“I really don’t think that’s—ah!—necessary,” she mumbled, gasping when he closed his teeth gently over the tendon in her throat and swiping her skin with the flat of his tongue. “I’m fine.”
He leaned the handle of his hammer against the side of the stairs and wrapped both arms around her, trapping her against his bulk. One rough hand slid under the back of her T-shirt and rasped against the skin at the small of her back, causing an instantaneous reaction between her legs.
Sneaky male. He’d obviously paid attention recently and noted that the small of her back was an incredibly sensitive erogenous zone for her. The right caress there could have her begging in seconds. Especially when it came from his uniquely textured fingers.
She had become fascinated by his hands. Not only were they huge—more than twice the size of hers; she had measured—but they had a texture he claimed was unique to his kind. Instead of the whorls and ridges of a human fingerprint, the surface of his skin featured tiny microscopic pitting, like the surface of an unpolished stone. Not only did it make him immune to the identification procedures used by human authorities (which was handy when one occasionally had to kill people the human authorities didn’t always know needed to die), but it provided the exquisitely abrasive tactile sensation that made Kylie squirm.
In fact, the man was making her squirm right then and there. “I thought you had to train,” she half gasped, half moaned, as he shifted his grip to lift her off her feet and press her against the hard length of his torso. Things felt pretty hard slightly south of his torso, as well.
Kylie estimated she had approximately fifteen seconds to put a stop to his seduction attempts before they stopped being attempts and became a grand-slam home run. Did thinking it in her head count as a college try? A kindergarten putsch?
“A Guardian is always prepared,” he purred, “but what sort of mate am I to place your needs below my own.”
Kylie tilted her head to the side, giving him better access to the sensitive skin underneath her jawline. “Trust me, my needs are doing just fine, big guy. In fact—”
Whatever she intended to say disappeared into the raucous chime of the doorbell. Wynn and Knox had suggested she add it before they left, just so that future knocks on the door didn’t go unnoticed for long enough to encourage visual exploration.
Kylie knew Wynn was a witch, but was she a psychic, too?
Tearing herself from Dag’s embrace, she backed up a step, nearly fell over backward, and righted herself with a blush of embarrassment. “Yeah, I’d better get that.”
Dag replied with a low snarl and a flash of teeth.
She turned to jog up the stairs, throwing a hasty suggestion to him over her shoulder. “If you want to guard my back, you might want to put a shirt on first. You’ll give my poor innocent mail carrier a heart attack.”
Since her own heart still pounded in her chest, Kylie figured she knew whereof she spoke.
She hurried along the hallway to the front door and pulled the panel open to receive whatever package the mail carrier couldn’t fit through her door slot. That smile froze then fell into a gape of surprise when she saw who really stood on her front stoop.
“What? No hello? You were raised by wolves?”
“Bubbeh!” The word squeaked out from paralyzed vocal chords as Kylie looked into her grandmother’s weathered and wholly unexpected face. “What are you doing here?”
Chapter Fourteen
Far vos hot Oden un Khave tsugedekt di mayse mit a blot, ven keyner hot zey nit geyzen?
Why did Adam and Eve cover their business with a leaf if there was no one to see them?
“I sensed a disturbance in the force,” Esther Kramer said, stepping inside and depositing her archaic brocade carpetbag on the entryway floor. “That’s how that saying of yours goes, right?”
Kylie closed the door slowly behind her grandmother and surreptitiously leaned back against it for support. Shock had turned her knees into chopped liver. “Um, yeah. That’s right. But bubbeh, I wasn’t expecting to see you. How did you even get here?”
Esther leaned back from the embrace she’d already pulled her granddaughter into and gave her a stern look. “I’m seventy-eight years old. You think I don’t know how to ride a train and hail a cab?”
“No, of course, I know you can do that.” Kylie attempted to soothe her. “It’s just that it’s such a long way. Did you come by yourself? All the way from Westport?”
Her grandmother reached up and gave her cheek a forceful pat. Just a reminder that if she needed some sense slapped into her, Esther was the woman to do it. “All the way? You live in the next state over, and you make it sound like I wandered the desert for forty years. What? Are you not happy to see me?”