“I’d like to see someone your size get intimate in a Ferrari.” Then she brightened. “Can we fly there? Using your wings?”
“No.” He gave her an amused look. “I don’t reveal my wings to humans. They react badly.”
“Oh, all right, then. I suppose we could take the fabulous sports car. Though that seems kind of boring.”
His eyes warmed. “Let me see if I can impress you with some other means of transportation, then.”
She lifted a shoulder, turned away. This time he let her go, and she took a deep breath as she moved into the hallway, headed for the staircase. Time to face the reality of her day. Reality, period. But she found herself pausing on the steps, looking back at him. He was leaning in the dining room entranceway, watching her, thoughtfully chewing on a strip of bacon. Shirtless, in jeans and bare feet, hair tousled. Her libido didn’t have a prayer.
She shoved it down with a ramrod. “A horse and carriage probably wouldn’t have worked out, anyway,” she said casually. “Horses get too nervous around those with demon blood. Which is a shame. I’ve always wanted to try riding a horse.”
“I expect the broom does get a little uncomfortable. Though you have some nice padding on your ass to protect you.”
“You—”
He was gone, retreating back to the kitchen before she could inflict boils on him. Or oozing sores. Instead, he left her standing on the stairs with a smile struggling on her face. But the laughter didn’t dispel the worry in her heart. He kept her spinning, unable to find a sure footing. She’d never been in that position with a man, and it was unsettling, exhilarating…terrifying. She kept telling herself he was a roller coaster, one that would come back full circle, leaving her with some pleasant memories. But these feelings, this intensity, this fast? It was also possible she might get launched off an unfinished track, leaving her tumbling through empty space, with the promise of only a hard crash and pain.
What she needed was a safety net. But with every touch, every kiss, he kept taking it away.
11
BEING MONDAY, SHE WAS ABLE TO HEAD TO BED CLOSE to two thirty A.M., an early night. The evening lineup had been regulars for her staff, and she’d played hostess in the parlor as she usually did. She never saw Mikhael, though she thought she felt his regard once or twice as she flirted and reassured, making sure tonight’s all-male guest list had their needs met. She supposed he was checking the perimeter, keeping an eye on Isaac, or doing whatever Dark Guardians did. Watching the latest Real Housewives of Orange County, for all she knew.
As she shed her clothes, she noticed his shirt still hanging on her dresser where she’d left it. After a pause and a frisson of amusement with herself, she put it on over bare skin. She liked the way it felt, brushing against her that way. Cathair was gone, probably in the boys’ rooms, because they fed him Cheetos while they rehashed their evening and fell asleep in front of the TV. She’d find the dust on his feathers in the morning, or shaken on her curtains when he preened, despite her scolding.
Males. Incorrigible, the whole lot of them.
Curling into her quilts, she shut her eyes. Even without her special chamomile mix that Gina kindly left steaming by her bedside, she was asleep in five minutes.
She knew better than to go to sleep without drinking it, but it had been a good evening. No reason to worry about monsters from the past, but that was when they struck, right?
The dream started out wonderfully enough. Mikhael was there, his magnificent body, his scent—probably filtering to her from his shirt—those intense eyes. He was in her bed, pushing her back into the quilts, his hands on her thighs. When he shifted his grip to her wrists, she saw a set of black manacles hanging above her. Manacles wet with her blood, from her struggles when she went mad from the confinement. They were suspended from the top of the narrow metal box in which Elceus hung her like meat when he wanted to prove a point. That he could do whatever the hell he wanted to do to her.
She was a witch. She didn’t let her dreams take control of her. “No,” she snarled, ripping her hands free. The agony was an echo of what it had been. “You’re gone. Dead. You can’t keep me trapped here anymore.”
She bolted out of the dream. The wind of her agitation swept through her room, dousing the candles, plunging her into full darkness. The French doors to the balcony slammed back, making her leap away from the bed, spinning into a corner to fight whatever came at her.
“Easy.”
A flame struck, and she whirled toward it, fists raised. Mikhael relit one of the candles with that brief spark, sat it back down in its holder. He’d been out on the property. She could smell the salt of the marsh on him, the night air, and there were some pale oleander petals on his shoulders, looking like tiny teardrops from the moon.
“You all right?” he asked quietly.
She nodded. Rubbed her forehead, then wrapped her arms around herself, taking comfort in that shirt, the one part of the dream that had stuck. He took a step toward her.
“I rescued myself,” she said. “I don’t need to be rescued.”
“Do I look like the first number on the damsel-in-distress speed dial?”
She saw a lot of things when she looked at him. “You stir things up,” she said. It wasn’t an accusation. Her mind was just as responsible for resurrecting the bastard in her dreams.
“I can calm them down, too.”
She raised her attention back to his face. No, he might not be the first on speed dial. But he’d been here when she woke from her nightmare, when he could have been a hundred other places. She’d never had anyone there when she woke from a nightmare. Crossing the space of her attic room, she walked into his arms. Goddess, he was warm. Strong.
“Do you ever have nightmares?” she asked against his heartbeat.
“Of course not. It’s unmanly to dream about harpies tying you down to eat your privates and skin you alive. Even more unmanly to wake up screaming like a little girl. So, no. Absolutely, no.”
Nestling her cheek against that broad chest, she continued to listen to the strong, rhythmic thump of his heart. He bent, lifted her in his arms and took her back to the bed, lying down with her. “Sleep,” he murmured. “No more nightmares getting past me.”
He didn’t ask her for details, didn’t make her talk. He probably knew the shape of every nightmare that anyone had ever had. He just held her.
ON THE RARE OCCASION SHE HAD NIGHTMARES, SHE usually didn’t sleep the rest of the night. This time, she didn’t remember much after two or three minutes in Mikhael’s arms. When she woke, sun was streaming in through the open French doors, and there was a note on the pillow next to her.
Our ride arrives at ten. Move that sexy ass or no ice cream for you. Wear something I’ll like.
Since he’d promised he’d provide the dampening spell that would keep her from causing four-car pileups in town, and he was a big, bad Dark Guardian, she was happy to test the strength of his spellwork—and his self-control. She donned a pair of snug jeans, low-heeled boots and a pale gold knit top with a rolled off-the-shoulder neckline. The top hugged her curves just like the jeans. The styles were sharp, tailored and classy, but maximized all of her assets so she was guaranteed to cause an erection at a hundred-yard distance. Unless Mikhael did his job, which meant only his cock would be affected. She looked forward to seeing that.
Putting emerald and gold studs in her double-pierced ears, she clipped her unruly hair back and donned bangle bracelets that gave her a touch of whimsy. Cathair landed on his perch and regarded her with bright eyes.
“Move your ass, wench,” he informed her.
“I’m going to turn his testicles into golf balls and use a five iron on them,” she promised herself, giving her familiar a gimlet eye. “You stop encouraging him.”
Cathair chirped. She came and stroked his head, bent to let him rub his beak along the corner of her mouth, a quick buss that always made her smile. “The perimeter’s reinforced, but stay here, keep an eye on things. Find me if there’s trouble.”
“Always trouble. Trouble, trouble, trouble. Headed toward trouble.”
“With a smile on my face.” She flicked a scarf at him as he ruffled his feathers and imitated a sneeze.
When she reached the main floor, she didn’t expect to see her staff awake and at the windows. Most were still wearing their pajamas, which suggested one had come down to pilfer a snack and discovered something that sent them all tumbling down here like excited puppies. Even the usually indifferent Matilda was pushed in between Saul and Ana. Luke gave the cook a wide and wary berth.
Glancing over his shoulder, Li gave a low wolf whistle, bringing the others around as well. “Pulling out the whole arsenal, aren’t you?”
She tossed her hair with exaggerated sex appeal. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gina giggled. “He’s pulled out his arsenal as well. It’s a horse, but not a horse, Raina. There’s magic around it. Fae magic.”
Raina knew her own eyes widened a little bit at that, but she reached for the doorknob. She would not be caught goggling out the window.
Saul gave her a wink. “Remember, you’re not impressed at all. Make him work for it.”