Page 14 of Hated By the Gargoyle

“I’m almost done,” she reassured. “Does it hurt?”

I gruffed but gave her no response. It would not do to give her more of my weaknesses to turn against me.

She scoffed. “You don’t have to pretend to be strong, you know.”

A sound rumbled in my chest.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re a big, bad gargoyle. But these wounds are…”

“Your fault,” I completed.

She huffed. “Whatever. I’m trying to be nice here and you’re making it very difficult.”

“I do not need niceties,” I said, hunching my back further. “I would prefer the silence.”

“Yeah, so you’ve said. But you can’t keep me quiet forever. I can talk if I want.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

I huffed again, waiting impatiently for her to finish.

Her soft hands were at a strange contrast with the husky timber of her voice, so at odds with her feral demeanor. A small breath left my lips as those hands slid up my spine in a slow, explorative manner.

I leaned forward, but her hands followed, grazing over the harder parts of my wing and then moving towards the thinner membrane.

I swallowed, my body suddenly tight, suddenly hot. Something inside me was set ablaze at the touch, and yet I could not find the strength to lean away from it.

It was not a disloyal thing, was it? To be healed by another woman that was not my wife?

So long as I reciprocated no touches. So long as she healed me and nothing else. Boundaries would not be crossed, and I would still be true to my real wife.

She was merely helping, for the wounds were in a place I could not reach.

Even as those words were echoing through the chambers of my own mind, I was entranced with her low rasp, the words and their meaning lost as the delicate touch drifted and mended.

My body reacted to that softness as if she had reached around me and gripped my cock at the base.

It stood, high and weeping, wanting.

A grumble tore through my throat. I attempted to will the member down, but her enchantment held me in a vice.

My body was betraying me, and I forced the reminder in my head.

She is not my wife, I repeated. It is merely a reaction of the body, nothing more. It will be fine, it should be fine, so long as nothing happens. Nothing will happen, because this feral creature was not the one I wanted.

She is not my wife.

I couldn’t help the curiosity that gripped me as I began dressing the gargoyle’s wings. I’d never been this close to someone not human before, and his anatomy was far different than anyone I’d ever known.

My hands traveled over his skin. The touch was innocent at first. I was focused on cleaning and disinfecting his mangled wounds. They were quite extensive and painful-looking, but he barely flinched as I swiped the wet cloth over and over to clean the blood and dust away.

When I finished cleaning, my fingers smoothed over his back, riveted by the almost grainy texture of his skin. Like a very light layer of soft sand coated him, there was a slight raspy feel of him. It wasn’t unpleasant, just different. His skin was the color of ash and I could make out light reddish undertones.

Everything about his body was a curiosity. I’d studied art and he resembled a statue carved by a talented hand. He was all tight muscles. His wide berth was perfectly chiseled, that tail a mystery. I couldn’t see where it began under his loincloth, but it hung out the bottom, swishing in the water at our side.

His wings were very wide, but I guessed they had to be if they were meant to carry his heavy weight around. I wondered if the small holes and tears through them affected his ability to fly and gnawed at my lip to avoid asking.