Stoneheart

by Cate Corvin

The Garnet doc began looking me over, from the top of my head to my toes. I was careful to hold Sawyer’s hand gently the entire time. “Well, everything checks out. Your body took to the stoneheart flawlessly. No damage, no missing parts. You’re free to go, Officer Sterling. A representative will stop by your place of residence in the next day or so to go over the Stone Accords and the rules of conduct with you. Welcome to the fold… and by the way, did you see which variety of stoneheart was implanted in you?”

  He asked the question offhandedly, but I could see he was dying of curiosity. His gaze went back to my chart, but I’d been trained to pick up the signs of deception. Despite his air of nonchalance, my answer mattered for some reason. What would happen if I told them it was a Ruby slowly beating in my chest? Gargoyle houses had beefs we couldn’t even begin to keep track of, and I wasn’t about to risk becoming the next casualty of a grudge that had nothing to do with me.

  “I didn’t, I’m afraid.” The words came out evenly, a perfect lie, even though the scarlet glow of the Ruby in my chest was vivid in my memories. “I was too panicked to notice.” I kept my expression neutral when he lifted his eyes back to my face. Whether he believed me or not, I gave nothing away.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough. The rep will want to test you, to be sure.” Dr. Khadara twiddled a pen between his fingers, looking oddly nervous. “Have a good day.”

  With that, I was dismissed from the morgue, no longer numbered among the dead.

  I swung my legs off the table and Sawyer was on me in an instant, cupping my face in his hands and running his thumbs over my cheekbones. Those green-blue eyes, like a summer pool, searched me with a mix of agony and relief.

  “I thought you’d died, Sterling. Jesus, do you have any idea what that did to me?”

  His voice was low, but Dr. Khadara picked up his clipboard and walked out, giving us privacy.

  Yesterday, my human heart would’ve thumped like a drum to have Sawyer this close. Now all I felt was a faint pulse, the magic of the stoneheart flowing through me almost like a heartbeat in its own right, but just as warm as my feelings for him. “I promise, Sawyer, if I’d had any idea what was coming, I would’ve jumped right back in that elevator.”

  There was a ring of truth to it, but somewhere under the residual panic was glee that I dared not acknowledge. I was one of them now.

  “Is that so, pardner?” He eyeballed my messy hair.

  “All I want to do right now is go home and take a hot shower. I smell like a dumpster.”

  I slid off the table and he wrapped an arm around my waist, supporting me even though I felt a thousand times better than I had as a human. I felt invincible, powerful, strength flowing through my limbs. “I’m not an invalid, Sawyer. There’s not even a scar.”

  “Zara. I thought you were dead. Allow me to baby you for my own peace of mind, if you please.”

  I clutched the white sheet around me tighter. My dress and shoes were still at the top of Viridios Tower. “I have no clothes. I’m not taking the subway naked.”

  “That’s why you got me.” Sawyer flashed me a grin, the first easy expression to cross his face since I’d woken. “I brought your spare duffel in, just in case.”

  “How’d you even know I was here?” I disappeared behind a curtained partition with the duffel bag, finding my spare pair of jeans, sneakers, and a gray t-shirt in it. Since things had spiraled with Josh, even to this day, I always kept a bag of necessities in my car, my apartment, and another in my locker at the precinct. You never knew when you’d need one.

  “I heard the call over the radio about a body outside Viridios Tower and I hadn’t seen you in hours. Luckily, the Garnet was already here and told us you were changing, or I would’ve gone back in myself and…”

  He broke off. I hated to imagine cheerful, sweet Sawyer plunging back into a nest of gargoyles, guns uselessly a’blazin’.

  “Well, I would’ve gone back. But when he looked you over, and there were no wounds for all that blood, he figured you were becoming one of them. So I got your clothes, hoping he was right and you’d be walking out of here just fine.”

  My skin felt sleek under the clothes. It was like being able to feel every single fabric fiber now, hyper-awareness of my surroundings. A small metal mirror was mounted on the wall, and I glanced into it and almost recoiled.

  Not because I looked like a wreck, with messy hair and dirt smudged on my face.

  But because I looked perfect under that mess. My eyes, already green, were almost metallic, and my skin had the perfect, velvety sheen of an airbrushed cover model.

  Any scar or blemish from before had been smoothed away. I was living stone now, a flawless sculpture.

  “Jesus, Viridios,” I whispered as I touched my cheek, watching the faint give of my skin. “What have you done?”

  Sawyer’s shadow moved behind the partition. “He’s earned himself a one hell of a beatdown, is what. Come on, Zar. Let’s go home.”

  The way he said it sounded blissful, like home with Sawyer was where I wanted to be. I stuffed those warm, fuzzy feelings down before I did something stupid, like imagine what a home with my partner would be like.

  Never date a partner. That was on Post-Josh Zara’s list of Hard Learned Lessons, and I intended to adhere to them.

  No matter how much I liked that Sawyer would go to shitty awards ceremonies with me and wait in a morgue all night for me to rise.

  Or how cute he was.

  Nope.

  He draped an arm around my shoulders and grabbed my duffel bag from me. “Invalid, remember? Try to act like it so I have a reason to be glued to you.”

  I let out a weak fake cough. “I’m dying, Sawyer, get me home so I can expire comfortably in my bed.”

  “That’s more like it.” He grinned again, all his anger gone, or at least hidden behind a very good front. “I called a taxi.”

  I leaned against him while we waited outside the morgue. The sun was high overhead; I must’ve been racked out past noon while the crystals of the stoneheart finished their takeover of my body.

  He was taut, and I realized he had stiffened his muscles to support my solid new weight. I might’ve been pint-sized, but I’d probably put on a solid hundred pounds overnight.

  I tried to lean away and cut him some slack, but his arm tightened, pulling me back into him. “Don’t even think about it,” he murmured against the shell of my ear.

  I tried to ignore the jitters in my stomach when we got into the taxi and one of his massive thighs pressed against mine, but there was no use. The butterflies were storming the castle.

  How different might my life be right now if I’d broken my ROE and gone home with Sawyer last night instead?

  But as pissed as I was at Damien, as much as he’d terrified me, he’d given me a gift with that scalpel, and I couldn’t get his hot bronze eyes or the planes of his chiseled body out of my mind. The velvet of his skin against mine.

  A traitorous part of me wanted to go in for round two, now that I was as unbreakable as he was.

  I pressed my hand to my chest, feeling the warmth of the Ruby thrumming against my palm.

  Rubies were rare. They didn’t often interact with humanity, let alone cops, their Houses keeping to themselves. It was one of the few higher Orders that I knew next to nothing about.

  I wondered what the rep would find when they tested me for magic.

  The taxi disgorged us in front of my apartment building, and Sawyer rode with me in companionable silence up the elevator. Despite my fear of heights—or maybe in spite of them—I’d chosen an apartment that afforded me a good view of the city. Sometimes, late at night when I was mired in bad memories and it was hard to breathe, I’d go out on the balcony and gulp down the cool air, letting the breeze clear my mind as it carried the darkness.

  Then I’d go back inside before I got sick to my stomach from the distance between me and the hard pavement below.

  I let us in with a spare key, r
evealing my almost sterile apartment. I hadn’t decorated much. Like my duffel bags, the lack of decor was a remnant of my time with Josh. Why get attached if I might ever need to leave in a rush?

  I had the basic necessities: a gray couch, a TV, and white walls above it all. My bed was a queen, shoved in the corner and made up with a white comforter set.

  Thankfully, Sawyer didn’t comment on how clean and unlived in my place looked. For a guy who hadn’t known me very long before Josh broke me down into little pieces, he got it. The blankness was a canvas I was waiting to paint on when I was ready.

  “Need a bedtime story?” He gave me a look that might’ve been a leer in a lesser man.

  I snorted, dropping my duffel by the kitchen island. “Are you kidding me? I’m not going to sleep. I need to wash off all this grunge and get to work.”

  “Hold up, hold up. Work-work? You just got a stoneheart, woman, you’re not going in to work today.”

  I gave him a look as I filled a glass with water. “No, knucklehead. You’re going to go to bed since you’ve been up all night on corpse-watch, and I’m going to see what this new body can do.”

  Sawyer’s smile dropped. He watched me drink—well, more like chug—the water, and when I lowered the cup, he was only a foot away.

  My lungs conveniently chose that moment to stop breathing as he closed the gap. I was trapped between him and the counter, and he placed a hand on either side, closing off any exits.

  “Pard—Zara. I don’t care how long I’ve been up.” He looked me dead in the eyes. There were faint lavender smudges under his, the only sign of his tiredness. “I’m not going to sleep until you do. I’m stuck to you like gum on a shoe. And when you are ready to sleep, I want to—no, I’m going to sleep right next to you.” He licked his lips and leaned in a fraction of an inch. “And I’m going to put that new body to the test the way I’ve always wanted to.”

  His chest was brushing mine, and my nipples hardened to tight points.

  The same fire Damien had awakened in me was reaching out for Sawyer, bringing all those suppressed desires back to the surface.

  I’d made a concerted effort to keep Sawyer at arm’s length when I was with Josh, and that had continued after we were partnered together, no matter how much I admired Sawyer’s personality and flawless appearance. Even if he was the perfect boyfriend material. I didn’t want rumors spreading about either of us, other cops whispering that I’d been sleeping with him before Josh died.

  That reason seemed so silly now, as Sawyer tilted his head to kiss me. That first contact was like a bolt of energy shooting through my newly changed body. Every nerve was alive and tingling with sensation. His lips were warm and soft, his tongue flicking between mine to tease me open.

  Even though I felt like I’d been dragged through filth, my hips pushed towards him, a moan escaping me when I felt how hard he was through his jeans. His cock throbbed against me and he exhaled, a sweet peppermint sigh accompanied by the gentle thrust of his hips against me.

  I knew at that moment that I was going to sleep with my partner, and I wasn’t going to regret a single minute of it. He was my rock in the storm, had been since my very first day back after the fire.

  If he didn’t care that I’d had Damien Viridios all over me last night, then I didn’t care, either. I wound my hands in his messy brown hair, tipped blonde from the sun, and kissed him back hard.

  His pupils were dilated and his breathing heavy when I finally broke away. “Come shower with me,” I whispered, suddenly feeling as shy as a virgin again.

  He nodded wordlessly, stripping off his shirt and tossing it aside.

  I’d imagined what Sawyer looked like under his uniform many times, but daydreams had nothing on reality. He was tan all over, with the beefy muscles that came from hard work in the gym and harder nights on the job. I salivated to take a bite out of that thick muscle.

  We somehow crashed our way into the bathroom, shedding clothes along the way, and when the hot water started pounding down on us I was already pushed back against the tile walls, my arms around his neck and panting into his mouth.

  The water rinsed me clean, and Sawyer was the one who soaped me up, running his hands over me almost reverently.

  I pushed a strand of wet hair out of my eyes and realized he was on his knees, gripping the outsides of my thighs. He kissed my lower stomach, droplets of water spilling from his dark eyelashes and over his cheeks, and for the second time in twenty-four hours, a very talented tongue slid over my clit. My poor knees weren’t ready for the onslaught and they shook wildly.

  I fell back against the wall, barely hearing the tiles crack under me. Sawyer groaned as he lapped at me, running his tongue over my wet pussy as his cock jumped.

  He sucked my clit between his lips and that was almost the end of the shower stall. I gripped the water handle, warping the metal as his tongue flicked against the sensitive flesh.

  The sensation that flooded me was like getting drunk, a thousand times stronger than any desire I’d felt as a human. It was like all my senses had been supercharged and pumped up to eleven.

  Or maybe it was because it was Sawyer eating me, his tongue sliding against me hungrily after months of forbidden daydreams about this exact scenario.

  I shivered against him, moaning his name loudly when I came the first time. I wanted to ride him right there on the floor, but Damien’s words from last night came back to me: “You’re breakable.”

  Sawyer was human, as breakable as I’d been, and I didn’t know my own strength. I glanced at the twisted handle.

  “Get up here and fuck me, Hawkins.” He licked me again, taking his sweet time before getting to his feet. There was a stormy lust on his face I’d never seen before, an expression that truly threatened the integrity of my knee cartilage.

  He spun me around and bent me over, cracking a few more tiles in the process. My breasts and hands were pushed up flat against the wall as he positioned himself behind me, cock sliding against my wetness.

  Sawyer notch his impressive cock at my opening and pushed in, unleashing another sexy, masculine groan as he filled me. He gripped my hips, pounding into me with the kind of ferocity that made me wonder how many times he’d imagined this, too, if he’d been pushing back deep-seated lust the same as I had.

  I tightened around him, moaning every time he slammed home. He reached out around, parting my folds to rub tight circles around me clit, cock still pumping into me relentlessly.

  The heat in my abdomen flared back to life, and I felt myself tensing up again, riding that edge until he slammed into me, pushing me almost flat against the wall, and rubbed his thumb over my hard nub.

  I shivered, bits of porcelain falling to the shower floor as I clamped down on his cock, the waves of the second climax exploding through me. Sawyer’s cock throbbed and he grunted, teeth grazing my shoulder while he came with me.

  His chest rose and fell against my back, his breathing ragged. A hand stroked wet hair out of my face again. “You have no idea how long I’ve thought about doing that,” he whispered, kissing the spot where my neck met my shoulder.

  “I bet you I do,” I whispered back.

  “Let’s take this show to the bed, Sterling.” Sawyer bit down gently, but my new skin didn’t give much. He ran his tongue over the spot instead, making me shiver. “I’ve got a few dozen more things on my checklist of things I’d like to do to you.”

  “Mmm, good. Then we can start on mine.”

  Chapter Five

  I’d crept carefully into the bed, listening to the springs groaning under me. The frame hadn’t been designed with a few hundred pounds of stone in mind.

  Sawyer climbed over me, running his hands over every inch of my skin. His thumb brushed one of my peaked nipples and I shivered under him, arching into his hand when he laid his palm over the curve of my breast and gently squeezed.

  I wrapped my legs around his waist, urging him forward. He was already hard again, a bead of liquid gli
stening at the tip of the flared crown.

  “I feel like a teenager again,” he said with an impish smile. “I can’t lie, I’ve wanted to taste you since the first time we met.”

  Likewise, Sawyer. But I still couldn’t admit to my attraction that early on, not with Josh’s memory a sore spot in my mind like a rotten tooth. “You’ve been the star of Sterling’s Late-Night Fantasies for months now, Sawyer. Now fuck me like you mean it and show me you deserve the role.”

  He gripped his cock, sliding the head over my pussy, but just before he pushed in, someone pounded on my door.

  I let out a sigh, but sudden anxiety coursed through me. Had the gargoyles sent their representative already, or was it my precinct captain? I hadn’t yet stopped to think about the ramifications that becoming a gargoyle would have on my career.

  “Just a minute!” I yelled as both Sawyer and I clambered out of bed to find our clothes like we’d just been caught by an angry parent. Damn, it really was like being a teenager again. I yanked a clean pair of jeans and t-shirt out of my dresser, and Sawyer was just straightening his shirt when I opened the door to a very unwelcome sight.

  Pitch-black eyes twinkled. Gio Onyarai casually leaned against my door, his fist raised to knock again. He was wearing nothing but pants, same as last night, revealing his mouth-watering torso. “Hey there, Tin Woman. Thought we lost you.”

  I closed the door.

  He knocked again, the thuds booming through my apartment. “It’s not like I don’t know you’re in there. I just saw you. Open up.” Gio’s voice was muffled through the door, but I stood in front of it, my arms outstretched like a blockade.

  “I’m the representative assigned to you, Zara. You gotta open up sometime.”

  I spun around and ripped the door open. The hinges creaked. I glared up at him, but he was still smiling, his gaze running over me. “Your boss ripped my heart out. Literally. He ripped it out and held it in his hands. Find me a different rep.”

  Gio shook his head, the dark planes of his face catching the light. “No can do. My boss is responsible for your acclimation, and by extension, so am I.”