Page 63 of Hearts of Stone

I couldn’t resist a direct order from whoever was master or mistress, but especially not her. As I gazed down at her, the moonlight bathed her face, somehow making her all the more beautiful. “That goat man, Silenus?” I went to jerk my eyes back to the cityscape, but she reached up with a gentle hand and pulled my focus back to her. “He told me things he shouldn’t have, private things.”

“I should’ve known better,” I said with a shake of my head. “Satyrs can’t let a bottle go undrunk, keep their dicks in their pants, nor their mouths shut.” I let out a sigh. “I should’ve taken you somewhere better.”

“But is it true?” she asked, her eyes searching my face. I loved how carefully she scanned my face, but I wished it was under quite different circumstances.

“All of it,” I admitted, unable to keep a single thing back. “Z Ward was a hellhole and Luther Whiteley deserves to burn eternally in the Christian hell for what he did, but I… A warlockcannot control a gargoyle sufficiently to ask him to commit a deed that goes against his nature. And touching another woman?” I paused, treasuring the way she felt nestled against my chest. If I could, I would carry her everywhere, never letting her feet touch the ground again. “It was not something I could ever do. I knew you’d come one day, Jade, and if you…” I forced myself to smile. “If you decided to accept the mate bond, I didn’t want to come to you sullied by other women.”

There, I’d said it, the one thing my stone brothers loved to tease me about, the thing that had made many of my masters leave me on the roof to stand vigil because apparently I was ‘no fun’. I didn’t wait for her reaction, focusing instead on the horizon. My mistress knew the truth about me and she’d make her own mind up about it. I assumed that’d take some time. Who ever heard of a creature eschewing all sexual contact for nearly a thousand years? And what the hell could I offer her? No knowledge of pleasure, that was for certain. If she did decide to accept me, perhaps I would need the satyr’s—

Her hand on my jaw stopped my train of thought dead and when she slid her fingers around to tug my head down, I blinked. Carrying Jade took no effort at all, but suddenly my breath was coming in fast and noisy. My mouth hovered over hers and I felt her breath fanning over my skin, forcing every nerve ending to come alive, then her lips touched mine.

My first kiss. I made a hopeless sound of pleasure, my flight path dipping suddenly in surprise. Because the feel of it, the sound of her breath, the way she clung to me, it derailed everything, including my internal compass. Jade let out a little gasp, pulling away to look over her shoulder in alarm, but I corrected our flight path quickly, then turned back to her.

“That was…”

There were no words to describe how that’d felt, kissing the one woman in the world that owned my soul, so instead I triedto show her. I pressed my mouth to hers, then, not satisfied with just that, I mapped her top lip, then her bottom with kiss after kiss, my wings working harder, faster, with each one, And then her lips parted. Hot, slick warmth and the sweetness of the wine, I tasted that as I took more and more, delving deeper into her mouth with each kiss. And the taste that was Jade, that was the sweetest taste of all, one I knew I’d become instantly addicted to. I’d lived my whole life waiting for just this but nothing compared to the reality.

“We need to get Jade to bed,” Graven insisted, the moment we landed on The Eyrie roof, bringing both of us right back down to earth.

“Let me,” I told Jade with a smile, carrying her through the door and down into the house.

Chapter 37

Jade

I’d met the Adeluminati tonight, found out that my gargoyles thought I was their fated mates, gone and walked through a night market filled with fae, satyrs and other fantastic creatures and learned a little bit about using magic, but for some reason it was Seneca’s revelation that had me undone. I just stared at that perfect angular face as he swept me downstairs and then into my room. Perhaps because when he laid me gently down on my bed, I realised he’d never done this for anyone else.

Was that why I stopped him when he went to pull back? Those dark eyes flicked up to meet mine as I reached up and placed a hand on that massive arm. Seneca looked down, staring at the place where I touched him, then back into my eyes. That thick throat bobbed as he swallowed hard and he was about to say something, but of course that was when Carrick and Graven walked in the door.

“Jade, we will… Oh.” Carrick’s lips twisted into a smug smile, his whole demeanour changing as he drew closer. “And what do we have—?”

“We will wait outside, Jade,” Graven told me, grabbing the other gargoyle and dragging him backwards. “We will stand watch over your room while we sleep and see you again when the moon rises.”

And then the door was closed with a decisive click, leaving us alone.

“I should—” Seneca started to say.

“You don’t have to, not if you don’t want to.”

OK, where the hell had that come from? Oh, I knew. I’d been flown around the city, seen wonders and horrors and ended the night in the arms of a virgin gargoyle. Yeah, I knew exactly where that’d come from. I flushed then, realising that I wasn't sure if this was even something Seneca wanted. Like could gargoyles be asexual? I’m sure they could and maybe—

“If you want me to stay, I’d…” When he smiled, his whole face lit up, that constant state of tension seeming to evaporate. “I’d like that very much.”

OK, so what now? I thought. The first time Trevor and I’d had sex, it was terribly awkward and kind of awful, but also amazing, because I felt like I loved him. We were doing this clumsy, stupid thing together. But Seneca… My hand smoothed up that massive arm, and that was the first time I really felt the differences between us.

He and the other gargoyles were so hard, as if they maintained some of their dormant stony state long after they’d woken up for the night. There was no softness in him at all, except for the little breaths he was taking as my hand slid upwards. Every muscle was on display; in fact they were popping as my hand moved over them, something which made me think he was growing more tense. But as I stared up into his eyes, I saw something else.

Excitement.

“Is this OK?” I asked him. It seemed like consent was severely lacking in the gargoyle/warlock relationship and I was never going to repeat those mistakes.

“More than OK,” he rasped out. “Jade…” His head dipped closer, his lips just brushing against mine at first, then going back for more, getting bolder and bolder until we were forced to draw apart to take a breath. “I am yours in every way it’s possible to belong to another person. You can do anything to me and that would be… OK.”

But his words had me drawing back. The satyr, his discussion of Z Ward, the things we’d seen there, the gargoyles… I frowned as I stared up at him earnestly.

“I don’t want to command you to do anything,” I said. “Or put you in a place where you have no choice. You have the freedom to come and go as you like, all of you.”

I was trying to do the right thing, but he just smiled gently.

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