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“What? No.” I move to scramble out of his arms as he heads towards the railing. With each step he takes towards the edge, the dizzying drop to the busy street below becomes more visible.
There are few things in the world that truly terrify me more than heights. Maybe my mother, or that time I had to work with a chimpanzee on a sports drink commercial, but the former could be bought off, and the latter could be plied with bananas.
“Yes,” Titan continues without stopping. “It’s only one story up. More like a hop, really.”
“It’s not a hop when you’re starting at the penthouse of a skyscraper.” I squirm in his arms, trying to free myself.
We are still far from the edge of the railing, but my heart races, and my fingers dig into Titan’s stone skin. Where is the seductress I’d been so determined to reclaim this morning? The seductress isn’t weak, she isn’t afraid of heights, and she doesn’t cower from a challenge.
“You’re actually scared, aren’t you, baby girl?” Titan’s clawed hand moves under my chin, tilting my face up to his. His hard gaze searches my face.
“N… no.” My voice wavers. I clear my throat and try again. “No. I can do it.”
“I can bring dinner down here. We’ll eat in the dining room.” Titan looks down at me, his marble eyes gentle in the glow of the outdoor lighting. His granite features, naturally viciously sharp, somehow soften.
“No, I can do it,” I repeat, my voice growing in power so I almost believe it.
“Brave girl.” Titan whispers it so softly, and I feel it zing straight to my chest and then lower to my pussy. “I have you.”
The feeling pricks at the back of my brain, the place where I hide away unwanted thoughts, like maybe I’m pushing myself to face my fear of heights not to feel stronger, but because this gargoyle wants me to.
“Hold onto me, tight as you want. You won’t hurt me,” he soothes, crushing me to his chest. “Close your eyes. It’ll be over fast.”
With a greatwhoosh, he unleashes his wings, and I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing out the new thoughts I’m not yet ready to handle. At this speed, the air is cool and moves fast against my body. My dress flaps around me. I can’t relax, but with my eyes closed, it isn’t as scary as I thought it would be.
Seconds later, with a solid, vibrating thud, Titan lands on the roof.
“Open your eyes, baby.”
I do so slowly, testing the view from one eye, then both. He is standing several feet back from the ledge facing out to the street. He hasn’t made a move to set me down, and I can feel his gaze on my face, but all I can look at is the vibrant scene in front of me.
I gasp, my body relaxing just a tiny bit as I take in the deep blue of the LA night sky and the white and colored lights that are set like stars in its darkness. “I’ve never seen the city like this.”
The forest of glass and steel towers in front of me are bisected by the thick gray veins of freeways. Beyond that, the city dips down to the shorter, mismatched buildings of Central LA, and then Hollywood, allowing a hazy view of an imperfect grid of streets. The illuminated billboards that are abstract in the distance become bright squares and rectangles of color, breaking up the expansive skyline.
“I forget how big the city is. It’s really just a bunch of little cities all stuck together.” I can see the Hollywood Hills in the distance and even a sliver of ocean to my left. The freeways are lit with ribbons of white and red. “It’s been a long time since I thought of the city as beautiful.”
From childhood, my experience of Los Angeles was confined to air-conditioned car rides and repetitive casting calls packed with look-alikes. Even now, I haven’t had time to look up from my phone or beyond the trendy bars I frequent as a sugar baby to actually see the world around me.
“Very beautiful,” Titan murmurs.
His eyes are on me, and under the weight of his attention, I burrow deeper into his chest.
“What happened, Julianna?”
I tear my gaze from the cityscape to look up at him. Confusion twists my lips into a tight bud as he frowns down at me.
“Who got you into the mess you’re in?” There is steel in his voice now. I could dodge the question before, but I won’t get out of it so easily now. “Who hurt you?”
“It’s cliché,” I say quickly, laughing at the end to make clear there is no cause for alarm in my story. “Honestly, it’s pretty boring.”
“Don’t do that.” His voice is low and quiet, but I feel the spine behind his command.
“Do what?”
“Don’t diminish your hurt.” He nearly growls it out, but the anger doesn’t feel directed towards me. “Someone caused you pain. It doesn’t matter if it happens to other people too. It happened to you.”
I swallow hard, looking into the middle distance as tears suddenly press at the back of my eyes.
