She tilted her head as she studied Tiago. She had never seen him asleep before. This was only the second time she had shared a bed with him. Apparently he did not understand the concept of bed sharing that well. He owned every inch of the bed and made the queen-sized mattress seem as small as a twin.
He radiated heat. She could feel it when she held her hand an inch away from his sun-burnished skin. His face was turned away from the morning sun. The arc from his head down the long column of his neck to the heavy flare of his collarbones was strong and graceful. He had a large scar that sliced across the right side of his torso. It started at the base of his right ribs and slashed all the way to his back. His broad shoulders and deep chest, with those defined intercostal muscles that rippled down his rib cage, indicated the kind of leviathan strength that could catapult his huge Wyr form through the air fast enough to bring down a helicopter gunship.
She touched the scar. One of the persistent legends about Tiago that circulated the Tower was from a time in the late 1960s when he had troops pinned down by enemy gunfire from a gunship. His fighters were dying, so he changed into his Wyr form and slammed sidelong into the helicopter. He drove the helicopter toward the side of a cliff, and managed to pull up just before it exploded against the cliff face. He had sustained serious injuries, as one of the helicopter blades had sliced into him, and he had been forced to take a six-month hiatus. Remembering how he had leaped forward to stop her SUV dead in its skid, she could believe the story.
As she studied him, the extent of his handsomeness was revealed, with those proud high cheekbones, dark slashing eyebrows, lean cheeks, a bold forehead, nose and chin and that mobile expressive mouth. When he was awake, intelligence and aggression carved him into a natural biological weapon. He was such a battering ram of a male, his personality was the kind of force that could roll over a country and bring down a government. No wonder the Dark Fae reacted so strongly to the possibility of him moving into their lands and home.
He’d had fun yesterday. Fun. She thought of him sprawled in the armchair in the downstairs study, calmly demolishing pastry after pastry while Aubrey looked at him in shock. Or what about that god-awful dinner? A variety of people looked daggers at him and tried several times to deliver a direct verbal cut, while he plowed through alarming amounts of beautifully prepared food with evident enjoyment for the cuisine and a monumental indifference for anybody else’s opinion. It wasn’t that he didn’t get that people had been trying to insult him. He just didn’t care.
She pinched her nose hard and bit her lip to keep from laughing and waking him up. He needed so much less sleep than she did, and to the best of her knowledge he had not had a chance to rest since he had arrived in Chicago. She wanted to enjoy this rare treat of watching him while he slept.
She had to learn to trust him, he’d said. He was right. Yesterday he had gleaned a surprising amount of information just by observing people, and he had a clear, strong vision of what he needed to do. His ruthlessness, his aptitude for tactics and strategy, and his incisive logic and investigative skills were all natural fits for the position he had reached out and taken for himself.
She took a deep breath and sighed. For the first time in what seemed like forever, the tight, restricting band around her chest was gone. She felt lighter, full of hope and optimism.
Tiago’s compilation of facts was persuasive. She believed as he did, that a killer lay in quiet wait in the house. But she now believed that the killer would be caught, and that she and Tiago had a fighting chance in this new life they had begun to carve out for themselves.
Belief, hope, optimism. Passion and laughter. A sense of safety. Look at the wealth of gifts he had given her. Just days ago she had been drunk, injured, frightened and alone.
Overcome with emotion, she pressed a kiss to his warm pectoral. She watched his face as he stirred, his beautiful mouth pulling into a sleepy smile. He put a hand to her cheek and fingered the pointed tip of her ear. She felt his penis stiffen against her hip, felt her own responding clench of hunger, and she indulged in a luxurious full-body stretch that moved her body along the length of his.
“Faerie, you sure do know how to make a man glad he’s alive,” he said. His morning voice was gravelly, deeper, and it rumbled against her cheek. He yawned.
“I notice that you are taking up the whole damn bed,” she said. She kissed his nipple. It pebbled under her lips.
“It’s comfortable so why not?”
“Tiago, it’s my bed.” She licked his nipple and nibbled at it and listened to his breath catch. It was the sexiest sound she had ever heard. Her hunger sharpened and became liquid as she felt his erection pulse.
His smile widened. He cupped her cheek with those long, clever fingers of his. “You’re my faerie. Besides, I didn’t hear you complaining in the night.”