Page 4 of Stolen By the Gargoyle
I understood every word, despite her imagining the contrary. Even when she groaned and began spitting obscenities in Spanish, her accent thick and delicious, like a frothy drink meant to be savored on the tongue.
The more frantic her pacing grew, the more rapidly I could hear the beating of her heart. It pelted against her chest, an echo in my curved ears that began to worry me with its rhythm. I counted out the beats in sixty second intervals, wondering tomyself if it was normal for human hearts to pound at nearly two hundred beats.
It sounded like a fragile thing, and my own emotions rumbled through me like flickering flames when my wife began to cry.
I stood to my full height, startling her. She yelped, her big dark eyes widening as she took in my stature. My wings flared, and I spread them out so she would look her fill. I prided myself in my size and the way the soft, bioluminescent lights of the tunnel reflected off my skin. I was not the tallest of my brethren, but I was sculpted from a thick mass of muscle needed to crush the very bones from my enemies with merely a squeeze of my thighs.
She seemed to appreciate my form, the same way I appreciated hers.
There were no words in all the demonic languages and beyond that were adequate enough to describe her. She appeared to be molded and shaped from tiger’s eye, all smooth brown skin with dark golden and mahogany undertones. Her body dipped and curved, appearing pillowy and fluffy and soft. My claws wanted to press into her flesh like it had earlier, feel the teasing hint of voluptuous flesh she boasted over every single inch.
I wanted to lay her down on the nest I built for her and worship at the altar of her flesh. I wanted those sighs and screams like gospel a lowly demon like me was never meant to hear.
I wanted to be inside her.
I wanted to make hermy wife.
But she would not stop speaking to let me say this. She would not let me squeeze my words in between the edges of her own and clear the misunderstanding she so obviously thought this was.
“A bat-filled cave. I don’t even like bats.”
It was, in fact, not a bat-filled cave.
Those were demons scuttling across the ceiling.
“Where even are we?”
The Underworld, my home, and now it would be hers as well.
Before I could deign to answer, she was already asking a new question.
“Who even are you?”
Your husband.
“Whateven are you?” She stared at me. “Scratch that, I know what you are. Why did you take me? Whyme, of all people?”
Because she was theone. The one I’d crawled out of the depths of hell to find. The one I risked the wrath of the Lord of the Dead to claim. Mine.Mine. From the moment I burst free from the confines of fire and torment into the human world, I had set flight on top of cathedrals. I’d remained hidden in the shadows, watching, waiting.
And then she’d appeared.
Dolores Villanueva.
I’d followed her in the dark, something feral in me awakening at the slightest scent that teased her skin.
I’d seen her.
I knew I had to have her.
And so I took her for myself.
This human woman who did not even know my name, but knew my tongue and the pleasure I could wring from her soft, supple body. Soon, she would know more of me. She would know my cock. She would know that my stone heart beat for her and no other. She would know that I would choose her in every lifetime because she had been made forme.
Nazzar. First General of the Underworld. Demon commander of the Lord of the Dead’s legions of hell.
She would know it all.
Know that my brothers and I crawled from despair to find our perfect human. That we would complete the mating ritual thatwould bind us together. I would feed her and wrap her in my furs and protect her for the rest of our days.
