Guardian (3 page)

Grace raised her hand and threw Coach into a trance.  My silent curse went unnoticed by most. Coach, who was really the winter court’s king in disguise to spy on Grace, would see again how her powers have increased. He felt the need to see for himself who and what was becoming of the anomaly, one of a kind, Grace that had yet to know anything about where she came from. Being from the summer court and opposition didn’t help my status in that room, so lately I’d avoided even going in there leaving Pike alone while I surveyed from outside.  And the dude wasn’t even a real coach.  Trivial details meant nothing, but at the time I was annoyed with the clock.  If Grace knew who she was really dealing with in that room, she’d use some of that power more often.  But then again, she didn’t know she was using any powers at all!

“Coach Stanton, can I use the restroom?” she asked him.  He was out of her trance now and angry, but hid it from her.  He hated that she could already do things and it caught him off guard.  It’s the only way she penetrated through him.  He could cause so much damage knowing what she’d just done.

“Well, yes Grace, but do hurry, class is just about to end.  Be quick!” he said just as the real coach would have making me sick.  The real Coach Stanton had a habit of replicating everything he said and therefore he had to mimic him.  He turned his face down to grade papers.  Only five minutes with Grace before the bell!  No,
five whole minutes
alone with Grace before the bell rings reality back at me.

The moron whistler from both of her early classes sounded off as she walked down the row and turned towards the door and
me
.  He was looking her over and fantasizing very inappropriately about what should be mine alone to think about.   

“What are you doing?  And how did you get out here?” Her kitten eyes tried to glare at me, but I knew she wasn’t really angry, only missing me.  My nerves kicked in high gear at the thought of not being able to touch her again. 

I sensed Kinsler close and darted my eyes in every direction for his entry. His father would always allow his escape.  When I turned back to her, her intended anger was gone and checking me out from top to bottom.  No holds barred.  She was noting what I had on.  Didn’t I wear the same thing all the time lately?  How could she be so fascinated each time?  As fascinated as I was picturing her the same?  I listened to her mind wheel around hearing myself described by how she saw me. How she thought I was so perfect was sad really.  I was far from it.  Her mouth dropped open, watching me and she closed her brilliantly green eyes and silently asked me why I was doing this to her, well whatever it was she thought I was doing.  Her heart sped up.

When she opened them, I realized simultaneously that Kinsler was closer and I hid around the corner in an alcove near the classroom.  I slid my smile open knowing she’d follow.   

“You wanted to be saved, right!” I said quietly hoping to avoid Kinsler altogether.  I grabbed her slender arm and pulled her too close ramming her up against me.  For a brief second the world was gone and only the two of us existed.  When her breath hitched at our closeness, I almost gave in then. Her body went rigid and then the tiny shivers that always ran up and down her when I touched her affected more than they ever had.  I needed her close, but I needed her far away at the second before I... 

She stared at my chin.  Lips.  Hell, if she looked me in the eye...

I felt the desire run through me and closed my eyes quick enough in hopes to taper it down a notch.  She could feel it somehow and that scared the hell out me and excited me all at once.  I ran my hand through my hair to keep it busy and not where it wanted to go. 

Then, she squeezed her eyes shut.  No!  I wanted those eyes on me.  I was torturing myself, and her.  She couldn’t handle this and wasn’t ready to have answers yet.  I had to move away from her.  Let her go for now.

I swallowed my thoughts and choked out, “Sorry! I didn’t mean to—

She grabbed her head in pain. 
It’s him, he’s near.
  She’d said that to herself.  I looked around left and right.  Did she mean that she knew Kinsler was near?

I went still and pulled her closer still which was the opposite of what I’d just told myself I needed to do.  I could feel more of her than I’d even known or imagined in where sometimes my unabashed mind would wonder too.  Wedged against the corner, her mouth was beside my cheek doing wondrous things to my libido that didn’t need to be given images.  She curled her lips in to keep from touching my face.

“WHERE did they go?” a voice boomed from the hallway.  Kinsler was searching for both of us.  He knew we were together.  I slapped the glamour across us and just prayed.  He yelled to Switch to split up and find us.

Grace was trying to rationalize why and how they knew to look for us.  She was so far off from the truth.  Soon she would know!

“How did you know you were saving me?  And are you saving me from that horrid class or
him
?” she murmured into my ear.  I didn’t mean for it to, but her lips touched my skin just slightly and my body reacted. 

She just stared at me.  And I just stared back.  I didn’t want to move yet and have it over.   She didn’t even seem to know her body was touching me in several places that felt like fire and death to ignore.  I couldn’t help thinking that if I lost all control and both of us were somehow ended right then...I knew just what I’d do next.

I smiled over her shoulder faking a look out trying to change the mood. 

“Grace,” I swallowed a baseball and whispered in her ear, “Are you okay?”  I’d stepped on her toes just then and hurt her, but I wanted a double meaning to slap her like a ton of bricks and force her to read into my every move with needed distractions.  I couldn’t say anything right out, but I couldn’t help but get that little bit of excitement instilled in her that made my own blood boil.  Anticipation was half the foreplay.

She nodded saying nothing, eyes down. 

“Guess he’s gone,” I looked around the corner again.   “Are you okay,” I repeated. 

Man, she could always catch the predetermined run-ins Kinsler forced on her.   It’s a wonder she’d never caught him before in his true form without the glamour to disguise himself as human.  I sweated the thought. 

She seemed to force herself away from me. “The bell is about to ring.  You need to go.” 

She held her breath too long and hid her thoughts better than I would have liked.

“Your lips are turning blue, princess.” I was being sarcastic but it was my only release. 

“Why are you not in class?” She demanded again taking a deep breath and letting it out across my face.  I stilled taking in the scent of her.  I blinked my eyes willing the control to stay in friend form for a little longer.  I held up a pink slip that got me out of class and shoved it back in my jeans.  She would never want to know that when she’s not looking what evils I have to fight off to keep her alive or even still, enslaved. 

“Umm, I didn’t feel good,” I said.  She didn’t believe me, but she never did.  Smart girl.  Sexy!  Amazing!  Beautiful!

“Who was Kin looking for?” she asked with a hope in her voice that I’d have the answers and would tell her.

“Mmm!”  I’d heard what she said, but I wanted to stall while I thought up a better answer than the truth.  I changed my mind.  “You, I guess!” leading with the obvious.  I loved her shocked expression followed by a string of sounds that all made her mouth form the letter O.

“What?” She didn’t like my flippant attitude.  I rolled my eyes to get yet another rise out of her.  “Oh, I don’t know, Grace, I heard him coming. I didn’t think you’d want to run into him.” I knew very well what Kinsler was doing and would continue to not burden her with worries that either would soon be revealed or not matter at all. 

I loved when she stared too long.  She watched my mouth a lot today.  That didn’t help what it did to me necessarily, but it did reassure me.  She took a turn rolling her brilliant green eyes as I watched her.  I was making her blush.  I warmed at the thrill of saying nothing to her and seeing her cheeks redden to a nice shade of pink and then darken because of things I do to her.  It made my fingers itch to touch her cheek and feel their warmth.

She coyly batted her eyes uncharacteristically at me and headed back to class without a goodbye.  I watched her stop and look up at the poster she’d finished for her conservation group she’d gathered this year feeding her passion for the earth.  I readily disappeared before she could see my smile of contentment.  When she turned to find me gone, her disappointment sent thrills up my spine.  I could wait a few more days and then my control would unleash. 

Mr. Stanton dismissed the class.  I heard him announce the rules as Grace bent down to pick up her things.  Her hand went to her necklace and stroked like I made her to do.  Kinsler moved beside her once again trying to persuade her to follow him into hell.  She begged for the person behind her not to be him.

  She peeked up and found me hovering above her face just minutes since I saw her last. After sighing in relief she rose up higher, her fingers pinching the skin around her neck holding on.  If it were up to me, I’d never leave her, but protecting her was never easy.

“What are you doing?” I asked watching her look me over again for the second time today.  Her point was well made.  Either my forwardness affected her more or she was getting bold herself.

Kinsler’s unfiltered nasty mind whispered behind her things she’d never hear.  I had to be on my guard so often now.

“Checking on you!” I said as calm as I could make myself and not alarm her to the danger surrounding her.  I smiled the kind of smile that always befuddled her mind knowing her intelligence was insulted by my obvious attempt at hiding something from her.  She kept thinking it was impossible that I seemed to be everywhere today. If she only knew.

Both of our next classes were in rooms next to each other.  I waved to her trying to tone down the overly done attention as I passed her into my own classroom.  It was the only class we had separate.  She wanted me to back off.  Not because she didn’t want me near, but because she wanted just the opposite.  She didn’t want to be hurt. The excitement ran through me as the class zipped by with only thoughts of Grace and the possibilities of the future.  I’d done this over and over twenty times every day this week to keep the smile on my face and avoid the imminent danger Grace would be in for three more days.    Forbidden for so long.
Not
long now.

I heard Grace say something to Caylie in the hall about me and missed it.  Caylie told her, “Grace, you’re gonna have to stop the staring.”

“Am I that obvious?”  Grace said back to her.  I couldn’t see her facial reactions when I wasn’t near her and that just almost bit at me enough I thought about glamming my way out of this room and going to where she was.  I regretfully remained still and listened.  She sighed loud and her friend continued.

“Yeah, girl.  At least lately!  Can anyone say Ian druggie?  Addicted to Ian?”

I smiled at her best friend’s assessment.

“But he won’t leave me alone.  He’s just there, all the time.  It’s not like I’m pulling his arm.  He’s pulling mine.”

“Still!” Caylie stomped her foot enough making it stand out in her thoughts.
              “
Still
?  He’s the one constantly there,” Grace strained her voice to get Caylie to shut up I suspected.

“I’m just saying.  If he is suddenly now wanting more than friends, he makes the move.  Until then, back off.  Friendship is more important and you don’t want that messed up.”

Grace was growling internally.  That’s my girl.

“Like I said, let him do the pulling.”

Grace thought of a campfire deviating away from one thought to the next too easily.  Her thoughts turned to...Pike.  Her mind pictured him the way she saw him making me curl my fists.  Her heart pounded feverishly when she caught him watching her.  He was apparently doing it now.  She thought he was trouble in disguise as she sometimes put it to herself.  She was right!  Then again, she thought that of me. Either way, she liked him.  And he knew it.

Time changed us both.  Now, the two of us fought for the same girl we both would never admit to the other we loved more than anything in this world.  And Kinsler may be dark, but I suspected he did the same.  What a mess this had turned into.

I
had
to fall for the girl.  I tried like everything to stop myself from it.  She was just that...amazing.  She had all the qualities of an enticing human girl with the Fey magic entwined in her very being.   I wanted to finish the task and move on with my life.  I couldn’t do that anymore.

I wanted her to only talk to
me
, but that was not feasible.  Logical.  Healthy.  But I wanted it just the same.

This girl knows just how to end me.

Grace spent the rest of the morning trying to figure out why I was acting the way I have.  She scoped through a dozen different explanations that made me either laugh uncontrollably in own class or knot my eyes up in anger.  I couldn’t set her straight and it was driving me to the brink of insanity.

The bell rang and I advanced fast to be outside the room and waiting when she exited her own.  I drew my finger in the air to call her towards me and watched her luscious lips open just a touch and her shoulders sag an inch.  Her mind was going ninety to nothing about why I was giving her even more attention.  I couldn’t stop myself.  I leaned on the wall and propped a leg up. I smiled at her reaction to me.  It was such a turn on.

She smiled back. 

I caught Kinsler watching, so I pushed off the wall and turned back to her hiding my fear with a smile for her.  Her eyes followed to where mine went.  Heck if she wasn’t so quick witted for a female.  Maybe it was the bloodline that was in her.

“What?” she swung her hair behind her back making her floral scent affect my every nerve ending.

“Nothing, princess.”  I followed her hair as it circled around onto the side of her neck. Just then her thoughts said something to shock me into standing stark still where I stood.  She asked me to love her forever.  I saw her blush at her own thoughts and it did things to me that even I couldn’t say in words.  Not that I ever thought my mind could be coherent enough around her to put anything
into
words for her.  She had the power to incapacitate me and that was seriously going to get me into trouble one day.

I couldn’t say the things she needed to hear the way I would want them.  She took the words right out of my mind with her every move.  I walked a while and then retreated to take care of Kinsler before lunch.  When I made it back to her Caylie was up to her usual ways when I was absent.  She was asking her for a day of unneeded horseplay and looking at other men.  That wouldn’t do.  She turned her down thankfully, but that didn’t fully mean a
no
.  When Caylie seemed down about the whole subject I saw Grace searching the cafeteria for me, my heart sped up. 

Girls talk ninety to nothing sometimes switching subjects as easy as chewing gum.

“Yeah, Supergirl here was giving him a steamy version of some big bad x-ray vision.  Probably deciding if he is a boxer or briefs kind of guy.”

Grace hit Caylie and growled as her best friend told Pam about the conversation from earlier.  I was amused at hearing about myself from Caylie’s point of view.  Normally her mind was a horrible place to be in, but when it was about Grace I listened. 

 
What the—

Grace’s mind alarm went off half listening to her friend now.   Caylie pinched her too hard.  “Yeah, don’t go all Wonder Woman on me.  You’re as weak to his charms as I am to Mike’s.  Don’t impulse buy until you try it on, girl.” 

“Hey, Caylie,” she held up a finger, “Wait for it.” 

Pam told her, “Be impulsive, girl.  He’s hot.”

I laughed at that one.  If they only knew.

“Wishes for a wishing well, girl,” Grace said sadly and was just as dejected inside.  What did that mean?

“I’m just saying, if the stallion chases the mare, she plays coy for the leading up to and then, BAM!  Give in to him.  It is what it is, sista.” 

Girl logic still baffled me sometimes, especially human girls.  Grace wasn’t fully human though.  There was hope. 

In the early years when I guarded her out of duty, I resented her for being half human.  But now, after hearing human girls and the way they tick, I appreciated the way Grace’s mind thought past the silly notions that most others seemed to stay in.  Grace spent more time pondering the whys in life than anything else.  Even about me. 

I joined their table and received brief nods with all three blushing from their conversation but didn’t give them any indication that it was heard.

Feeling Kinsler get close, I stiffened and sent Grace’s hand to her charm to hide her thoughts.  Kinsler, Mike, and Jason were standing just behind her when she looked up.  Switch was covered by the glamour in the corner watching.  We were surrounded.

His two human cronies, Mike the goalie and Jason the referee were flanking both his sides.  He wouldn’t try anything with them there, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t stir the pot black and cold.  Mike started by mentioning the Halloween party next week to Caylie. 

I flinched when Grace focused on how good looking she thought Kinsler was, sickening me.  She thought he was bad news, but not completely a lost cause.  How could she be so blind?

Grace raised her head to the flags above to avoid him in hopes he would just leave.  With Kinsler trying to break into her thoughts, her hand stayed on her charm as we left without a single word spoken from any party except for Mark and Caylie.  Kinsler snaked his glar just to unnerve here.  When Caylie grabbed her arm, I pulled my own back forgetting my place.   

Pam, the highly immature one in their friendship circle, stuck her tongue out at Kinsler. 

“Stop!  Let him be.  He left me alone today,” Grace told her.

“Big shock!” Caylie said with no certain tone as Mike left her to go with us and he caught up to Kinsler. 

“I’ll never get Kin’s fascination with you.  Not meaning…just saying…oh, never mind.”  Pam told Grace.

Grace let go of the necklace as soon as we exited the cafeteria and her body relaxed more. 

I followed him after excusing myself when I knew Grace was safe and would be with Caylie long enough for me to confront him.  I heard them talk of me the instant I left.  Hell if they didn’t have a direct hotline to each other for the seconds I was away from her today willing Grace to be even more eager to get us closer.

Caylie leaned close to Grace and said, “Heard you skipped out of class in the middle for a little rendezvous.”

“Who from?” Grace asked already knowing the answer.

“Pam!”

“Figures.”

“You play right into him.” Caylie said.

“Wouldn’t you?”  Grace was being blunt with her friend like I’d never seen.

“Nope.  Not the bad boy type.  He has too many mysteries about him I can’t solve.”

That’s right and will remain so.  For now!

“Hmm!  Isn’t that what makes him so irresistible?” Grace said rather seductively.  I heard her mind searching for where I went.  She was worried I was listening.

Without a doubt dear Grace.

After cornering Kinsler in the bathroom for a little chat, I headed to Geography replaying this last conversation between the girls.  Kinsler wasn’t keen on the talk, but it would hold him over till the next infraction.  Class was quiet so it served its purpose apparently.  But chemistry class was a little more interesting than it had ever been. 

“Let’s make some chemistry.” Kinsler’s disgusting mind warped everything into something dirty and horrid.  I hated that he could do this to her.  I wanted to smash something to tiny pieces, preferably Kinsler’s damn prettyboy face.  

My threshold for tolerance was bust about five hundred insults back but this close to the target goal held me in check.  Kinsler knew this.  I knew this.  He played with the embers that would be close enough to the fire I couldn’t touch. Over and over again all friggin’ day long.

Internally, right in the middle of class, she asked me for help at this point with her eyes throwing me off enough I had to blink back into focus.  I took her arm and led her to the back lab desk forcing Kinsler up front by the time his arrogance stopped to look around and see her gone from his clutches. I watched him crane his neck to watch her from his desk to where we were in the back.  Her head turned to Pike, Christian to her, who was at her side and she thought of a campfire again.  Why did she do that with him?  It was very odd. 

She leaned back into me and turned her head landing it closer to my face than she thought it would land.  I admit I leaned a little in her direction myself seeking a thrill moment.  Her mind filled with longing for the woods and possibly a hike then just as fast rechanneled to considering herself being rescued from Kinsler and she was appreciative. 

“What kind of chemistry do you want to make?” I breathed on her cheek wanting to correct any lingering bad thoughts of Kinsler she might have.  My annoying long eyelashes brushed her cheek and she gasped.  The sweet sound of it nearly undid me.

I’d have to bench press a thousand pounds to release the tension my body held.  She could make me a-bomb with more emotions in a single moment with just her pretty eyes and little soft sounds.

Her heart fluttered and her mind raced with a million things she didn’t want to admit to herself out of fear and self-preservation of her heart.

She backed away turning and trying to focus on the lab and what the teacher was giving for instructions.  I kept my eyes steady on her hoping she would risk a glimpse in my direction after leaning back just enough to be sure my face was farther out of her sideways glance.  I didn’t move a muscle.  She trembled.  I didn’t
do
anything and she still reacted that way.  Intense and long was the stolen moment as my leg brushed against hers and when both of us jumped slightly in our chairs, the air left both of us in quite possibly the longest ever in-sync audible sigh.