Page 22 of My Guardian Gryphon

Chapter 9

GRETCHEN

Liquid head coursed through my body, originating from where Alek’s tongue danced with mine all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes. Excitement. Hunger. Contentment. Everything. All the emotions piled into my heart at the same time.

I tangled my fingers in his hair and held on with what little control I had left. It was a dream, had to be, but I wanted it to last as long as humanly possible.

Alek wouldn’t be kissing me in reality. He didn’t even look at me like he knew I was a full-grown, twenty-seven-year-old woman, but this—this kiss was the stuff of my dreams, my fantasies. All I’d imagined paled in comparison to this one experience. This was what it would be like to really be kissed by Alek, held by him, to hold him. I’d cling to this for as long as the illusion would last.

He tasted exactly as I’d thought—a hint of the hazelnut coffee he drank every day and raw hungry male. By the gods, he was better than the special wine the Blackmoor’s pulled out for holiday meals.

“Why can’t you be real?” I asked, my words garbled through our entwined mouths.

Alek pulled me tighter, and my breasts pressed against his chest, nipples coming to needy points through the thin fabric of my dress. The material, usually soft against my skin, scraped and tugged with each movement. I wanted to feel his skin against mine. His heat.

I slipped my hand beneath the hem of his t-shirt and moaned again. Muscles rippled beneath my fingertips. He was perfection. Hard. Sleek. Hungry for me.

And then my illusion shattered. My dream pulled his mouth from mine, grabbed my hand from where it explored the enticing lines leading my hand to explore lower and lower on his stomach, and stared me straight in the eye.

“I am real. You are awake.”

I blinked, tugging my hand, but he didn’t release it. His other arm, still wrapped halfway around my body, hadn’t loosened, either. I was nearly straddling him. One knee rested on the floor, the inside of that thigh grazing the outside of his. Then somewhere on the way off the love seat my other knee had nestled itself between his legs. The top of that thigh pressed into his very distinct, very aroused manhood.

Oh gods. Heat raced across my skin, up my neck, across my face. What had I done? I’d mauled him, thinking I was merely dreaming. Almost a week had passed with no word. I didn’t dare ask anyone about him after Diana had delivered that first message, but there’d been no mission, no attack that had put us into hiding this week.

I wanted to scream and yell and ask why he’d just abandoned me without a word, but at the same time, I wanted to grab his face with my hands and just keep kissing him. I wanted to straddle him for real. I wanted to feel all that energy coursing between us explode into more. Instead, tears came.

Tears poured down my cheeks. The astronomical emotional loss of what was about to happen slammed into my soul. He’d finally returned to the library, and I’d ruined our friendship. He’d never come around again after this. He was Rose’s soldier. I could see it in his gaze. Fierce, but apologetic. This wasn’t going to go the way I’d fantasized.

“Gretchen, please.” He lifted me from his lap and gently placed me on the cushions of the loveseat. “Don’t cry.”

“You’re leaving me for good this time,” I said, my voice barely more than a hoarse whisper. “Why did you come back at all?”

A heavy sigh slipped from between his perfect lips. Soft and kind and glorious lips that had returned my affections only moments ago.

“I hated the way I left things. I had to explain.”

Explain? Pain lanced through my side, like he’d driven a sword through my gut. “I love you, Alek Melos.” There, it was out now. I’d cut out my heart and offered it right up. Maybe I just wanted to hurt him like he was about to hurt me. At least my words might make him feel guilt. He’d kissed me back, held me tight, and wanted me with all the fierceness he was now using to pull away.

But he was a man, and men took what they could get—or so I’d been told, but I expected more from Alek. I knew that’s not what he’d been thinking when he returned my kiss.

He was a giant of a man, but straightforward. He’d never lied to me before or disappeared without sending word. He’d been there for me for so many years. More tears fell. I tried to imagine what my life would be like from here on out without him. How would I continue in my caged existence without his bright light in my dark corner of the world? I didn’t fit in the House of Lamidae. The life they all lived so happily choked me a little more each day.

“I didn’t realize—” His eyes drifted to the walnut floorboards.

“What? That you were more to me than just a friend who reads stories and discusses history?”

“I didn’t realize I’d fallen in love with you, Gretchen. Not until I avoided you this week.”

Avoided me? Purposefully…wait? “You love me?” I wiped the burning tears from my cheeks and sniffed. Hope blossomed in my chest, unfurling like the roses in the courtyard garden. Maybe my fantasy wasn’t about to sink to the bottom of the ocean and collect barnacles like the Titanic.

“I do, but this…this can’t be, Gretchen.” He inhaled a deep breath. “We can’t be together. It would never work. Rose would sooner cast me out of Sanctuary than allow this.” He gestured to each of us in turn. “We are impossible.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my short life, Alek, it’s that nothing surrounding the supernatural is impossible. You’re a Gryphon, a mythical being that shouldn’t exist on Earth, but you do. I’m a woman who can see the future, our future. I shouldn’t be able to do that, but I can. Impossible is normal in our lives, or hadn’t you figured that out yet?”

“I swore an oath to protect the House of Lamidae from all who would seek to take you from your destiny.” His voice broke halfway through, and he dropped his bright gaze to the floor. “I will not be the reason all our efforts fail. If all the Protectors had been found, if the prophecy was fulfilled, perhaps then—”

“Perhaps by then another thousand years will have passed and I’ll be dead and gone.” My tone was bitter, anger seeping into each word. He wanted me. He was in love with me. But Rose’s damned crusade was more important than us having a chance for one lifetime of happiness. “Who’s to say the prophecy can’t be fulfilled with one less Sister? We’ve lived and died for millennia, and the prophecy has yet to be fulfilled. Never ending. Always hanging over us like a shroud.”

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