by Harley James
“Can I give you a disease or get you pregnant?” His voice sounded hoarse in the stillness of the room.
She nodded.
Alright then. Facts he could talk about for days. “Guardians never get sick, therefore we cannot transmit disease. As to progeny, there have only been myths of Guardians impregnating humans.”
She remained silent for some time. He wasn’t sure whether it was because she was glad or not. How ridiculous. Of course she’d be glad he couldn’t give her an STD or get her with child.
Her hand resumed stroking his chest. “Can you ever die?”
“Yes, but not easily. Provided my body has enough resources while it’s healing, it can infinitely regenerate. As you can probably imagine, it allows one to fight rather dirty.”
“Why doesn’t your death scar ever heal? To remind you of your self-sacrifice?”
He inhaled deeply. She was sidling close to some heavy truths. “In a sense, yes. But it also reminds us of the scars we’ve left on the souls of others.”
Her hand stilled. “I see. Does it ever go away?”
Here it was then. Another peeling away of the veil.
He stared up at the trayed ceiling above his bed and laid his hand over hers. “The scar can only be healed by a soul mate.”
She eased her hand out from under his and sat up to frown at the scar on his chest. “Clearly, I’m not The One.”
“We cannot know for certain yet,” he replied, quietly.
“Yet?”
He was almost afraid to answer because what if she wasn’t The One?
But not saying something didn’t make it any less true.
Put her first. Earn her trust. Deserve her affection. To achieve those ideals, he needed to give her the truth. No matter what.
It was a burden and a relief.
“A Guardian’s death scar disappears when he makes love to his soul mate.”
Chapter 25
Sex was the litmus test.
She wanted to laugh it was so absurd. Sure, sex and intimacy often went hand in hand. But talk about pressure.
Sydney tried to ease out of bed without looking like she was running from the situation. She turned away from the beautiful man in bed and started slipping back into her clothes.
You’re totally running.
Spencer had been all kinds of selfless, honest, and protective—both in and out of bed. But this new piece of information was definitely a burden. It was too inflexible. There shouldn’t be absolutes like that.
It presupposed people could only have one true love in their lifetime.
While she believed that’s how it worked for some—her mom and dad, for example—she didn’t believe it was true for the vast majority of people. That would be tragic. No higher power would limit love like that. Right?
So why were Guardians held to such rigid standards? Was it another punishment? It just didn’t jive with the idea of a loving God.
All her questions only inspired more questions.
How would she ever get out of her head enough to have sex with him now? There was a frickin’ test that would definitively tell whether or not she was bound to this quasi-immortal man.
What if she was?
What if she couldn’t bear it if she wasn’t?
She shook her head, zipping up her jeans, too much the coward to look at him. She heard the sheets rustle and wanted so badly to climb back into that warm bed with him and forget that the world was under siege by demons, her family was in protective custody, and Tiana was still out there, somewhere.
“Sydney.”
Her eyes closed as his warm, deep tenor flowed over her. She exhaled shakily and turned around. The raw masculinity of him made her breath catch. He stood in the middle of the room, trousers zipped but not fastened, a fresh white dress shirt clutched in his left hand, seemingly transfixed by her stare.
She couldn’t help herself. She’d held on to those broad shoulders and dug her fingernails into his warm skin as she’d selfishly sought and found her release. “I…”
He waited without seeming to breathe.
You pressed for the truth, and he gave it to you. Give him something back.
“I should really thank Nate and Jessie again for taking my family to Minnesota where they can be safe until Baal is…gone.”
Coward!
Spencer still didn’t move. Her heart beat like a rabbit that had been tossed into a lion’s den.
“What can I do to help manage your fear about…all of this?” he asked.
“Nothing. Really. It’s just…still taking it all in, I guess.” And even though I can’t possibly know you—he was four hundred years old, holy shit—I feel like I do. How could that be?
He cocked his head, his eyes like lasers cutting through darkness. Through bullshit. “You could have gone with your family, you know.” His words hung between them. They were more of a question, really. He was asking, why didn’t you go?
I don’t know!
But she did.
Stop running.
God, his eyes. She wrapped her hands around her elbows and hugged herself. “I’ll tell you why I stayed if you tell me why sometimes there’s an ocean of pain in your eyes.”
Chapter 26
Sydney tore her gaze from Spencer’s naked chest, choosing to stare at the black, silver, and purple strokes of the abstract painting above his bed. She’d stayed behind in California even though Raj, Nate, Jessie, and both her parents had all but browbeat her into accompanying the Ashbys to Minneapolis.
She wouldn’t leave Torque or Tiana behind. At least, that was her excuse last night.
In the bright light of today, however, she was forced to admit that there was another reason she didn’t want to leave San Francisco.
A tall, devastatingly handsome Brit, of course.
No other non-family member had ever gone out of their way—much less put himself in mortal danger—for her the way he had. It was comforting. Way beyond that, though, his sacrifice for her family meant she owed him something.
And according to what she’d overheard earlier, she helped him on some metaphysical level, too. So, the sooner Spencer could send the devils back to Hell, the sooner she and her family could get their lives back to normal.
This was all easy to rationalize when she wasn’t looking at her dapper Guardian. But when he stepped in front of her, his skin flawless with the exception of the circular scar, she lost all resolve to keep things impersonal. He died and came back to life.
He’d nearly died helping her family.
And she still hardly knew anything about him. “What are you? Post human? Meta human? Alien?”
Spencer shrugged elegantly. “Does it matter? I am no longer one of you.” His tone made it more of a condescension to himself rather than an insult to humanity.
“Tell me about your life, your childhood. What was it like living in sixteenth century English aristocracy?”
His eyes narrowed as though deciding whether to indulge her questions. “It was lavish and unproductive and scandalous. My parents were…eccentric in their sexual appetites.”
He turned away and went to the mini bar where he poured amber-colored liquor into two crystal, double old-fashioned glasses. “My father sired dozens of bastards, but my mother never cared since she had a stable of young bucks at her service—most of them approved by my father. For fun, they kidnapped young, blue collar men, kept them blindfolded and paid them for sex. Afterwards, the men were dropped off—no harm, no foul—several coins richer.”
She accepted the glass he handed her without looking at it. “Are you kidding me?” Sounded like the plotline to a TV drama. “And you knew about this?”
He leveled a self-mocking stare at her. “I tried to stay away from Lord Henry and Lady Jane Parr as much as possible. I became engrossed in my studies at Eton, but when the Headmaster praised my intellect in a letter to my father, the Marquess decided my schooling was making me too effeminate and made me return to our seat
in Northamptonshire. Ultimately, I became as worthless and spoiled as my sisters. My family put on a happy face at our social soirees, but privately they mocked me, saying I had been castrated by my professors. The more I acted out—the more reckless and destructive I became—the more my father praised me.”
Spencer drained his glass and donned his white dress shirt with clipped, angry movements. The temperature in the room had risen by at least fifteen degrees. His parents’ last name—Parr—didn’t match his own, but that conversation could come later. If there was a later. “Your poor choices weren’t motivated from an innately bad character, Spencer. Your environment played a part.”
A muscle ticked in his cheek. “My environment made it easy for my innately bad character to shine through. Plenty of humans throughout history have found themselves in situations where it was easier to indulge their dark nature, but they took the more difficult path to do the right thing. I always had a choice. And I always made the wrong ones. I had a roomful of clothes I only wore once, while our house servants wore their clothes until they were threadbare. Then they mended them. I wasted food and drink with no thought of when or how the people in the servant quarters would fill their own bellies. I whored, cheated, stole, and lied with impunity, and I got away with all of it because no one dared to defy a Marquess’ son. There, are you satisfied now?”
Oh, he was hurting. She grabbed his arm as he strode toward the door. “Spencer, wait.” Even after nearly four and a half centuries, his wounds hadn’t healed. “I understand that your air of superiority is so people don’t think you’re weak. It’s how your father made you feel by belittling your studies. You loved your education, yet he took it away and made you feel powerless.”
“And then I killed him.” Emptiness stood in the shadows of defiance in his eyes.
“He was raping the woman you loved!”
His face flooded with color, his brows forbidding. “Didn’t you hear me? I murdered my own father!”
“You wouldn’t have done that unless you felt you had no other choice.” His hand went to the doorknob, but she pressed her back against the door. “Tell me you had no other choice!”
“You are a fool, but I am even more so for thinking I could ever have...”
She hung on those last few words, but when he spoke next it was only to ask her to move from the door, or he’d move her himself.
“Your father was a serial rapist. You all but said so yourself. And with his status in the peerage, he was practically untouchable. What else would have stopped him?” Her heart throbbed so hard she felt faint. Was she actually justifying murder?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, Sydney.
Still, she wanted so badly to vindicate him. To ease his guilt and suffering.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her aside so fast she stumbled. Oh, hell no. She recovered, barreling up behind him to wrap her arms around his waist in a reverse bear hug before he even made it out the door.
The force of her momentum made him lose footing, and they both went weightless for a suspended moment before his Guardian reflexes rallied. His fingertips touched down, feet regaining their balance.
“Bloody Christ on the Cross, woman!” He untangled her arms from his waist, keeping her wrists in a vise grip until he leaned down and shoved his shoulder in her belly, forcing all the air from her lungs. She gasped, instantly dizzy as he hoisted her in the air and unceremoniously slapped her ass.
Hard.
“Ow! Put me down!”
“Shut your gob, vixen. Regrettably, you’ve already caused quite a scandal.”
What? She used her hand on the top swell of his butt to lever up and look down the hallway behind them. Several smirking clubgoers winked and waved. Good grief.
Everything about this man made her act stupid.
He returned to the warm haven of his bedroom and slammed the door, speaking gibberish and waving his hand over the door handle. Her pulse kicked up another notch. “You can put me down n—”
He spanked her again and tossed her on his bed so hard she bounced. She didn’t even have time to catch her breath before he was on her. Full frontal contact. Hands pinning her own beside her ears, pressing them into the pillow. His blue eyes burned down into hers, his heart pounding a furious rhythm against her breast.
She forced her limbs to soften, to accept his weight instead of resisting.
Accept. Submit.
Yield.
She saw the change in his eyes immediately. His body shuddered slightly when he exhaled. But he didn’t move away. She held his gaze—intimate, stripped down, scary in a way he hadn’t been when he was so angry—and gave it all right back to him.
She waited.
Waited.
The sounds of his security team rounding up the interlopers from his private hallway. Waited. A police siren wailing as it sped down the road outside. Waited. The sound of her shallow breath sliding from between her lips. The heat and press of his body. Foreign. Familiar. Welcome.
The waiting its own kind of knowing.
Then.
“You want all the sordid details? Well, you shall surely have them. When I was eighteen, I fancied myself in love with the butler’s lovely daughter, Margaret. When my father found out, he gave me a lecture on the many ways the peerage should avail themselves of the lower class. One day, I walked in on one of those lessons. He had Margaret bent over his desk. Her ass was purple and covered in welts and my father’s semen. One would expect a young woman so vilely used to be crying, however, she was not. Her features were…utterly blank, the look in her eyes so empty I felt her shock ricochet through me, only to be replaced by abject rage.” His eyes above her went faraway. “I can still feel the dark fullness of the anger. I went to the fireplace. Grasped the iron poker. And attacked. I smashed his skull. Over and over. So much blood. Margaret, her father, and the rest of the servants covered it up because Lord Henry had elevated demeaning the staff to an art form.”
Don’t. Cry. He would only withdraw.
“He was a monster,” she whispered.
“My violence was no less than his.”
“Yet you were given a second chance. Someone saw that you were capable of redemption. I see how you treat people now. How you treat me and my family.” She slipped one of her hands from his grasp and laid her palm against his cheek.
He closed his eyes. “Don’t.”
Her throat ached, but the words couldn’t be contained any longer. “What if I’m your soul mate?”
His eyes snapped open, his voice hoarse. “You can’t be.”
The pain of rejection flared hot, but quickly spent itself as she saw the longing in his eyes. “You think you don’t deserve it,” she breathed.
“I know I don’t deserve it.”
“You keep others at a distance because, like what happened at Eton and to Margaret, you’re afraid something or someone will be taken away from you again.”
He shook his head, but the vulnerability in his eyes told her she was right.
She wriggled her other wrist free to run her fingers through his hair. “Don’t push me away because I’m getting close to the heart of it.”
The silence crackled between them. His chest muscles tensed. She’d know if they were soul mates if she made love to him. By the dark, hungry look in his eyes, he was thinking it, too.
His right hand began a slow trek to her hip. She inhaled, then struggled to let the air out. “Does amplio only make you stronger?”
“It’s more than just strength. You amplify all my senses and bolster my mental acuity...and my appetites.” His thumb ran underneath the waistband of her jeans. “You basically make me a super-Guardian.”
A Guardian on steroids. That was good news in the war between light and darkness, she supposed.
Spencer leaned in to sniff her neck, nudging her legs apart. Both her hands found their way to his backside. It contracted, and her whole body tensed.
“Don’t go looking for trouble,
you’re sure to find it,” he murmured.
If this was trouble, lock her up and throw away the key.
Still need answers.
But it was so hard to think with his lips against her neck.
She reached between them and teased her fingers along his trouser-clad erection. He groaned and licked the column of her neck until she shivered. “You think you don’t deserve happiness.”
“I’m not thinking at all at the moment, goddess.”
His accent got thicker the more aroused he was. It was unbelievably sexy. “You deserve to be happy.”
“I know how you can make me very happy.”
She pushed him back with a breathless smile. “Maybe I will, but first I need to know everything about soul mates.”
“I believe you’ve asked more questions than the sum total I’ve been asked my entire life. You might be the one to end me after all.” He sighed and pushed back to his haunches on the mattress, running his hands through his hair.
Butterflies launched in her belly. He’s going to tell me.
She sat up and crisscrossed her legs, willing her pulse to settle. “Nate and Jessie are soul mates. Jessie also told me that your other partner, Katherine, has hers as well. So you must believe it’s possible.”
“I’ve committed much worse sins than Nathaniel and Katherine, so no, I don’t think it’s likely I will be given such a gift.”
Sydney didn’t know what either of the other Guardians had done, and maybe she didn’t want to know. “You keep your word and are on the right side of the fight. I’d give you a soul mate if it were up to me.”
He walked away from her to sprawl on the loveseat. His trousers demonstrated that he could be irritated and aroused simultaneously. “You would do well to remember that I slay demons and protect humanity first and foremost to save myself from the pits of Hell. Not because I am a good man.”
She punched a fist into the bedcovers. “Why do you try so hard to make me see you in the worst possible light?”
“Because any other picture would be a lie, and lies expend so much energy. I have no time to remember fabrications. If someone doesn’t like the truth, quite frankly my dear Sydney, I don’t give a damn.”
