Written In Stone

reply was the door shutting firmly.
    ~ * ~
    "Well?" Mattie looked expectantly at her husband.
    "Well, what?" Gav asked innocently.
    "Why did you just blatantly lie to our son?"
    "I didn't lie to him, I simply embellished a little bit," Gav said wryly.
    "What if he discovers that it is perfectly all right to tell Mrs. Elliott he can heal her with his bite? You know as well as I do that healing the severely injured is one of the benefits of our condition."
    "Mattie," Gav held up his hand, "listen, sweetheart. Gavin is confused about what he is feels for this woman. You and I both know the fangs only come out like that when one of us finds our true mate. You and I have waited a very long time for grandchildren; do you really want to wait any longer?"
    "Of course not, but…"
    "This will simply show Gavin he truly loves the young lady. Nothing is as sweet as that which you have to work for. If he merely told her he could heal her condition, and they are to be mates, it would be no different for our boy than all the other women he's bedded. This way he will have no doubt this is the woman for him."
    "You are a clever one, aren't you?" Mattie wrapped her arms around her husband.
    "Clever enough to marry you," he replied, bending to kiss her.

Chapter Five
Dream Lover
     
    "Sure," Gavin muttered to himself as he made his way back to the manor house. "I'll just make her fall in love with me, and we'll live happily ever after."
    Gavin climbed the stairs to his room. He lay heavily on his big bed, brushing his hand across the ornate scrollwork in the headboard that told his family story. Well, it told his family's story if you could follow it and put it all together like a puzzle. No woman ever slept in his bed, no woman ever stepped foot inside his house, except the maids but that hardly counted. Did he want one to be here now, permanently?
    The permanent part had him wound in knots. He was a hundred and fifty years old, and that, compared to the actual length of his entire lifetime, was but a drop in the bucket. When one lived forever, an unfortunate beheading notwithstanding, permanence wasn't what one looked for. At least, it wasn't what Gavin looked for. Maybe one day, he sighed, when he was tired of the world, knowing he had seen and done everything, maybe then he would think of something as permanent as a mate.
    On the other hand, what if she truly was his mate and he let the moment go? She would simply grow old in her wheelchair, and then, one day, she'd die a mortal death. The thought squeezed a cold grip of grief around his heart. If she really was his mate, he would never find another woman to spend eternity with him, it would be as the past hundred and fifty years of his life, an endless stream of beauties playing bedroom games and trying to get him to marry them. What if he did marry another? He could never make her what he is, would never want to. Wouldn't she notice he was not aging the way she was? What would happen if she were to bear his children? Would they be like him, or mortal like their mother? Would he have to watch his own flesh and blood grow old and die as well? If they were like him, how on earth would he explain it to their mother?
    The questions, the possibilities, however remote, did not make Gavin feel better, and only served to confuse him all the more. What was he going to do? Not knowing how to answer his own question, he didn't know what was going on inside his head and heart concerning Angela right now, either. He'd only seen her three times, and they'd had only one real conversation. He knew very little about her, though it was more than she knew about him. Blowing out a breath, he muttered. "What am I going to do?"
    He didn't have a clue.
    ~ * ~
    Angela tossed in her bed, unable to find a comfortable position. From the moment Gavin left, the situation earlier in which she'd found herself in need of being rescued, and Gavin happening along to do just that, kept replaying in her head , making rest impossible. She thought of the way his body felt, all hard planes and muscle, the heat that radiated from him, straight into her body, and the strength in his arms as they held her. The way he looked so intently into her eyes, and the way his eyes had seemed to glow and peer straight through her. Even the way her blood had begun to swim in her head, heating her entire body, and the dampness that gathered between her thighs. Angela threw back the bed covers. It was too warm in her room