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.”She raised an eyebrow.“Am I supposed to be flattered?”Asher would have been happy to offer her the kind of flattery she wouldn’t have to question, but somehow he couldn’t be certain of how she would react if he described exactly how enticing he found the firm, lush curve of her ass.He might intend the remark as flattering, but he wouldn’t be surprised if she took it as an insult.He found her that confusing.It would have helped if she’d reacted in any kind of predictable way to him.Somehow Daphanie Carter didn’t seem fazed by his default tactic of silent intimidation.Since she hadn’t responded to D’Abo’s loud and blustery intimidation, either, he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised.Maybe he should just take the safe road and do what she wanted, help her with her metal sorting.At least if his hands were busy, he couldn’t give in to the temptation to see if her dusky skin felt as soft as it looked.He leaned into the table and cleared his throat.Maybe there was another way to win some points here.“You know”—he shifted and frowned—“I’ve begun to think … perhaps … that I haven’t exactly been … well, that maybe I could have done a little more … that I never acknowledged … how big of an intrusion this is.On your normal life.”She watched him impassively.“You think?”“Excuse me?”“You think this is maybe almost as big a pain for me as it is for you?” she repeated slowly.“I mean, sure you have to spend all your time staring at me sort steel pipes, but I have to put up with being watched.I have to accommodate my life to the presence of someone who doesn’t know me, doesn’t particularly like me, and has no apparent interest in so much as conversing with me.Do you think that might be a touch intrusive?”Asher winced.For hell’s sake, did she have put it quite so … truthfully?“Yes,” he said.“I think it is.”“Hmm.”That was it, the sum total of her response.She met his gaze steadily, her almond-shaped eyes clear and unblinking.She offered him no quarter, no wiggle room, not the barest shred of mercy.Shit.She was going to make him say it.Asher ground his teeth together until his jaw muscles screamed in protest.He would never normally use this kind of language, and definitely not in front of a woman, but she’d backed him into a corner.What else could he do?“I apologize,” he finally ground out, the words rolling off his tongue as quickly and easily as stone-cold molasses.He practically had to reach in with his fingers to pull them out of his mouth.He hoped she was happy with herself.He decided maybe he shouldn’t ask her that.To his surprise, his words had the effect of a magic spell.In an instant, her expression softened, her brown eyes melting like bittersweet chocolate.Her posture shifted, shoulders lowering, muscles relaxing, and her mouth quirked in a smile that conveyed as much sympathy as amusement.“Apology accepted,” she said.“You still with me?”He stared at her in confusion.“What do you mean?”“Are you still with me?” she repeated.“Feeling okay? The apology didn’t kill you?”“Very funny.”The smile widened into a full-fledged grin, one that broke over her face like the early morning light, softening and illuminating it all at once.“See, it was at least a little bit funny.And that, my friend, is what I see as your main problem in life: you take everything too seriously.You need to lighten up.Then maybe the idea of admitting when you were wrong wouldn’t feel quite so much like unanaesthetized surgery.”Odd, because until this moment, Asher would have defined his main problem in life as being oblivious humans blundering their way through the world of the Others in unenlightened folly.He probably shouldn’t mention that, either.He watched while she swept the scattered remains of packing straw off the table with brisk, economical motions.She appeared perfectly willing to go about her business and forget both her previous anger at his insults from the other night and her own much more recent insult to him.When would humans begin to make sense to him?“That is it?” he demanded, stepping around the end of the table and grasping her wrist.She stopped her cleaning to glance up at him.“The apology has been issued and now we forget about it?”“That’s how apologies are supposed to work.If I hung on to being mad at you, what would be the reason for you telling me you were sorry?”Since he wasn’t entirely sure of the reason he’d apologized in the first place, he felt unqualified to answer that question.Hell, at the moment, he felt unqualified for a lot of things, including for dealing with this baffling woman.“So we go on from here,” he said, mind struggling to catch up.“We go on from here.So why don’t you try answering my original question?”“What original question?”“Do you think you might be willing to do something more useful and less unsettling than just sitting there watching me all day?”Ah, that question.Asher debated the answers he could give her—that he needed to be alert to threats and therefore couldn’t let himself get distracted in her presence.That he would be glad to help out as long as she realized that everything else took second place to guarding her.That what he really wanted to do was strip her naked, lay her down on the dusty workbench, and make her scream with pleasure.Somehow, none of them seemed quite right.Asher Grayson maintained a strict policy regarding women—he never let any of them close enough to interfere with his work, and he never became intimately involved with humans.The first part stemmed from the fact that as a Guardian, his work wasn’t an occupation so much as a part of his identity.He couldn’t possibly allow another person, and certainly not a woman, to become as important to him as his own sense of self.The very idea was alien to him.The second part stemmed entirely from experience.Human women, in his estimation, were too fragile and entirely too young for him.Oh, he cared little for the concept of chronological age; live a couple of centuries and counting the number of one’s years started to look a bit ridiculous.No, when he claimed that human women were too young for him, he meant in their souls.He’d spent his entire existence taking care of humans, keeping them out of trouble, or rescuing them from it when they stumbled in despite his best efforts.They possessed so little awareness of the world around them that he had begun to suspect eons ago that they wore their ignorance as a badge of honor, maintaining the blinders on their eyes because it was just easier to pretend that things like the Others didn’t exist.Keeping the supernatural relegated to the world of fairy tales and ghost stories seemed to help the humans sleep at night, but in Asher’s eyes it made them look … pathetic.Like babies, they felt no need to see the world beyond their immediate surroundings, and the idea of forming some sort of attachment to someone who struck him as little more mature than an infant …Frankly, it wasn’t just unappealing; it was downright distasteful.And yet, somehow, Daphanie Carter made him want to make an exception, to break his own rules.When he looked at her, spoke to her, drew in her scent, he almost forgot she was human [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]