Page 28 of Howl for the Gargoyle

"Probably fucking like animals," Rafe said, nodding.

"She's human," I pointed out. "But he doesn't hurt her."

Except Natalie mentioned something about liking Theo in chains, so…

I tried not to think too hard about my friends together in a full moon frenzy—there was an involuntary arousal to the picture this close to my own frenzy—but it did make me wonder if I'd been ignoring a few puzzle pieces I could've put together.

"How long ago was he turned?" Rafe asked.

"I don't have a decade to get my shit together," I said, thinking of the band.

"Do you have a human boyfriend you're afraid of hurting?" Rafe asked, the question so painfully neutral in tone it was impossible not to read into it.

"God, no," I said, and he only blinked in response. "But I… Sometimes, if I'm not careful…with a stranger around the full moon…"

Rafe's lips pursed, and his eyes flicked back and forth. "You can't force yourself to fast and then not expect to be starving, Hannah." My fork clicked against the plate, my breath tight in my chest. "Your friend has a partner he's presumably regularly fucking. You don't have a higher libido just around the full moon."

That was true. I'd invested in a whole new arsenal of vibrators and toys when it became clear my basics weren't up to the job. But it was like trying to dull a knife against cotton—utterly useless. The beast in me wanted the wrestle and strain and contact of another body.

I glanced at my plate, which was mostly scraped clean by now. I’d had less satisfying meals in five-star restaurants, and I wondered what made Rafe choose MSA over a career as a chef. Unless he just loved this work more than cooking. Which made me smile. I rose from my seat, and Rafe's eyebrows jumped. He smiled too as I approached, helpfully scooting back from the table. When he made to stand, I pushed him back into the chair, and he laughed as I set his dish and glass aside.

"When was the last time?" he asked as I perched at the edge of the table.

"Don't you remember? Just an hour ago at the door," I said, lifting my bare feet up from the floor and setting them on his shoulders. My dress parted and slid back like a curtain. Rafe's cool hands clasped around my ankles as his gaze focused down to my core.

My answer was easier and lighter than the truth. I hadn't had sex with anyone since my last appointment. I'd barely had contact. So yes, I'd been starving—starving for any touch at all. The hug from Ray popped up in my head, but it vanished quickly as Rafe lifted my feet from his shoulder and then pulled them back to his wings, tucking them into the gentle hooks at the top of a joint.

"At the door was just an appetizer," Rafe said, smiling at me.

"Well, we've had dinner now, so…"

I gasped as his wings flashed open from their fold, yelping as the motion stretched my legs wide. My hands clapped against the table behind me, and Rafe grinned wickedly, bending forward. I panted and followed the push from his wings, bending my knees, brazenly positioned and exposed.

"Time for dessert," Rafe said, turning his head to place a kiss against the inside of my thigh.

I lifted one hand, helping myself to that unruly curl, teasing my fingertips into the dense locks around one of his petite horns. He groaned and leaned into the touch. Apparently, the raised flesh around his horns was as sensitive as the spot around his wings. Which made me curious…

I rubbed my feet at the base of his wing hooks and smiled as his eyes fell shut and the broad wings shivered. Gargoyles were curious with their erogenous zones, so unexpectedly sensitive for beings everyone considered made of stone.

Rafe's eyes flashed open, lovely and dark, and I wondered what his thick eyelashes felt like, if they were sharp and heavy, or feathery-soft like a human's. But his gaze was heated and his next kiss on my thigh came with a swirling tongue and dragging teeth, drawing a harsh breath from my chest. I tugged on his hair, trying to draw his mouth to my cunt, but it didn't do more than make him hum, the sound vibrating against my skin.

"Relax," he murmured against my tense thigh, quivering as I waited for him to reach a better destination. "We have all night."

Except I'd had one night with him, and it'd been exhausting and satisfying and bone melting, and it hadn't been enough to get me through the month. The thought might've left me bitter, but Rafe chose that moment to slide a cool, firm, wet tongue along the crease of my thigh, and there was nothing to do but tighten my grip in the curls at the back of his head and let sensation soothe the restless clawing in my chest.

It took a great deal of effort to turn my head away from the growing foggy blue light outside the bedroom window. It would take even more effort in a few hours to get up out of this bed and leave the appointment. I didn't want to think about that. I just wanted to enjoy—

I gasped as Rafe's lips ran over my shoulder as I lay on my belly, his hips tilting and the rub of his cock aimed faultlessly inside of me.

I was vaguely aware of his goal for the night. He'd been wringing one orgasm after another out of me from dinner to dawn, but he'd been using mouth and hands and even one beautiful hour of just grinding his cock against my clit without penetration. He'd fuck me between each break, until his own breath was rough and his hands grew almost bruising. He was dragging out his own orgasm for both our sakes.

"Is this okay?" he rasped.

And now he was kissing over the scratched scars on my shoulders and back, licking them. And a teeny-tiny wounded part of me wanted to scramble away. It made my heart beat a little faster in my chest, the hairs on the back of my neck lift in warning. But mostly, I was exactly the kind of exhausted I'd come to Rafe for, and it was shockingly nice to be a useless sack of bones on the sweaty sheets and let him explore the most vulnerable, still healing, part of me.

"Yes," I whispered, my lips numb from the night's kisses.

His tongue stroked up and down my right shoulder blade, over the spot that had been the last to heal, the deepest scratch. He was grinding into the sweetest place inside of me—a ruthless and impossible to refuse orgasm rising up in me—and licking and kissing that scar. I was going to cry as I came, but there was something nice about that too. I buried my face in my pillow, sobbing out pleasure and a worn out sorrow I'd been nursing too long, and Rafe's hand slid around my hip to stroke one fingertip up and down over my clit. As if I needed that.

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