Page 29 of Bumpy, the Gargoyle Slayer

“How?” She looks up at me, her blue eyes shining like sapphires within their veil of tears. “We’ve both got different destinies, even if we’re not sure we want them.”

Pressing her head back into me, I spread kisses along the top of her hair. I can’t help it. I need her. I need to kiss her. Finally, I say, “Let’s just play this out. A few more days like we planned. At the end, we can decide. Maybe… maybe we go our own ways. Maybe we live our separate lives together. You could come to Paris. I have a pied-a-terre across from the cathedral. I bought it a couple hundred years ago. It needs to be renovated, but you could do your slaying thing there as well as here.”

“You think so?” She pulls back to look at me again.

“Everything I have is yours. You could paint at Montmartre. It’s a large hill in the eighteenth arrondissement where artists gather. You could be creative and still slay vampires, though I’d prefer it if you call me first. I’ll keep a cell phone on me.” I really don’t want her near vampires without me.

I’ll tell the cathedral I’ll come back so long as I have time to spend with Bunny. I’m used to negotiation now. I’ll make it work.

“That’s not quite the creative I had in mind, but… thank you. I lo… thank you.”

My heart kicks up again. I think she was about to say that she loves me—again—but I don’t press her. Until I can say the words back to her without feeling guilt so heavy I could better shoulder the entire weight of the cathedral, I can’t hear the full breadth of it.

But as we walk on, hand in hand, one thing is clear: we’re no longer fake anything. The farce has become real even if the future lies just as far away.

CHAPTER 9

Bunny

All week, Alain and I have been dancing around each other. By mutual agreement, we’ve decided not to discuss the future and the destinies that might separate us—or keep us together. But while I’m glad that we can communicate about not communicating, nothing helps the constant roiling inside me as time ticks down.

I’m going to have to make a choice that could change my entire life, provided he makes the same choice. Otherwise, I’m back to slinging coffee, looking for a slay job, and pretending I’m an actress. And if he does make the same choice, I can’t imagine how it would all work. How can he guard the cathedral and be with me? I can’t sleep on the roof. Can I?

More than anything, I’m going to miss curling up into him. He’s become my totem, my good luck gargoyle, my comfort. Each night, he comes to my room. He kisses my lips, now, which is a bigger deal than it would be for anyone else. And he kisses like he wants to imbibe me, like he’s so starved for me that he might gobble me up whole.

And then he brings that hunger between my thighs and gives me orgasm after orgasm. But he won’t actually fuck me. He says that if he kisses and fucks, he might just as well fly me to a deserted island and stick me in a cave, because that’s how possessive he’s going to become.

Is it terrible that I want to push him to it? I mean, there could be worse things than having to live with him in a remote location for the rest of my life.

Somehow, I manage to restrain my worst urges. I exhaust myself with laps in the pool and planning his birthday surprise. What do you get a billionaire gargoyle who can buy a small country and has seen it all? Done it all?

Luckily, internet videos, along with his insistence that I think about trying out new creative outlets so I better understand what I might want to do with my life, have given me a clue. I’ve become just a tad obsessed by grazing boards.

And so, I’m going to make him a grazing board, one as beautiful as he is. Because I love him. I didn’t want to, but it’s pretty hard to miss what I’m feeling. When I’m with him, I’m content. For the first time in my life, I can relax, even when we’re out being seen and photographed together by the paparazzi. Even when we’re watching cooking shows on television, reading books side by side, or just hanging. He doesn’t expect anything of me. He doesn’t force me to practice fighting techniques. He doesn’t insist that I read up on Kinds and how to kill them. He just lets me be… me.

Only, that almost makes it worse because I’ve never had a chance to find out who I really am. I was told I was a slayer. I fell into acting because my high school friends were doing it. And I sling coffee for rent money. Finding myself seems like the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

Only one thing is harder: not being with him, because when we’re parted, even for a couple hours, I feel like a huge chunk of me is lost.

Today, I drove with him to his office so I could slip out to the fancy Manhattan delicatessens while he meets with world shakers, but popping out to the store on my own is a lot harder than it should be. First, there are reporters everywhere and they’re all interested in me. I was raised to avoid notice, to sneak in with the herd in order to pounce from a position of anonymity. Well, that plan’s been shot to hell.

“Miss Winters, Miss Winters, tell us how things are going with Mr. D’Ange. No ring on your finger, I see. Are there plans?”

“Yes, and you’re disrupting them. Now, go away.” I try to slide around the arrogant reporter, but another seven just take his place.

Fine. I use the heel of my hand to blast a camera out of my face, causing it to hit the wielder in the nose. “Oops, sorry. Your camera touched my face. Just trying to not be assaulted. Hope that didn’t hurt.” I kick the shin of another and wince, pretending I stubbed my toe as I move, move, move towards the waiting car. I punch the next guy in the family jewels and keep sliding through. Maybe he’ll think it was one of the other reporters?

Before I have to lay them all out, Jean-Luc shoves his way through to me. Using his greater bulk, he wraps me under him and proceeds to knock reporters aside like they’re bowling pins.

“You have talents, Jean-Luc,” I say, once we’re both safely in the car and pulling from the curb, leaving a strobe-light effect of camera flashes behind us in the gray September sky.

I miss North Carolina. The sky would still be a summer-blue right now. The heat would see me wearing a light tee-shirt and cotton pants. I might pull on a cotton sweater just to pretend it feels like fall. I’d be making the same pumpkin spice lattes that I drink at Alain’s, though.

Downside of the metro area: it’s rainy, cold, and my hair… I swear my hair is frizzing.

“Right. Here we are. First stop.” Jean-Luc pulls along the curb, ignoring the screaming signs that say no parking. He unsnaps his seatbelt.

“You can stay here. I’ll be right back.”