by Amber Kell
I blushed and Candy grinned and waggled her eyebrows. Subtle she was not. But neither was Frey. Geez, I hope she wasn’t going to ask to watch us together or something. She had a gleam in her eye now whenever Frey got friendly with me.
“Um, yeah, I think I could do without the ‘whole settlement’ knowing if we get busy.”
“You are shy,” he said.
“Frey…knock it off!” It was clearly a white flag. He roared with laughter. I’d never heard anyone actually do that, apart from books and evil villains in movies, but he did. I found myself smiling even as I led the way to my Smart car.
“Oops,” Candy said, as Frey just stared at my car.
“I will ride,” Frey said and then looked around for where I kept my noble steed.
“You’re going to have to stuff yourself in the passenger side.”
“I have seen automobiles on the vision box—”
“He means TV,” Candy said.
“I figured.”
“They have spacious leg room.” Obviously he’d been sold on that advertising hook.
I sighed, rubbing my neck. “Frey, you’re attracting attention with the bare chest and the long hair and—”
He looked around and smiled proudly and flexed his muscles when a girl and two guys walked by us, staring at my walking, talking, historical romance hero.
“I’m tired,” I finished. “Get. In. The. Car.”
He paled but set his jaw and I realised belatedly that he was afraid of my car. I opened my mouth to suggest we take a bus when Candy opened the passenger door. “I know it looks the size of a Campbell’s soup can, but it gets great mileage and it’s wicked good for the environment,” she told Frey. “Come on, you get to be alone with Bailey. You know, in a house, all alone with a bed and his hidden stash of sex toys and everyth—”
“Thanks, Cand, I think he gets the picture,” I snapped, blushing again.
Frey met my eyes and I saw uncertainty. “Trust me,” I rasped. “I’m the guide.”
“You are the guide,” he repeated and taking a deep breath he folded his body to half its size and got into my car.
I waved at Candy. She took her phone out and tapped it and I nodded. Yeah, I’d call her when we were settled. But that wouldn’t satisfy her. I saw her texting me and glanced quickly at my phone.
I want deets, boyfriend! She wanted to know what went down between me and Frey. Jesus. I wasn’t far wrong in her wanting to watch us go at it. I wondered if she’d ask me to film it.
But my best friend had good taste in men.
I helped Frey fight into his seatbelt. I wanted him to put the sword in the back, but he wouldn’t let it out of his reach. His insistence was a cold feather brushing my spine.
“Okay, ready?” I asked him.
Looking like he was manning up for combat he gave me an affirmative and we pulled out of the campus lot. Man, my palms were sweaty on the wheel. I was picking up on Frey’s anxiety. I drove like I thought I’d lose my licence if I didn’t keep perfectly aligned on my side of the street. Finally, I made myself relax.
Weirdly, when I did, Frey started enjoying himself. As we hit the little freeway that went through the mountain woods to the small town where Mom lived, he was looking around. I wondered again about this ‘summoning’ business. What kinds of times and places had he visited? And was it in a linear line, stretching back to his own time, and how had he got the job of a guardian?
I had lots of questions. I needed to sit down with my pad and paper and write them down so I could quiz Frey.
“Go faster?”
I smiled. “Yeah.” I gave the car more gas and we roared down the road.
Frey threw his head back and gave a war cry.
When we pulled up at the house, Frey stayed frozen in the car.
Finally I got out and walked around to his side, wondering if he didn’t know how to work the door. After a moment of him fiddling inside, it opened and he got out with a breath of relief. “Tight as the womb, yes?” he said.
“You’re a big guy.”
His eyes took on that gleam. “Very big,” he said with pride. “As you will find out.”
I rolled my eyes. “Someone loves themselves.”
“That is never as satisfying.”
I laughed. “That’s a pretty good play on words, big guy.” As I sobered, I just looked at him, his blond hair a little silver in the fading day, the two braids, the bright blue eyes, the warrior’s tension. His chest was twice the size of mine, with tiny nipples puckered from the chill. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
But Frey paused, looking at the house. “Wood is good, yes?”
I grinned, thinking of the Beatles’ song Norwegian Wood. “I know I like yours.”
He laughed heartily at the joke on himself, but then nodded at the house. “Much wood.”
“My dad was an architect,” I told Frey. “He had that seventies ‘back to nature’ approach, so when he and Mom bought the cottage, we renovated it as a family. It’s…a little different inside.”
“I would meet the father of Bailey,” he said.
“Uh…” Loss washed over me, fresh as if I were sixteen again. “He’s gone. He passed away when I was a teenager.”
“He was a teacher for you, a guide.” It was a strange way to put it, but it fitted. It totally fitted.
“Yeah, he was. My Mom and I were both influenced by his belief in reuse, reinvention. That’s why I have that car you aren’t too fond of.”
“You would have to have a good reason for such a steed,” Frey said dryly.
I laughed again and unlocked the front door, ushering Frey into the house. “I know it smells a bit like a root cellar,” I said. “Thing is, my Dad thought it would be a great idea to incorporate the raw granite bluff as a partial wall inside the house. Problem is when it rains, which it does a lot around here…” I nodded to the granite with rivulets of water running down. “This house kind of becomes a tribute to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.”
“This is a secure fortress,” Frey said, placing a big palm against the rock wall. “Things cannot come at us from the earth itself.”
“Oh, yeah…” I hadn’t thought of that. And I could have gone a few more days without thinking of it. “That thing from campus, it could follow us here? We’re going to see it again?”
“I cannot predict what is to come. Shadow creatures are the dogs of war, formidable. They killed the last guardian.” He looked at me over his shoulder and I took in the scars on his body, the hand-hammered sword riding his hip, the grave blue eyes.
“How old are you?” I hit the switch for the electric fireplace in the great stone hearth which ran up like a tree trunk through the central part of the house. Immediately I caught that damp-wool scent that meant this place had been empty a while—which was good. I didn’t want my Mom home while all this was going down.
Frey’s eyes widened, as if he was surprised by the personal question. “I was ten and five when I became a guardian,” he said.
“Fifteen? You were a…” I wasn’t quite sure what a guardian was yet since I was slim on details of the job description, but I knew Frey didn’t exactly play endless rounds of Monopoly. “Warrior at fifteen?”
“What else could I be, Bailey, son of—” He stopped.
“Fred,” I said. “My Dad’s name was Fred. But I’m just as much the son of my mother and she is Beth. Professor Dunbar would say a matrilineal line is equally legitimate. ”
“Bailey, son of Fred and Beth,” he repeated, as if my name and my parent’s names helped him fix my special place in the universe.
I moved closer to him, touched the shiny scar that ran down his right arm. “How old were you when this happened?”
He frowned at the mark, as if he had to think. Jesus, if I had a scar like that it would be a no brainer, which just showed how different we were. “I was ten and three. The settlement was attacked and I fought the raiders. Many were killed.”
“Your f
amily?”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.” There was the ghost of humour in his eyes. This is my life. He accepted it.
“Is that why you became a guardian, to, um, help other people?” I was still stroking his arm. I yanked my hand back, flushing, but he reached out, took it firmly, and replaced it on his skin. His silent message was clear, touch me, I like it.
Shit, I liked it too.
“It was not that simple,” he sighed. Faint colour touched his cheeks. “I joined the raiders who destroyed my village.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. It was clear Frey was expecting me to say something like ‘how could you?’ but my life…was cushy compared to what I knew of his. He’d been born in a time that was as alien to me as if he’d walked with dinosaurs.
“I was enslaved,” he said. “It was…not good. Then I won my freedom with a sword. I was good at killing. I felt nothing.”
“At fifteen…” It was hard to wrap my brain around it, but I guessed people didn’t live very long back then and, at fifteen, he probably would have been tall, powerfully built. “How old are you now, do you know?”
“I am a guardian six cycles. I am ten and five and six.” He frowned, as if counting took careful consideration.
“Twenty-one.” Somehow I was leaning against him, my back against the chilly rock wall. He loomed over me. I reached up and touched his beard. “How are you still alive?”
“It is not magic,” he told me as if he had had this conversation before. “It is the science of the druids. They understood the wheel of life, the stars and seasons. They battled the creatures who try to enter our world through a tear in space.”
“The Shadow creatures!”
He nodded. “Guardians are drawn to a weakness in the fabric of space where a door is made.”
“I made a door, I know, but it was a total accident.”
“There are no accidents, guide,” he chided. “I have said this.”
“Yeah. So, you come through the door to fight monsters with the, uh, guide. What happens after you win?”
Frey smiled sadly. “We do not always win, Bailey, son of Fred and Beth.”
The truth I’d been dancing around just spilled out. “I don’t want you to get hurt!”
Frey lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his hips. I pulled him close, scrabbling hands on his broad back. He growled and kissed me, taking my mouth, his tongue hungry, stroking mine so I shuddered hard. Each stroke made my nipples pulse, made my erection ache. I was loose and slutty in his arms.
“You are ready to be taken as a woman,” he whispered.
“Oh, yeah.” Why deny it? I wanted him to fuck me. I got off thinking about it—my legs shoved apart, ankles over his massive shoulders so he could use me or maybe I’d be on top of a pillow on my bed and he’d be behind me, face tight as he took me…
“Where are your furs?”
“Furs?” My head had fallen back so he could run his teeth over my throat. I was ready to erupt, right here, right now. I wanted to cover him with my cum.
“Your sleeping place.”
“My sleeping place is fur-free,” I said, “except for Mable if she gets in my room. She’s our Siamese cat.”
“It is time to make you cry out as I pleasure you. No one in your village will have any doubt that I have made you a woman in my bed.”
His ideas were a little archaic, but fuck it, the reality was a big ‘yes’! I had a feeling if he did me, I’d be willing to sing a few bars from A Natural Woman.
He gave my jeans an impatient tug. When he couldn’t figure out how to unzip them, they gave with a primal ripping sound. He’d just torn my pants off!
“If I owned you, I would never permit you to wear clothing,” he told me, moving me like a doll as he undressed me. “You would wear only my talisman.”
“Not really politically correct,” I said. His hand was on my cock. Oh, yeah, oh, God, I was going to cream just from his hand on me. “Frey,” I whimpered.
“I grow impatient.” No kidding. He took me down to the sheepskin rug in front of the fireplace, shoving the tie-dye so it revealed my pointed nipples, which he tweaked. I cried out, getting into the idea of him owning me. He shoved the shreds of my jeans and boxers off so I lay naked, exposed…and a little vulnerable. Instinctively I raised a knee, not sure I was ready for—
He tore off his shorts. More ripping and then his monster-sized cock fell out, heavy and uncut and wet-tipped, ready for me.
But I was not ready for him. “Wait! We need… I need…”
His fingers pushed inside me.
“Ah!” I wasn’t sure if that was pleasure or pain. I was frightened of him. I wanted him.
Chapter Five
Frey was feasting on my neck like he was a vampire who needed to feed, his hot tongue laving my skin. He pushed my arm up and put his mouth on my mole. My sweet spot.
I shouted.
My dick didn’t care that Frey posed a clear and present danger to my heart. He might as well have been sucking my cock since the result was the same. He took his time, nuzzling my skin so I felt the silkiness of his beard, so he looked into my eyes, his so sober and blue, the eyes of a warrior who had grown up too fast in an alien world. That look lent solidity to the experience that wasn’t anything like one of my light flirtations. This was a man who took what he wanted, but did not take the pleasure for granted. Because he might…die. And he knew it.
“Frey,” I groaned.
“You are pleasured,” he said.
Oh, yeah. He whispered his fingers along the sides of my neck and I felt them, callused, yet gentle on me. Those calluses came from handling that sword, just like the scars on his body emphasised he was a battle-hardened warrior.
And oh, geez. He was the perfect Johanna Lindsey hero.
Fantasy was meshing with reality.
“Wait.”
“Your body does not want to pause, guide.” He licked the side of my neck lavishly, so that I shivered with sensation. If he did that again, I’d come. I couldn’t help myself.
“Have you…ah…made many men your, um, woman?”
Frey seemed more interested in sucking on my earlobe than answering my question.
“Frey!” I smacked his shoulder. That got his attention.
“You wish to hit me, to play the reluctant?” he asked, nodding as if we were playing a familiar game. “We can do that until I conquer you.” His hands were on my thighs, splaying them open.
“Yikes, hang on.” In another moment he’d mount me. Part of me wanted that, part of me shied away when the solid length of him glanced against my lower body. A spear indeed. “Didn’t they use…olive oil or something in your day?”
“I would use my blood to come inside you.” He lifted his sword to his wrist.
“Wait!” I gripped his arm before he could cut himself. “You can’t do that! You can’t cut yourself just to be with me.” What the fuck? This was just sex. Didn’t he get that? “You don’t need to do that. I’m…” Not worth it.
“This guardian would die for his guide,” Frey said. “What is a little pain?”
I swallowed. Whoa. That he would do it, make a wound just so he could have me. “You don’t need to. I, uh, I have stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“Remember how I made you that drink this morning? It’s like that, something instant.”
He nodded enthusiastically. “It was good. A man’s drink.”
I grinned at that. “Yeah, just don’t say that to Candy.”
He grunted. “To answer your question, guide, I am hungry for you.” His expression turned grim. “In my last battle, I lost the guide.”
Oh. So he’d lost someone he cared about? I sat up, pushing his irresistibleness to a safe distance. “This is too fast.”
“I have told you we may yet fall.”
“Okay, the ‘tomorrow we die’ thing may be a spur to your libido.” I studied his lower b
ody. “Not that you apparently need it. But it chills me out. We need food and I have questions, lots of them.”
“You do indeed talk more than any guide before you,” Frey said, with obvious disapproval. He pushed back hair out of his eyes, his tanned face setting them off like jewels.
“I guess people talk more in the twenty-first century.”
“If you were a stable boy like my first guide, by now I would have bedded you. It would be most pleasing,” Frey grumbled.
Thing is, I couldn’t argue with him. He made my body sing.
“I can’t get over the creepy feeling that thing is going to show up, attack me again,” I told him.
Frey reached for his sword and his gaze went to the miles of windows that took in cedar and fir and granite.
“Hey, it’s just a feeling!”
“You are the guide,” he muttered.
I was getting sick of his reverence. It wasn’t for me. He didn’t know me.
I was on my feet, knowing I was going to fuck up large, but not caring. “Look, you want to know why you’re really here?”
He just looked at me, bright blue eyes on my face, his own serious, like I was his king about to issue a decree. Jesus, he had no clue.
“You’re here because I wanted to show off. There’s a cute guy in my graphics class and I knew if I made up a cool Celtic logo I’d not only impress him, I’d also get a better grade than anyone else. That is why you are here.”
“There are no accidents—”
“Bullshit!” I yelled at him. “And don’t look at me like that anymore. Don’t you get I’m not anything special? If you want a quick bang, fine. Ask around, you’ll find out I never say no.”
He was on his feet, getting his face in mine. “Do not insult the guide.”
“I am the guide, so I know best!”
“You need to be soothed from your fears. You seem to have many, guide.”
“Fuck you!”
He just looked at me. A rock would have had more to give.
I was getting nowhere.
I stomped up the spiral staircase to the second floor and the kitchen there. The first thing I noticed was I’d forgotten to water Mom’s spider plants again so they hung limply over the rim of their pots. I grabbed the watering can and took care of them. Then I sat down at the simple wooden table and rubbed my eyes which were stinging because I was tired. I’d had a weird day. That was all it was.
