21. Treasure
TREASURE
Iwake up warm and stretched out comfortable, which is exactly how I know something’s off. I fell asleep on the sofa, and this is the bed.
The sun is sitting way up in that window already. I groan and rub my face. Sun up means my gargoyle is gone into his stone.
My shoulders slump. “I didn’t even get to kiss you before the stone took you,” I murmur to myself.
Then I spot my old moving boxes stacked neat against the wall, handwriting still on the sides. I sit all the way up. Bags sit lined up beside the bed, and I know that hair bag anywhere.
He’s in the corner, stone gray and still facing the bed. Back in LA, a man watching me sleep meant changing my locks. Up here it means I’m loved.
I smile at him. “How did you get all of this in here? And how did you get ME in here? I don’t even remember you picking me up.”
“You will grow accustomed to the quiet of my movements.” His voice rolls in warm through the mark on my neck. “Even at my size, I am silent. It has kept me alive a long time.”
I roll to my side and scoot toward the far edge of the bed. The big chest is sitting right where a nightstand ought to be. Most women get a lamp.
I brush my fingers over the iron bands and wonder how one gargoyle hauled my whole life up a mountain by himself. “Where’s Sable?”
“He is guarding Stanley’s,” he answers.
I frown at the corner. “Why? I’m not there.”
“He is not guarding the diner, Treasure. He is guarding Devon.”
I prop up on my elbow. “Ohhh.”
“I watched you protect the young one at that diner,” he says. “The boy loves you for it. He will stay guarded until he finds his match.”
I bite down on a smile. “My sweet monster.”
It was difficult, not touching her while she slept. I stole one lick. She was delicious.
“SOREN.” I snatch the covers up to my chin.
He groans, long and miserable. “Forgive me. I cannot control my thoughts.”
“Don’t apologize.” I settle back against the headboard, grinning at him. “But I’m probably gonna torture you for the rest of the day.”
“You do not want to do that.”
“Oh really?” I let the covers slide right back down and stretch out on the bed. “I’ve been told once or twice I was hard-headed growing up.”
“I have a stubborn mate.” He sounds proud about it.
I pull my dress up my thighs, taking my time with it, and remember real quick that I still don’t have a stitch on underneath. “I bet I’m running real red down there where you destroyed me.”
The stone SHAKES. A grinding sound rolls out of the corner, and I slam my knees together.
“Okay, okay!” I hold both hands up at the corner. “Don’t shatter on me!”
“I want my tongue in you,” he says.
“Soren!” I smack the mattress with both hands.
“That was no stray thought. I meant it.” He sounds entirely too pleased with himself.
“I can’t tell the difference when you’re in there!” I swing my feet down over the chest and cross the floor to him.
I lay my hand flat on his chest, expecting cold rock. The stone is warm, and something thumps slow and steady against my palm.
“Soren.” I barely get the words out. “Your heart is still going in there.”
“It beats for you, Treasure,” he says, and the beat picks up quick. “Only you. Always you.”
I keep my hand right there. “I think I’m falling in love with my monster.”
The stone grinds again, harder, and I snatch my hand back.
Then he goes quiet on me.
His voice is gone, and the drifting thoughts are gone with it. Did I say it too fast? Did I break something? I stand there with my hand pressed to my own chest instead, wondering what I did.
I clear my throat. “Soren?”
Nothing comes back.
I stare at him a little longer, and then I turn to the boxes because I don’t know what else to do with my face. “I’ll just… umm… figure out how to keep myself busy until you wake.”
I’ve been strong my whole life, but this scared is new. I’ve never told a man I love him. I get one toe close to saying it, and this one turns to stone and stops talking to me.
I dig through my bags without unpacking anything. If I broke something this morning, I am not trying to have a whole life up here to pack back up. I find fresh clothes and underwear and set my hair bag on the bed. Then I go run my shower.
I spend the morning on my hair. I think about straightening it and don’t have the heart for it today. The bun goes back up. Then I clean up the mess I make of the kitchen cooking breakfast, and later, lunch. I keep my hands busy so my head stays quiet. It half works.
In the afternoon I find my purse on the sofa where he left it and dig out my phone, surprised it’s still holding a charge.
I scroll way back, to the roommate days, all of us squeezed into someone’s birthday picture with LA lights behind us.
I look happy in that picture. I wasn’t. It took moving out here to find the thing that was missing, and the thing that was missing has wings.
And now I’m scared I messed it all up by telling him I’m falling for him too fast.
I think about going into town, but my car isn’t here. And I am not walking down a mountain. So I stay put. The clock crawls, and he doesn’t call to my mind at all. Somewhere in there, the scared starts turning into mad.
When evening comes I pick through the fruit bowl in the kitchen and get out a knife and a cutting board. I start building a fruit salad I don’t even want, cutting louder than I need to.
The sun sets. Back in the bedroom, I hear his stone give out.
I keep my back turned and keep cutting.
Silent feet or not, I know when he fills up a doorway. Before I can reach the next peach, his warm clawed hand closes over mine. “Treasure.”
I try to pull my hand back. He doesn’t let go. I look up at him with every hour of sad I’ve been carrying, ready to let him have it. Then I gasp instead. He folds all that monster down to my level and presses his forehead to mine. “I had to go quiet, Treasure.”
“Why?” All the mad I built up over that fruit bowl comes out sounding small.
He slides the knife out of my hand and lays it on the counter. “Hearing that from you… what I felt would have cracked my stone through. And cracks do not heal.”
I swallow hard. He’s told me that.
I pull back enough to see his face. “You could’ve given a girl a heads-up. I’ve been in my head all damn day wondering if I messed up.” I press my finger into his chest. “I told you I want a partner, Soren. That means you don’t get to pick what I can carry.”
“You are right. I will not go quiet on you again.”
He takes my hand and presses it flat over his chest. “The day you know that you love me will be a very, very long night for you, Treasure.”
I say it anyway. “What if I know now?”
He leans down until I have to tip my head back, and the look coming down at me is flat-out menacing. “Try me, Treasure.”
I think about the last time he got his hands on me. Would I survive a sequel? Debatable.
I ease back a step toward the counter. “Let me eat something first.”
He pulls his head back and stands to his full height while I turn back to my cutting board on legs I don’t fully trust.
I pick the knife back up. He moves in behind me, all that size towering over the back of me. I hover a shaky hand over the peach, and his claw catches my wrist, gentle.
He steps closer, and that’s when I feel the length of him through the pants I made, pressing hard against my back.
His breath stirs the top of my head. “I missed you last night, Treasure.”
I turn around and look up at him, then down at the front of those pants, then back up. Lord.
“Are you sore?” he asks.
I shake my head no.
He picks me up and carries me to the bedroom. I bite my lip the whole way. He lays me down easy on our bed.
“Soren…” I start, and lose the thought, because his dick looks about ready to come through the fabric. I haven’t even gotten around to making him a second pair.
His tongue slides out and drags warm up my cheek. “You have no idea how difficult it was to quiet my thoughts.”
The gold in his eyes has gone low and hot. Whatever he was quieting all day is looking right at me now.
“Umm. Soren?” I scoot back an inch that I know won’t save me.
He grins and comes down over me, one arm planted on either side of my head, all that monster blocking out the ceiling. I reach up and lay my hand along his jaw. “You don’t have to do that with me. The quiet.”
“I did have to, my love.” His claw traces my cheek. “It would have frightened you, so I shut it all the way down. I am terrified of scaring you away from me.”
I catch his claw and hold it against my face. “You’re not gonna scare me off this mountain, Soren. Tell me what you need.”
“I do not want to talk.”
His wings flare wide enough to shadow the bed. “I want to show you.”
My mouth makes a little o shape.
His eyes go up to my hair, brushed neat into its bun, and one claw barely grazes it. “You did not straighten your hair.”
“I…” Whatever excuse I had dies under that gold stare.
“I am disappointed, Treasure.” His lip pulls back off his fangs. “You said you wanted me to ruin your hard work again.”
Oooh, I played with my monster a little too much.
“Another time,” he says. I nod anyway, and his hand slides down from my hair to the waist of my leggings.
The claw at my waistband curls. “I want my tongue in you. Now.”
“Oh god,” I whisper.
He moves too fast for me to follow. He yanks my leggings and panties off together, and they land somewhere I’ll worry about tomorrow.
Then the world flips. I’m hanging upside down off the bed with my legs kicking at the ceiling, and his arm locks around my hips like the lap bar on a ride I did not read the warnings for.
His tongue sweeps up me, one long drag from my pussy all the way back over every last private inch of me, and I scream. “Soren??—!”
He keeps licking. My legs keep kicking, and his arm doesn’t budge. The front of his pants is straining hard enough to pop right in front of my hanging face. I did not sew that seam to hold monster. I grab the waistband and work him free, and his dick springs up long and heavy right at me.
Oh my god. It’s even bigger than I remembered.