Magical Midlife Love (Leveling Up 4)

“Would you like to move outside?” he asked, his eyes soft. “I need to barbecue.”

“Sure.”

He put out a hand to help me up, and I moved beside him as if on a cloud.

“We should’ve started earlier in the afternoon so we could’ve enjoyed the view.” He led me to the sliding glass door at the side of the kitchen and stepped out onto a large deck.

“Weren’t you busy earlier?”

He closed the door behind me and pulled a couple of chairs from the edge of the deck toward the barbecue. Kingsley finished spreading out the coals, then put the grate back on the grill and sat.

“Oops, forgot the steaks.” Austin brushed his fingers across my cheek before heading back into the house.

I gasped when I saw the ground beyond the deck, sloping downward before the tree line. The last shards of light fell across small blue flowers speckled with buttercups, swaying softly in the breeze, just like in the meadow we’d overlooked on our first date.

These were the flowers he’d referred to earlier, when he picked me up. They weren’t native to this mountainside, as this small area was the only one covered in them. I knew without asking that he’d put them here to remind me of that perfect outing. He was so dang romantic that it almost hurt my heart.

I stood in silence for a moment, my mind a little dizzied again, my body humming, desperate to be touched. My heart beat harder but not faster, and I put my hand to my chest, not sure if I should be alarmed. Wanting to go after Austin. Wanting him to come back out here.

Wanting to know what was happening to me, and wanting it to keep happening.

Twenty-Six

Kingsley watched Jess’s face go through a gamut of emotions, ending on confusion. She’d already entered the mating slide. The effect was plainer than in any shifter he’d ever known, and not because she relayed everything she felt on her face. He’d bet female gargoyles mated explosively, territorially. Permanently. She’d be a handful when the mating link settled. Volatile and extremely dangerous. Austin would be in for a wild ride.

One thing was clear: Jess had absolutely no idea what was happening. She was the driver of the mating bond, she was choosing the speed (and wasting no time), but she didn’t realize it.

Given she still thought like a Jane, Kingsley couldn’t fault Austin for not explaining any of this to her. She’d probably spook and go running. She was fighting the bond even now, which meant she had a stubborn streak a mile wide.

“How much do you know about gargoyles?” Kingsley asked her.

“Some.”

“Are they territorial?”

She thought about it, those thoughts sitting on her face and in her body movements for all to see. Thankfully, mages couldn’t read people any better than she could, or the upcoming meeting with the mage probably wouldn’t go well.

“I’ve only seen them in my territory, so I don’t know,” she finally answered.

“You’re not territorial over your…property?” But he already knew the answer.

“No,” she said. “I mean, I don’t like Peeping Toms, obviously, but I don’t really think of it as my territory. It’s Ivy House’s territory. She handles most things.”

He sat and then leaned back and crossed an ankle over his knee. Austin stepped out with three potatoes wrapped in foil, placed them on the grill, and closed the lid. A glance at Kingsley let him know to get lost. It was interrogation time, and Austin would just get in the way.

The warning in Austin’s posture was clear. Take it easy on her. Don’t hurt her. He winked at Jess before ducking back into the house.

“Thanks for the flow—” The door closed before she could get all the words out. “I feel like I should be helping,” she murmured.

“He’s cooking for you. Let him.”

A thoughtful expression stole over her face. Her eyes wandered; she was probably calling up memories of what Kingsley had said earlier about shifters cooking for their women. She crossed her legs, her discomfort incredibly plain, the reasons equally so.

His wife, Earnessa, should be having this talk with Jess, not him. It was borderline unacceptable for a male to talk this through with a female, at least when the female was this expressive, not to mention she’d been claimed by the strongest alpha in the world (or near enough).

Into the silence, he asked, “Are gargoyles protective of their females?”

She bit her lip. “The guys aren’t protective of their…of the women they meet in the bar. But I doubt that counts.”

“No, that doesn’t count.”

“Then I don’t know.”

“You?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think so. I’ve only been on a couple of dates since inheriting the magic.”

“So you know very little about gargoyle culture.”

“It certainly seems like it.”

Kingsley lazily swirled the wine in his glass, watching it in the glow of the deck light, the darkness having finally swallowed the last rays of the sun. “Shifters are territorial.”