Stonewing Guardian Read online

  It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to close the distance between them, and close her lips over his. Like a circuit closing, filling her with an electric rush that grounded through her fingers and toes. She was so intensely focused on the kiss that she was only dimly aware of one of his hands coming up to cup the side of her face and card through her hair.

  There was a shock of separation when their lips broke apart and she found herself gazing at him from inches away. His face was incredibly soft.

  "Thea," he said, in a tone that somehow managed to be both question and answer, and she lunged forward to kiss him again.

  Mace

  Her lips were perfect, soft and full, stealing his breath and his heart with each hungry kiss. They kissed with a kind of eager desperation, until Mace realized his knees were rumpling the map.

  He pulled away. Thea made a small protesting noise in the back of her throat.

  "Wait," he told her.

  He got up and went to the door, glanced out into the hallway—no sign of anyone out there, even Gio—and closed the door. He almost never locked it, but there was an iron bolt on the inside, set into the heavy dark wood of the door. Mace threw it.

  "No sense in being interrupted," he told her.

  Thea looked up at him. Her hair was tousled, her lips parted. "What did you have in mind?" she asked.

  "I think that's up to you." He held out a hand and helped her to her feet.

  There was a fire laid in the fireplace, but not lit; the day was too warm to need it. There was always a slight, dry coolness to the library in any weather, however, even with the sun warm outside the windows. Mace couldn't help showing off a little. He laid his hand on the stones of the fireplace and briefly exerted his will, extending it outward into the stone and igniting an enchantment laid in the fireplace very long ago. Heat curled up through the wood, followed by small tendrils of smoke that ignited into flame.

  Thea gave a soft gasp. Mace looked around at her. He was still holding her hand with his other one, and he felt her fingers spasm in his.

  "I felt that," she breathed out. "That wasn't—you didn't flip a switch, did you? Tell me it's some kind of modern electric fireplace."

  Mace shook his head. "That was magic."

  It intrigued him that she had been able to feel it. So far, he'd had very limited success teaching Jess and her mate Reive to navigate the various enchantments laid around the old building. Jess could sense them more strongly than Reive, but neither had a natural aptitude for it. He had wondered if you had to grow up with it, or if perhaps it was necessary to be a full-blooded gargoyle. Jess was only half, and Reive had been brought over to it as an adult.

  But here was Thea, a perfectly ordinary human as far as he knew. She was gazing at the fire in wonder, the flames reflected in her eyes.

  "What was that?" she asked. "How does it work?"

  "My ancestors built magic into the stones of this place," Mace explained. "I don't know how it was done. At this point, most of those old skills have been lost. The early gargoyles knew a lot that we don't." He hesitated. "May I?"

  He guided her hand to the stones beside the fireplace. He was very curious if she could feel the same things he could feel when he wasn't activating it for her. Surely not much of it. She was human, with no traces of gargoyle at all. He would have been able to sense gargoyle heritage in her, the same way he had sensed it upon his first meeting with half-human Jess.

  Surely she would feel nothing at all.

  And for the first moment, her fingers were quiescent upon the fireplace stones. Mace reached out, doing it slowly, feeling for the complex spells laid on the stone that he had activated a thousand times to kindle or put out a fire. Normally, it was like plucking a string—a single swift action that reverberated through the entire web. But now he reached for it slowly, feeling it out as he might have felt his way through an unfamiliar massif of stone.

  And Thea drew in her breath. Her hand twitched under his.

  "I do feel something," she breathed.

  Mace withdrew his hand slightly, sliding it up her arm and incidentally pushing up the cuff of her sleeve, so that his fingers rested on her wrist. He pressed his other hand against the stones of the fireplace, so that the two of them formed a circuit, the awareness of the spell in the rock thrumming between them.

  At least that was what he felt. He had no idea what she felt.

  But he was captivated by her sure, strong fingers, callused and capable. She moved her hand slowly, running it over the stones. Her face was fixed and intent, staring at the rock under her fingertips as if she could unravel its secrets with her eyes alone.

  "It's so strange," she said, her voice distant. "I don't even know what I'm feeling. When you did that ... whatever you did, it was like a little electric shock, the way you can get a static charge off a doorknob in the winter. Except not entirely. It's ... almost like it's clinging to my fingers. It's weird."

  She pulled her hand back and gave it a brief shake, briefly breaking contact with his fingers.

  "Like something gluey, or ...?" Mace prompted.

  "More like a web or net," she said thoughtfully.

  She could feel it. There was no way she'd have thought to describe it that way otherwise. It was exactly what it felt like to him, too.

  "It's a combination ignition and fire-damping spell," he said. "It's very complex, far beyond anything I could make if I worked on it for years. It lights the fire and puts it out, and it keeps sparks from flying out of the hearth, or smoke damaging the books. You'll notice that there's heat coming off the fire, but not much else. Only the slightest hint of smoke in the air."

  "You're right." Thea stretched out her fingers to the fire, and then looked at him, her eyes wide and reflective in the firelight, fixing on his face. "Would you think I was insane if I told you I've felt something like this before?"

  "I think you're the sanest person I've ever met," Mace said. "Tell me."

  Thea chewed her lower lip, drawing his gaze like a laser pointer. "It's something that happens on dig sites sometimes. Or in old buildings. Temples. I can't really explain it."

  "You feel magic there?"

  She enthralled him. He couldn't have looked away from her if he'd wanted to.

  "I don't know. I'm not the only person I know who has had weird stuff happen in old buildings or on dig sites. I mean, it's a whole entire thing. Archaeologists are as rational as they come but we also do sometimes have strange stuff happen, things we can't explain. Most people write it off as various natural phenomena. I mean, you're out there in nature, poking around in old ruins, of course you'll run into more and varied phenomena than if you never traveled at all. But I know a lot of people in my field with ghost stories, or whatever it is that we know as ghosts, whether it's a thing that happens in the brain or some kind of electrical manifestation—" She broke off and pressed her hand to her mouth. "I'm rambling again," she said between her fingers.

  Mace closed his hand carefully over hers and lowered it; the backs of his knuckles brushed her lips. "I love it when you ramble. Please don't stop. What were you saying just then?"

  "The point is, this isn't entirely new to me." She glanced at the fireplace, and then pulled her hand from his and stroked her fingers across the rough-cut stones. "Sometimes it's like I walked through a spiderweb, except there's nothing there. Sometimes it's more tingly, or a sense of ... of presence."

  "It makes sense." He caught her hand again. "There was more magic around in the old days, before that knowledge was lost to us. Most of what I know about now is the magic of gargoyles and dragons. But the cultists are proof that there's still magic out there in the human world, too. There might be a lot of old spells lingering around that most people can't sense. But, Thea." He brushed back stray strands of fine brown hair from her forehead and cheek, where it clung to her skin. "You can."

  "For whatever that's worth," she said with a shaky laugh. "It isn't very strong. I would never have noticed this i
f I hadn't been touching you when you did whatever you did."

  "I knew there was something that led me to your office that day," he murmured.

  "Yes, the campus directory."

  But the laugh died on her full, inviting lips, and when he leaned in for a kiss, her mouth opened under his, warm and welcoming.

  It was overwhelming. He lost himself in it. When their lips broke apart, she immediately began fumbling with the buttons of her borrowed cardigan, then gave up and yanked it off over her head.

  Under it she wore a sleeveless, strappy white blouse, which she also shed while Mace was peeling out of his sweater. He had seen the tan-colored bra before, down beside the spring on Gio's land, but he hadn't been able to fully appreciate the swell of her breasts in its sturdy, practical cups.

  Now he could. As she reached behind herself to undo her bra, he put an arm around her, thrilling to the feeling of her bare skin against his. "Let me," he murmured.

  Neither of them were blushing virgins and they both knew it, but someone as rare and lovely as Thea should be savored, pleasured, and treated like a queen. He unhooked the bra and freed her beautiful breasts, and went down to one knee before her, in front of the fire.

  Thea gave a nervous little laugh that turned into a gasp when he ran his tongue across her small, firm nipples. She had a lean, athletic body, gorgeously defined. He ran his hands over her hips and pulled the skirt down, then the underwear beneath: down her long legs, leaving her naked in the firelight.

  "Mace," she murmured, placing her hands on his shoulders.

  "Shhh." He kissed her smooth belly, the points of her hipbones, the long expanse of each soft, lightly freckled thigh. Then he nuzzled the brown curls between her legs. Her scent was intoxicating.

  "Mace," she said again, in a very different tone. Her hands tightened on his shoulders.

  He lapped at her, lightly at first, an exploratory taste, then more deeply as he gained a feel for what she liked. She was an active participant and he loved that; she made soft noises, threw her hips forward, gripped his shoulders and jerked as he brought her closer. Then she placed a hand on top of his head.

  "Together," she said, in a voice that shook with suppressed need.

  Mace nodded. He stood up in a single fluid motion and stripped out of his dark jeans and underwear. He was achingly hard, so desperate for her that it was an all-consuming fire, but it was with exquisite gentleness that he took her and laid her in front of the fire.

  She was dripping, wet and open when he pushed into her. Mace was large and he knew it, but she was able to take all of him on the first stroke, and from her stifled cry, she wanted all of that and more. He found himself close to the edge in a way that made him feel like a teenager again, but held himself back, glorying in the feeling of her enclosing him, her strong thighs clenching on his hips.

  "Mace," she gasped out, and she came with an arched back and a shudder of tension running through the entire glorious length of her. He followed seconds later, shuddering through his own climax with one arm wrapped around her, holding her against him.

  He relaxed slowly and settled beside her on the rug in front of the fire. She rolled onto her side, and he lightly stroked the side of her face.

  "That was really something. I'm sorry I was so fast," she said.

  "I was going to say the same."

  She laughed softly. "Not usually a problem one has at our age." She frowned slightly. "How old are you, Mace?"

  "Seventy-four."

  "I'm forty-two. Does it count as May-December if we look the same age?" she asked with another quiet laugh.

  "In all truth, we are about the same age. Gargoyles age differently than humans. In human terms I'm in my early to mid forties—just the same as you."

  "And how long do you live?"

  "From here it's pretty similar to the rest of a human lifespan. We just get more in the middle, but we do still age."

  "Well, that's convenient for the rest of us. You wouldn't want to be too enviably perfect."

  Mace snorted. "I'm hardly that."

  "More than you know," she said, and ran a gliding hand down the side of his face. Abruptly she sat up. "And none of this is helping you find Viking landing sites."

  Mace pulled her back down by the fire. "We'll get back to that in a few minutes. For now I might just enjoy this for a bit."

  He kissed her lightly, and then was startled when she rolled over to straddle him.

  "And what did you want to enjoy, exactly?" she asked.

  Mace pulled her down to kiss her again. "You tell me."

  As it turned out, it was more than a few minutes before they went back to the map.

  Thea

  The next few days passed in a blur of research and making love and eating expensive cheeses and taking baths in her big claw-foot bathtub—not always by herself. Thea still couldn't quite figure out how she had ended up here. She was living with a hot billionaire gargoyle and making love to him. Apparently.

  Was she in love with him, though?

  She could be, she thought. She was definitely headed there, if she wasn't careful.

  But Thea was not a person who fell fast. Sensible Thea, with her sturdy boots. Mace had come as close to sweeping her off her feet as anyone had in her lifetime. But they were both mature adults with their own lives. He made her heart beat faster than anyone ever had. But would she rearrange her entire life for him? The jury was still out on that.

  The way Mace looked at her made her heart clutch in her chest. But sometimes she saw him examining her face as if he was looking for something there, something he couldn't quite find.

  They kept separate bedrooms, but they made love in her room, in the library, and anywhere else they happened to be when the urge overcame them and there was a convenient lock on the door. It was like being college-age and insatiable. She couldn't seem to get enough of him.

  Meanwhile, she and Mace pored over maps, and she used Mace's rickety Internet and her own university credentials and contacts to pull together as much information as she could on what was known of Viking exploration in the New World—from reputable digs to exploratory archaeology that went nowhere, from local legends to treasure hunters' rumors.

  Mace took a shopping list and stonewalked to St. John's, coming back with the clothes, toiletries, and underwear she had asked for. Opening the last, she discovered that he had indeed bought the requested bras in her size—but one of them was a brilliant jewel red, with matching red panties.

  She made sure to wear them.

  He seemed to approve.

  She requested a leave of absence from the university, explaining that there had been a family emergency. They were very accommodating, making her feel guilty about not knowing how long it was going to take her to come back ... or if she was coming back. It was a deferral of a decision, nothing more than that, and she knew it.

  But she really liked being at Stonegarden. She liked the big, rambling old house with its many wings and gardens, the stark beauty of the surrounding hills, and the beautiful little fishing town like the crown jewel of the bay.

  She eventually met Jess's husband Reive, tall and dark and strikingly good-looking, but standoffish. He rarely smiled, and Thea got the impression that he didn't like her much, in contrast to Jess's warm friendliness.

  "It's not you," Jess explained, as Thea helped her box up books to take down to the village. "He grew up very isolated, even more so than this. He takes a while to warm up to new people." She smiled. "Trust me, the fact that you've seen him smile at all means that he likes you."

  The town was also a delight, although there wasn't much to explore. Everyone was friendly, and seemed fascinated by her presence in the house up on the hill, which they apparently regarded with a kind of wary respect.

  "Do they know about you?" Thea asked as she and Mace wandered along the beach on the bay during a break from poring over maps, looking at rocks and shells instead. The beach was made not of sand, but of stones washed sm
ooth by the sea, ranging from roughly thumbnail-sized to as big in diameter as the length of her thumb.

  "I think they suspect." Mace picked up a cobblestone, ran his thumb across its smooth gray-green surface, and tossed it out into the waves rolling rhythmically against the shore. "They have their own secrets too, the people of this town."

  "Like what?"

  He smiled one of those quiet smiles that were rapidly becoming one of her favorite things. "Not my secrets to tell."

  She noticed Mace glanced up at the rugged hills above them. They had managed to impress on Gio that he needed to stay out of sight when they were in town, but Thea suspected he was up there somewhere. He generally hung around them most of the time, doing his best impression of a great stone watchdog, but occasionally he also wandered the hills around Mace's mansion. She wondered if he was giving rise to local cryptid sightings, and smiled at the thought, a bit wistfully.

  They were still no closer to finding a way to turn him back.

  They narrowed their search down to a handful of locations, and went to check out the nearest. Tor once again took them on his boat. It was a gorgeous day, the sun striking sparks off the water. This time, while Mace sat crosslegged on the deck and leafed through his notes, Thea went into the pilot's cabin to chat with Tor.

  "So how are you liking Newfoundland?" Tor asked.

  He was apparently part of an entire family of very tall, blond, Nordic fishermen; she had met several of them around town. He drove the boat casually from a swivel chair behind a console-type set of controls, with one large hand draped over the wheel. His strong, capable fingers were laced with calluses and scars.

  "I like it a lot so far. It's very beautiful."

  The green and gray coastline unrolled past them as the boat skipped over the waves. They stayed within sight of land, but far enough out that the surf on the shore was just a thin white line.

  "You have to love it to live here," Tor said. "Not so much right now, when it's warm and beautiful. But in the winter, when the nor'easters lock down the island for a month at a time, and the ice piles up in the harbor ... it's harder to love her then."