Tease- Xander - The Guardian, Never Let You Go

Happy New Year!

It's almost here!

The familiar aria coming from the Enchanted Garden awakened me. For the first time ever I was acutely aware that I was in a dream state, and swiftly scanned my surroundings; expecting to see Griffin. What I saw instead turned my legs to Jell-O, my mouth went dry as sand.

Standing in the middle of the glowing forest, shirtless and looking like a God was Xander. With his back facing me, I gaped in awe as he slowly swung a sword over his head in a long sweeping arc from his head to the ground as he stepped forward. Then, just as deliberately, he moved a step back and rolled the sword forward with his wrist. I watched as he held the deadly weapon straight out from his side before slicing it across his invisible opponent’s mid-section. The muscles in his back and obliques bunched and elongated with every move he made. The shimmering tattoo across his ribs that I’d seen only once before glowed brightly in the surrounding light of the neon flowers and plants that sang to me.

As if he noticed the change in their tune, he stilled; the mighty blade still above his head, his arms taut. I noticed a bead of glistening sweat drip down the small of his back and my stomach tightened. Lowering the sword with one hand, his other ran through his hair in a familiar gesture. Suddenly the site of him jolted me out of my frozen stance and ran towards him. The butterflies in my stomach set off the equivalent of a six-point-zero earthquake as heat only his nearness could provide began to rise through my torso.