Randy cleared her throat. “That, ah…that was…” she paused to lick her lips, “…uh…fun.”
Michael grinned into the bedspread and squeezed her in a one-armed hug. “I kinda thought so.”
She didn’t open her eyes, just lay beside him and breathed deeply and evenly. She didn’t feel as relaxed as Michael would have liked. His brows drew together.
“Are you okay?”
She snorted. “Fine. You didn’t hurt me, He-Man. I’m made of stronger stuff than that.”
He slid his hand up to her chin and turned her to face him. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
Her eyes opened and locked on his. “What did you mean, then?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not claiming to be Casanova, but women don’t usually end up more tense after I make love to them than they were when I first got started.”
“You’d rather I started snoring?”
“I’d rather you tell me what’s on your mind.”
“You don’t really want to know.”
He waited.
Randy laughed. “I was thinking about Adele.”
He pursed his lips. “Well, that’s a new one. I’ve also never had a woman tell me that my technique in bed reminds her of her grandmother.”
“It had nothing to do with your technique, which I’m sure you already know.” She looked back up at the ceiling and grinned. “I was just thinking about what Adele would normally have said if she’d caught me in this sort of situation. Something about living down to her expectations, I’m sure.”
“Because we made love?”
“It’s not about the sex. It’s about having the sex on the first date. Hell, we haven’t even been on a date.” She grinned. “So technically, I jumped into bed with you before the first date. This is not the kind of ladylike, decorous behavior Dame Adele expects from the members of her family.”
Michael tucked a piece of hair back behind her ear, unable to resist the urge to rub a thumb over the delicate arch of her cheekbone. The light dusting of freckles there looked like cinnamon sugar. “Oh, well. She’ll live. In fact, I think she’d better get used to it. Quick.”
Randy turned her head to look at him and quirked an eyebrow. “Does that mean you have something more in mind than a one-night stand?”
Smiling, he leaned forward and captured her lips with his. When he raised his head, they both had to struggle to catch their breath. “I have quite a lot in mind. After all, it’s not every day that fate and magic conspire to bring me together with the woman of my destiny.”
“Is that what I am?” Randy grinned and wriggled closer.
“Among other things.” Another heated kiss made his voice even darker, even rougher. When she slipped her hand between their bodies and squeezed him affectionately, he nearly lost the power of speech completely. “You little witch,” he growled.
“Am I?” she asked, her voice genuinely curious. “I didn’t think casting one spell qualified me.”
Michael trailed a line of kisses down her throat and up the slope of her breast. “It doesn’t. That was a figure of speech.”
“Oh.” Randy registered a vague sense of disappointment, but really, who wanted magic powers? If she had those, she might have to develop some sort of a sense of responsibility. Perish the thought.
Michael heard her quiet “Oh,” and lifted his head. “Are you upset?”
She shook her head. “Nah, I’m pretty cool with who I am. In my family, if I had special powers, that would actually make me more ordinary.” She wrapped her arms and legs around Michael and shimmied her entire body. When his eyes rolled back in his head, she laughed and pressed her lips to his ear.
“But since you’ve got the magic in this relationship, I think it’s only fair to warn you that you’ll have to fix my parking tickets for me. After all, there ought to be some benefits to dating a witch…”
“Oh, I’ll show you benefits,” Michael chuckled, his grin going sharp and wicked. Slipping his hand beneath her, he raised her hips high and speared deep within her body.
Randy shrieked and let her head fall back against the pillows. Every molecule in her body was suddenly focused on the intense, erotic heat of him, the utter completeness she felt with this man buried inside her.
“Oh, yeah,” Randy sighed and curled her hand around his neck to tug him to her. “That works.”
Epilogue
“And he left me some kind of message about me standing him up. Can you believe that?”
“No.”
“Like I’d ever have agreed to go out with him anyway, even if it was weeks ago.” Randy scoffed, pushing off with her foot to set the enormous nursery rocker in motion.
“Of course you wouldn’t have.”
Randy Berry raised an eyebrow. “I’m detecting a certain lack of attention to my conversation in your voice, Cass.”
Cassidy Poe Quinn rolled her eyes and continued to shove onesies into a voluminous diaper bag. “Miranda, it’s four forty-five in the afternoon. I had two hours of sleep last night because the twins were up with colic starting at midnight, and Sullivan and I have a plane to catch in just over three hours. I’m sympathetic, but I’m also half-comatose. Take what you can get.”
Randy felt a distinct stirring of déjà vu and grinned like a madwoman. She was getting a huge kick out of reliving this conversation without the angst that had tormented her last time. “Bitter, party of one, your table is ready.”
“Miranda Louisa, you could try the patience of a saint—”
“Which is something I’m very pleased to report you’re a far cry from, Cassie love.”
“Must be a family trait, because Randy wouldn’t qualify for the title either.”
Both women turned to the door of the nursery at the sound of those deep, masculine voices, but this time, Randy barely spared a glance for Sullivan Quinn and his twin babies. Her eyes went right to Michael Devon and locked on like a homing beacon.
“And that’s exactly why you guys are crazy about us. Or at least, one of the reasons,” she said, wriggling her eyebrows suggestively.
“Here I was thinking it was just because we guys are crazy,” Quinn grinned.
Cassidy rushed forward immediately. “I’m sorry, honey. I was just finishing up their bag while they were napping. Have they started fussing again?”
“They’re fine. I told you a drop of whiskey would settle them down.” Quinn dropped a kiss on his wife’s forehead. “Are you all set then? The car will be waiting for us downstairs.”
“I’m ready. Why don’t you give me Molly? No sense in you trying to keep them both.” She reached out and took her daughter, balancing the little girl on her hip, then looked at where her cousin had taken up a position at Michael Devon’s side and shook her head. “I wish we didn’t have to rush off, so you could tell us exactly how this happened. It nearly bowled me over when the two of you showed up on our doorstep. I didn’t even realize you knew each other, let alone that you were involved.”
Randy glanced sideways at Michael and grinned. “Oh, it kind of took us by surprise, too.”
“Well, I’ll call when we get settled in and pry it out of you then.”
Michael grinned down at Randy and took her hand in his. Together, they walked Cassidy, Quinn, and the babies to the door and waved them off.
“Have a safe trip,” Randy said, giving Cassidy and Molly their good-bye kisses. “We’ll make sure the plants stay watered and the mail gets forwarded, and we promise to clean up from any keggers before you get back.”
Quinn laughed and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. “Never mind that. Just make sure the bedsheets are changed.”
“Quinn!” Cassidy used her free hand to smack her husband on the chest while he and Michael laughed like lunatics.
Randy just rolled her eyes to the ceiling and shook her head. “Men are such pigs. Makes you wonder why we put up with them.”
“Ah, but I think the last thing you’re fearing at the moment is
how to put up with us, cousin,” Quinn murmured. “You seem to have found exactly what you’ve been looking for.”
Randy stroked a hand over baby Declan’s fuzzy head and grinned up at his father. “I did, didn’t I?”
Michael extended his free hand and shook Quinn’s. “I’d say we both did.”
They watched the little family load themselves into the elevator, then shut the apartment door and turned back toward each other. For a long minute, Randy just looked up at this man she’d magicked into her life and said a heartfelt prayer of thanks.
“You know what?” she murmured, as she stretched up to kiss him through her cat-in-the-cream smile. “I’d say you were absolutely right.”
Keep reading for an excerpt from Christine Warren’s next Gargoyle novel
HARD AS A ROCK
Available April 2015 from St. Martin’s Press
He moved silently through the quiet house, draw inexorably to his witch’s side. The darkness of the bedroom where she lay meant nothing to him, as his night vision nearly equaled the acuity of his sight in the daytime. Wynn lay on her side beneath a fluffy covering, one arm curled beneath her, and the other tucked up so that her fingers curled in a loose fist beneath her chin. She looked innocent and so very fragile, and Knox felt something shift inside him as he stood above her and watched her breathe.
He knew he should concern himself with nothing more than neutralizing the threat to humanity posed by the nocturni. For that reason alone had he been summoned from the nothingness of endless potential. He existed for no other reason than to battle against the forces of the Darkness, and yet he knew that if he had to choose between saving the world and saving this one small female, he would not hesitate to let the world sink into the abyss.
The knowledge made him uneasy. It ran contrary to the very core of his being, and yet he could do nothing to change it. Was this what those first Guardians had felt? he wondered. When they had grown bored with protecting a species for which they had no feelings, with which they shared no connection, was this what they had felt when they had woken to find their mates standing before them? He thought it must be, for he understood in his core that if his little witch asked him to take on the Darkness itself single-handed, he would do so just to please her.
It shook him, the thought that any creature should hold such immense power over his very existence, not because he feared she might abuse that power, but because he knew that he, a creature of such strength and ferocity, could be humbled by such a soft, tiny, weak little creature. It made no sense.
No, “weak,” he realized, was the wrong word to describe his little witch. Fragile she might be, with her bones that easily snapped, her soft flesh that so quickly tore, and her short mortal lifespan; but at the core of her existed a strength he could feel every time she was near. It twined with the magic inside her, but he knew it existed separate from that power. The two fed off each other, her power greater because of her strength, her strength increased by the power she wielded. It all left him with a sense of awe and a burning desire to touch that inner magic and bathe in its bright, hot light.
Unable to resist the temptation, Knox gently seized a handful of fabric and drew back the covering that concealed her. She had removed her torn and soiled clothing before settling in to sleep, and now her soft, tempting curves lay before him, barely concealed by the pink scrap of cotton panties and the snug, gray tank top she wore over them. Her scent rose up to him, fresh and green and musky and sweet, and his mouth began to water. Like a lodestone, she drew him to her, and he followed helplessly, lost in the force of her magnetism.
He reached out, the need to touch her nearly unraveling him. With exquisite care, he traced the tip of one finger along the curve of her pale, shapely leg, admiring the silky smoothness of her skin and the warmth of her soft human flesh. Part of him wanted to seize, to grab and squeeze and stroke and taste, but another part wanted only to tend to her, to have her sleep and regain her physical strength for the battle he knew loomed before them. He might not know what the fight would entail, when it would begin or where it would take place, but he could feel it coming deep in his bones.
“You know, in human society, it’s considered impolite to molest a sleeping person. In fact, it’s seen as pretty creepy.”
His gaze shot to her face and found her regarding him through dark eyes heavy with sleep but lit with amusement rather than indignation. He felt himself relax slightly and continued to explore the fascinating contours of her calf and thigh. “Then as you are now awake, I may continue without fear.”
Wynn rolled to her back, her gaze searching his features, for what he did not know. If he could have given her what she sought, he would gladly have done so, but instead he simply held her gaze and allowed her to look.
When she spoke, her words caught him by surprise. “Do you really believe that fate can choose a mate for you? Just pick one out of the billions of humans walking this earth, plunk her down in front of you, and she would be the perfect match for you? No questions asked?”
He turned the question back on her. “You do not believe this is possible?”
She huffed out a soft breath. “I don’t think I want to believe that. I prefer to think that we carve our own paths in life. To think that in the end, we have no choice about something as fundamental as who we spend our lives with … that scares me.”
Knox hummed and laid his palm fully against his witch’s skin, curling his fingers around her delicate knee. “I prefer to think that the Light designs for us the one being who most suits us, then offers us the chance to be together, knowing that no other would bring us half as much joy and contentment.”
“I never would have pegged you as such a Pollyanna.”
“I presume this means you think my outlook is simplistic and overly positive.” He shrugged. “I find myself hard pressed to believe otherwise when I am presented with such beautiful evidence to support my theory.”
“Oh, smooth,” she said, her tone wry. “Flattery is not going to distract me, though. How can you be content with just leaving it up to fate?”
Knox sighed and sank to sit beside her hip, his weight depressing the mattress and bringing her even closer against him. “How can I now? I know from the moment I saw you that you belonged to me, that I must protect you with my life, and that if you were to be taken from me, nothing in existence, not even the Darkness itself, would stop me from getting you back.”
He saw something flicker in her eyes, something made up of equal parts pleasure and wariness. “You mean you wanted to fuck me.”
He growled at her dismissive tone and the crude way she described his desire for her. For him, having her would be so much more than a mechanical release of lust. He did not want to merely “fuck” her, as she termed it. He wanted to claim her, to possess her and be possessed, to sink into her soul until neither of them could tell their own being from the other.
Of course, the hardness between his legs insisted that she did have a point.
“Of course I want to fuck you,” he admitted roughly. “I am male and you are female. We feel attraction for each other. To want to satisfy that attraction is natural. But physical desire is only a small part of what I feel for you. My emotions for you are much more complex than simple lust.”
“I didn’t think Guardians were known to be emotional. You’re supposed to be warriors, not exactly a touchy feel bunch.”
Something colored her voice, uncertainty and a touch of hope well hidden behind her bluster and sarcasm. He raised a brow and pinned her with his gaze. “You think because I take the form of stone that I have no more feelings than a rock?”
Wynn sighed heavily and lifted an arm to drape over her eyes, shielding her from his regard. “I don’t know what I think. I’m too damned tired to think anything right now.”
“Then do not try to think.” He leaned forward, taking advantage of her temporary blindness to swoop in and hover his mouth over hers. “Simply feel.”
#
He seized her lips before she even knew his intent. One minute his deep voice rumbled over her like the purr of a big cat, raising the hair on her arms and tightening her belly with a restless ache. The next, he took her mouth like an invading barbarian and the world around her dissolved in a rush of heat.
Already he tasted familiar, rich and dark, with a faint, intoxicating bitterness, like coffee and unsweetened cocoa. His flavor seeped into her until she began to crave it like a drug. Instead of pushing him away—she knew, oh but she knew she could push him away—she found herself raising her arms and twining them around his neck, pressing him closer until he settled over her like a blanket, heavier and warmer and so much more satisfying than her down-filled duvet.
His weight pressed her into the mattress, and she felt him brace his arms on either side of her, caging her within his embrace. Instead of making her feel trapped, it made her feel safe and protected, and she knew she was an idiot for thinking it. She was an idiot for allowing this kiss, for craving it, for aching to feel his body moving over her, around her, inside her, because if she surrendered to him, there would be no going back. Allowing the Guardian to claim her meant giving herself to him forever.
How could she do it? Already, thorny tendrils of obligation and loyalty and human decency had twined around her to bind her to the Guardians and the Guild and the whole messy defense against the machinations of the Order. Bad enough that she had to work with the organization she’d resented for so long in order to put a stop to the nocturnis’ plans for her city, but to tie herself permanently to the very reason for that organization’s existence seemed to her to qualify as a special form of insanity.
But then again, how could she not do this? Never in her life had Wynn felt anything like the electricity that sparked between her and Knox. If she could bottle it, she swore she could put ComEd out of business. Nothing in the world had ever felt so perfect, so right, and so damned exciting. This Guardian had lit a need inside of her that was fast taking her over. She craved him like air and water. If she pushed him away, how could she know if she would ever find this again?
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