Stone Cold Lover by Christine Warren Page A

development of the mark on her hand had only added to her tension until he had asked if there was any activity she might pursue to take her mind off the troubles at hand.
    Anything involving leaving the safety of her home had been immediately vetoed. Spar might prefer to have a well-made stone fortress to house them, but failing that, at least remaining in her home gave them a defensible position. He had thoroughly explored the two floors of the apartment and knew all the entrances and exits. There were far too many for his liking, but in knowing where they were, he could secure them to the best of his abilities and judge from which direction an attack was most likely.
    He could have predicted Felicity’s reaction. It involved a tremendous increase in the volume of her speech, several violent hand gestures, and a number of curses, many of them in a language he only vaguely recognized. He was learning to, though, since she seemed to favor it whenever she lost her temper.
    They had argued for quite a few minutes before she had threatened to escape his guard the very minute he turned his back. Not that he doubted his ability to stop her, since she would require sleep long before he did, but the threat impressed him with her seriousness. She meant it when she said she would not tolerate being held a prisoner in her own home. In the end, Spar had been forced to learn a very human skill—compromise.
    Their agreement ended with Felicity promising not to leave the premises so long as Spar widened the area of her confinement to include the first floor of the building. It turned out that the apartment in which she lived sat above a storefront that had belonged to the grandparents who had raised Felicity from her childhood. She had inherited the building upon their deaths and converted the downstairs from her grandfather’s sign-painting shop into her own art studio.
    Spar disliked the tall plate-glass windows that faced the street, but at least he could place himself between them and his charge. He had done so the instant they entered and now watched as his small female bustled around, turning on lights, arranging supplies, and setting a large canvas atop a stained and battered easel.
    “You are an artist?”
    The room was Spartan, filled with little more than finished and half-done works of art, supplies he could not have identified under torture, and a few pieces of furniture built more for utility than for comfort. His low voice nearly echoed off the bare surfaces.
    “Yes and no,” she answered, her attention on the brushes she was cleaning with a stained rag and a solution that stank to the heavens. “I paint, but it’s not how I make my living. I restore artworks for museums and private collectors. Occasionally, I take a commercial commission like my papa used to. My grandfather. He had a sign-painting business, and it’s not my thing, but I still do the odd favor for old friends of the family.”
    Felicity had changed out of the clothing she wore to the café and the hospital and now wore a pair of battered trousers that looked like the bottom half of a military uniform. Paint and other things stained them from waist to ankles, and Spar could see why when she began to stuff the multitude of pockets with tubes, bottles, cloths, and tools. Over the pants, she had pulled an equally stained tank top that might once have been black but now more closely resembled the color of aging asphalt.
    She kept the temperature in the room warm, obviously for comfort, but Spar felt the rise in his temperature had more to do with the sight of her slender arms bared by the sleeveless top. The way the fabric had hitched up at her waist around the rag she had tucked there didn’t help. Every time she shifted, he caught a glimpse of the pale, soft skin of her belly and his mouth watered with the desire to see if her taste there matched the one in her mouth.
    Dragging his eyes back to her face, he saw her frown at him and quickly cleared his