Page 53 of Guarded by My Gargoyle

She set the wine down, and it clicked against the wood, too loud in the sudden quiet. Across the kitchen the pan sizzled but neither of them looked at it. The distance between the table and the range was maybe eight feet. She stood up, and he was already coming to meet her, and the distance vanished. His hand came up to cradle her face, his claws already retracted.

“The dinner,” she said.

“The dinner can burn.”

“You made a whole⁠—”

He kissed her. Not the rushed kisses on the terrace with a phone waiting to ring, or the firelit kisses with a child asleep on the rug ten feet away and both of them trying to stay quiet. This one was slow and thorough and devastating. The house was empty of everyone but them, and a low sound rumbled through his chest, resonating against her palms. His other arm circled her and he lifted her up against him so she didn’t have to strain to reach him.

His skin was always cooler at first touch, but it changed under her hands as the kiss went on, the cool bleeding to warm and the warm climbing towards hot, the heat startling a gasp out of her.

“You run hot,” she managed.

“Only—” the word came out rough. “—recently.”

She laughed, and the laugh turned into something else halfway. He carried her effortlessly out of the kitchen and into the warm bright living room, where a fire threw its light across the polished wooden floor and a thick dark rug lay in front of the hearth. He went down to his knees on it with her still against him, and the size difference was both overwhelming and perfect. His hands spanned her back, and she could feel his heart racing beneath her palms, hard and fast.

“Tell me,” he said, his voice still rough. His eyes had gone full gold, and his wings were shifting restlessly at his shoulders. “If you want to stop. Tell me and I stop. I’ll always stop.”

“I don’t want to stop.” Her hands found the buttons of his shirt. “I’ve wanted this since the fern wall, you impossible—” She got a button free. “—stubborn—” Another. “—man.”

“Not a man, little thorn.”

“Since the fern wall,” she said, “you impossible, stubborn, gargoyle.”

She felt his laugh more than heard it, his chest vibrating with it. Then he was easing her sweater over her head with a care that made her want to cry. Her skirt was next, his movements still slow and reverent, as if he couldn’t quite believe it was happening.

He looked at her in the firelight and then he made a sound she’d never forget as his wings snapped open, spreading wide and dark and enormous behind him. The firelight caught the membrane and turned it to smoked amber, and the sheer scale of it should have frightened her. It didn’t.

“Sorry,” he ground out, “I can’t⁠—”

“Don’t.” She put both hands on his hot bare chest and pushed his shirt the rest of the way off. “Don’t you dare fold them. Not with me.”

He eased her down and rose over her until the firelight was gone and there was only him. His huge hand cradled her head as his mouth found her throat.

“Mine,” he said against her skin, the word low and rough, more vibration than voice. She put one hand around his neck and pulled him closer as her other hand slipped beneath his belt. He thrust into her hand, huge and hot and… ridged? A shiver of pure anticipation ran down her spine, and her fingers tightened around as much of him as she could hold.

“Say it again,” she whispered.

CHAPTER 18

“Mine.”

The word came more naturally to Garrick the second time. It should have concerned him. A great many things should have concerned him.

But Maris was naked beneath him on the rug, her clothing somewhere behind them, and the firelight gilded her body with gold. His wings were extended so far they nearly brushed the furniture on either side of the hearth, and every instinct he possessed had apparently decided this was precisely where they belonged.

Her hand was wrapped around him, her eyes wide but not afraid. He’d never felt less in control of himself, but he’d never felt more certain of what he was doing.

Her mouth curved. “Say it again.”

He stared down at her.

“Greedy,” he said.

“You started it.”

He had. Since January, although he hadn’t known what it was then. He’d come out of stone two weeks early with something pulling at him from beyond the boundary wall, and he’d spent eight months refusing to examine it. Then Maris Calder had walked up to his door with dirt already ground into one knee of her jeans, and the word had arrived fully formed in some primitive part of him.