Guarding Grayson by Cathryn Cade Read Free Book Online Page A

the prom … not good enough to be my girlfriend … … not good enough.”
    She was out on the road, tears streaming down, blinding her so that the eerie glow around the bend in the road didn’t register at first, until she drove around the steep turn and the glow expanded, turned acid bright and green and so bright she was blinded, didn’t know where the road was, and her car was swerving the wrong way, thumping over something that wasn’t the road and then sailing out—too smooth and easy, this wasn’t road it was thin air—and then down, down, down and she opened her mouth on a thin wail of terror as she realized what was happening. The air bag smacked her in the face, thumping the back of her head hard against the seat and dazed, all she could do was lie there, panting shallowly as water glugged and bubbled around the car and she sank down, down into cold darkness.
    “No,” she whimpered as icy water flooded in around her. “No … Gray. Gray … “
    "No! Brynne, no!" Gray opened his eyes and sucked in air with a huge gasp, shoving himself off the sofa.
    He was halfway across the living room before he came back to himself. He stared around him at the small, familiar room full of happy childhood memories—photos of him with his family, all of them smiling, and had to brace his hands against the wall to stay on his feet.
    “Brynne,” he choked, sorrow and guilt flooding him until his chest ached with the effort of holding it in. “Oh, my God. She was so goddamn fragile … such a freaking mess.”
    He shoved himself upright and turned, swiping at his wet eyes as he stared at the slender, pretty woman still perched on the sofa.
    “I’m so sorry,” he said, meaning it more than he’d meant anything in a long time. He’d been a royal shit to her. Gah, so self-righteous as he told her to be herself , like he had any idea who she really was, or what she'd gone through to become the woman she thought she had to be to hold onto him.
    And meanwhile, she’d really believed she was in love with him.
    “I’m certain you are sorry,” Brynne’s inhabitant said in her flat voice. “But I am not Brynne. Perhaps you can speak with her again tomorrow, and say this to her.”
    Gray dropped into the armchair across from the sofa and stared at her—them with new eyes.
    “You really aren’t Brynne,” he muttered. “You really are a—a guardian.” And she’d taken him inside Brynne’s memories, inside her heart. Her fragile, wounded heart, still so ready to give.
    He gave a deep shuddering sigh and scrubbed his hands over his eyes. “So … why are you here again?”
    “To save you both.”
    "You saved her." He fumbled for words. "But … how did you … how did you do it?"
    "Bring her back to life?"
    "Yeah, that."
    "I used my energy. Beings of my race are able to interface our energy with more … primitive beings and affect your life force. More than that, I will not say."
    "Afraid we'll use it?" he muttered, a shaft of dark humor puncturing his gloom.
    She gave him a dry look.
    “No. I am not concerned about you or other humans using the method, because you do not have the capabilities, nor will you at any time in the foreseeable future. Cloning and cyborg tech, yes. Re-animation, no.”

 
    CHAPTER SIX
    Gray opened his eyes and stared blankly. Where was he? Flowered pillowcase and sheets, walls of soft apricot, and a nightstand with a clock, a small bronze of a Navaho woman and a paperback mystery. Oh, right, his Gran’s house in Magic.
    He stretched and then grimaced. Man, that had been one helluva nightmare. Good to wake and realize it wasn’t real after all ... Then memory flooded back and he dropped his head face first into the pillow and groaned. Wrong—it was real, and it had happened.
    But how had he gotten to bed? The last thing he remembered was sitting on the sofa in the sitting room, his mind reverberating with shock, horror and grief as Brynne’s alien took her hand away after dropping