CHAPTER 6
Bunny
I shouldn’t be surprised that his lips and hands move at glacial speed over my body. He’s stone, after all, though his skin is still skin. Like dragon skin. Or bat skin. Or…
Another moan rockets through me, pooling me into a big melty heap. He’s so gentle, and his gentleness pulls my sensitivity to the top of my skin, so that by the time his mouth finds the edge of my dress, I’m shaking from his restraint.
I arch my body into him. Each caress he makes of my stupid ribcage meets and dances down between my legs, lighting something in me that has no name.
Sure, it’s desire. I’m not an idiot. But it’s more than that.
It’s like the kiss he described—transcendent—and I want it all so much more than seems logical.
“So sweet,” he murmurs, vibrating the sound against the skin he’s dampened with his tongue.
More shivers trill over my flesh. Unbearable heat fills me.
A sudden tearing sound thrills through me. Air meets my previously covered skin. He skirts onto one elbow to continue to rip the luscious fabric all the way to the hem, and when his hand moves down to tear the dress from me, his knuckles graze over my mound.
So close to where I need him… I arch again, but sadly, he’s already gone.
“Patience, little girl. I know what you need.”
And even though it’s simultaneously sort of annoying me and sort of making me wet, every single time he calls me “little girl,” I tingle. Because he makes me feel safe, like I haven’t ever felt. He’s a gargoyle, a guardian of Good, so I trust him not to hurt me. To protect me.
And hell, my mother always said that idiots die young. Maybe I’m just proving her right.
When his lips finally find my nipple, I practically levitate. He suckles me through the delicate lace. The texture of the fabric, combined with the wet heat of his mouth, nearly drives me to scream aloud.
When he pops off, he moves to the other breast and repeats his torture.
I’m pulling his head into me, trying to make him touch me harder, heavier, anything to ease the ache rather than building it, but he’s not like any other guy I’ve been with.
He’s not racing to finish this part so he can stick his dick in me. He’s… savoring.
And I didn’t know that I needed to be savored until this moment.
My bra disappears. His kisses trace down my belly to the top of the thong before he rolls the fabric down my ankles, leaving me naked.
But he just continues his slow parade of worship to my thighs, ignoring my needy pussy and jumping to my knees, my calves, and even down to each toe, before he starts up the arch of my foot, my back ankle, my knee, my thigh…
and then does the same thing to my other leg.
By the time his mouth reaches the inner top of my second thigh, I’m wringing the comforter in my hands. But he doesn’t continue, doesn’t kiss me where I most need to be touched. Instead, in a move I don’t expect, he flips me over.
I writhe against the comforter, trying to put pressure on the part of me he’s not touching, but at the same moment, he pulls my hips off the bed, denying me once more. Like he knows what I’m thinking. Like he’s controlling me.
“I hate you,” I whisper, nearly sobbing.
I’m ready to roll my fingers over my clit when he chuckles. It’s a dark, sexual sound that pierces right through me. “Little girl. Trust me. If I can’t make you scream, I don’t deserve you.”
With one arm around my waist, holding me up from the bed, he kisses down my back, nuzzling, finally, between the cheeks of my ass, over my nether hole…
and then his tongue licks up my honey in one long, slow swipe from back to clit.
He twists so he’s under me before he drags me down against his open lips, vacuuming me onto his tongue.
I scream as I come.
That’s the last thing I remember before a cavern of black swallows me up, as if the gargoyle has slain me on his tongue.
+++++++ Alain +++++
I should have jerked off again. Desire is going to kill me faster than holy fire.
I cross my legs to hide my straining cock from the modiste that I’ve hired to outfit Bunny. I’m so hard, so needy after tasting my fake girlfriend last night and making her orgasm, that no amount of taking myself in hand has dulled my desire. I strain tall, hard, and mighty.
After leaving her lying unconscious from the force of her release last night, I spent hours tossing and turning in my own bed. I was too afraid to remain with Bunny lest I test my boundaries. I feared that even stone wouldn’t hold me.
But here I am again, back in the same pink and white room that screams her name, as if I’d had it decorated in anticipation of her one day resting within its walls. Fate, that.
There’s been entirely too much of destiny lately.
But the innocence of the room in daylight is a reminder that I have no place in the slayer’s life.
She’s twenty-seven. I’m over eight-hundred-years-old.
That’s not an age-gap. That’s insanity. I’m pretty sure the difference makes me a perv.
Then again, even a ninety-year-old female wouldn’t close the gap.
I cross my legs in the other direction and try to hold onto my best nature.
Which is made easier as she spills a cup of cold coffee down the length of fabric that the modiste pins to hers. As the seamstress flutters about like Bunny’s lit her on fire, I can’t help smiling.
“Oops,” she mutters, standing straight. She meets my gaze through the mirror and shrugs.
The room is elegant, graceful, and seeped in a comforting level of tradition, Bunny is…
not. Not now, and not at her etiquette lessons earlier.
I nearly expired watching her knock silver to the floor, trip when she attempted the curtsy necessary for royalty and upper human lords, and chug water from a bottle rather than a glass during a break in her lessons.
She left me flabbergasted because when she moves, she moves with the grace of a dancer.
And yet, with Monsieur Finnagan, her etiquette teacher, she flopped around like a beached fish.
Monsieur Finnagan was sweating by the time he ran out the door, his immaculate suit creased and his eyes watering.
My Bumps is not for the faint of heart.
Bunny leaves the fabric with the modiste and crosses to sit on the arm of the antique chair that occupies a corner of her room.
The arm cracks off under her weight, nearly sending her to the floor, though she catches herself.
“Oops,” she says again, sending me another glance. “My bad. Was this, um, expensive?”
“Only priceless, Bumps.”
A glimmer passes over her eyes before she tucks her gorgeous ass onto the chair cushion and places the spindly arm on top of the small table between us.
And suddenly, I can’t help laughing out loud. “Minx. You’re just pretending to be clumsy to annoy me, aren’t you?”
“Annoy. Test your limits. Whatever,” she replies, deadpan, before she burst into a wide smile. “You should see your face, Alain. You look like you’re about to vomit.”
“Charming.” But I am charmed. How did any human learn to be so precious?
Careful, Alain. She’s not your girlfriend. She’s not your beloved wife. She’s…
But my mind can’t quite finish the statement because I’m not sure what she isn’t, let alone what she is. Delightful. Gorgeous. Shaped to make my palms itch. Special. Brave. Inciteful. Funny.
And if you keep listing her attributes, you’re going to spoil everything. She’s only here because she trusts the pretense. If you fail at that, she’s going to run off, leaving your global initiative to fail and you to die of a broken heart.
“Stuff it, inner voice.”
“What?”
Damn. I said that out loud. “Er—nothing. Just talking to myself.”
She nods. “I do that, too. It doesn’t mean you’re crazy.”
Doesn’t it?
But her smile drops as she looks towards the modiste who’s still desperately trying to wipe coffee off her fabric.
“Alain… is this necessary? I mean, I can just grab some stuff to wear from some place at the mall. Or point me in the direction of a thrift store. I’m a wizard with a thrift wardrobe. I don’t need anything fancy.”
“But I need to see you wearing something that befits your perfection.” I clear my throat. “I mean, you are my pretend girlfriend. You must look the part.”
Good save, dimwit.
She sighs. “Right. As spectacular as my billionaire boyfriend.”
She thinks I’m spectacular? I can’t help but preen… or lean toward her so I can inhale her scent—perfection and shampoo, the combination of which twists down into the heart of me, calling my cock to do something with its stone.
Down, boy.
Alas, it’s too late for orders.
The modiste, Mrs. Kwan, hurries over from the pile of fabrics she’s laid across the bed.
“We’re ready again, Mr. D’Ange. Miss Winters.
” She gestures towards the bed before holding out her hand to take my fake-girlfriend’s.
When Bunny extends her fingers and stands, Mrs. Kwan grabs her and examines each digit, frowning.
“What a mess. We’ll have to work on your nails, and I suggest a polish for your skin, too.
Now, I’ve put the more luxurious fabrics along the base of the bed.
How many outfits are you envisioning?” But the last she says to me, over her shoulder, as she leads Bunny away from where I sit next to the demolished chair.
Right. Math. Roughly thirty days, three changes per day, maybe a few extra. “About a hundred outfits, give or take.”
“A hundred?” Mrs. Kwan and Bunny turn and gape at me at the same moment.
“Yes. Along with some ready-wear: swimsuit, underwear, lingerie, shoes, bags… that sort of thing.”
I cross my legs again and take care to look away from the small mirror on the desk, the one that handily reflects the larger mirror in the closet.
Not that I’ll watch Bunny undress once it’s time for her to be measured.
I’m not that kind of gargoyle, not like Simeon, who used to spy on the troisieme etage of the apartment complex across the way.
Poor Simeon. He burned in the fire.
And I’m burning in my own Hell, thinking of Bunny naked. Heavens, she’s lovely. All those curves. All that smooth skin. The scent of her. The pink of her flesh. I can’t wait to lap her up all over again.
I close my eyes and turn myself to stone from the chest down. Not all the way into gargoyle form, but enough so that I can’t feel anymore.
Much better.
Bunny soon loses herself in petting fabrics and approving images from the magazines Mrs. Kwan shows her. She’s got an eye for clothing.
Bumpy, the fashion slayer. She can slay me any time.
I push the thought right out of my head, but it lodges deep anyway, especially once Bunny moves into the closet to change down to her underwear.
Resolutely, I close my eyes and try counting to sixteen-quintuplet-billion-seventy-nine-and-five, a nonsensical number that usually has me calculating rather than focusing on what I shouldn’t.
It’s no use. I hang my head in my hands to prevent me from breaking my own rules and peeping at her like some lecher. It’s not easy being a good monster. It’s a lot harder with such provocation standing less than twenty feet away.
I keep the position while Mrs. Kwan finishes measuring my fake-girlfriend, and only raise my head when they both re-enter the bedroom.
“I have a team of twenty I can call in. I’ll send the daywear over first, a few options at a time, as daywear is the easiest. The evening dresses will take longer since fit is so important.
We’ll set up final alterations for the end of this week and have everything by the weekend. Is that suitable?”
I raise my brow in question, seeking Bunny’s response.
“Don’t look at me, gargoy—er, Alain. I’m fine with off the rack.”
Mrs. Kwan’s face tightens.
“That will be fine, Mrs. Kwan, but send the ready-wear purchases by tomorrow, if you would. Thirty of everything for now. No budget.”
Mrs. Kwan’s eyes gleam. Humans are obsessed with money. I can see her making calculations in her head.
Once Mrs. Kwan leaves, Bunny sinks down onto the bed. She doesn’t seem to realize what a tantalizing sight she makes in connection to the furniture. Dressed in loaned clothing from Mrs. Dumay, the too-loose pants cinched with a belt, she’s still too lovely for my state of mind.
“I’ve never been so tired in my entire life,” she moans, before flopping back.
“Etiquette lessons and fittings will do that.” Don’t look at her with lust, Alain.
Be a gargoyle, not a troll. “Will you be up to dining out tonight at a restaurant? I’ve got an eight o’clock reservation at Le Tour.
” I name the hottest restaurant in Manhattan.
Paparazzi always hang outside like damp bats, hoping to catch the rich and famous unaware. I intend for them to catch us.
That’s the whole point of this pretense, after all, though it’s easy to forget.
“I’ll be okay.” She sits up again. “I could use some caffeine, though. And a nice hot bath. I love being in water.”
“There’s a pool up on the roof under a glass enclosure. You can have a nice swim. I’ll call in the hair and makeup people and have them ready.”
“My clothes…”
“I ordered an outfit for you while you were failing etiquette lessons. From Coco. Shoes and handbag, too.”
“Coco? Seriously?” Her wide blue eyes blow wider. “I… wow. A girl could get used to being your fake girlfriend.”
I just smile and refrain from voicing my thoughts: that’s what I’m hoping. And though I wish I wasn’t thinking that particular line of idiocy, each hour I spend with the slayer makes the statement all the truer.
I’ll just blame my desires on loneliness. It’s nice having such a lively female living with me.
It’s nice having a girlfriend, fake or not.