Page 76 of Married to the Devil

“How long have you been watching me?” she asks.

I don’t hesitate to answer. “Since I first approached.”

She swallows, spinning the charmed ring I’d given her on her thumb. Ah, her affinity with metals exposed my lingering obsession. How sloppy of me.

“You’re captivated by me,” she says, again, not a question.

Captivated is a good word for it. Descriptive. Like a moth to her flame. She is a fluttering light in a world of strife. She is my firefly. Warmth stirs in my chest even as this is inconvenient.

“Clever witch,” I murmur.

“Why hide it?” Vulnerability seeps into her words. Those blue eyes have a certain type of yearning in them that I want to swallow whole, but it doesn’t change the facts.

“Because I still can’t be what you need,” I say without inflection. “What does it matter if I’ve kept tabs on you?”

Her brows rise. “You watched me in my workshop. At my old place. You saw me fall asleep at my desk.”

I still. She’s put together much more than I figured.

“That corner needed a chair,” I say. Like it’s a simple thing that I’d watched her lit-up window from the roof of the next building over. Many times.

I can’t tell if she’s displeased. After all, I violated her privacy. She’d cleanly rejected my proposal, and instead of leaving it alone, I planted one of my most trusted men in her life. Against my better judgment, Iwatchedher. I plotted ways to keep her even as I stayed away.

Lorenzo was always going to fall. The territory was going to be mine, but more importantly, Stella was always going to be mine.

Fate must have agreed because the way it all happened was a much cleaner solution than anything I had in the works.

Stella’s expression is so very serious. “Why can’t you be what I need?”

I swallow. She hadn’t questioned that before, and I didn’t realize then how much of a grace it was for her to not be surprised that I couldn’t be the one to cater to her emotional needs. That I couldn’t care for her heart.

But doesn’t she deserve to know?

“I’ve borne the brunt of what happens to the vulnerable when the people they rely on allow themselves to be swayed by emotions.” I try to keep the statement clean, direct. “And there are a lot of people who rely on me.”

Stella stops spinning the ring. Her attention on me absolute. “Who hurt you?”

And in this moment, the fire in Stella’s gaze is as mesmerizing as her pleasure the night before.

As if she would burn down a whole clan of gargoyles if I’d admit how they treated me. I was a burden to them, someone not worth the resources and definitely not worth having any space or possessions of my own.

I sigh. I have no wish or need for Stella to wage a war of revenge my behalf, so I focus on the important part of the story. “My father left me vulnerable. He gave his whole heart to my witch mother, and when she died, he crumbled.”

The clan had been sure to detail just how weak he was to not only be half witch himself, but to fall in love with a witch so completely that he could not survive her passing.

“Crumbled?” she asks.

“He chose to sleep and never wake. It’s the way gargoyles meet their end. They exist as statues until the elements break them down.” From dust to dust.

“How old were you?”

Young.Too damn young to see the statue of my father along with the other elders of the clan, never to find the will to resurface from his slumber. Discomfort is tight in my wings, and I stand. “The details aren’t important.”

Her eyes are wide at my abrupt movement and something in my chest softens. I breathe through the inconvenient feeling while wanting to snap my teeth in frustration.

I cast off my reaction and continue. “I will not risk the people who count on me.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to. Truly.” She bites her lip. “But some would argue that those types of strong feelings empower people.”

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