The Guardian (9 page)

He wasn’t one to bluff.

Fine. Whatever. Let him stew in his misery. It didn’t real y concern her anyway.

Not like I have to deal with you much longer.
Sooner or later, Solin would free her. She knew it.

With nothing else to do, she sat on the bed and watched as he worked on whatever it was he had on his

laptop. She tilted her head as minutes dragged by and he hit the keys so hard, she was rather surprised it

didn’t lock up or break.

It was woeful y obvious that he had no idea what he was doing, and he became more agitated by the

second. Boy, did she understand that. As the old saying went, a TV can insult your intel igence, but nothing

rubs it in like a computer.

And for some reason she couldn’t name, she felt a smug satisfaction over it.

Good. I hope you stew in frustration until you’re pruny from it.

That’d teach him to be nicer to her.

Seth tried to focus on his research, but al he real y noticed was the faint sound of Lydia’s breathing. Every

time she made the smal est move, his body reacted to it against his wishes.

Why had she touched him? Between that and his kiss when he’d given her her voice, he’d screwed

himself. Now he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have sex with a woman and not a demon.

Were al non-demonic women like Lydia? Did they smel that good? Feel so soft?

Don’t look at her.

He heard his inner sanity and yet he couldn’t resist glancing over his shoulder to catch her staring at his

back from where she sat cross-legged on his bed. With her elbows braced on her knees, she rested her

chin on her folded hands. He had no idea why he found that adorable, but he did.

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

“Trying to read through your big head.”

“Why?”

She gave him a drol look. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I’m bored out of my friggin’ mind and there’s

real y nothing else to do since I’m not sleepy. What do you do for entertainment? Other than surf online porn,

that is.”

“Porn?” She used a lot of words he didn’t have a definition for.

“You know? Pornography? Naked women showing off their happy places to lonely men who can’t get

dates? Or, in your case, guys who live under rocks and never get to see a normal woman’s happy place.”

He was both appal ed and intrigued by what she described. Did women real y do such a thing? And you

could actual y see it?

Of course, during his brief time in the human realm, people had been very open sexual y. Obviously, they

stil were.

“I’m not surfing porn.” He didn’t realize he could do that, but now that she brought it up …

Where would he go to find it? He hadn’t had the computer long. Only a little more than a week. He

wouldn’t have even known they existed but for one of the slug demons who’d mentioned it while he’d been

questioning Solin.

Once he got back to his room, he’d manifested one and it’d taken him awhile to figure out how to use his

powers to make it connect to the human world.

The rest of it, though …

Some special kind of sadistic demon must have invented this damn thing.

But Lydia seemed to know how to work it. “Do you…”

Don’t ask. Don’t do it
.

She arched a brow at him. “What?”

He hesitated. He’d stopped asking others for help a long time ago. Either he was ignored, or humiliated

over it. It was a no-win situation for him.

And he’d been kicked in his teeth and insulted enough for one day. “Never mind.”

A knowing light sparkled in her eyes. His cock jerked at that playful expression.

“You want me to help you, don’t you?”

Yes
. But he’d never admit that. “I can figure it out on my own.”

She tsked at him. “It doesn’t make you weak to ask for help when you need it. Rather, it’s a strong man

who knows and acknowledges his limitations.”

And it was a fool who exposed himself to ridicule. “Do you mind? I need to concentrate.” He turned away

from her.

Lydia wanted desperately to tel him where to shove that laptop. But the almost boyish shyness about him

kept her from being hostile.

He’d started to reach out to her and then something had made him pul back.

Something?
Hell, girl, you’ve seen his body.
It wasn’t an intangible thing that reeled him in. It was years

of abuse that had taught him to stay inside himself.

There came a point in everyone’s life when they’d been slapped too many times for reaching out. After a

few concussions, they stopped doing it. She understood that better than most.

“Guardian?”

A tic started in his jaw as he turned toward her with a scowl so fearsomely evil, she wondered if it was

one he’d practiced in a mirror to scare the other demons of this place.

Good thing she didn’t scare easily.

Instead, she smiled at him. “Computers are extremely annoying and hard to operate if you’re not used to

them. Sometimes even if you are. If you’l let me go, I don’t mind helping you do whatever it is you’re trying to

do.” She jiggled the chain expectantly.

Seth didn’t move for a ful minute as he debated with himself. It was safer for his sanity when she stayed

away from him.

Who are you fooling? She might as well be on top of you, the way you react to every breath she takes,

even when it’s across the room.

And he needed to get this done. His time was running fast through an hourglass he couldn’t stop or break.

Noir wouldn’t give him any kind of extension and he knew it.

Steeling himself, he nodded.

Lydia final y breathed again as her chain vanished instantly. Whoa … those were some scary powers he

had and she stil didn’t know the ful extent of them.

Trying not to think about it, she got up and went to his desk.

He moved out of his seat and offered it to her.

Cracking her knuckles, she sat down, then hesitated as she reached for the laptop. “This thing isn’t going

to eat my fingers is it?”

“Pardon?”

“I tried to use it earlier and it slammed shut on me. It almost took a couple of my phalanges with it.”

Something twitched at the side of his mouth that might have become a smile had he al owed it. “No, it

won’t hurt you.”

Stil a little skeptical, she careful y pul ed it over to her. But he was right. It wasn’t hungry anymore and she

was able to type in safety.

She looked up, and saw another new lumpy bruise on his temple that wasn’t visible until you got close to

him. Her stomach clenched. Knowing he would never talk to her about it, she focused on what they were

doing. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

He took a step away from her. “I need to learn more about the key to Olympus.”

Okay. She had no idea why and had never heard the term before. But then there were a lot of things she

didn’t know about her native culture. Solin had raised her in other parts of Europe. For reasons he wouldn’t

name, he kept her away from her heritage. While he’d schooled her on the gods and her Were-Hunter

branch, he’d always been insistent that she never try to contact them.

And since she hadn’t interacted with others of her kind after her family had died …

She was pretty ignorant of anything other than the major facts.

“Did you Google it?” she asked him.

He frowned. “Google?”

“Yeah, Google. You know,
the
search engine.”

He sniffed and jerked his head as if he’d had a pain shoot through his nose. Then he placed the heel of

his hand over his left eye and held it there. “What’s a search engine?”

“Are you okay?” Even though he didn’t complain, she had a sneaking suspicion that he was real y hurting

right now.

“It’l go away in a minute.” He lowered his hand and blinked his eye open.

Lydia gasped as she saw that the entire white of his eye was now completely red. Blood red. “Oh my

God. Does that hurt?”

Seth had no answer to her question. Every part of him currently hurt. Especial y his inflamed cock that

kept begging him to take her regardless of her protests.

But he wasn’t that much of an animal. Having been raped on several occasions, he wasn’t about to do

that to anyone else. For that matter, he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had sex that hadn’t raped

either his body or his soul.

As she’d noted earlier, after age thirteen, he’d never known a touch that wasn’t angry or bruising.

Not until her …

She reached up to touch him.

For an instant, he was frozen by the desperate need he had to feel her skin on his.

Don’t. All it will do is remind you of things you can never have.

She belonged to Solin. Not him.

He quickly moved away.

But she didn’t take the hint. Instead, she pursued him across the room.

What the hel ? Every time he moved, she was there, trying to touch his injured eye. He didn’t even want to

know how stupid he must look while he dodged her.

“Stop!” he final y snarled.

She pul ed back as if he’d slapped her and that made him feel like a total ass. “I just wanted to help you.”

“Help me do what?” Die of unsated lust? That was his biggest threat in the room at present.

She shook her head. “Your eye is completely red. It’s like it’s fil ed with blood.”

That explained the haze over his vision, but the pain he felt was from his eye socket where Noir had

punched the shit out of him after Seth had given in to the incessant need to question Noir’s parentage. “I

must have broken a blood vessel. It happens.”

Lydia felt sick about the nonchalant way he spoke of something so horrible. Broken blood vessels didn’t

just happen. Anymore than his bruises had just appeared on his face. She took a step toward him.

He took one back.

Fine. He wasn’t going to al ow her near him again. And to think, she’d actual y been afraid of him forcing

himself on her. Yeah …

“You stil haven’t told me what a search engine is.” He licked, then sucked at his busted lip right before he

ran his hand across it.

How could something so ferocious look so vulnerable and uncertain? These smal glimpses of the real

him were actual y sweet. And even worse, they were charming her a lot more than she was charming him.

“You real y don’t know what it is? I mean, I realize you live in…” she glanced around the dreary room. “Or

rather under a rock, but you do have a computer.”

“I haven’t had it long and I didn’t figure out how to make it connect to the human world until about an hour

before you arrived. And you know how little time I’ve had to work it since then.”

That explained a lot. And yet … “You had one before this, right?”

He shook his head. “I’d never heard of one until a demon told me about them. He said it would help me

learn things quicker. But I honestly don’t see how. Books are much faster to navigate. I figured out how to

open up one of those the instant I touched it. It took two days just to find the on switch for that damn thing.”

His words stunned her. Had he honestly made a joke? She laughed, hoping it didn’t offend him.

Seth froze at the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. A true and sincere laugh. And it wasn’t at his expense.

No one had laughed like that around him in …

He had no idea. Had he ever heard laughter that wasn’t mocking or cruel? If he did, he had no memory of

it. Nor had he seen anyone’s eyes light up like hers did.

She was so beautiful that it took his breath away. Worse, it drew him toward her when he knew he should

be running for the door.

His lips twitched as if they wanted to smile, but that, too, was something he had no memory of. Surely

he’d smiled as a child? Hadn’t he?

Why couldn’t he remember?

She pressed her lips together and sobered. “Sorry.”

Her apology confused him even more than her laughter had. It, too, was something he couldn’t remember

hearing from anyone. Ever. “For what?”

“I don’t know. You looked upset. I wasn’t laughing at you, I swear.”

“I know.”

Lydia felt suddenly very awkward. Even though he had an extremely expressive face, she had a hard time

reading it. And he never reacted the way she thought he would. Things that should make him happy made

him angry and things she thought would offend him, didn’t.

She offered him a smile. “If it makes you feel better, you’re not alone with that thought. Computers make

fools of us al . But I have to say that I’m highly impressed.”

“By what?”

“You got it up and running when you’d never seen one before? That’s impressive. I have to cal the Geek

Squad every time I buy a new one and I’ve had one for years.”

Again with the dancing, indecipherable emotions on his face. Final y, he settled on a stricken look that

she didn’t understand the source of. “Did you just compliment me?”

She widened her eyes as she debated how to answer. Was he offended that she’d complimented him? It

was how he acted. But that made no sense whatsoever.

“Um … yes.”

This time there was no mistaking the fury in those accusatory blue eyes. “You mock me.”

“How?” She was completely baffled by his behavior and attack. “By saying I think you’re intel igent?”

His breathing turned ragged as fury darkened his gaze. “I’m wel aware of my flaws.
All
of them. The last

thing I need or want is
you
patronizing me for it.”

What had they done to him that he couldn’t even take a wel -meant compliment? It broke her heart that