Chapter 7 – Grey
GREY
My entire body is so hard I’m having trouble breathing. I have a fucking thing for tiny women. It’s been twenty years since the last time I fucked a woman, and I can still picture in perfect clarity the many different ways I can spin a tiny woman on my dick.
It’s so easy to position them against a wall, their legs over my shoulders and my cock plunging in deep. And they can ride me in any direction on the bed.
Fuck. I need to stop thinking like this.
But it’s impossible not to. The woman has her arms around my neck and her legs wrapped around my back. My dick is hard as a rod, begging me to plunge deeply inside of her.
If she wasn’t a monster, it’d take nothing at all. I’d dive down into the trees far below. Pick a spot, and ask her how she wants it. She’d be on her knees sucking me off before I could finish the question.
But she is a monster, which means she’s off limits.
Which means I shouldn’t want her… I don’t want her.
I’m just so fucking horny.
“How much longer?” she asks, her voice soft, almost shy.
“As long as it takes,” I grit out.
She looks up at me and for a minute I’m lost in her auburn eyes. I’ve never seen a shade of eyes like hers before. It gives her an inhuman quality that should make me uneasy, but only makes me feel like I’m looking deep inside of her.
“You don’t have to be a total dick.”
I stiffen. Is that a dig? She’s got to feel how hard I am, right?
“Talk as sweetly as you want. Act as innocent as you please.” I lean in. “But I know what your kind is capable of, so don’t think I’ll believe you for one second.”
“Oh, and what am I capable of?”
The words come out before I can stop them. “One of your little monster-bitches killed my best friend.”
Her eyes widen. “Who?”
“That slithering bitch, Lamia.”
Something strange comes over her face. “Oh, Lamia.” She says the beast’s name with such pity.
Why? Why does she pity the creature?
In my mind, I can still picture it all. My brother and I had just awakened atop a castle—one that was being torn down brick-by-brick. We rose from our perches and set out into the woods. Later that night, we split up, looking for firewood.
I came into a clearing to find a half-snake, half-woman creature on top of my brother. She had drained his blood, her face and chest covered in it. He lay dead, and his entire chest was painted in his blood.
It was my first time seeing someone I loved dead. I’d been in so much shock that when she slithered away into the woods, I’d simply rushed to my brother and tried to save him. As a gargoyle, the only thing that should’ve been able to kill him was to be beheaded.
To this day, I don’t know how she was able to do it. I didn’t know why either.
All I knew is that I couldn’t save him, and I couldn’t find her.
So, I knew first-hand what monsters were capable of. And I wouldn’t lose one of my brothers again… never again.
“I’m so sorry you lost someone to Lamia, but she isn’t some heartless beast… she’s just complicated.”
Anger awakens within me. “Killing an innocent doesn’t make someone complicated.”
Her gaze meets mine, and I can feel she’s evaluating me. “Have you ever read about vampires? How they drink blood to survive? Well, Lamia needs blood to survive. I’ve met her many times before. She hates what she is, but she doesn’t have a choice. And she does everything in her power not to kill.”
I hear my teeth clench together. “If you’re trying to make me feel sorry for that murderous piece of shit, then you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
She tenses in my arms. “Is that anger doing you a lot of good?”
I stare in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Does being angry help you deal with his death? Does it give you peace?”
“Who said I want fucking peace?”
How dare she question anything when she’s a dangerous killer too?
“I’m just saying that it’s a hell of a lot easier to hate someone than to try to put yourself in their shoes.”
“You some kind of psychologist, harpy? Huh?”
She tries to slap me.
I catch her arm, releasing my grip on her thigh in the process, and her leg slides.
She cries out, grabbing my shoulder more tightly with her one free arm. As if she really thinks I’d let her fall. But then again, maybe she needs to learn a lesson.
Unable to help myself, I release her other leg.
She gasps, her legs frantically trying to hold on as she slips.
“Don’t forget your place, monster. I could so easily send you slamming into the ground. Healing after that would hurt like hell.”
Letting go of her arm, she immediately clings harder to my neck, and I reach down and pull her legs back around my waist. I hate that the friction has me even more frustrated.
When I’m done, she’s panting against my neck.
Something I refuse to find sexy.
“You are such an asshole!” she yells at me.
I try to hide my grin. “Maybe next time don’t try to hit me.”
“I’ll hit you whenever I want to!” she shouts.
“Keep it up, and I might have to spank you.” The moment I say the words, I wish I could take them back. Spank you? Who says spank you to a woman?
A horny idiot is who.
She looks up at me very slowly. “I think you’d like that a little too much.”
I picture her naked, bent over my lap. A groan nearly tears from my lips. Yes, I’d like that. Way too much. God damn it, I’m dropping this woman the first chance I get.
“You know I think you’re lying, right?” I say, changing the subject.
“Big surprise,” she mumbles, then louder. “About what?”
“I think you’re causing the bird problem in Cherish.”
She rolls her eyes. “And I think you need to get a life.”
“No defending yourself then?”
She licks her lips, and I’m glued to the small movement. “I have a feeling no matter what I say, you won’t believe me, so what’s the point?”
For some reason, I can’t remember what we’re talking about. She shifts against me again, and I swear my balls tighten. Oh fuck, I think I’m going to spill my seed right here against her.
I will not embarrass myself like that.
Adjusting my direction, I head down toward the trees.
“What are we doing?” she asks, sounding panicked.
“We’re going to make a short stop.”
Her gaze goes far ahead, where I can see the specks that are my brothers. Probably flying together and talking about me. Annoying assholes.
“Won’t they wonder what’s happened to us?”
Her legs hold me tighter, and I swear out loud before I can stop myself. “We’ll catch up to them,” I answer, panting.
We lower through a slight opening between trees. When we reach the ground, I instantly drop her on the ground.
She falls like a sack of potatoes.
Glaring at me from the ground, she climbs to her knees and comes level with my hard erection.
Time seems to stand still as I stare at her. I think of how easy it’d be to plunge right into her sweet lips. To close my eyes and feel the warmth of a woman.
Only, she’s not a woman. She’s a monster.
Springing back from her, I can feel my heart beating in my ears. “Stay here for one minute. Don’t run. I’ll be right back.”
I don’t watch to make sure she obeys. Without her ability to shift, even if she runs, I’ll be able to catch her with ease. But it’d be easier if she just listened.
When I find a stream, I open my pants and pull my hard length free.
It takes nothing at all to wrap my fist around myself and start pumping.
I try to think of the female gargoyles. Of every human woman I’ve ever fucked.
But it isn’t them that makes my cock swell.
It’s the image of what Celaeno would look like naked.
It’s the thought of how tight the tiny woman must be.
In my ears, I even hear her moaning my name.
Every muscle in my body tenses and I explode, my seed decorating the forest.
I continue to pump myself for another long minute, until I’m sure every drop has come free. Taking a deep breath, I know this was the right course of action. The tension that’s been under my skin since meeting the woman has eased… at least a little.
Using the river, I clean myself off, then zip my pants back up.
Now to handle the harpy with a clear mind!
Going back through the forest, I come to where I left her. Only, she’s gone.
Of course she’s fucking gone.
Enraged, I shift back into my gargoyle form and launch myself into the sky. I circle around until I spot movement, and I fly lower, just above the treetops. Celaeno is running with all her might through the woods, and I smirk. Did she really think she could escape me?
When I see an opening between the trees up ahead, I shoot toward it and drop down. I come exploding through the leaves and branches just feet in front of her.
Those stunning auburn eyes of hers widen, and she turns around.
I race toward her and catch her around the waist. She goes down like a brick wall.
As she struggles under me, her ass rubbing against my cock, I’m shocked when I harden once more. Is this a fucking joke? I just stroked myself off.
But looking down at her, my arousal only deepens. She’s so fiery. So filled with passion as she swears at me and tries to struggle out from under me.
“Stop,” I order her, more angered by my own reaction that her.
She turns and looks back at me. “You’re an asshole!”
“You’ve said that before,” I say, hauling her to her feet.
When I yank her against me, she looks up at me, and there’s a little sadness there that pulls me in. “Even if I escaped, I’d help the people and the birds.”
I hate that a small part of me believes her. That some place deep inside of me thinks maybe this monster is different than the others I’ve faced. Because it makes me an idiot. All monsters are the same.
“Of course you’d still help the humans if I let you go,” I say, my voice filled with mockery. “What do I look like, a sucker?”
She takes a long second to answer. “No, you look like someone who’s been hurt and can’t trust again. It’s sad.”
Sad. The word echoes through me. No one has ever called me sad before.
And I don’t like the way I can’t seem to let go of the word.
“Let me clear something up for you, harpy. Don’t look at me like someone sad and hurt. Look at me like a soldier, and you and I are enemies. Got it?”
She nods, but her gaze remains strangely gentle. Like I didn’t just insult her and declare us enemies. She actually looks like she feels bad for me.
Which again, I hate.
“Shall we go?” she asks, reaching her arms up.
I lean down, place my hands on her waist, and her legs wrap around me. But instead of instantly flying away, I seem to be frozen. Holding this woman who calls me sad and looks at me with gentleness in her eyes.
I need to stop this. Now. Before it becomes something more than it is.
For some reason, my thoughts and emotions are all over the place as we launch back into the sky. I’m not sad, am I? I think of my life at the gargoyle sanctuary. I think of my time with my Brotherhood of Gargoyles, Ender and Journey.
People would call me angry. But somehow as I repeat the word in my mind, it doesn’t quite feel right. And I hate that I can’t seem to shake off what she said. Sad just rolls over and over in my mind.
My castle was destroyed. My lands taken from beneath my protection. And my brother murdered.
I’ve been so angry… or is anger what I’ve been feeling?
Fucking hell. I can’t wait until we reach the town. Then I won’t be left alone with my thoughts. I’ll be focused again. On our mission. On helping humans and obeying the Elites.
Which is what I should be thinking about. Not that Celaeno might have seen something in myself that I’ve never seen.
And that I think she might be right. Because for some reason, that idea shakes me to my core.
The sooner we reach our destination, the better.