “I’ve already removed the rest of the stuff from your room. Sorry. I should have done that sooner.”

  He shrugged. “It was only four boxes. They took up little space. How long will it be before the others arrive?”

  “Their plane lands at two-twenty. I’m having a car service meet them at Logan, so by the time they get their stuff and drive out here, it should be about three-thirty. Which means I need to finish moving boxes and getting everything set up for them.”

  “I will help,” Dag proclaimed, and turned to stride down the hall to the back bedroom. His own occupied the front of the house, but this one overlooked the small rear patio area.

  Sighing, Kylie dusted off her hands and followed. When she stepped inside, she nearly ran over the large Guardian who had come to an abrupt stop just inside the door.

  “What is that?” he demanded, pointing a finger to the middle of the room.

  Kylie followed his gesture to the bed and frowned. “Um, it’s a bed.”

  “Why is it so large?”

  “Because there will be two people sleeping in it. Duh. I figured if Knox was even close to your size, they’d need the room to be comfortable. So I ordered a king size.”

  “Yet you left me with a tiny piece of furniture clearly inadequate for my frame. Was this some plan to cause me physical distress as a form of revenge?”

  Finally understanding his attitude, Kylie rolled her eyes. “Get over yourself. You got the bed I had, plain and simple. A queen size is perfectly adequate for one person, even an escapee from steroid camp like you. I have the same size in my room upstairs.”

  “Adequate for some. You are less than half my size, little human. You could be comfortable on a chair cushion. I require more space than that.” Without another word, the Guardian stepped forward, turned around, and flung himself backward onto the bare mattress. Stretching out his arms and legs, he easily occupied the whole space with a smug smile. “There. You see?”

  Kylie just stared, wondering if maybe she’d been wrong about the possibility of a concussion after all. Or maybe she needed to revisit her original theory about the entirety of the last week being the product of a coma, hospital-grade drugs, and a vivid imagination. The only other choice appeared to be acknowledging that the Duke of Dour was actually smiling at her.

  And being playful.

  Her psyche couldn’t cope. It went completely fartshadikt. She may as well have been oxygen deprived all over again.

  Crossing her arms over her chest, she took a cautious step forward and frowned down at him. “I’m not buying you a bigger bed. We don’t even know how long you’ll be here.”

  Something sparked in his black eyes, but he just kept smiling and ran a hand across the smooth fabric of the mattress. “But you bought Wynn and Knox a new bed.”

  “No, I bought them a bed. As in, first one. It was either that or make them sleep on the floor, and I’m not that bad a hostess. My bubbeh would never forgive me.”

  Dag’s smile faded. “You speak often of your grandmother, but never of your parents.”

  The quiet observation caught Kylie by surprise. And here she’d thought he tuned out most of what spilled out of her mouth. “Yeah, well, I’m closer with her than I am with them.”

  “Why is that?”

  The question still niggled at her, even though it had been asked before. Dag wasn’t the first person to notice how tight she and her parents weren’t. Still, she never liked answering it, so she gave her pat response. “Just different personalities. We don’t really get each other.”

  And some of us never tried. But Kylie never said that part out loud.

  The Guardian seemed to digest that answer, but instead of moving on, he reached out to grasp her hand, pulling her toward the side of the bed. “Explain. What is there to ‘get’ about being family?”

>   Whoa, he wanted to go there?

  She shook her head. “I think some people related by blood aren’t suited to be family to each other, and some people who meet by chance and start out as strangers can be better family members than the ones you’re born with. That second kind, Bran was that for me. Wynn, too.”

  “And your parents were the first.”

  Persistent nudnik, wasn’t he? He asked so calmly, though, and sounded so genuinely curious that she couldn’t quite bring herself to just brush him off.

  “Definitely the first.” She sighed and perched warily on the edge of the bed. “They didn’t have me until they were older than most first-time parents. Only-time parents, actually. They never intended to have kids. I came as quite the shock when they found out. I’m not sure they ever really adjusted to the idea. They had careers they both felt really passionately about. Maybe they just didn’t have a ton left over, especially not for a precocious kid with a thing for electronics who didn’t take well to being told to keep quiet and not bother the adults.”

  “What careers do they have that took priority over their child?”

  “Mom’s a finance type. CFO of a venture capital firm where I grew up, in Connecticut. Her head is always buried in numbers; and Dad is a law professor. Civil rights issues mostly. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or of the daughter.”

  She delivered the line with a smile. After all, she’d been using it for years.

  “I would think two such accomplished people would have been proud of having a child who succeeded in so much at such a young age,” Dag said. He’d heard the story of her early acceptance to Boston University, of her big invention and sale, as well as of her decision to drop out and pursue her own interests instead of getting her degree.

  Kylie grimaced. “I guess in some ways they are. Mom likes that I impressed the tech world enough to earn a big paycheck, at least, but she seriously balked at the dropping out. Dad, too. And he’s always wished I would use my skill to do something more serious, something to ‘better the future of mankind.’ He thinks of that program I wrote as a toy. Like I said, they just don’t get it.”

  “Unlike your grandmother.”

  The thought made her smile. “Unlike bubbeh. She doesn’t really understand what I do either, but she’s hella proud of me for doing it better than anyone else. I think she just never had any preconceived notions about what I was supposed to be, so she just sat back and watched what I became.” Kylie thought back to some rather loud conversations among Esther, her son, and her daughter-in-law. Those made her smile turn a little toothy. “Plus, she was less than impressed with how my parents dealt with me. We ended up spending a lot of time together. She’s kind of my hero.”

  “I would be pleased to meet her one day.” His tone rang with sincerity and something else Kylie couldn’t name, but it made her belly tighten and twist.

  The way the long fingers still gripping her hand continually teased and tangled with her own made it plain hard to breathe. What was he doing to her? For the past week, he’d made it his mission in life to avoid her as if she were a bubonic plague carrier. Then yesterday they were forced back into close quarters, and he wakes up this morning wanting to get all friendly and cozy? The man changed moods like the Bruins changed forward lines—every forty seconds or so.

  Needing to regain some of that space between them, Kylie made as if to tug her hand away and stand. “Come on. There are still boxes to move, and they’ll be here in a few more hours.”

  Dag tightened his grip and shook his head. “Later. Stay here.”

  She huffed impatiently and pulled harder. “Let go.”

  She didn’t see him exert so much as an ounce of effort, but one minute she stood next to the bed leaning her entire body toward the door and the next she found herself yanked off her feet and lying sprawled over the chest of a very pleased-with-himself gargoyle.

  “No,” he eventually rumbled, black eyes glinting. “I do not wish to.”

  Panic warred with excitement in Kylie’s chest, but either way, she used the surge of energy to attempt to free herself. “Dag, come on. We’ve got stuff to do. Let me go.”

  Another swift move had their positions reversed, and Kylie gazed up into a very smug, smiling face. “I told you, I do not wish to let you go, and as it happens I have a few ideas of my own regarding activities that you and I need to perform right away.”

  He actually wiggled his eyebrows when he said it, and Kylie found herself torn between amusement and panic as the pressure of his body on hers made perfectly clear that his innuendo had been entirely intentional.

  How in the world had she gotten herself into this situation?

  More importantly, did she want to bother trying to get out?

  Her hormones cast their vote with a lusty, “Hello, sailor!” and tried to get her legs to spread wide and wrap themselves around Dag’s waist in preparation for a spirited ride. Her brain, on the other hand, hauled hard on the internal reins and shouted, “Down, girl!” as it attempted to seize control of the situation. It had some serious concerns with this entire concept, beginning with the whole different species thing, moving on to the way he had barely spoken to her for the last week, and circling around to the issue of his immortal life span and bad case of petronarcolepsy. Wouldn’t she have to be crazy to get involved with this guy?

  Crazy-shmazy, her hormones shot back. Had she gotten a load of those muscles? Better to trace them all with her tongue now and worry about the details later. As in, sometime postcoital.

  Confused and frustrated by the internal dialog, Kylie banged her head backward onto the mattress, wishing fleetingly that it was made of concrete instead of soft, cushiony foam and resilient pocketed springs. At this point, knocking herself unconscious might turn out to be her wisest move.

  Then Dag snatched the decision right out of her brain with a murmur of, “Beautiful Kylie,” and the soft, intoxicating pressure of his lips against hers.

  Oh, wow. She had almost forgotten just how good the man tasted, and right now that felt like a tragedy. To forget the glory of this would be to forget how to breathe, or the rich-spicy-nutty flavor of rugelach fresh out of the oven. It would make the angels weep and God shake his head. And, well, she couldn’t have that, now could she?

  So she let herself melt, because what else was there to do? The past week was over, and now all that mattered was the hard weight of Dag’s body pinning her to the mattress, and the soft, hungry pressure of his mouth on hers.

  Maybe it was the impression left by his last kiss, but Kylie had expected that if they ever came together it would be the same, fast and angry and almost violent, all need and speed. But this felt like something else all together. For the first time in her life, she felt entirely seduced, literally led away from all of her objections and hesitations and second thoughts. Every shift of his lips on hers, every stroke of his tongue, every nibble and nuzzle led her further and further down the path to surrender, and she felt nothing but peace with the process.

  Well, peace and eagerness and searing, mind-numbing heat, because while Dag used none of the speed or force demonstrated in their previous encounter, his touch still made her burn.

  She felt him in every cell of her body, from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes, because every inch of her felt alive and alert in a way she had never experienced. When she gave in and wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingertips tingled as they sifted through his short-cropped, dark hair. She could feel the tightening in her chest as she breathed in his earthy, stony scent and the race of sensation that started between her thighs and shot up to dance across the back of her throat.

  A groan escaped her, cutting through the quiet, and it took her a minute to realize she had made that tense, needy sound. Color flooded her cheeks and she tried to turn away from the kiss. Obligingly, Dag released her lips only to trail kisses over her jaw and down the sensitive line of her throat until she felt her eyes roll back into her head. Tha
t was not what she had intended.

  Pressing her hands against his shoulders, she tried to shift him, but it was like trying to move a mountain. There wasn’t a crowbar on earth big enough to shift a Guardian from where he wanted to be, but Dag pulled back to stare down at her, his black eyes burning with inner fire. It was like seeing the light of a hundred flickering candles reflected in a pool of black water, and she found herself hypnotized by it. The words of protest she had meant to utter fluttered away on a puff of air.

  When she didn’t speak, Dag shifted his gaze from her wide-eyed stare, over her flushed cheeks, and down to where she knew he had to see her racing pulse throbbing against the hollow of her throat. One huge hand came up, brushing the hair back from her face and then burrowing into the thick, dark waves to cup the back of her head.

  “You’re so tiny,” he murmured, leaning close so that his breath caressed her cheek with warmth. “I forget how small your body is because the rest of you is so very large. Sweet little human, I don’t want to hurt you.”

  And just like that, her hesitation melted away and her sense of Kylie came rushing back. He was right; no matter what her physical size, Kylie Kramer was a big girl, and she could take whatever Fate and a certain gargoyle decided to dish out to her.

  Heck, if she liked the taste, she might even ask for seconds.

  Feeling her lips curve into a smile, Kylie gripped his shoulders with small, strong fingers and tugged to bring him closer. “Don’t worry, Rocky. I promise not to hurt you, either,” she purred, and reached up to press her lips once more against his.

  * * *

  Dag felt the change in her, even if he didn’t know what to attribute it to. In the end, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the woman who had frustrated, teased, sassed, and aroused him for the last seven days was in his arms and returning his embraces with a fervor that matched his own.