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“You,” Rasmus said with a sigh. He retrieved a pair of jeans from the floor and stepped into them. His gaze remained on mine as I watched him carefully zip them up.

The guardian had a beautiful body and I was flattered he liked mine so much. But vanity never lasted long in me. What tightened my throat with emotion was how much I loved the intimacy of waking beside him and watching him dress.

“Sorry,” Rasmus said. “I forget about them because they’re so quiet.”

I blinked in confusion. Who was quiet? Because no one had ever accused me of that—in bed or out. Eventually, I realized Rasmus was talking about the demon wolves. What could I say to his admission of forgetting about them? Their captive situation had fallen lower on my to-do list too.

Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I made myself look away from him. He looked so appealing with his pants on but still unfastened. I wanted to ask him to come back to bed but my pride wouldn’t let me.

Cursing the relationship baggage that kept me feeling as vulnerable as Rasmus looked, I uttered a sound that most would have called a growl. “I need clothes and coffee.”

Rasmus retrieved the clothes he’d taken off me last night. He dropped them in a pile on the bed next to me. Keeping a careful watch in case he pounced on his own, I wiggled into yesterday’s clothes under the covers without exposing my nudity to him. It was a talent many women developed in their lives. For me this morning, dressing under the covers was an act of desperation.

I feared what Rasmus might do to avoid talking about the things we needed to talk about.

“Are we getting coffee before we talk?” he asked.

“Yes, please,” I said softly, sliding from the bed fully clothed.

Cursing my need to clear the air before I got more sexually entangled with him, I snuck past a still shirtless Rasmus to use the bathroom in the master suite I shared with Fiona.

Freshly brewedcoffee was truly the nectar of gods.

Gratitude oozed from me as I sipped. Once I’d finished a cup and started on a refill, the caffeine jumpstarted my human system and got my motor running.

The man sitting near me drinking tea with honey instead of coffee also got my motor running. I feared it would take all my tricks to keep him from using it against me.

Rasmus and his intensive study forced me to an uncomfortable realization. Despite what his fellow guardians had done to make him more human and less supernatural, his mind constantly collected data he used to form his arrogant, but not superior, opinions.

Since I also used reason on good days when I wasn’t angry at the world, it wouldn’t have been fair for me to hold his current rational thinking against him. The original guardian was back and he was not the inexperienced boy that Version 3 had been. Oh, Rasmus stilllookedlike Version 3, which I imagine was shocking to him as well.

After spending two nights in his arms, the younger body his soul currently wore inspired my lust and sparked a lot of fantasies. Our age difference was visually obvious to everyone with eyes, or at least, I thought it was.

Listening to him ask Conn and Mulan his deep questions made me look beyond his youthful appearance, though. His more mature approach to reasoning things out only added to his appeal to me. The only reason I could give myself for feeling that way was that in conversations he now felt like our equal.

It pleased me that the four of us seemed to fit together. We wouldn’t be living together at the new property, but I could see many more shared meals where the conversations would be thoughtful as well as entertaining.

Rasmus was asking us all questions about his favorite subject this morning—the one Orlin and I battled over still. Discussion about the million influences on human decision-making gave me a bit of an epiphany. Throughout my marriage, I’d hidden as many things from Jack as he had hidden from me. Keeping secrets from my husband was a defense mechanism to combat his disapproval of me doing magickal work.

Jack also believed the complicated truths he hid from me were far more important than any I might be keeping from him. To be fair to myself, in the beginning, I wanted to tell Jack about my magickal heritage. It took a lot of talking for my parents and The Dagda to convince me not to do so. Sadly, rationalizing my need not to be truthful with Jack got easier the longer we were together. Lies of omissions break trust just as fast as direct ones. I never confronted him about the random lipstick stains he came home wearing. I didn’t want to get into the fight that would come with being honest.

Was that emotional laziness? Some would call it that. I might be doing the same with Rasmus. Or perhaps I was putting off the hard questions because they might chase him from my life.

Despite appearing like a human male, Rasmus was not one. He was a guardian—one who left constantly for mysterious reasons he never shared with me. When he was present in my life, I frequently felt like a bug trapped under his microscope. Though I refused to allow him to make me feel that way, his sense of superiority never waned. A perfect example was that I should have been the one demanding answers about things this morning. Instead, Rasmus was the one firing off questions.

“Was the man with Ben an elf?”

“He’s paranormally classified as a male fairy. Both elves and fairies are descendants of the Tuatha de Danann and are often seen as the same species. They’re called Aoi Si or Mound people. The mounds are portals to a place in the veil. Goddess Danu created an entire world for them there. Since they’re very long-lived, they have very different rules than us. Ezra is serving his people by working with humans. I believe he’s in the last century of his service.”

“Are you part of their species?”

I shook my head. “No, I’m ahumandescendant of The Dagda. You might say the fairy folk are distant cousins of mine through other members of the Tuatha de Danann. I grew up as a witch because the women in my family on both sides embraced the craft. That made me a magick wielder from birth. On the Earthly plane, though, humans rarely know their magickal heritage unless their ancestor makes it a point to inform them.”

Rasmus tilted his head. “Are you saying there are other magickals like you?”

I shrugged. “There could be, I suppose. Humans not in touch with their magick would probably rationalize themselves as being luckier than average. Ya find those sorts of situations in healers, herbalists, and potion makers who excel at what they do. They’re nearly always closeted magickals.”

Conn grinned. “Other humans have been called to serve The Dagda, but Aran is one of a kind.”