by Zoe Chant
He tried to edge away from Jess, but she woke with a jolt and a cute little moan. "Reive," she murmured, and then her eyes flew wide. "Reive, you're awake!"
"So are you," was all he could think of to say.
She really was naked under there, or mostly so; he caught an enticing flash as she started to sit up, then appeared to discover her own lack of dress as if it came as a surprise to her, too. He glimpsed some tantalizing flashes of her lean curves before she pulled up the coverlet to her chin.
"Are you all right?" Reive asked her. The last thing he remembered seeing was Jess fighting the magician.
"Am I ..." She trailed off. "You saw me. Earlier. Didn't you."
It wasn't a question, and he didn't pretend not to know what she meant.
"I saw you shift," Reive agreed, and a spasm of sorrow crossed her face. She closed her eyes. "And you were magnificent."
Jess's eyes flew open again. "I was what?"
"Magnificent. Gorgeous. Amazing."
"I heard you." She blinked, staring at him, still bleary with sleep. "Just to be clear, you ... remember what you saw me turn into, right?"
"Of course I do." How could he forget? Jess was beautiful as she was, of course, but she was also beautiful as a gargoyle, just in a completely different way. He hadn't realized it would hit him like that until seeing her do it—watching the strength and grace and power flow through her limbs. She was strong even as a human, but as a gargoyle she was unstoppably fierce, and he and his dragon had thrilled to watch her.
And she had wings. That was the best part. He could shift into his dragon and fly with her. He refused to believe it would never be possible.
"Jess ..." He tried instinctively to move his right arm. It didn't move; there was just a painful tugging sensation on his neck. Instead he put his left hand on her bare shoulder, curled his fingers around her neck and caressed her jaw with the pad of his thumb.
"You're beautiful," he said quietly. "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, inside and out. It doesn't matter how your body changes. That's still you in there, beautiful and strong."
She gave a tiny shaky laugh. "Oh sure it's still me, but the outside—"
"Is beautiful, Jess. When you're a human, I love your skin and hair and all the rest of it, and when you're a gargoyle, I still love your skin and your hair and all the rest. It's just different." And now he yearned earnestly to find out what she felt like in that form. Would she be hard or soft, pebbly or as smooth as she was now, with his thumb lightly caressing her cheek ...?
"Love," Jess whispered. Her lips were parted, her brown eyes enormously huge and soft.
"Yes, I—" He faltered; how could he, how dare he love her when he might be dying?
But he did. He loved her strength and resilience, her bravery and her quiet wonder. He loved watching her deep in concentration in an Italian hotel room, nibbling the end of a borrowed hotel pen with her intent gaze fixed in concentration on her translated notes. He loved watching her fight, the thrilling and bold abandon of it.
And in Jess's wide brown eyes, now beginning to fill with unshed tears, he saw an impossibly soft warmth, as if something was reaching, answering back—
And then there was something else.
He'd never felt anything like it before. His dragon had been quiet since he woke up. But now it roused abruptly and he could feel it rising to the surface, the way it did when he shifted. Except he wasn't shifting. It was just that he and his dragon had suddenly become utterly unified in one single purpose, and that purpose was loving Jess.
She's our mate, his dragon whispered in his head.
But ... he thought.
But everything he'd ever heard from other dragons made him think he would just know the moment he saw her. And he hadn't known. He had found her beautiful and fascinating from the beginning; he'd definitely felt a spark between them, a pull of attraction. But it hadn't felt like this—like something that was always meant to be, had always been; an unbreakable bond, snapping into place.
"What ... what is this feeling?" Jess whispered, staring at him.
"What are you feeling?" he asked, shaken.
"That's just it, I don't know? It's like something opened up inside me and I just knew—" She hesitated. "Like there's a voice in my head, almost ...."
"Do you hear a voice in your head?" he asked, curious. Back in Indiana, she'd said she didn't. But maybe it was possible for the mate bond to wake up her inner animal.
"No, it's not like that. It's more like a ... a knowing, the same way I sometimes just know what stone is like inside when I touch it, like if a stone tabletop has a crack deep inside that doesn't show on the surface, or how it's made of granite instead of limestone. It's that kind of feeling. Except ... it's you." She touched his face cautiously, wonderingly, drawing her fingertips down his jawline. He shivered at the sensation. "It's like ... you're for me, and I'm for you, if that makes any sense? Does it?"
"It does." He felt himself breaking into a grin, a true wide grin. He hadn't felt like this in months, his entire body singing with joy. "Jess ... have you ever heard of true mates? In all your reading have you come across something like that?"
She shook her head.
"Every dragon has someone who's meant for them. Everyone in the world probably does, humans and shifters alike, but unlike them, we actually know it, and can tell when we meet them. Or at least, everyone I know has been able to. Except ... I couldn't tell. Until now, right now, with you."
It was like every aspect of her that had been so compelling to him had become a thousand times more so. Not instantly, in this moment—but over the past few days, gradually, and now he had suddenly and completely fallen into full awareness of it. He could have spent an eternity just looking at the way her lips curved, the slight quirk at the corner of her mouth that was just a little higher than the other side; he could have mapped every freckle dusting her cheeks, and lost himself in the way her nose was just a little bit bony across the top. He could have counted every dark lash framing her eyes. He could have spent forever staring into those eyes, mapping out their endless contrasts of color. Who ever knew brown had so many shades? He could have—
He could have done all of those things, but didn't have a chance because Jess lunged forward and kissed him.
Kissing her before had been warm and wonderful and delightful, but now it was amazing. He hadn't realized this was so different—kissing someone you loved, kissing your mate, different from any woman he'd ever kissed before. He lost himself in it entirely, and only came back to himself when Jess jerked back with a soft hiss of breath. The covers had fallen down to expose the soft swell of her breasts, and for a moment he was almost too distracted to speak.
"Reive, are you all right?" she asked, drawing him back to the moment, and out of his soft wonder at the marvels of her body.
"Jess, what's wrong? Did I hurt you?"
"No, I was afraid I was going to hurt you. Does this ... hurt, at all?" She hesitantly ran a hand down his stone arm. He only knew she was doing it because he could see her hand there; he couldn't feel it at all.
"Not when you're touching me." It hadn't been just his imagination before. He'd like to think he was getting better, but he could see clearly that he wasn't; the stone had spread noticeably from where it had been before he passed out. No, the soothing relief from the pain was all Jess.
"It really helps?" Jess said. She cautiously brushed her fingers over the place where his stone arm met his flesh shoulder and neck. He could feel that, and it did hurt a little, but mostly it just tingled. "Is it because I'm a ... because I'm a gargoyle, do you think?"
"I think it's because you're my mate," Reive said. "Mates are stronger together."
"Are you in pain now?" Her voice was a whisper, as her lips brushed lightly across the junction between flesh and stone.
"No," he whispered back. "Not at all."
With her head bowed to kiss his shoulder, the back of her neck was exposed, a pale st
ripe with her dark hair parting around it. Hesitantly he kissed it, and felt her shiver against him.
Mate, he thought, gentle and wondering. Mate. Mate.
He kissed across her neck, brushed his lips against the soft shell of her ear, and kissed the side of her face before she turned her head so her lips could meet his again, kissing and nibbling.
It was amazing. He had been with women before, though relatively rarely—there weren't many opportunities while isolated in the mountains—but this was on a whole other level. Even her slightest touch raced down his nerve endings, filling him with a pleasant heat.
It had been this way from the beginning, he now realized—the fascination he'd felt with her, the way he had thrilled at the slightest brush of her hand. It was just that the true reason for it had been buried underneath the urgency of his mission and the general awfulness of how he felt.
But right now, he wasn't hurting; in fact, he had never felt this fantastic. He rolled her over and she went willingly, her lips spread in a wide smile. He straddled her, supporting himself on his one good arm while he kissed that smile, and trailed kisses down her chin and across her amazing breasts.
It was incredibly frustrating to only have one arm for this; there was so much he wanted to do. But Jess was an eagerly willing participant, treating the stone parts of his body no differently from the rest. Her warm hands trailed across his skin, leaving pleasure and relief where before there had been only pain. It was with deep regret that he rolled off her.
"I, uh ... really need to eat and use the bathroom," he admitted.
Jess laughed and sat up. Her hair was wonderfully tousled, framing the pale, lovely oval of her face. "Yes, let's do that. I could really use some cleaning up, too. There are some clean clothes for us on the chair there."
Reive swung his legs off the bed, looking around at the heavy stone walls turned honey-gold in the morning sun. "Are we at Gio's? Did we get the book?"
"We did get the book." She pointed, and he saw it on the end of a couch against the wall. "We're at Mace's house in, um, in Newfoundland. Long story. Very long story. Our luggage is still at Gio's villa in Italy."
"How long was I asleep?" Reive asked, shocked. He had assumed it was only a little while, and yet somehow he'd gotten all the way to Canada. It was possible for dragons to fall into a deep, comalike sleep while they healed; his uncle Heikon and his grandfather had both spent years like that.
"Not that long," Jess hastened to reassure him. "The fight in Italy was last night. We came here through a ... oh, I feel completely crazy saying this, but ... a portal, of sorts, that Mace was able to use to transport us here. He says it's a gargoyle thing. Does that sound too weird?"
"No weirder than anything else that's happened to me lately." Reive glanced at the golden gleam of sunshine outside the tall windows. From the bed he couldn't see much except a cloud-flecked sky. "Are we prisoners?"
"No." It was Jess's turn to be shocked now. "Mace is helping us. We're guests."
But he's still a gargoyle.
So was she, he reminded himself. But she had grown up knowing nothing about her people, and the old hostilities she was heir to. Mace might have been decent to them so far, but he would have grown up with the gargoyle-dragon feud the same way Reive had.
"Oh, there's food on the table," Jess added. "It's left from last night. Mace was going to bring us something when we're awake."
The contents of the tray on the table had been somewhat demolished, but there were still pastries, and he grabbed a couple. "Do you need the bathroom?"
"No, go for it."
The bathroom was modest and pleasant, with a claw-foot tub next to a built-in shower stall. A small window let in the morning sun, faintly green-tinted from the climbing plants that curled over its small rippled glass panes and provided additional privacy.
Reive curled his bare toes in the thick rug on the floor. He couldn't help noticing that the sink was on a marble plinth shaped like a gargoyle, squatting and holding up the bowl of the sink with its arms. He was just going to have to assume that it was a carving and not an actual gargoyle, because the alternative was too unnerving to consider.
He stuffed a whole pastry in his mouth and did his business, then stripped out of his jeans. Someone had taken off the rest of his clothes last night, but left the jeans on—a concession to his modesty that he appreciated to an extent, but would have appreciated more if they hadn't been so utterly filthy. Even aside from blood and rock dust from the fight, he'd been wearing them for three days straight.
"You said something about clean clothes?" he called through the door.
"Yes, they're out here," Jess called back. "Can I come in? Are you dressed?"
"Do you mind if I'm not?"
She said something faintly that sounded like "oh my," and opened the door. She had wrapped a quilt around herself and was trailing it like a queen's cloak. "Here, these are Mace's clothes and he's bigger than you, but it's better than nothing. He brought some women's clothes for me. I want to take a shower before putting them on. I'm kind of a mess."
"You look beautiful to me." He touched his fingertips to her chin and then, awkwardly one-handed, took the bundle of clothing that she held out. One corner of the quilt slipped down as she did so, revealing a soft bare shoulder. "Were you planning on showering alone?"
Her eyes went wide. "Well, I was ..."
"I guess I should ask if you mind company. Because I need a shower too, and you know ..." He leaned in, smiling, to kiss her shoulder. "It's more time-efficient."
"Oh, is that your main concern here," she murmured.
"Absolutely. I'm all about maximizing efficiency."
He stepped out of his boxers. Jess gave a sigh, a little "aaahhh," and then dropped the quilt from her shoulders. Beneath it, she was only wearing panties. Her body was exquisite, long and smooth, her stomach a perfect soft curve above the pink triangle of her satin panties. She had naturally wide shoulders and medium-sized, gorgeously defined breasts with puckered brown nipples surrounded by a few softly curling hairs.
"Uh, yeah, so," Jess said, looking down at herself, "first of all, I have boob hair, which I used to pluck out but I kinda stopped because that is not the nicest feeling in the world and nobody's gotten up close and personal with my boobs in a while. Also, the rest of my body hasn't seen a razor in a while either, so—"
"Jess." It came out on a breath. "Your breasts are perfect. You're perfect."
He stepped closer, into the circle of her arms. Again he was frustrated by the lack of two good arms, but it just meant he had to be a little more creative.
Small scratches and bruises, already partly healed, marked the freckled perfection of her skin. It was clear that gargoyles healed as fast as other shifters.
Reive kissed gently around each bruise. He just wanted to touch every inch of her. He cupped her amazing breasts one at a time, kissed them, and lightly tongued over her nipples, making her gasp softly.
A trail of kisses down her belly led to the pink satin panties. Reive hooked a finger in the waistband and tugged them down, revealing a tangle of curls a few shades lighter brown than her hair. Reive buried his face in them briefly, inhaling her scent, and then pulled her panties down the rest of the way, with kisses to her inner thigh and her knee.
She rested her hands lightly on his shoulders, and lifted one foot at a time to step out of her underwear. "About that shower ..." There was a slight catch in her voice. "Is showering all you wanted to do?"
Reive grinned up at her. "Let's find out, why don't we?"
The shower enclosure was big enough for two, with some crowding—but neither of them minded crowding right now. As gloriously hot water sluiced down over them, they lathered each other from the bottles of guest shampoo and body wash. Jess whispered apologies when the soap stung the healing gashes across Reive's ribs, but he shook his head, wet hair falling in his eyes. He welcomed the sting; it was good for the wound to get clean.
Working one-hand
ed, he scrubbed handfuls of shampoo and conditioner into Jess's thick mass of hair, scrubbing at her scalp while she closed her eyes and sagged against him in bliss. Then they shuffled around so she could return the favor, running her fingers through his hair until he all but melted in her hands, glorying in the blissful pain relief.
Under the cascade of hot water, they kissed and kissed, with shower water running down around their joined lips. He mouthed her wet skin, her taste diluted by the water but still enough to drive him and his dragon half mad. Her lips tickled his skin, and her teeth nipped lightly at her neck and shoulders.
By the time he moved to enter her, she was wet and welcoming. She twisted around, pressing the curve of her buttocks eagerly against him, and he spread her and slid into her wet, waiting heat. She pressed her hands against the shower wall and panted with each stroke, head bowed, struggling for quiet. The rush of the water covered his grunts and her gasps. Reive wrapped his good arm around her front. Her nipples were erect against his skin, and she shuddered as his arm pressed into the sensitive nubs every time he drove himself home.
"Do we need," he gasped, dragging himself down to earth, "to worry about—"
Jess shook her head, her wet hair slapping his chest. "Implant," she gasped. "'m good ... don't stop ..."
There was little danger of that. He had never felt anything like this before. It was beyond ordinary sex, beyond anything he'd ever known, a perfect unity of heart and body and soul. Her body moved in sync with his, the water sluicing down over both of them. They were one being, one soul. When he started to turn her so he could see her face and feel her arms around him when she came, she was already moving, squirming around in the shower so he could thrust into her from the front.
"Reive," she gasped out. Her eyes were half closed, her lips parted. Water dripped off her hair and beaded on her long freckled neck and her collarbones.
"Jess—" and as her name left his lips, she threw her head back and her arms tightened convulsively around him as her body bucked.
The spasms of pleasure rippling through her were enough to send him over the edge. Pleasure whited out his brain, and he came back down slowly through the shuddering aftershocks.