by Cate Corvin
The Onyx gargoyle was immune to the deepest level of stink-eye I could muster. His dark gaze flicked up, taking in Sawyer, who was watching with suspicion. “Did I interrupt your hanky panky? Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry at all.
I took a deep breath and held it. Gargoyles were uptight about their Accords and rules. If Gio was assigned to me, the likelihood of me getting another rep was nil. “Fine. Come in, but don’t break anything.”
I opened the door, and he eyed the hinges as he sauntered in, lowering his wings to fit in the door. “Looks like you’re already taking care of that.”
I scowled and closed the door, forcing it back in its frame.
He stood in the middle of the living room and stretched like an oversized cat as he took it all in. Then he spun around to shoot me a glare that froze me in place. “Next time someone gives you a very valuable gift, try not to run off and collapse in an alley, all right? You have no idea the damage that could’ve been done if you’d fallen into the wrong hands.”
I braced my hands on my hips, but a moment later I was flinging myself between him and Sawyer, who was clearly prepared to come to my defense against the Onyx. Sawyer was as brave as they came, but I had never been more aware of how much stronger gargoyles were than I was now.
“Maybe next time your boss should ask before he gives out his little gifts,” I said through gritted teeth. “Are you here to lecture me or give me the low-down?”
Gio pulled his gaze away from Sawyer, focusing entirely on me again. A shiver went down my spine at the look in his eyes. “Both. Your life is my mission, Zara. When you lock me in a vault and collapse in alleys, it becomes my problem whether you like it or not, you get me?”
I managed to drag Sawyer away, plunking both of us down on the couch. I draped a heavy leg over his thighs, pinning him in place. “Sorry,” I mouthed. Sawyer raised an eyebrow, but he pressed his fingertips to the inside of my thigh.
I fixed a level stare on Gio, who was eyeing Sawyer’s hands on my thigh, close enough to my still wet pussy to make me squirm. The heat in Gio’s stare only made me wetter, and I could swear I saw him get hard before he turned to my kitchenette. He made himself right at home, messing with the coffee maker. “What do you mean, my life is your mission?”
He hesitated, a mug in his hands. It looked ludicrously small between his big palms and long fingers. “Damien didn’t tell you about your new heart. He didn’t have time before you pulled your little stunt and vanished.”
“He gave me a Ruby,” I said, a little too loudly, and Gio glared at me, slamming the cup on the counter.
“Why don’t you get a megaphone and announce it from the balcony?” he demanded. “We could probably go down to the TV station and make a live broadcast, see how long you last once the whole world knows.”
A cold chill ran down my spine, much different from the kind the heat in Gio’s eyes gave me. “You need to explain this shit very clearly and in vivid detail right now.”
The smell of roasted coffee filled the air and Gio pulled out a barstool. He seemed to instinctively know how to position his wings so they always just missed touching anything, despite his insouciant stance on the stool and counter.
“When a stoneheart is given to a human, they become part of the House it came from. Your name isn’t Sterling anymore. It’s Kyrillian.” He kept his voice pitched low, but his eyes flicked to the balcony as though expecting to see a gargoyle listening with their ear to the glass. “Zara of House Kyrillian, because you’ve got the last Ruby of that House in your chest.”
“What does that have to do with my life?” I asked, keeping my breathing steady. I already didn’t like where this was going. Sawyer’s hand left my leg to grip my clammy palm in his.
“The last Ruby from that House. Literally the last. There are no other fullbloods or stonehearts left from Kyrillian that we know of. Damien’s been looking for a worthy successor for years. He was starting to believe the magic in it would die before he found an heir.”
I stared at Gio, trying not to squeeze Sawyer’s hand to death, but my partner asked for me, his voice slow. “And why is her Ruby the last one?”
Gio poured himself a cup of coffee, and we shook our heads when he held it up in offering. He chugged it steaming hot. “Because someone’s murdered all the others. As of right now, no one knows this one has been given to a human, and we’d like to keep it that way.”
Sawyer’s handsome face twisted into a furious scowl. “You gave her a fucking stoneheart knowing it came with a target on it? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Sawyer.” I touched his cheek, reassuring him, but the stoneheart in my chest was pulsing in alarm now, like it sensed the looming danger.
“What’s so special about this stoneheart that you felt you needed to endanger a stranger’s life?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice level. It was a death sentence. I’d thought that maybe one of my lost hopes had been answered, but I should have known better than that. Of course this gift came with a target on my back.
Or on my chest, literally speaking.
Gio didn’t look remotely sorry. “The Kyrillians were very important to Damien. We couldn’t stop the slaughter of their House, but the stoneheart in your chest belonged to someone who meant the world to him. He would die before he’d let their House go extinct without trying to salvage it.”
He got up, rinsing out his cup in the sink like we’d just been discussing the weather. “Luckily, you’ve got me.” Gio winked. “I’m going to be stuck to your ass like a burr to keep you safe. All you need to do is go about your life without broadcasting that there’s a Ruby in your chest.”
I stroked Sawyer’s hand as I thought, running through my options. For the life of me, I could only see one: to do exactly what Gio suggested and pretend nothing had happened last night. If no one knew I was now the last Kyrillian stoneheart, no one would come after me.
I glanced between Sawyer and Gio, and an old adage came to mind: three can keep a secret if two are dead. Between us and Damien, there were now four weak points in the story.
“Gio.” He looked up from rinsing his cup, all innocence. There was nothing innocent about a winged six and a half foot tall fullblood. “I’m not going anywhere near Viridios Tower again, so where exactly are you proposing to guard me?”
He looked around the room and held up his hands. “Right here, obviously.”
“Absolutely not,” Sawyer said, scowling fiercely.
“I… you can’t…” I didn’t even have words. “No. This is my gargoyle-free apartment.”
“You’re a gargoyle. So, it’s technically not gargoyle-free, is it now?” Gio leaned on the counter, propping his chin on his hand. “There’s clearly enough room for trois. Maybe even with the ‘ménage a’ before it.”
My mouth fell open. Was he seriously propositioning me? Us?
“You’re not so breakable now, are you, Zara?” he asked softly. The heat was back in his dark eyes, the lines of tension in his body, like he wanted to pounce on me. “I can assure you the safest place in New York for you is… under me. Over me. As long as we’re skin to skin, my magic can protect you.”
I was saved from having to answer—not sure I’d have been able to get the words out without tripping over them anyway—by my cell ringing. Even Sawyer stopped gritting his teeth at the sound.
We all looked at it, the tension in the room a palpable feeling. I let it ring, and a minute later the screen lit up with a new voicemail.
“Let’s hear it.” Gio had dropped the sexiness, all business now. He strode across the room, grabbed my cell off the coffee table, and tossed it to me.
“How are my voicemails your business?” I asked, which was a rather stupid question.
“Everything you do right now is my business.” He crossed his thick arms over his chest, emphasizing the flex of muscles. Delectable. “Until I’m absolutely sure no one knows, I’ll be screening your calls.”
Luckily, the number was ju
st that of the precinct captain. Colton Raymond’s acerbic voice filled the room when I switched it to speakerphone.
“Got a call from the city morgue last night, Sterling. Heard you’ve gone pebble on us.”
I winced at the slur, but Gio’s hard expression didn’t change.
“You’re on paid administrative leave until further notice. According to the persistent bastard that stopped by earlier, having a gargoyle officer on human payroll violates their Accords. Keep it together while we have HR figure this one out.”
My stoneheart seemed to sink in my chest. Was I going to lose my job, too? Right when I had something in me that could really make a difference?
To my surprise, Captain Raymond’s voice softened before he hung up. “Keep it frosty, Sterling. We’re not letting you go without a fight. And tell Hawkins to get his ass in by tonight, I’m sure he’s with you.”
The voicemail ended and Sawyer looked guilty. “I’ve had my phone on silent.”
I smiled at him and squeezed his hand. “You should probably stop in before he decides to rip you a second asshole.” Raymond was a good boss, but the man had a bite to match his bark.
“More like a third,” he muttered, and leaned across the couch to press a gentle kiss to the corner of my mouth, the kind of kiss that said he wasn’t done with me yet. He was obviously reluctant to leave me alone with Gio, but I turned my head to take a full kiss, assuring him that I’d be fine and promising to resume our… activities later.
Gio watched with satisfaction as Sawyer left, casting me one last look with those green-blues before shutting the door.
“Well, well, well. It’s just you and me now.” I looked up like a deer in headlights at the gargoyle towering over me, his wings flexing behind his back.
“Nope.”
“Nope?” Gio demanded, looking outraged. “Nope?”
I got up and ducked around him, heading for the bathroom. “Yep, nope. I’m going to take a few minutes to process the fact that my entire life changed overnight, and you’re going to let me do that without interfering. Okay? Okay. Great, glad we had that talk.”
Then I shut the bathroom door, leaned against it even though a thin slab of wood wouldn’t stop a gargoyle from getting through, and sank to the floor.
With Sawyer gone, the full impact of everything had crashed down on my head like a sack of bricks. I was on admin leave, possibly about to be relieved of duty. Captain Raymond could be a bastard asshole when he wanted something, but even bastard assholes couldn’t override the Accords.
I was the last of House Kyrillian, an honor to the gargoyles, and what was rapidly becoming a curse to me.
I was no longer breakable, which clearly put me right at the top of Gio’s interest list, but Sawyer was still breakable. It’d taken coming that close to death for either of us to make a move, but now that I was stonehearted, what if we were an impossible pair?
I wrapped my arms around my knees and drew them up under my chin, my eyes drifting shut as I pondered. All I really had to do was pretend I wasn’t stonehearted at all. Sure, I looked like a perfected version of Zara Sterling now… but I was no more beautiful than the human models Damien made headlines for partying with. I could always chalk it up to a raise that paid for some great facials.
Until the first time someone shot at me. Then my bulletproof, living-stone skin would give me away. Or just the fact that I’d destroyed about eighty percent of my bathroom in one morning without even realizing it. What if I ripped off a car door while trying to open it?
I was still uselessly poring over the endless variations of mistakes that could give me away when I lost the battle with exhaustion and fell asleep right there on the bathroom floor.
Chapter Six
I woke up to the first faint rays of sunrise and realized I was snuggled in my bed. The last thing I remembered was sitting in the bathroom, surrounded by shattered porcelain tile.
The shower was running, and I wasn’t in it. Someone had tucked me in, arranging the poofy comforter around me like a cocoon, and the smell of fresh coffee filled the apartment.
The water shut off. I blinked up at the ceiling, no longer feeling like a train wreck of a human being.
At least until the bathroom door opened.
My mouth dropped open. I stared.
Then I stared some more.
Gio stretched his arms over his head, his wings spreading as far as my small apartment would allow. His muscles flexed with the movement, rippling from his arms and shoulders, all the way down to his heavy thighs and calves.
He was also stark naked, and the anaconda on display was looking right back at me.
“Morning, sunshine.” His deep voice cut through our staring contest. “I made you coffee. You slept through the night; part of your acclimation process is learning the limits of your body. Stonehearted humans still need to sleep, and even eat on occasion. You’ll probably be tired for the first week or so while your physiology adapts to carrying the extra weight of the crystal matrix.”
He’d really managed to skip over the most important part of this situation. “Gio, you’re…”
“I’m taking you out later today to run you through your paces so you have a better understanding of what you’re capable of. Be careful of handling delicate objects until you’ve adapted to your new strength. We’ll start light and work our way up to heavier things.”
I drew in a ragged breath. “Gio. You’re naked.”
The Onyx relaxed his arms and tucked his wings in against his back. He looked down at himself. “Yes. I usually am when I’m not in public. I can protect you from a distance, but in your case, skin to skin will make it much easier.”
He obviously wasn’t interested in putting his clothes back on. “Why is that?” I asked, ripping my eyes from his endowments and forcing myself to meet his eyes. They sparkled with amusement even though he looked as stern as ever. “What does a Ru… my stoneheart do?”
All cops took intensive training courses on the gargoyle Orders. Emeralds and Sapphires were the ones we tended to watch for the most, with their powers of charisma and emotional manipulation making them the most dangerous entities, followed by the brute-force magic of Topaz. The Diamond Order were truthsayers, easily able to spot a lie. Amethysts bent the light around themselves to become invisible, blending with their environment, and Garnets were healers. Moonstones were theorized to be able to enter dreams.
Rubies, however, had remained a mystery.
Gio crossed his arms over his chest. It was like he knew that showed off his physique to its maximum advantage. “Immunity.”
A lump formed in my throat. “Immunity to what, exactly?”
“Us.” He raised an eyebrow. “Emerald’s charisma, Sapphire’s manipulation, and Diamond’s truthsaying will have no effect on you whatsoever. The mental effects are inherent, but you’ll need to train yourself to throw off the physical abilities of Topaz and Onyx. As for right now, as long as I’m in close quarters and touching you, I’ll be able to keep a shield around you until you learn to shut me out entirely. But that’s a Kyrillian Ruby in you, which belonged to the strongest of all the Kyrillians, which makes the skin contact necessary.”
I felt like I was going to be sick in a good way, which was a sensation I never thought I’d experience.
All the fears I’d ever had about the Emeralds’ ability to convince me to walk off a cliff and the Sapphires’ ability to make me feel overjoyed about it was now null and void. A Diamond would never be able to question me into a corner until they had the full truth.
I was free.
I could truly be Supercop if the captain was able to bring me back. I’d always shoved that desire in the back of my mind, recognizing how childish it was, but Damien had literally made me into the Supercop I’d dreamed of being, able to go toe-to-toe with the gargoyles.
Hell, I was so excited I almost forgot the gargoyle in my apartment was naked.
Then he walked to the counter, his cock swinging,
and I was reminded of that fact abruptly with a tightening in my stomach. He was too damn perfect, and it was hard to yank my eyes away from all the flesh he had on display.
Especially when he brought me a steaming cup of coffee. “Drink up. We’re going to the junkyard after this.”
I gave him an incredulous look as I drank. “The junkyard. Really?”
“Yes, really. Where else are we going to find cars for you to throw around?”
Throwing cars was the best part of being a gargoyle.
I dug my hands under the chassis of an old Camaro, tilting it upwards until I could plant my palms on the underside of the car and lift it overhead.
It was heavy, but my muscles didn’t fatigue as I rotated in place like a powerlifter, looking for an ideal spot to toss it.
“Keep your hands and feet a little further apart.” Gio lounged on the hood of a junker, his wings spread wide. He’d conceded to pulling his sweatpants back on before leaving the apartment. “You’re a mountain, and your legs are the base. Keep them stable.”
I widened my stance, digging my feet into the earth, and threw the car.
The Camaro crashed into an old bus, what remained of its windshield shattered everywhere, and I jumped up, pumping my fist in the air. “Supercop!” I whisper-shouted.
Then I wondered if I could pick up the bus.
Gio watched me lazily as I stalked up to the end of a VW bus. “Whoa there, tiger. Let’s get used to flinging around compacts and coupes before we bring out the big guns.”
“I just want to see if I can do it,” I said, planting my feet in front of the bus. I lifted the front end, but when I got to the middle, I was gritting my teeth.
Turned out stonehearted bodies could feel strain, but it didn’t hurt the way it would’ve hurt human muscles. I instinctively knew the bus was overload.
Instead of tossing it, I tipped it off to the side. “Could you pick up a bus?”
Gio slid off the hood of the junker to a duffel bag he’d brought with us. “Sure could. But we’re not here for me.”