Page 33 of Taken for Granite
“Then we wait. If you’re not healed, you won’t have a fighting chance.”
Her concern seemed genuine, for a possible agent. Why was she so insistent that he heal? That ran counter to what he expected from an agent.
“Is there anything we can do to speed up the process?”
Spoken like an agent.
“No,” he said, lying.
“Any food? A special vitamin?”
“No.”
“I’m only asking because you’re as shaky and feverish as you were two nights ago. Worse, now that I’m looking at you. Sleeping outside did not do you any favors.”
Her hand lightly brushed his brow. Tas sprang back, his useless wings outstretched. “Do not,” he hissed.
“Sorry, sorry,” she repeated.
“I am worse because of you.” Once he uttered the words, the rest spilled out as though a dam burst. “I cannot rest, I cannot think, and I cannot enterduramnabecause of your pheromones, female. Stay away from me.”
“What? How is this my fault?”
“Because I need to mate!” His voice filled the glade and echoed off the trees.
Silence hung between them.
He was so tired of resisting, of trying to ignore the pebble in his boot. He wanted to see her, wanted to see if her face held shock, disgust, or intrigue.
“It is a physiological reaction,” he explained. “My body has responded to your pheromones and activated my mating gland.” He touched just under his jaw, near his ear, indicating the gland at the back of his throat.
“Oh.” She was quiet for a moment. “What happens if we don’t, you know, mate?”
“It is unpleasant, but eventually it will pass.”
“So why don’t we?”
He did not believe her words. “Because my mating fluid, mydassa, can alter your DNA. In a female Khargal, it makes her fertile and improves her health. I do not know exactly what it will do to a human.”
“So you haven’t, um, with a human before?”
“Not I. Others have,” he said.
“But the women survived?”
“Undoubtedly. There are Khargal-human hybrids.”
She hummed, as if thinking over the problem. “Let’s do it.”
* * *
juniper
Okay, okay. In all fairness, “We need to screw to cure my illness” wasn’t the best come-on she ever heard, but Tas looked rough. She believed him. After eating basically everything she put in front of him the day before, he gained a little color back and no longer looked so emaciated. His dip in the lake hadn’t helped, and he slept outside, wet, with no shirt and no blanket. She knew this because she left two blankets and a pillow on the front porch last night when it was obvious he wasn’t coming in, but they remained untouched that morning.
Stubborn gargoyle. Last night got cold. She shivered under two blankets and a flannel sheet and couldn’t imagine roughing it outdoors.
And she couldn’t deny her attraction to him. He was everything out of a fantasy, with his handsome face, strong shoulders and wings. She wanted to touch and stroke the leathery membranes. She wanted his wings to wrap around her, cocooning her inside, safe in his arms.
