Pushing to her elbows, Kylie looked at him with her skepticism sitting right on the tip of her nose. “Who told you to say all that? Did they make you practice?”
Dag gave a rueful chuckle and tugged her to his side. Carefully. “They did not. It is true that the others did initially point out that my attitude may have offended you. They also let me know that they had learned very quickly from their own mates that human females are both sturdier than they look and fierce in their independence, which I should have recognized on my own. But once I grew calmer, I not only saw the reason for your anger but the justification for it as well. I reacted badly to the idea of sending you into danger, and I allowed my fear to control me.”
She kept her narrowed gaze on him, but felt herself softening. “When did you become so enlightened?”
He grinned and leaned close to kiss her. “When I feared that your anger for me would lead you to keep me from your bed this evening.”
Kylie scoffed. “Typical.” Settling once more onto the mattress, she allowed herself to snuggle against her Guardian’s side. “You know, right after I recovered from Wynn’s school of magical suffering, I was planning to come find you and skin you alive for the way you acted.”
“I know. This is why I came to you and commenced groveling with all due speed.”
“Groveling?” She tilted her head to look at him. “I heard an apology, but I don’t recall any groveling.”
Dag shifted to one elbow and loomed over her, resting his other hand on the mattress beside her head. “Oh, no? Then what is it that you consider to be groveling, little human?”
His smoke-and-stone voice rasped against her like a caress, sending shivers straight through her to pool low in her belly. “Well,” she purred, fighting a smile, “it usually starts on your knees…”
His grin turned wicked as he began to crawl down her body. “If you prefer to see me on my knees, I am happy to oblige you. Just let me get these jeans of yours off, and I can kneel before you and show you how very sorry I am for upsetting you.”
Just as her breathing began to speed up, the loud peal of the doorbell shattered the moment.
“Pizza!” a loud female voice shouted from the stairwell. “Dinner’s here, you guys, so get your stinking clothes back on and get your butts downstairs. If I have to come up there, I’m afraid I’ll be struck blind or something!”
Fil’s footsteps drifted away from the stairs and Dag groaned, collapsing to the mattress beside Kylie. “Can you remind me of the reason why we invited these nuisances into our home?”
Kylie pushed aside the rush of warmth she felt hearing him call the house “our home” and threw her arm across her eyes. “I plead insanity. What’s your excuse?”
“I’m eating all the extra cheese and mushroom!” Ella’s voice drifted up from the hall and Dag swore before shoving to his feet.
He reached down to pull Kylie up behind him and dragged her toward the stairs, mumbling, “I have no excuse,” as he went.
Kylie laughed. “There is no excuse, but we’d better go. I want those mushrooms.”
Chapter Sixteen
Shlof gikher; men darf di kishn.
Sleep faster; we need the pillows.
Three days later and Kylie still couldn’t be certain she had recovered from that first lesson in magic. Not that it mattered, because the Terrible Trio of Trainers, as she had dubbed them, hadn’t let up on her for a minute. Every day, they had dragged her into the empty dining room (nothing valuable to get caught in the crossfire, Wynn explained) and put her through not just her paces, but the paces of several world-class athletes. At least, that’s what it felt like.
The first thing they insisted she know was defensive magic. After they made her demonstrate how well she had learned her lesson about calling the power to her fingertips. Once the magic tingled in her hands, Wynn explained, sending it out into the world with intent was what made for a spell, and a darned effective one. The witch demonstrated with a very cool cone-of-silence trick that ticked Fil off to no end (she’d been in the middle of a sentence when Wynn bespelled her) and yet that she refused to teach to Kylie.
“First off, you just want to use it on Dag. And me,” the witch added, noting her pupil’s glare. “And second of all, it’s not going to be much use against the nocturnis. You need to learn the important stuff first. We don’t have a lot of time.”