by Brianna West
“She would be an incredible Guardian and an invaluable addition to our ranks,” he said with a small, respectful bow after finally looking at me again. “I hope you consider joining us indefinitely, and I pledge that I will take your side for when my idiot brother assuredly screws up in the future.”
He really was the sweetest.
I smiled, giving Bernie more reason to whine as I pressed a grateful kiss to Carl’s cheek, stunning just about everyone in the room. Their eyes followed the exchange before I was regarding Simon with a look of finality, resolved to do what I desired most to do.
“If you deem me worthy, I wish to join the Promiscus Guardians and pledge my loyalty to the Cause.”
Every person in that room had grown eerily quiet as Simon watched me, discerning something that I couldn’t even begin to fathom. Like my brother, I knew that the angel far exceeded my ability to judge situations and others, so I didn’t even endeavor to pretend to.
The hand holding mine tightened briefly before Simon was smiling so beautifully that I nearly lost my footing. He strode over and took my hand, the one that Bernie hadn’t a hold on, and kissed it with a pointed grin aimed at the Guardian beside me before nodding.
“Quite the contrary, Nyla, we are unworthy of you. So, you will be made team leader immediately of my most elite group of Guardians. The very same group Bernie is a part of.”
Yaniv seemed pleased, striding over and nodding slightly in gratitude before kissing my cheek farewell. “Be happy, Sister. We will speak soon. Our realm will be better for your sacrifice,” he said with a smirk Bernie’s direction before he and Anric disappeared through a portal that came and went in the blink of an eye.
“Wow, that was magical,” Vedric said in awe with my brother’s leaving.
Bernie nodded as if it was him they spoke of. “Yeah, he’s mighty handsome and mysterious like that. Obviously. He is a king.”
Simon nodded shortly at the remaining group, causing the four to disappear from the room with the silent dismissal. I was still internally reeling from the shift from one responsibility to another, but as I was a leader in charge of an army, I never allowed it to show on my face.
“Speaking of kings,” Simon began, gesturing towards Bernie, “there is something in which we must discuss.”
Bernie’s expression grew serious with the discernable change in Simon’s tone, expressly business. “Were you able to figure out how to give my title away?”
“I’m afraid not,” Simon divulged with a grim expression. “We will continue to strive for a way, but in the meantime, your position may be of some use to the Guardians.”
Bernie shuffled with a strained smile, the tension in his torso insinuating he wasn’t at all happy with the answer Simon gave him. “Anything I can do, I will, sir.”
“Very good. As you are still recovering, Nyla, I suggest you remain here for a few days. I will introduce you to the group you will oversee, after you have rested, of course.” Simon grinned brilliantly before he was gone from the room, leaving me to the two brothers as they stood beside me quietly.
I lifted my chin, attempting to push down the sudden excitement I felt throughout my entire body. But just as I was managing to control it, Bernie shouted with glee and took hold of my body in a hard embrace. Carl’s expression never faltered, but I could see he was somewhat fearful of what I might do to Bernie. Surprising him, evident in the way his eyebrows rose, I hugged Bernie back with a smile, letting my head rest against the pound of his heartbeat.
“I’m getting down and dirty with the new boss!” Bernie said, the words immediately triggering me to strike down his massive body with a punishing blow. His hat went flying and skidding across the carpet, while his arms and legs spread out and didn’t move for long minutes as I breathed through my anger.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Carl said, smirking and leaving through the door of the room.
“Meanie!” Bernie yelled after him, smiling up at me as if I hadn’t just beaten him down.
He was so bloody adorable, I could never be angry with him for very long.
“Now that we’re alone,” Bernie said, getting to his elbows with a suggestive look, “you going to kiss this sweet cowboy’s boo-boos?”
My mouth slid up. “I find myself quite hungry all of the sudden.” I turned on my heel and strode towards the door, hearing the panicked voice just as I opened it and began to leave.
“Hey! Wait a second, you’re not being serious right now, are you, darling? Right?” I left through the door and down the hall, hearing the Guardian still calling after me as I smiled and giggled to myself. “Princess? This is just a joke, right? You’re going to come back in just a second, right?!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
~***~
Carl had returned earlier in the evening to the nearby headquarters, leaving me and Bernie alone to allow me a few days of recovery before I would be introduced to the team I was charged to lead; a team that had recently lost their leader for some reason or another and required a new one in his stead.
When I returned to the room I had first fled from, I was greeted with the sight of Bernie’s bare backside as he took the towel he had recently used to wipe his massive body and dried his hair. The beautifully golden physique had me stalled midstride as soon as I entered, as I was completely unprepared to see it. I froze, feeling the sparks of arousal just as Bernie whipped his head around and grinned unabashedly at me.
“Care to get wet?”
Say what?!
My mouth opened as he turned, the tense muscle hardening and rippling along his frontside as he stood, not even the slightest bit concerned over being stark naked. “I just got out myself, but I don’t mind joining you for one if you want to get all lathered up and wet with me, darling.”
My jaw didn’t seem to work as I watched the naked Guardian stride confidently towards me. Then, with a mischievous grin, Bernie took me quite literally off my feet and headed towards the bathroom at the corner of the room.
“Seeing how you’re a lady of few words, I’ll take that gaping mouth and hot stare as a blaring ‘yes, Bernie, you devilishly handsome cowboy you!’ and give you the five-star cowboy treatment.”
Bernie held me close, his heat radiating into me as if the man had recently been aflame. I unintentionally clung to him, unable to react, let alone speak, with his bare body distracting me and making my head fuzzy with the notion of what it could do to me. What I wanted him to do to me. Kissing me. Loving me in a way only he could. And if I were being honest, I wanted to touch him and confirm what couldn’t be said with words.
Bernie’s smiling face beamed down at me as I struggled internally with how I wanted to react. “Not going to fight me on this one, darling?” His amber eyes trailed from my face to where I was held aloft inside his arms. “Or is it that you really can’t? I mean, you did just wake up. Maybe you’re not at full strength, although those hits earlier hurt just as good as they always do.”
I stiffened, still slightly ashamed of the overreaction. Even though Bernie had every bit of it coming to him with his public display in front of not only other Guardians, but a very powerful, highly influential angel. I was starting to wonder if I may have overreacted slightly by unintentionally reverting back to old habits.
“But my brother was there…and we were speaking with Simon of all people,” I accidently voiced out loud, making the Guardian laugh with surprise as I covered my mouth against the outburst.
“Fair enough, princess,” he conceded with a boyish grin, “I was just so damn happy to have you back in my arms, I may have gone a bit overboard with the Bernie loving.”
My smile wavered as I thought back on all that had transpired. As if truly comprehending it all for the first time, I was hit with the reality that I was free to stay here with Bernie. I was now in control of my own fate. I was no longer princess to the Spiritum Bellatorum kingdom, but a Guardian to the Promiscus Guardians. It overwhelmed me with feelings so fierce that al
l the emotion drained from my face as I became frozen in the midst of my internal, euphoric moment.
The joking nature from before slowly faded from Bernie’s expression as if he, too, just realized what had taken place before. Then, my Guardian’s arms constricted as his steps hastened towards the bathing room. Setting me down on my feet, Bernie cradled my face in his hands and looked questioningly into my eyes.
“You alright, darling?”
My thoughts came back full circle as I peered up at him, finally comprehending what he was saying. “I am.”
“Doesn’t look that way to me,” Bernie remarked softly, caressing my face with his thumbs before forcing me up against the bathroom wall, “You look like you want to cry.”
His statement surprised me as my expression faltered and my mouth fell open to my silent befuddlement. “Cry?”
Bernie’s eyes softened as he pressed a kiss to my forehead and hugged me close, reminding me once more that he wore nothing at all. To an outsider’s point of view, we would be undeniably ridiculous to look at with the serious conversation we were currently having while Bernie, as naked as the day he was born, had me pinned to a wall.
However, I was still lost to the words he had spoken. And then in an instant, I felt hot tears falling from my eyes and fleeing down my face. I lifted my hand and touched the stream, still not quite sure the reason for them. But as I looked into the amber eyes of the man I loved, knowing I’d be able to spend the rest of my life looking at him, touching him like this and receiving that same affection in return, I realized what it was that made my eyes flood with emotion. I knew the reason I cried openly, shamelessly.
I was unequivocally and irrevocably happy.
Bernie sighed deeply, kissing where the tears came and went, and then swiped the fresh stream away with his thumbs. “Tell me what this handsome cowboy can do to make you feel all better?”
I was overcome by laughter, half-heartedly glaring at the man that was too adorable for words. “Who said I needed to feel better?”
“You don’t?”
“Not in the least,” I retorted, giggling again.
Bernie’s eyes danced with mischief. “I love when you smile like that, darling. Makes me want to smother you with my lovin’.”
“You mean you haven’t already?” I rebuffed with a secretive grin, making the Guardian’s mouth drop open in feigned insult.
Bernie’s lower lip pushed out as he whimpered at me. “That’s just plain mean, princess. I haven’t even begun to smother you yet.”
“That is rather worrisome,” I said, resting my head against the wall and eyeing the tall Guardian with my own mischievous glance, “I do have my doubts, though. I’m not sure how much more you could do to me that you haven’t already done.”
I wanted to pounce on him, but I held back in hopes of seeing what Bernie might do in response to the challenge in my words.
Brandishing his best smile, Bernie’s eyebrows raised as his hands worked to get me out of my clothes. At first, in a manner he clearly hoped I wouldn’t notice. But I noticed, of course.
I reached out and touched where I felt the quickened thud of his heart, letting my hand map out every ridge and dip of his form, leisurely tasting his shape with my fingertips. I had nearly mapped out every part of his chest by the time Bernie groaned, panting heavily. He threw on the shower, turning the knobs with the easy, expert reach of his arm.
“You trying to seduce me, princess?” he asked, clearly succumbing to his lust as the obvious signs of transformation appeared with the sharpened incisors and faded stripes on his body. Also, pressed between us as Bernie pinned me back into the wall was another part of him that was very obviously responding to my touch.
“Because you’re in for a world of sweet, sweet loving if you are.”
My lips quirked upwards as my hand slid down the line of his torso to where his desire for me was unmistakable. Taking hold of him, I stroked the silken flesh without a breath of hesitation. His stomach grew rigid as his arm held his body upright, propped up against the wall behind me as my hand grew bolder.
Bernie’s mouth opened, a growl rumbling from his chest before illuminated tiger eyes fixed to where I continued to pleasure him. The Guardian shuddered when my eyes faltered downwards and then back up at his face, the desire for more clear in my expression. I was growing so desperate with each passing second that I’d absently sought friction by moving against the hard surface I was pressed against.
“Now that just ain’t playing fair, darling,” Bernie breathed, thrusting up into my hand as his head bent forward, already defeated, “I can’t be a gentleman with you seducing me like this.”
Satisfied with what I’d accomplished, I leaned up and pressed a kiss to his lips, the bathroom steaming up in the minutes we had been occupied. “I thought it was you who initially seduced me.”
“I’m going to be honest, darling, with you stroking me like that, right now I’d be lucky to remember my own name.”
Bernie pulled open the glass door of the shower, groaning with the loss of my hand when it fell away, and ushered me into the wet spray with an urgency that had already set the pace for our lovemaking.
I was immediately pressed into the wet shower tile, ravished by a beast—an overly eager beast who wasn’t able to hold back anymore as our bodies came together and fused with the hot water washing over them. I was lifted beneath the knees, sliding up the shower wall with Bernie’s raw strength, and then swiftly dropped down onto the hard flesh I’d been stroking only minutes before.
My head fell back into a sharp gasp as the flood of sensation startled my body into action. Wrapping my arms around strong shoulders, I held onto Bernie and fell, again and again, onto his hard, pulsating heat.
Sparks of our mingling magic burst in the midst of hot steam and misting water. But I barely noticed anything but the color of amber. The sounds of our passionate lovemaking bled into the sounds of splashing water, the white noise falling to the background when my Guardian would speak gruffly into my ear.
I never missed one whispered ‘I love you’ that Bernie said into my ear as he penetrated me and repeatedly filled my body with his heat. Nor did I forget to return those whispered words with my own, kissing Bernie’s lips with abandon as I breathed my ‘I love you’ against his mouth the moment our pleasure reached its peak, succumbing instantly to the body-wide tremors that held me hostage for what felt like hours.
Meeting Bernie was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I may have lost a great deal—a brother who I still mourned in silent moments and those that had supported me until now—but I had gained so much by falling in love with him. And I’d do whatever I could to make it clear to the man himself how much I was grateful for having him in my life.
For letting me love him, and for him loving me in return.
~*~
I lifted my chin and fixed the braids weaving around my head into a tight ponytail. Brushing the wrinkles from my fitted fighting attire, I prepared myself as Bernie and I waited in the receiving room of an estate that I was told the previous night would be one of several we might occupy during missions.
I was finally going to meet the team I was in charge of.
As I silently prepared myself, Bernie smiled as he always did and drank happily from his cup. He pushed the hot chocolate towards me that he had made upon arrival, which was—of course—overflowing with marshmallows. He grinned proudly when I watched him do so with evident scorn.
“Come on, it’ll be great. The team is going to love you almost as much as I do.” Pouting, he put his cup down. “Now that I think about it, that ain’t such a good thing. No! Why can’t I just have you all to myself?!”
Shaking my head, I didn’t say anything in response to his rhetorical nonsense. I knew that Bernie simply wished to ease my worries and was making light of things. His words, though said in the usual Bernie manner, were comforting.
I certainly wished for that very outcome, but I wasn’t sur
e what to expect. I was a princess from another realm, and without the slightest bit of seniority, I’d taken the position of their leader. It was natural that some, if not all, felt hesitant to trust me as their leader. Still, I kept my face removed of emotion entirely as we waited for the team members to show up.
I’d been told that they would be here within the hour and was growing more anxious with every passing minute. Unlike my soldiers, these Guardians had no reason to accept me as their leader, and the very idea of them rejecting me had my stomach coiled into painful, nervous knots.
Suddenly, the shift in the air alerted me to several arrivals, finding the massive form of Victor as he strode into the room with a woman pinned to his side. Her auburn hair and bright green eyes struck me with awe before I realized just what their close proximity suggested. The angel’s intelligent gaze confirmed it just before he kissed the woman’s head possessively and inadvertently made my cheeks grow warm with the unabashed display.
“This is Lilly,” Victor introduced with an affectionate smile.
The woman smiled as I nodded my polite greeting. She was very obviously a strong fighter, favoring a sword that was sheathed at her back. I was already quite fond of her projected strength, because it suggested she was a confident fighter. I looked forward to seeing her abilities when I had a chance to spar with her.
“Victor told me that you’re going to be our new team leader.”
“I am,” I concurred, hearing Bernie’s coo at the two as he sauntered over to them.
Bernie’s eyes were practically sparkling. “You guys are just the cutest!”
He really was the sweetest.
Several others appeared as I watched Bernie fondly, enjoying the way Lilly blushed every time Bernie would say something even slightly complimentary. I trusted that Victor would put him in his place when he overstepped, and was glad when Victor’s smiling words had Bernie scratching the back of his head and retreating in fear of what the angel might do to him. It was a very endearing display of their close relationship, which warmed my heart greatly.
