Free The Guardian

flabbergasted by his overreaction to a simple question. “Are you honestly that afraid of a touch?”
    Turning his head, he glared at her over his shoulder. “I told you, I fear nothing .”
    But she knew better. He wouldn’t give her his name. He wouldn’t let her see his real face or offer him
    comfort of any sort …
    “You can lie to yourself al you want to, Guardian. I know the truth about you.”
    A deep scowl lined his brow. “What truth?”
    “You fear people. Why else would you live like this?”
    He slammed his hands down on his desk with enough force that it made her jump, and it lifted the laptop
    a good inch before it clamored down and landed sideways on the desk.
    “I don’t fear people,” he said between his clenched teeth. “I fucking hate them.” She could taste the venom
    he spat out with that one word. “Do you understand? They lie. They steal. They cheat and deceive. There is
    absolutely nothing about them that I can stand … And if you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to take your
    voice away again.”
    A part of her was tempted to test him on that, but the saner part of herself won out.
    He wasn’t one to bluff.
    Fine. Whatever. Let him stew in his misery. It didn’t real y concern her anyway.
    Not like I have to deal with you much longer. Sooner or later, Solin would free her. She knew it.
    With nothing else to do, she sat on the bed and watched as he worked on whatever it was he had on his
    laptop. She tilted her head as minutes dragged by and he hit the keys so hard, she was rather surprised it
    didn’t lock up or break.
    It was woeful y obvious that he had no idea what he was doing, and he became more agitated by the
    second. Boy, did she understand that. As the old saying went, a TV can insult your intel igence, but nothing
    rubs it in like a computer.
    And for some reason she couldn’t name, she felt a smug satisfaction over it.
    Good. I hope you stew in frustration until you’re pruny from it.
    That’d teach him to be nicer to her.
    Seth tried to focus on his research, but al he real y noticed was the faint sound of Lydia’s breathing. Every
    time she made the smal est move, his body reacted to it against his wishes.
    Why had she touched him? Between that and his kiss when he’d given her her voice, he’d screwed
    himself. Now he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have sex with a woman and not a demon.
    Were al non-demonic women like Lydia? Did they smel that good? Feel so soft?
    Don’t look at her.
    He heard his inner sanity and yet he couldn’t resist glancing over his shoulder to catch her staring at his
    back from where she sat cross-legged on his bed. With her elbows braced on her knees, she rested her
    chin on her folded hands. He had no idea why he found that adorable, but he did.
    “What are you doing?” he asked her.
    “Trying to read through your big head.”
    “Why?”
    She gave him a drol look. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I’m bored out of my friggin’ mind and there’s
    real y nothing else to do since I’m not sleepy. What do you do for entertainment? Other than surf online porn,
    that is.”
    “Porn?” She used a lot of words he didn’t have a definition for.
    “You know? Pornography? Naked women showing off their happy places to lonely men who can’t get
    dates? Or, in your case, guys who live under rocks and never get to see a normal woman’s happy place.”
    He was both appal ed and intrigued by what she described. Did women real y do such a thing? And you
    could actual y see it?
    Of course, during his brief time in the human realm, people had been very open sexual y. Obviously, they
    stil were.
    “I’m not surfing porn.” He didn’t realize he could do that, but now that she brought it up …
    Where would he go to find it? He hadn’t had the computer long. Only a little more than a week. He
    wouldn’t have even known they existed but for one of the slug demons who’d mentioned it while he’d