Page 67 of Guarded by My Gargoyle

“Say it again.”

“That’s you.”

He made a wordless sound, and took her down onto the bed. Then her clothing went, one piece at a time. Her jeans. Her bra, which defeated him for a second and made her laugh, and her laugh made his mouth curve against her shoulder. His hands were enormous and hot and he had learned exactly what to do with them in a single night on a rug. His wings went wide and open, because he never could keep them shut when he wanted her this much.

“Garrick—”

“I remember.” He moved down her body. “I remember all of it.”

He put his mouth on her, and she had to put the back of her hand across her mouth, because her son was asleep one floor below and there was nothing quiet about what he was doing to her. He was patient about it, as patient as he was with the stone, taking his time like he had all night to wait. She came with her fingers locked at the back of his skull and his name in her mouth.

When he came back up her body she was still shaking. He looked down at her with the gold filling his eyes.

“Again,” he said.

“No.” She got a hand around the back of his neck. “Now. Come here.”

He was burning hot. That was the thing about him she would never get used to, the cool grey quiet when he was at rest and then the furnace under her hands as the need took over. She reached down between them and wrapped her hands around him, and he shuddered against her as though she’d hurt him.

“Maris.”

“I know.” She guided him. “I know.”

He paused there, braced on his forearms, looking down at her, and she understood he was giving her the moment to be sure. She pulled him down.

He filled her the way water finds a gap in the rock, slow and inevitable and exactly right, and the sound he made went from a word to something older. His wings came down around them both, creating a warm dark room made of him.

She kept her palm on his chest the entire time. The first time had been the fire and his hands and the sheer astonishing size of him. This was the vibration under her hand and the two of them in the darkness beneath his wings with nothing to look at but each other. She could feel the resonance against her where their bodies pressed together and then she could no longer tell if she was feeling his heartbeat or her own.

“Don’t stop,” she said. “Don’t⁠—”

He didn’t. He put a hand under the small of her back and lifted her into him, and his ridges caught her where she needed catching, and she came apart the second time with her mouth pressed against the hot skin of his shoulder.

He followed her over with her name in his mouth, and his weight settled down over her, and for a while neither of them said anything at all.

Afterwards she lay with her cheek on his chest and his resonance under her ear, and told him the only truth that mattered.

“I’ve got you.” Her hand spread over his chest. “I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere.”

And the huge body shuddered, and held her, and stayed.

CHAPTER 22

Garrick woke up in the grey hour before dawn with an answer in his head, the answer that had started to come to him in the stone before he’d heard a door open that wasn’t supposed to open. He’d seen a similar problem before—a steep parcel and numbers that only worked if you pretended the water went where you wanted it to. He’d bid a job exactly like it once, and lost.

Maris slept beside him, one hand on his chest, her body relaxed and trusting. He lay still under her hand for a long minute, feeling the resonance between them, and then he slipped quietly out of the bed and went barefoot to his study.

He pulled out the archived files, thumbed past four years of dead projects, and there it was.

RIVERSTONE MEADOWS—BID PACKAGE—NOT AWARDED.

He spread it across the desk. His proposal had been undercut by a firm called Royal Builders who’d promised the client the steep parcel could be tamed for less than it could actually be tamed for. He’d walked. He’d told his team the ground wouldn’t hold and they couldn’t fix it for the price the client wanted to pay.

Royal had won the bid. And then, eighteen months later, Royal had folded, and the developer with them, and the project had died a quiet death.

But they’d started the project. They’d have graded. They’d have cut roads and run the first utility spurs before the money ran out. And if all of it was still sitting up there in the weeds…

Enough infrastructure to reduce the costs.