With that, he strode past me and out the door, not looking back.
“What’d you do?” I asked Ivy House quietly, a little embarrassed by my tendency to talk to the house like it was alive. Talking to myself was one thing…
The wooden carvings along the arch formed by the meeting of the stairs started moving. The house did this sometimes—it sent me messages via moving pictures in the carvings. I didn’t talk about it much with the others. If this whole thing turned out to be an elaborate joke one day, I didn’t want a stack of evidence against my mental stability.
A woman with a bare bust and flowing hair galloped across the scene on horseback. Ghastly creatures swooped down at her with long claws and sharp fangs. Animals lunged for her war-horse, its head leaned forward with speed, not distracted. She turned, spear in hand, and looked down at me, the battle raging around her.
I stood transfixed, feeling fire spread through my blood, watching as wings sprouted from her back, snapping out to the sides and moving faster and faster, beating at the wind. She rose from her horse, and then it dropped out of view as the wooden scene shifted from ground to sky. Spear still in hand, one leg bent and one down, her posture proud and magnificent, she gave me a thumbs-up, and I felt rather than saw a little smirk and a wink.
“Tricky little bitch,” I said with a grin, unable to help laughing. Austin was being dominated by a house, and while I didn’t know how, I knew it pissed him off. It pissed him off, and Ivy House was gloating about that fact.
“I’m definitely going to the loony bin,” I said as I tore my gaze away from the triumphant woman in the wooden carving and went off to join the others. “I’m rooting on a house in a battle of wills with a man that turns into a polar bear. Somewhere along the line I’ve hit my head and now I’m living in fantasy land. I’m probably in a straitjacket in a padded room as I mutter about knives named Cheryl…”
My mumbles dried up, along with all the spit in my mouth, when I walked into the sitting room they’d chosen for the meeting.
My gaze immediately went to the man at the back of the room. He had dark, tousled hair, a midnight five o’clock shadow, a strong jaw, and a straight, narrow nose. His eyes, the lids naturally heavy, as though he were plotting something, flicked my way. In the next moment, his body position shifted minimally, enough to alert everyone in the room that he’d torn focus away from them and was now devoting it all to me.
A hush settled on the room as the others followed his lead, and in that moment I knew. He was the large gargoyle with the incredible wingspan. This was the guy who had saved my life, protected me from the reaching branches, and cut himself up in the briars so I wouldn’t get scratched. This was my knight in shining armor. This incredibly hot guy, in his mid-thirties, was under my command.
The breath left my chest and a tingling warmth spread within my lady-drawers. Usually a man got the position of power and the underling was an implausibly sexy young woman. The role reversal was a little hot, making me want to do things that were a lot naughty, and oh my God, where were these thoughts coming from?
I cleared my throat, trying to scrub my mind while I was at it. I might have to work with this guy—you never got involved with someone you worked with.
“You need to live a little. When the pants come off, make sure he’s the one on his knees.”
I blocked out Ivy House’s magical communication and thus her voice. She wasn’t helping.
“Well now, this is nice, everyone just standing around, staring at each other,” Niamh said, cutting through my frozen thoughts. Mr. Tom sighed much too loudly.
There went any semblance of classiness, gone with one comment.
“Hi,” I said to the room at large, not able to tear my eyes away from the tall man in the back. He was Mr. Tom’s height—six four or five—but he looked much larger by virtue of his perfect posture. His broad shoulders and muscular chest was nearly as robust as Austin’s, and his wings fell so low that they nearly dusted his ankles.
A surge of heat blistered through me, making me want to fly with him again. To see those incredible wings snap out before they pounded against the air. Something in me craved it. And I didn’t just want to see it—I wanted to join him, to meet him in the sky so we could tumble down together, our bodies entwining, reaching our finish and separating before we crashed into the ground.