My Guardian Gryphon (Sanctuary, Texas Book 5) Page 8

  My heavy boots thumped across the polished marble floors. Grabbing the ornate railing of one side of the double staircase, I took the steps two at a time. The closer I got, the more powerful the pull.

  Gods, I missed her. Until I’d kept away for a week, I’d not realized just how much I’d already bonded to her. I didn’t know a lot about my Gryphon magick, Jared and I had both been teenagers when my father had shoved us through the open portal and said more of the family would follow behind us.

  We’d waited at the entrance for nearly a week before hunger had forced us to hunt. Even then we returned to the ring of stones every day for months. No adults ever came through.

  Jared and I weren’t the only ones waiting or the only ones grieving, but we’d been the only ones that stuck together. The rest of the random supernatural teenagers from the cities of Rekar and Resar—saved from slaughter—vanished to the four corners of the world. I never saw them again.

  I turned a corner, not surprised that the second-floor hallway was quiet. The Drakonae were all in the cafe, except Mikjáll. I hadn’t seen him and his Kitsune rescues lately. Riza and her baby were always at his side. Sochi, Riza’s sister, had remained a little more aloof from the town.

  The younger Kitsune was also pregnant and grieving through the separation from her first child, who still remained in Xerxes’ clutches. Rose was devising a plan to get the baby back, but so far we’d been unable to gather intelligence on where he’d moved his base of operations. Until a location was determined, there was nothing to be done. Our only salvation was in knowing that he needed the baby alive.

  I stopped for a moment to admire van Gogh’s The Starry Night. How those sneaky Blackmoor’s had gotten their hands on it before the Riots tore through New York was beyond me, but they had.

  It and many of its companions from the Modern Art Museum had found their way into a hall of this castle fortress. The stone floors were covered in Persian carpets, and the walls were draped in tapestries that looked like they’d been lifted from Camelot itself, and more paintings. They had so many paintings. It was like walking through a palace. So much history. So much wealth.

  We’d all accumulated much through the millennia, but the Drakonae had a special penchant for art and history.

  I pushed open one of the library’s French doors and slipped quietly inside. A soft heartbeat thudded in the back of the room, steady and familiar. My footsteps were silent on the carpets lining the floor. Reaching the end of the first row of shelves, I peered around the corner and spied Gretchen curled up on a love seat in one of the reading alcoves.

  Black lashes lay against her creamy white skin. A few strands of her silky black hair trailed across a cheek. I squatted on my heels beside her and used the tip of my finger to tuck it behind her ear. Then my gaze dropped to the gap at the top of her dress, where just enough cleavage showed to make my blood rise a few degrees. The dress she wore was thin and white, and how, by the gods, had I been so blind to her beauty? She’d spent hours almost every afternoon at my side.

  Her heartbeat sped up, and her breathing hitched. Blue eyes appeared, bright and wide and filled with surprise. I’d scared her. My face was barely a foot from hers, and I was staring at her like a lion ready to pounce.

  Instead, she pounced on me, wrapping her arms around my neck and pressing her velvety soft lips against mine. Shock paralyzed my body for a split second before instinct drew my arms around her torso, tugging her from the loveseat flush to my chest. My balance wavered, and I tipped from my heels, landing on my ass with a thud. Still our mouths explored each other’s.

  I dared to inhale as her fragrant scent twisted and spun around me, promising everything I’d ever desired—at least the illusion of it.

  Her fingers slipped from my neck up into my hair, and a moan laced with need and frustration and a hint of simmering anger rose to the surface.

  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.”

  Even as I spoke the words, dread filled my gut. I didn’t know exactly what made our visions come and go through the years, but I had an inkling from listening to the older Sisters talk that each and every one of us was very important.

  “No supernatural is allowed to be with a Sister. If our DNA was compatible, I would be no better than a Lamassu, trying to create a more powerful race. The visions are contained within the House of Lamidae for a reason.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t. Nothing ever felt right to me until I met you. And then you left me.”

  He rose from the floor, and all seven feet of his sadness and regret loomed depressingly over me like a thunderstorm about to pour. It couldn’t be that simple. There was more to life than the black-and-white destiny the Oracle, and Rose spouted day in and day out.

  There was more to life than searching for a way to have a baby and continue my line. If I never had a child, I could live with that. Right? The emotional pain of the thought tore through my heart, but if it meant I could be with Alek, I would bear the pain for as many years as Fate would gift us together. I knew I only had one lifetime, and I wanted to spend every waking moment of it in his arms. In his life.

  I looked up, meeting his gaze once more, halting his backward retreat. “What if it was allowed?”

  He shook his head, a mask of pain shadowed his face. “It is not.”

  “But what if it was?” I pleaded for a tiny sliver of hope, something I could cling to. Something that might bring him back to me again.

  “If it was allowed, Gretchen, I would take you in my arms again and never let you go. I would treasure you for as long as the Fates would allow. You would be mine.”

  The last word twisted the sword in my gut. It wasn’t fair. He was mine. I was his. We were supposed to be together. I’d seen it over and over and over.

  He took another step backward.

  “Alek, please.” My voice cracked through the plea. I’d never begged for anything my entire life. But I would beg for him. I would crawl on my hands and knees. I’d do anything if it meant a chance for us.

  He shook his head, slowly deciding our Fate for both of us. He wasn’t going to fight. He wasn’t going to beg or plead. I knew he wouldn’t. Alek was stoic and proud. He always did the right thing. Always followed the rules. Life was black-and-white for him. Why had I thought he’d change for me?

  But I’d hoped he would.

  Somehow, I had convinced myself that he’d drop everything he’d ever known, sweep me away from this stone prison and unwanted destiny, and save me.

  “It is against the rules, Gretchen.”

  “What rules, and who said specifically we couldn’t be together if we wanted to?”

  His eyes darkened, sending shadows to dampen my hope. “It is common knowledge that Rose does not allow supernaturals to be with the Sisters. Why do you think so much trouble is gone to…to bring in…?”

  He couldn’t say it, so I did it for him. “Studs?”

  “Gretchen.” His tone highlighted his extreme discomfort with the topic.

  “That’s what they are. We’re just cows. Here to breed and procreate and have visions that will fix something, but even we don’t really know how the prophecy will play out.” I stood, planting my hands on my hips, and sneered. “How about that for your black-and-white rules? The seers have never seen past a time when we were here. In this town. In this prison.”

  “This is far from a prison. You are well taken—”

  “We are stock, bred and birthed, and kept bowing to the almighty Rose’s every whim.” The anger in my voice turned venomous. Years of bottled-up frustration continued to pour out. “I’m nothing but a tool for her, and apparently, I’m nothing more than a distraction for you. We have a connection. I’ve felt it every day for the last fifteen years. Every time we’ve touched…I saw more.”

  He took a step forward and reached to touch my arm, but I jerked away and walked behind the loveseat. I didn’t want to touch him now. What if I’d ruined it? What if the vision changed, or was just gone?

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to have gone. “You were my future, my hope, but Rose’s big bad sheriff won’t—”

  He turned on his heel and walked out before I could finish. His shoulders slumped in defeat. Nothing. No words of anger. No argument. I didn’t set out to hurt him, but I had. My chest tightened, and my heart burned beneath my sternum. The giant Gryphon of Sanctuary had taken my pain and verbal lashes and left without a single solitary cry.

  “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.” The words echoed through the empty library. I knew he’d heard me. He could hear as well or better than any other supernatural I’d encountered. They could all hear a whisper through a wall of stone if they wanted. No privacy. Ever. “Alek.” I dropped my face into my hands, and tears poured again, burning trails of regret down my cheeks. “Please come back.”

  What had I done?

  How could I fix it?

  There had to be a way. I refused to believe that I was so integral to the world’s destiny that it would begrudge me actual love, a real life. Perhaps even a real family.

  Chapter 10

  ALEK

  By the gods, why had I let myself continue kissing her? Because she tasted like heaven and sunshine wrapped into the most decadent of desserts. Her lips had stolen my breath. I’d pulled Gretchen closer, taking her mouth like we’d been lovers for centuries.

  The scent of her arousal had been like an aphrodisiac, robbing me of my common sense. Her breasts, firm against my chest, had sent my mind into a place where I thought—just for a moment—that
a life with her might be possible. Only for a second had I wanted to roll her on the floor, strip her of that thin linen shift, taste her sweetness, and make her mine.

  Fuck.

  Right there on the floor of the library.

  Fuck.

  She deserved better than that. I was better than that. I wasn’t some teenage, hormone-driven lunatic who couldn’t keep his pants on.

  My body still vibrated with a desire that threatened my usually unwavering logic. My Gryphon struggled within me, desperate to get back to her. It didn’t make sense. She wasn’t my kind. She was a human, and a Sister. One of the women I’d sworn to protect from exactly what I was fantasizing of doing.

  I couldn’t bond with her the way my parents had bonded. I didn’t know how. The rituals and ceremonies I’d watched others perform were vague memories from a childhood long past, wisps of shadows that teased and tested my patience. I was a man—a beast—without a people. Without any knowledge of my race except what my hormonal, teenage mind had retained from all those thousands of years ago.

  I could shift. I could fight. I could scream a sound that made men tremble from miles away. Those were things I’d learned growing up with Jared, doing the best we could to survive in a strange world filled with people who would ostracize or kill us if they discovered our secrets.

  Still, I knew there was more to being a Gryphon. That I had deduced through trial and error. Magick wound itself around my heart like coils of ivy, and every so often I’d feel it surge within me, driving me to fly, something I’d only done a few times over the millennia. Nowhere on Earth was safe for a winged monster. I wasn’t as big as a dragon. One well-placed rifle shot could knock me from the sky.

  I stalked through the castle, away from her, away from her tears. It was better this way, easier for both of us. I refused to be the reason Rose’s precious prophecy was put on hold or, worse, destroyed. Even if I had moved past needing to get home, my friends had not.