Free Heart of Stone by Christine Warren Page A

understood how a man as take charge and dominant as Kees would prefer to be in control of a vehicle, but there was no way she was going to let him operate one. Especially not when he admitted this was as close as he’d ever been to one. Her nightmares traumatized her enough already.
    “It does not appear complicated.” Kees tilted his head to the side and gestured toward her feet. “Already I have deduced that the objects beneath your feet control this vehicle’s momentum. Your right foot moves to the right when you wish to move faster, and to the left when you wish to slow down. Simple enough for a child to master.”
    “Yeah, well, we don’t let children drive, either. You need a license.”
    “No one has asked to see this license of yours since we took the machine away from the people at the desk. I don’t see how anyone would know whether or not I possess one of those plastic cards.”
    If they hadn’t been moving, Ella would have banged her head against the steering wheel. Damn, he was persistent.
    “They’ll know if we get pulled over.” She glanced at him and sighed before explaining. “The authorities have the right to make us stop if we disobey any traffic laws, of which there are thousands that you aren’t familiar with, or if we appear suspicious. When they do that, the first thing they will ask is to see the license of the driver. If you were driving, the fact that you don’t have one could get both of us in serious trouble.”
    Kees frowned. “I would not wish to cause trouble for you with your human authorities, but perhaps later we could see about obtaining one of these licenses for me. I would like to operate this machine for myself. It appears … very interesting.”
    “It’s not that simple. There are tests you have to take about the laws I mentioned, so you’d have to study. It’s not a simple process. Trust me. Now, can we change the subject? I’m kind of over this one.”
    As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Ella felt the temperature in the interior of the SUV go up about ten degrees. She could sense Kees’s gaze on her. Hell, she could almost feel it, like hands against her skin.
    “And what should we talk about, little human?” His low, rumbling question sounded disturbingly close to a feline purr, full of arrogance and satisfaction. “Perhaps we could discuss the moment we shared inside the museum earlier, hm?”
    Ella gritted her teeth and tried to pretend that her cheeks weren’t glowing hot enough to cook an egg.
    “Or we could not.” She shot him a glare. “Unless you want to talk about what the hell you were thinking back there. What was that lover boy act all about? Do you just get your jollies from embarrassing me?”
    Kees’s expression went from teasing back to stony. He shrugged. “It seemed a logical way to explain why I had accompanied you to your work this morning. It also explained why I would not leave when requested. A male does not leave his mate in a situation in which she could be vulnerable or in which she feels unsettled.”
    “Yeah, well, the only thing unsettling about this morning was you, and you put me in an awkward situation. Now Bea is going to keep asking me about you like we’re in some kind of relationship. And I had to tell the police you were at my apartment all night.”
    “We are in a relationship of sorts, at least until I locate my Warden and you are placed with an appropriate Guild mentor.” He shifted to look toward the road. “And from what I understand of this age, a young woman spending the night alone with a man she is attached to will make no one think twice, not even the police.”
    He was right, but Ella was still unsettled. “What do you know of this age? You’ve been asleep for, like, a few hundred years, right? You think you understand modern relationship paradigms?”
    “I slumbered,” he agreed, but Ella could hear the caveat in his tone. “However, we Guardians require little enough sleep when we are