Page 94 of Grim Tidings

“Gonna keep you close,” I mutter against her ear. I press a distracted kiss beneath it, drag my mouth against her skin to the top of her spine. “Gonna keep you safe.”

Her fingers lace through mine. “I know you will,” she whispers. “I’ll keep you safe, too.”

I come with a broken sound from somewhere deep in my chest, my fingers tangled with hers and my face pressed against her shoulder. My wings beat once, then wrap around us, sheltering us from everything outside this room.

Darcy strokes her fingertips over my forearm, tracing a tattoo of a swallow.

I press a kiss to the back of her head, then pull away and tuck myself back into my jeans. Her underwear is crooked around her hips, displaced from where I was moving against her. I smooth it back into place, making no move to clean her up. I like the idea of her going back into the bar with the both of us worked into her skin.

She huffs and tosses an amused look over her shoulder, and I grin in response. Lazy and satisfied as I hand over her jeans.

“What happens now?” she asks, slipping one leg in, then the other.

I barely wait for her to finish doing up the zipper before I tug her into me. I stamp a kiss to her forehead, then lean down and kiss her mouth.

“Now I do exactly as I said. I keep you close,” I promise. “I keep you safe.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Darcy

What happens if he comes here?”

Gabriel flips down the top half of his newspaper and stares at me. I can only see him from the nose up, but it’s enough to know he’s tired of my questions.

“Then he’ll come here.”

I pick at my thumbnail. Beneath Gabriel’s secondhand kitchen table, Tater Tot does his best to destroy a chew toy that looks like a pumpkin. “But Gideon is old.”

“So am I,” Gabriel says, unconcerned.

“He’s powerful.”

Gabriel snorts. “So am I. And so, for that matter, are you.”

“Not lately,” I mumble. My relationship with my magic over the past couple of weeks has deteriorated from bad to worse. Gabriel seems to wield his magic in a way that’s natural. An extension of his own body. Mine? Not so much.

Sometimes when I call for my magic, I feel like I’m hurling pine cones covered in peanut butter and birdseed.

“I’m worried—”

“You shouldn’t be.”

I pick up a strawberry from the bowl I’ve been snacking on and lob it at his head. It smacks against his newspaper with a wet thwack, then falls to the floor. Strawberry juice splatters like blood, and the symbolism of it is not lost on me.

Tater Tot lumbers up from beneath the table, sniffs it, then tentatively collects it between his teeth. He wanders off to the other side of the living room to enjoy his pilfered snack while Gabriel folds up his newspaper and tosses it on the table.

He leans forward on his elbows. “Do you need more distracting?”

My cheeks burn hot. Distracting is all we’ve been doing with each other. Our moment in the office has made me needy for more, though Gabriel has done an admirable job of keeping us within the boundaries he sets. We have time, he’s assured me every time my grabbing hands start pulling at his clothes, trying to get more, harder, faster. A rough grumble, and then, I can’t believe I almost fucked you against a desk.

It seems his possessive roughness was more of an exception than a rule. Ever since he flattened me against the desk in his office, it’s been slow kisses and gentle touches and all of our clothes frustratingly in place. His control seems to be tethered to a lack of bare skin, and as much as I want to strip down and push him right over that line, I don’t.

Because it’s endearing how hard he’s clutching to those hard-earned morals of his, if not wholly maddening.

“No,” I mutter, petulant. “I don’t need distracting.” I don’t need to be sexually frustrated to the point of oblivion. “This is something we’re going to have to deal with.”

Gabriel’s face softens. “And we will. But we have time, Darcy.”