Page 47 of My Guardian Gryphon

I scurried to the bathroom to fulfill my body’s needs and then returned to the bedroom. He hadn’t moved, but my stomach was cramping. The last meal I’d eaten had been breakfast the morning before. So much had happened yesterday…food just hadn’t been important.

His eyes opened, brown with flecks of honey-gold. Our gazes met, and then his drifted down to my chest. I was naked and should’ve felt shy, but I wasn’t. I wanted him to see me. I loved the hunger I’d seen last night.

He rose from the bed and walked to where I stood in the doorway, concern or surprise etched into his expression. I couldn’t decide which because his naked and fully aroused body was making me forget how hungry I was.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, trying not to stare at his…cock.

“The white marks on your collarbone, I don’t remember seeing these last night.” He traced his finger across my chest, and I gasped. My skin heated under his touch in certain places, and I felt a rush of something I’d never felt before. A cloud of warm energy encircled me, spinning and twirling around my legs and arms and entire body.

“What marks?” I tried to gather my wits and look down to where his fingertips touched my skin. A pattern of glyphs crisscrossed my collarbone like a necklace had been painted on—but each mark glowed as he traced it, like a lamp had been lit beneath my skin, but only when he touched the marks. Once his fingertips passed by, it faded back to white.

I looked up, my gaze stopping at his biceps where the same glyph pattern was etched in a ring around both of his upper arms. “You have them, too.” I reached out, touching the marks on one of his arms. They lit, just as mine had, under my touch then faded when I pulled my hand away.

He looked at his arm and brushed at the marks. Nothing happened when he touched them. Then he focused his gaze on me again. He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me away from him. “It’s draped around your shoulders like a necklace.”

“Do you know what they are?”

He turned me again so that we were facing each other. “I know that my parents had them. I remember seeing them on my father’s arms when he would bathe. My mother’s were usually covered, but I remember seeing glimpses when she would fall asleep on the couch and the shoulder of her dress would be crooked from turning in her sleep.”

“I am proud to wear your mark.”

“But I don’t know how—” His voice carried even more confusion now. “I don’t know what this means for us.”

I stretched to cup his face in my hand. “It means we belong together. Don’t worry about the rest. We will learn in time, just like you did with your Gryphon’s abilities.”

He grasped my hand and turned to kiss the palm. “I’m four thousand years old, and I still don’t understand everything about being a Gryphon. What if we never understand the link we’ve created? What if I do something to ruin it?”

I’d never seen him so unsure, so anxious. He was always calm and in control in the library. Like steel, strong and unyielding. This tense and worried Alek was a stranger to me, but the marks didn’t bother me, and I didn’t have a driving need to understand them at this very moment.

“Nothing is going to happen right now.” I kept my voice soft and steady, trying to ignore the small slice of pain that’s stabbed my heart at the mention of his age. We would never have that much time. Our relationship would feel like the short season of fall in Texas—so brief you had to be looking for it or you’d miss it.

He drew in a deep breath, and I could see him centering his mind— like he’d taken all the extra thoughts and concerns and filed them away and out of sight. “You’re right.”

“I think we will both feel better if we eat.” My stomach growled loudly, echoing its agreement to my statement. I pushed away my worries and smiled up at him.

A chuckle slipped from Alek, and one of his rare smiles brightened his face. “Very well.” He left my side briefly, walking to a dresser across the room, and returned with a large black t-shirt—very much like the one he wore almost every day, steady and predictable. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him wear anything other than a pair of jeans and a plain t-shirt. The color of the shirt varied a little, but they were mostly black.

He pulled the soft cotton over my head, and I smoothed it down my body, not surprised to find the hem at nearly mid-thigh. Alek was a large man, seven feet tall and broader in the shoulders than most doorways. His waist and muscles tapered into this beautiful V-line that made my insides quiver with a very different kind of hunger every time I looked at it. It made me wonder if he had the same reaction when he looked at my breasts…or lower.

“You should put on something, too,” I said, licking my lips and taking in the magnificent view below his waist.

A mischievous grin I didn’t recognize spread across his face. I’d seen the rare smile on his face—the amusement he usually hid—but this was something else. Something predatory and dangerous that made the skin on my body prickle with excitement.

“I don’t think you’re as hungry as you claim. On the bed, hands and knees.”

I sucked in a quick breath, surprised that those few words turned my knees to jelly. My legs were useless, like my brain had forgotten how to function. Instead, something deep inside my belly throbbed, coiling in anticipation.

He put a hand at the small of my back and guided me toward the torn-apart bed. The coverlet lay on the floor in a heap, and most of the sheets had been shoved to the side from our vigorous activities during the night.

I crawled onto the edge on my hands and knees, fully aware that his shirt wasn’t covering most of my bottom. One of his hands cupped my ass while he used the other to push the t-shirt well above my waistline, baring me fully.

“Absolutely gorgeous.”

The tip of his cock brushed my slick center, and a second later, he was all the way inside me. Air rushed from my lungs, and my stomach tightened. My well-used, still-sore muscles took a few seconds to relax into his slow strokes.

He slipped his hands from my hips around to my bobbing breasts inside the t-shirt. The nipples were already stiff, and he immediately rolled and teased them between his thumb and forefinger.

I dropped to my elbows with a moan of tortured bliss… His paced increased, and our bodies slapped together harder and harder. Pleasure swirled inside me, coiling and winding up like a snake getting ready to strike. My breath turned to pants, and my heart thumped hard in my chest like someone going at a wall with a hammer.

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