“Listen? I always listen!” Baen protested. “She barely speaks to me!”
“She says enough. She says that she is uncertain, and yet your response is not to offer reassurance, it is to tell her that her uncertainty is unfounded because Fate brought you together.”
“Because it did.”
The female Warden rolled her eyes. “And what does that matter to a human’s heart? They don’t know the power of Fate, brother, not like we do. They do not trust it. They build their lives on the concept of free will, that they can all choose their own destinies. And then you appear before her, telling her that none of it was true and she must give up her entire belief system and throw herself in your arms like a mindless hussy? Tell me, would you really want that from your mate?”
Baen stilled and focused on her words. He had never looked at the situation in those terms before, and he found them unsettling. Of course he did not want Ivy to abandon her personal beliefs for him, nor did he want a mate who meekly accepted his word without question, who went along with whatever circumstances arose in her life just because someone—even him—told her it was destined. He wanted his mate to think and reason and act independently, and Ivy did, which were among the reasons he found his little redhead so appealing.
Spar leaned over Knox’s shoulder and pointed. “Look, you can see the light beginning to dawn. Does anyone have one of those intelligent phone devices? We could get a picture.”
A second pillow hit Spar square in the face.
Ash hadn’t even bothered to look when she threw that one. Her gaze remained on Baen. “You need to show your mate that while Fate might have brought you together, you still want her to choose to be with you. Ivy needs to have good reason to do so.”
“And before you start planning to impress her with your strength and ability to keep her safe from harm,” Kees broke in, “allow me to save you some trouble. Humans have no difficulty understanding that we are stronger and faster and can protect them from harm. They appreciate it, but only to a point. Your mate doesn’t need to be reminded of that. What human females value is when we reveal our emotions to them. Do that, and your Ivy will stop struggling against her fate.”
Baen felt shock, then panic. “Guardians do not feel emotion.”
The five other figures in the room broke into raucous laughter. Spar actually wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. “Oh, brother, you cannot still believe that old nonsense, can you?”
Ash rolled her eyes. “Everything that lives, feels. Magic or no magic, emotion is the fuel of the living mind. Of course we feel. The only ones who said otherwise were the founders of the Guild, and remember, these were the same humans who trapped us in stone and wanted to leave us there like hibernating guard dogs who would only be let loose at their whim. By telling us we did not feel, they kept those leashes short. But they lied.”
“All you need to do is think of your mate, and you will know the truth,” Dag said. “Your feelings for her are clear to anyone who sees you together, and anyone who bothers to watch your face whenever you set eyes on her. You feel plenty, Baen. All you need to do is acknowledge it.”
Kees nodded. “And then share it with your mate.”
Baen must have looked as shocked as he felt, because Knox chuckled and hastened to reassure him. “Be comforted to know that all your brothers—and your sister,” he corrected himself when Ash cleared her throat. “All your siblings before you have gone through this same experience. We have all come to feel deeply for our humans, and by sharing those feelings have claimed the mates we were destined to have. They have made us better men—er, better Guardians—and your Ivy will do the same for you.”
Chapter Twenty
To her surprise, Ivy opened the door to the bedroom Rose had shown her to that first night, and found the space empty. For the past week, every time she had managed to slip away from her six-and-a-half-foot shadow before bed, she had found him already here, waiting for her, showing no intention of leaving, no matter what she might order him to do. Any time she protested, Baen would just kiss her until she forgot all about maintaining distance and not complicating matters with sex. Or really, her own name. When that giant Guardian touched her, Ivy could not think at all.
She could only feel.
So where was he tonight? And for goodness’ sake, why did she feel such a wave of disappointment at the idea that all her previous attempts at pushing him away might have finally had the (ostensibly) desired effect? She should be whipping out the pompoms and doing her happy dance, not feeling the hot press of tears behind her eyes.
Well, maybe she could at least blame that last part on PMS? Hormones were always a good excuse. Right?
Sniffling and calling herself ten kinds of idiot (idiot with cheese, diet idiot, idiot with chocolate sauce, et cetera, et cetera), Ivy padded into the en suite bathroom and washed up in preparation for bed. She’d had a little time to think since that conversation with Drum and Ash on the terrace before dinner. Even though there were people everywhere in the manor, they had all seemed to be operating according to some shared understanding that Ivy should be left alone. Even after dinner when it had been expected that she join the other Wardens in the blue salon, the conversation had flowed around her, including her without demanding much in the way of responses from her.
Maybe Drum had tipped the others off? She couldn’t see him gossiping or directly reporting what they had talked about to anyone else, but he was such a nice man that she could see him warning the others that she had a lot on her mind, and maybe they should give her some space.
She’d gotten that, and her mind had put it to use almost without asking permission. Or, in other words, she’d spent the remainder of her night brooding about what to do about herself, her Guardian, and all the conflicted feelings currently twisting up inside her.
There hadn’t been all that much else to choose from. In the past week, Ivy had learned that life at the manor moved in time with the traditions of the French countryside. While they might be less than forty miles from Paris in the geographical sense, in all other ways Maison Formidable occupied a world apart from the capital. The Wardens who had sought refuge here had come from all over the world, and yet they seemed to have embraced the slow pace and unhurried lifestyle of the local population. Only, you know, with magic, instead of farming.
That meant that days were spent learning how to cast spells and catching up on the history of the Guild, while the Guardians smashed at each other with sharp and/or heavy objects. Evenings, on the other hand, revolved around conversation and games, rather than television or painting the town. Ivy had heard rumors that the manor did have a satellite dish and several accompanying TVs, but hadn’t spotted one since her arrival. Instead, she’d spent time reading and talking and studying.
And studiously avoiding the very being she had expected to find waiting for her in the bedroom. Now that he had failed to show after she’d spent the entire evening searching her soul to discover how she really felt about him, Ivy couldn’t help but feel a little miffed. How dare he give up on her just as she had maybe, almost, sort of, half decided that she didn’t want him to?
Ivy finished brushing her teeth, rinsed out her mouth, and made a face at herself in the mirror. She at least had enough self-awareness to realize how ridiculous she sounded, even inside her own head. But that didn’t change the feelings behind her thoughts.
Hours of quiet reflection had told her that it was entirely possible she had feelings for Baen that had nothing at all to do with Fate or destiny or anything in the universe other than the fact that he made her heart race and her knees go weak. If she admitted that to herself, then she also had to admit that if he had been any other man on the face of the earth, she’d have been chasing him across the manor grounds, not leaving it the other way around. She didn’t like to think of herself as a bigot, but what was really stopping her from doing exactly that? Other than the fact that he was a Guardian and she was human.
Who cared? Not a single other cou
ple around them had let that put a stop to their relationships, so why should Ivy?
Turning off the bathroom light, she crossed back to the bed, climbed under the downy duvet and clicked off the bedside lamp. As she settled herself in a nest of fluffy pillows, she allowed herself to admit the answer.
Fear.
Fear had held her paralyzed since the first moment she laid eyes on Baen in that dark, narrow alley, and if she didn’t start fighting back, fear might rob her of her greatest chance at happiness. So what if destiny had brought them together? Most people would kill for the sure knowledge that they had met their soul mate. They wouldn’t be pouting and whining over it like she had.
Maybe it was time to embrace the idea that while Fate might have conspired to present Ivy with certain opportunities over the last several days, it was up to her to seize them and make the most of them. That was a choice Ivy could make, and after several hours of introspection, she had.
She wanted Baen.
The question then became, did he still want her?
She didn’t hear him approach, but then she never did. What she did feel was the way the mattress dipped when he settled his heavy weight on the edge beside Ivy’s hip. Her gaze flew through the dark to settle on his face, barely visible in the unlit room. She didn’t need to see him, though. She felt his eyes on her, that reassuring warmth she had come to take for granted over the past week.
He sat in silence for a long time, and it fascinated her to see the way his gaze caught fire as he watched her. She saw the first spark leap in the dark black pools and watched as it ignited a tiny flame that then burned brighter and brighter the longer he looked at her. For the first time it really struck her that she was the reason his eyes burned, and it made her stomach turn slow somersaults in nervous excitement.
“I was starting to think you’d found somewhere more comfortable to sleep,” she whispered after a moment. The words came out so quietly, she could barely hear them herself.
Baen shook his head. “There is nowhere else. Not for me.”
Her heart leaped, but her brain cautioned her not to read too much into the words. Maybe he meant that the house was crowded and he couldn’t find an empty room. Or that he felt too duty-bound as her Guardian to leave her vulnerable to attack while she slept. His words could have any number of explanations, and she was afraid to interpret them in case she drew the wrong conclusion.
When silence stretched between them, she felt her nerves stretch as well until she couldn’t bear the tension. “Baen—”
He pressed a finger to her lips. “No. I need to speak with you, to you, and I must tell you before we go any further. Before you distract me once again.”
Ivy wanted to protest that she wasn’t the only one providing a distraction over the past week. He should know by now what happened when he flashed those rippling muscles of his and paraded around the room half naked, with his jeans hanging low off his Adonis belt. Every time she saw those grooves carved into the sides of his hips, she wanted to trace the lines with her teeth and tongue. And he called her a distraction.
His finger slid from her mouth to her cheek, cupping it in a tender caress. “For all of the long years that I have lived in your world, I have believed certain things to be true,” he began. He spoke slowly and quietly, as if he himself needed to understand as much as he wanted her to do so. “I believed that I existed for only one reason—to fight against the Darkness. I believed that being trapped in sleep for centuries upon centuries had purpose and honor, because my brothers and I were told this by those who summoned us. I believed that as a Guardian, the only emotions I could feel were those that swept through me in the heat of battle—rage, fury, hatred for my enemy, triumph and pride when I emerged victorious.”
Ivy listened and felt her heart contract. What an empty existence he described, cold and gray and in the end futile. His battles against the Darkness kept humans like her safe, but his life of eternal sleep punctuated by nothing but brief moments of danger and bloodshed sounded to her as if they’d been designed to create an army of serial killers. With nothing of hope or love to soften their experiences, the endless rounds of conflict and pain should have warped the Guardians into monsters. The fact that they remained stalwart and honorable, dedicated to the service of the Light, only demonstrated their essential goodness. And contrasted it with the frankly evil actions of the generations of Wardens who had kept them imprisoned.
She reached up and laid her hand over Baen’s, squeezing in acknowledgment and silent encouragement.
“All of that I believed, amare, and to me it seemed like graven truth that I should be separate from the world I defended, that I should form no attachments to it, since it would pass by me as I slept. To have developed feelings for humans who would grow old and die while I slumbered would have driven me mad. It seemed wiser and safer to allow things to continue on as I believed they had always done.”
His thumb stroked across her bottom lip and the corner of his mouth lifted in a tiny smile. “And then you appeared, and all of the universe tumbled into its proper alignment.”
Her heart skipped and shuddered into a much faster beat, racing ahead while Ivy stared into those burning eyes and tried to contain the rush of excitement and hope that welled inside her.
“I looked at you,” Baen continued. “I looked, and I saw the true purpose of my existence laid out before me. You were the thing I had been summoned to defend, and to protect the rest of your kind was only a happy accident. You were the Light I could never let fall to the Darkness, the Light that guided me through all the long years of waking and sleeping. You were the reason for the heart that beat within me, the reason I could feel anything other than the bleak, numb emptiness of endless solitude.”
Ivy’s throat tightened until she couldn’t have said anything if her life had depended on it. All she could do was look into his gaze and hope he could see the words reflected in hers.
“Ivy. Amare. My perfect little human.” He leaned down and brushed his lips gently over hers, more of a caress than a kiss, infinitely tender and full of reverence. “I know that your own world has turned upside down in the days since you met me, and I know that you have been overwhelmed with new knowledge and new rules, with magic and legends and talk of Fate and your responsibilities as a Warden. I know all that, but I want you to believe that none of it is as important as what I have to say to you.”
Baen reached out with his other hand to hold her face cradled between his palms. He leaned in until he hovered only inches away, until all she could see was the fire in his dark eyes.
Until all she could see was him.
“Ivy Beckett, of the red hair and the smoky eyes,” he murmured, his lips smiling but his voice deep and serious. “Ivy of the quick tongue and the tender heart, know that whatever you decide, whatever path you choose to tread, guided by Fate or your own bright mind, I am yours. I shall always be yours, to embrace or to cast aside as you wish. For as long as I draw breath in this realm, I shall protect and defend you, walk beside you or behind you and support you in all things.”
Forget not being able to talk. When Ivy heard those words, she forgot how to breathe. Her chest seized up and her heart felt as if a fist had wrapped around it and squeezed. Her vision began to blur, and it took a moment for her to realize that it was from the tears that had welled up in her eyes. Tears of happiness, or gratitude, or too much emotion in too small a body.
Tears of love.
And Baen wasn’t even finished. He had saved the best for last.
“I love you, amare.”
He said it simply and softly and with so much conviction, it might as well have been etched in stone like the Ten Commandments. There was no question of doubting him. His words were Truth, and they were for her alone.
She didn’t know how to contain the emotions welling inside her. She had a feeling they would spill over at any moment.
“I love you. I will love you always, and whether you grow to return my f
eelings or you send me away from you, I will not cease to love you for as long as there is Light in the universe. Because you are my Light, and everything aside from you fades into insignificance.”
“Baen.”
She breathed his name, blinking away the tears only to find more welling up to take their place. She stroked her hands up his arms to curl her fingers around his broad shoulders. She needed to hang on to something, and she needed to prove to herself that he was real, that she hadn’t imagined this entire scene, hadn’t conjured it up from a wishful heart.
“Baen. You terrify me,” she admitted, hating the look of hurt that crossed his face, but needing to get the words out. “Not because of what you are, but because of what you make me feel. I didn’t think this was possible. I didn’t think that there was any such thing as one perfect partner for everyone. I didn’t believe in true love or soul mates or happily ever after. And I certainly didn’t believe that someone could swoop into my life out of thin air and wind up being the only thing in the world that I couldn’t live without.”
She reached up to brush her knuckles over his raspy jaw and struggled to find the words to admit to both of them what her heart had already assured her was true.
“That’s why I keep running away from you,” she admitted, ashamed of how she’d been treating him, blowing hot and cold, shunning him one moment, and melting into his embrace the next. “That fear. I’ve been so afraid, I haven’t even been able to admit to myself how scared I really was. Until tonight.” She took a deep breath. “Tonight I realized that the only thing that scares me more than what you make me feel, is the idea of losing you because I was too afraid to hold on.”
He started to protest, but she shook her head and hushed him. She needed for him to hear this, and she needed to say it aloud. “No, it’s the truth. You don’t deserve to be treated the way I’ve treated you, and I don’t deserve to live my whole life with the fear that whatever I love is going to be taken away from me. We both deserve better than that.”
Hard Breaker Page 24
