Page 37 of Fated to the Gargoyle

“I went looking around the furniture shop in town today,” I tell him, trailing my fingers along the back of a dusty sofa. “I have so many ideas.”

I wander the front rooms while he watches me from the door, and when I head down the hall, his footsteps follow me. I push open the bedroom door at the end.

The bed is huge, and it’s the one thing in this cabin without a speck of dust on it. The sheets are crisp and new, the corners tucked tight, and the pillows sit up fat and proud in a room that’s been shut up for years.

I step out of my flats at the door and set my purse on the dresser. I catch myself doing it and can’t even be embarrassed.

I cross to the bed and smooth my hand over the mattress. “This is a new bed.”

“The wolf pack has been friendly,” Soren says from the doorway, filling it. “They want to be sure you’re comfortable.”

“Huh?” I turn around to face him.

His wings give a little shrug behind him. “After you fell asleep, I flew to the Shadow Wolf Pack and asked their help.”

I walk over and lay my hand flat on his chest, and his heat comes up through it. I slide my hand down all that carved muscle and catch my bottom lip between my teeth. I’m in over my head. I need to know anyway.

This time, he doesn’t pull my hand away.

I drag my fingers down his stomach one ridge at a time, and the rumble in his chest drops lower with me. His eyes burn gold in the dark of the cabin, and his wings shiver at their edges. All that power, and he stands statue-still and lets me play. The gold light follows my hand and gives away everywhere he wants me to touch him.

I find the edge of the loincloth and grip it, and it turns out I don’t even need to pull. He’s already swelling behind the cloth, lifting it, and then he’s out from under it, heavy and standing free, and I forget to blink.

Let me be honest about what I’m working with here. It’s thick, it’s long, it’s hanging out of him like a second leg, and there is no way in hell all of that is going inside me without putting me in a coma. A nervous laugh comes flying out of me, and his head tilts, and that makes it worse.

I take a step back. His claw catches my hand, gentle, and he leans down and presses his forehead to mine. “You will fit, Treasure.”

“What?” I pull back enough to see his whole face. Surely I heard that wrong.

His tongue comes out, long, and swipes warm up my cheek. “I just need to prep you.”

And Lord help me, I’m not even worried about the tongue. The tongue, I can work with. It’s the rest of the situation I’m negotiating.

“I never thought I’d die from sex,” I whisper. “Soren, I don’t think I can handle all of that.”

“Don’t worry, my love.” Every part of me pays attention to that. “I’ll prep you.”

I open my mouth to ask how, exactly, and he rises up over me. My feet leave the floor, and then my back meets that brand-new mattress with the sheets cool under my shoulders. His claws settle at my knees and spread me open with a gentleness that does not match the size of anything about him.

“Ahh⁠—” It comes out of me with no time to dress it up.

He eases my dress up my thighs, in no hurry at all, and I drop my head back on the pillows and brace myself.

His wings spread wide over the bed, curtaining out the last of the light. “Let me worship you, Treasure.”

My legs are trembling and he’s barely touched me. So I’m really about to get fucked by a monster.

The only question is whether I’m going to survive it. A dick that big…

I hope I do.

17

SOREN

Asour thread runs under all that strawberry sweetness, and it clears my head of everything else. My mate is spread beneath my wings in our new bed, afraid. I would sooner crumble than give her one reason to stay that way.

“I have waited for you,” I tell her, low. “There has been no other woman before you.”