23. Treasure
TREASURE
I’m humming when I lift the lid on the crockpot and give my beef stew a stir. The whole cabin smells like I know what I’m doing.
A week of deliveries and decorating opinions, and this place is finally ours instead of just his.
I hemmed yellow curtains on my Singer for every window, and my gargoyle hung them without needing a ladder.
There’s a thick rug under the sitting area that I dig my toes into every chance I get.
My picture frames went up on the long wall.
Two are filled from my phone, and the rest are waiting on the festival.
I run my hand over the rug pile on my way through and smile at the laundry basket by the hall. It’s full of clean clothes I’m not allowed to touch. Soren made me promise. Folding is his now. He squares up every corner of every shirt, and God help the crease that comes out crooked.
I fold the throw blanket over the sofa back and click the television off. I hum my way into the bedroom, fluff the pillows, and turn the lamp on. Then I sit down at my vanity and get to work on my hair.
I take my twists down section by section, still humming the tune my gargoyle loves, and pick up my flat irons. I want to look nice for him tonight. I’ve got my reasons.
When the last section falls straight and swinging, I stop humming to fluff my curls out at the ends, and his voice comes warm off the stone in the corner. “Why did you stop?”
I smirk at him in my mirror. “You’re about to wake up. You can hear the live version.”
“Thank you, my love,” he says.
I hum the rest for him anyway while I lay out a pair of pants and a shirt for him on the bed. Then I head back to the kitchen and start on a fruit bowl. My gargoyles will eat fruit all week long, right up until the hunt urge hits. What happens at the lake after that is none of my business.
I’m slicing melon when the sun slips behind the ridge and his stone lets go.
He goes quiet-footed to the bathroom, and I listen to my monster brush his sharp teeth and start the shower, domestic as anything. And now I’m standing here grinning at a crockpot.
The fruit bowl goes in the fridge. I’m taste-testing the stew when he comes out and pulls his clothes on. I keep my back turned when he fills up the kitchen behind me, towering close enough that his warmth beats the stove’s.
I set the lid back on the pot and turn around, and he’s already right there. He lifts me off my feet and presses his forehead to mine with his eyes closed.
“Hi, baby.” I hook my wrists behind his neck.
He answers by carrying me to the sofa and settling into the corner seat I picked out special at Cozy Corner, the one with the low back so his wings have somewhere to go. He tucks me against his chest and holds on.
“Maybe Lena and Sable will come out of their cabin for dinner,” I say into his shirt.
“We could barely keep our hands off each other in our first days,” he says, and rests his chin on top of my head. “I doubt they will surface.”
“Look at you, doubling the population of this mountain.” I reposition myself across his lap so I can see his face. “Do you need to go hunt tonight?”
“No.” His claws curl in a little at my hip. “But I may need to meet with the dragon soon, if he calls on me.”
“I love that you’re helping out Shadow Wolf Creek.” I stretch up and kiss the underside of his jaw.
“It is our home.” His big clawed hand slides down and gives my backside a gentle pat.
I trace one of the seams on the shirt I made him, getting my nerve together. “You know what my favorite part of the day is? This part right here. When you first wake up, before you’ve got any words yet, and you just hold me.”
“I have a reason to live now,” he says. “Because of you.”
And there’s my opening, walking right up to me.
“Are you still wondering if I can love a monster?” My finger stops on the seam.
He smiles at me.
“Because I do.” I hold his eyes. “I love you, Soren.”
He goes quiet.
I know this quiet, and it’s not the good one. It’s the one from the last time I got close to those words, the one that lasted all day.
I push up off his chest to face him. “Well, you can’t make me feel bad this time.”
His eyes narrow at me.
I climb up off his lap and stand in front of him with my hands on my hips. “I’ve wanted to say it for a while now, and you scared me last time, so listen good. You’re just gonna have to get used to it. I love you, Soren. My monster. My gargoyle. And there is nothing you can do about it.”
I turn and storm off toward my stew. I said what I said.
My feet come off the floor. “Oh shit??—”
He carries me into the bedroom and kicks the door shut hard enough to rattle the frames on the long wall. He sets me on my feet and leans down until his face is level with mine. His gold eyes burn steady on me.
“Take off your clothes,” he says, “or I will rip them off.”
I bite the inside of my cheek, fighting my grin with everything I’ve got, and reach for my hem slow on purpose. He straightens up and strips his shirt and pants off in two pulls. His dick stands out in the lamplight, and there is nothing reasonable about it.
“Ohhh.” I fan myself with the hem I still haven’t lifted. “You’re about to be rough tonight?”
He doesn’t answer.
That’s the thing I clock too late. He’s done talking.
He hooks one claw in my panties and they’re gone in one quick tearing sound. A scrap of cotton hits the floor by the vanity. My dress goes up over my head while I’m still gasping about the panties.
“I should’ve known better than to wear panties,” I say, and then I’m off my feet.
He drops to his knees, spreads one wing out behind me, and lays me back on it, my hips up in his claws and my shoulders resting on the warm stretch of him.
My hair fans out across his wing. I straightened it for exactly this reason. That doesn’t mean I was ready.
His tongue is on me without one word of warning.
He licks into my pussy, then lower, then back, no order to it, while I holler and grab the edge of his wing for dear life.
There’s no talking me through it this time and no checking in.
His breathing goes ragged, and the wet, filthy sounds of him enjoying himself fill our bedroom.
I come fast and loud, and I am not one bit ashamed.
He doesn’t slow down. The next one rolls in before that one’s done, and somewhere in there I stop being able to tell them apart.
My thighs shake against his grip, and the noise I’m making has left English entirely.
I’m delirious by the time he folds his wing from under me and lays me on the bed, wrung out and calling his name.
He turns me onto my hands and knees, and before I’m even set he pushes into me, thick and already pulsing.
I grab the headboard. Good decision. He takes my hips and quits being careful.
Every stroke lifts my knees off the mattress and sets them down somewhere new.
I can’t get a full breath around the size of him.
The bed knocks the wall in a rhythm the whole mountain can probably hear, and I hold on and take my monster like I meant every word I said in that living room.
“Oof— hold on, Soren?—” My grip slips on the headboard.
Nope. He has no words for me, only that deep growl rolling through him and the slap of him against me. He drives me up the mattress and hauls me back until I quit asking him to hold on and start asking him not to stop.
Then he pulls out and sits on the edge of the bed. He lifts me onto his lap facing him and slides me down onto his dick in one long stroke.
“Oh my god?—” I grab for his shoulders.
He bounces me hard and fast, one arm around my back, my knees not even pretending to help. I’m crying now, because it’s too much and it’s exactly enough. And that’s when my quiet monster finally opens his mouth.
“I love you, Treasure.”
The first time he’s ever said it out loud, and this monster says it mid-stroke.
“Every year I stood,” he says against my throat, never slowing, “was the road that led to me finding you.”
“I’m gonna die,” I sob.
“No. You will not.” He drives me down harder. “But you will be on bedrest for a while.”
He’s not lying about the bedrest. He bangs me plain silly after that. When I come again I squeeze him so hard he growls. He roars into my shoulder and holds me down on him while he gives me everything he’s got.
When it’s over I am jelly, straight jelly. He gathers me up and holds me against his chest until I can breathe right again, one claw stroking slow lines up my back.
He presses his forehead to mine. “This is how I tell you how much I love you.”
“I know,” I manage.
His palm spreads warm over my belly, where I’m sitting a little swollen and full of him. “I am excited for our first hatchling.”
My eyes snap open.
“I don’t have a problem with babies,” I say carefully. “But.”
“But?” He gazes down at me with all the love in the world on his face.
“Am I about to lay an egg? Soren. Look at me and tell me I am not about to lay an egg.”
A chuckle rolls through him. “No, my love. Hatchling is only our word for our young. You will carry full term, as a human. But our hatchling will become a full gargoyle as he or she ages.”
“Oh.” I settle back down on his chest. “I saw the word when I was researching gargoyles, and my mind went straight to a whole nest.”
That deep, happy rumble starts up under my ear.
Well. At least I didn’t pass out this time. Thank God for that.