Page 7 of Stolen By the Gargoyle
I tried to focus as much as I could, swallowing past my earlier panic. When I looked back up at him, I almost regretted it, because he was staring at me with that same worried and tender expression.
Finally, when I felt like I wasn’t going to swallow my tongue, I formed a coherent question. “Why did you takeme?”
I was no stranger to the paranormal world we lived in. I knew there were beings that roamed alongside humans. I’d seen inter-species relationships. Vampires, shifters, and an array of creatures mingled in the city.
But gargoyles? This was new to me.
And the fact that of all the women, he’d taken me and not… I don’t know? A succubus? Wouldn’t a succubus be more equipped to handle this? Not some human.
“I watched you,” he said finally. His voice deep and mysterious. “From the shadows.”
A slow trickle went down my spine, the sensation of something I couldn’t quite make out. It was the same kind of feeling of realization, like being shrouded in darkness, knowing something was following you but not being able to prove it until it was too late.
“I watched many women after I crawled myself out from the depths of the Underworld, but none were like you.”
He leaned forward, the tip of his horns pushing into my tight coils of hair. This close, I could smell him. Like fire and embersand ash. It wasn’t unpleasant. It reminded me of a campfire, warm and inviting.
“You captured me from the first moment I saw you in the rain, wearing yellow and red and black.”
I blinked rapidly, recalling the exact outfit, the exact day, he was describing. There’d been a storm and I’d had to run out and slipped into yellow rain boots, a black raincoat, and a bright, cherry red umbrella.
That had been weeks ago.
He’d been following me for that long?
Maybe I should have been afraid, and a part of me was, but I was also… intrigued? I mean, with the attention span that men had nowadays and brains to rival chickens, the dating pool was slim to none. So knowing someone actually, I dunno, liked me at first sight? It was more than I could have hoped for with any of my exes, pathetic as that shit may have sounded.
“I felt your pull.” He reached a big hand between us. The tips of his claws were long like knives, and I knew he could kill me with one if he wished. They were darker than the rest of him, all black like they were stained with paint. He pointed at me with one of those claws and pressed it against my chest, over the feral beating of my heart.
I was sure he could feel it and I wondered if he would carve it out.
“And Iknew.”
My throat felt dry, and I swallowed past the scratchiness to ask, “Knew what?”
His black eyes seemed to burn. “That you would bemine.”
Well, shit.
Was it crazy that those words warmed me? It was stalking, kidnapping, and probably an unhealthy obsession like off some unhinged Netflix show, and yet everything inside me warmed at the thought of someone wanting me just that much.
But even still…
I cleared my throat and forced myself to look away. “Okay,” I whispered, accepting his explanation. Who was I to question his feelings? “But why take me? Why not… I dunno, why didn’t you talk to me first?”
The question appeared to confuse him. “No wife is a true wife unless she is taken.”
Say what?
“Can you explain that to me, because I’m confused.”
“I am a demon,” he explained slowly, and there was pride in his words, even if they shocked me. “Our traditions dictate that for our brides to be true brides, we must prove our worth to them first.”
“Oookay?”
“First, we take them.”
And he’d done that.
