“He doesn’t love me.” There was no conviction behind the statement. “He can’t.”
“Your face is scarred, Quinton,” I exhaled. “That doesn’t mean you are unlovable.”
For a split second, I wondered if I was becoming the proof of that.
His eyes closed as he turned into my palm and repeated, “He can’t, Esme.” And just as he began to peel my fingers from his face, his eyes sprung open and speared through mine. “What were you doing?”
“W-What?” I blinked. Confused, I looked between my hand and his face and then it hit me.
I’d touched him with the fingers I’d just been using to touch myself.
“What were you doing when I walked in?” he demanded.
I swallowed over the lump in my throat. “Finishing what you started.”
The taunt hung like a banner across the thick beams of desire forged between us.
The potency of his gaze held me hostage as he turned his nose directly into my fingers and breathed their traitorous scent in. The fire in his eyes confirmed their betrayal.
Goose bumps littered over my skin like dust bowls on the prairie, blowing every which way with just the slightest provocation from his body, trying to anticipate what he would do next. Wondering if he would walk away again or if this time, he would stay…
My stomach quivered with a hope so desperate that he would stay.
“Q…” I breathed only a single syllable before he yanked me hard against his front, my body molding like the needy coagulation of desire it was against him.
“What do you want from me?” His lips grazed over my ear, forcing me to shiver.
“You. Your secrets. Everything about what I can see and all the reasons behind it.” It was impossible not to confess the truth when my body was on the verge of conflagration. “Everything, Quinton.”
“So you can destroy me?”
I laughed because it was the only way I could find to breathe. “I’d no sooner destroy you than I would this cathedral,” I swore. “Tell me you don’t look at this place and see beyond all the ways it’s fallen into disrepair. Tell me you don’t stand in front of the front façade or in awe at the altar because there is too great a beauty glittering behind its scars.”
I felt the blood thundering through his veins as it pumped through the fingers that held my own hostage.
“I don’t want to destroy you, Monsieur Gargouille, and that is not a lie.” My tongue darted out to lick my lips. “I want you to see your worth beyond the scars—beyond the faults—and that is my secret.”
His body turned to stone as though Medusa had captured his attention.
There was a second of complete stillness—not the kind typically found in a church, but the kind found in the center of a cyclone. A brief space of respite where there was time to wonder only one thing:
Would he drop me back to Earth, unharmed and untouched, or would he whip me into the whirling winds and treacherous tempest that drove his determined destruction?
His grip on my wrist forced its unsteady path toward his face and I held my breath, wanting nothing more than to worship the most wounded parts of him. Instead, he held my fingers right in front of him and inhaled a long breath, savoring the scent of my desire—the scent of how much I wanted him.
A ragged growl ripped from his chest as he took my fingers between his lips. But he didn’t just lick them clean. I let out a hiss as his teeth dented into the skin and scraped up the sides, as though not only did my taste belong to him, but even the cells which had the audacity to come in contact with it were his, too.
“Only I—” he bit out with a ragged rasp, “—am allowed—” satisfied he’d retrieved what belonged to him, he pushed back, and I stumbled until I found myself against the far wall, “—to finish you.”
I gasped as he freed my hand suddenly and dropped to his knees in front of me.
It took a moment to take stock of my new situation —my new position —but I couldn’t even garble a protest before his teeth sank into my pussy, through my skirt and thong, marking the tender flesh for his sacrifice.
“Quinton!”
One hand pulled the center piece of my skirt to one side while the other hooked two fingers on the edge of my thong and pulled it away, baring my sex to his gaze.
“You want to know what it feels like to have a monster devour your pretty weeping cunt?” he growled, spearing his tongue through my folds with a rough swipe that exploded stars in my eyes.
My chest heaved in order to focus—to answer.
My fingers shook as they speared through the thick midnight locks on his head, just as soft as his body was hard.
A feral growl ripped from his throat as he hoisted my legs one by one onto his shoulder, bringing him even closer to my core and bringing me even closer to the brink of insanity.
I gripped forcefully and tugged his head back, forcing his eyes to mine as I licked my lips and replied, “I don’t care whether or not you are a monster, Q, as long as you eat me like one.”
Even my abysmal French couldn’t mistake the hoarse curse that flowed from his lips before those dangerous beasts set on me. And in the last moment of rational consciousness, I realized I knew what that green flicker was.
I realized that my laser was scanning us.
Me against the wall, my legs wrapped around Quinton’s shoulders, and his face carving a place between my thighs.
Oh God…
My hips jerked against him and I cried out as his mouth suctioned over my pussy. Tongue. Teeth. Lips.
The scars wouldn’t be between my legs, but inside the very depths of my lungs, deprived of oxygen as his mouth ravaged every slick inch of me.
It was wrong. So wrong. What he was doing. Where we were doing this. But I couldn’t stop him because he worshipped me.
My mouth opened and shut, searching for breath where there was none. And when most would be desperate for shelter, my hips ground against his sinful mouth searching for more of the storm.
Even locked as tightly as they were, the anklets on my legs chimed in harmony with my moans—a sinful melody that broke through the sacred silence.
His tongue whipped around my clit before smashing over it, pausing every sensation, only to repeat it again. If felt like someone was holding me at the edge of a cliff, my arms tight in their grasp as they shoved me forward but didn’t let go, pulling me back at the last second with a deceitful and devilish ‘not this time.’
And each time my body prepared for the plummet: my heart pausing, knowing I wouldn’t survive it anyway. My eyes clamping shut as blood pounded in my ears.
Only to be pulled back once more.
And I Just.
Wanted.
To Fall.
“Q…” I gurgled, choking on the rest as he speared two fingers inside me without warning.
It didn’t matter.
I was so soaking wet, his entire fist would’ve fit.
“You want to see if your sweet pussy is magic enough to heal my scars when she comes all over my face?” He blew over my exposed clit.
I whimpered and felt a tear slip down my cheek, so strung out with need I thought my heart might explode.
“No,” I panted, my eyes hardly able to focus on anything except a bright green blur that flashed over me. “I don’t want to heal your scars. I want you to leave your own on me.”
My fingers clamped into his hair, crushing his mouth against my pussy. My hips tried to grind against his tongue but were locked in place by the thick fingers wedged inside my clenching core.
Tears leaked from the corner of my eyes as my pussy gushed on his hand, squeezing and clenching, like a person suffocating, only my body would sooner be suffocated without orgasm than without air.
He demanded secrets from my body that my mind was unwilling to give and finally, I could take no more.
“Q…”
His lips pinched down on my clit as his fingers curled and drove into my front wall, tearing both orgasms fr
om me as violently as though he were ripping off limbs.
I screamed into the sanctuary and convulsed against him. My sex seized around his fingers and squirted onto his waiting palm.
My head tipped back with a small thud onto the wall, feeling like I’d just touched the very fringes of heaven with that orgasm.
A horrible thought, to be sure, but the fact that we were in a church was the farthest thing from my mind.
I shuddered and shivered as he stayed between my thighs, licking up every last drop of my release as though I’d just deigned to give him his last supper.
When I could no longer see the pearly gates I’d been clinging to moments before, I peeled my heavy eyelids open, letting the fog of my surroundings come back into focus.
The empty room with my equipment.
I moaned.
The light on my scanner was off.
I tried to find a single cell to spare in order to be upset about the scan he’d ruined, but I couldn’t.
In truth, for one blasphemous second, I didn’t care if the entire building collapsed into dust as long as he was with me.
This time, I shuddered for a completely different reason—one that far surpassed the planet of the physical and into the galaxy of emotions I swore I’d never visit.
The ones that longed for things.
Longevity.
Loyalty.
Love.
A strained sigh slipped from his lips as he unwound my legs from his neck. Looking up to me, I watched him savor the last taste of me on his lips before he stood with a pained grunt and adjusted the front of his pants.
His thumb and forefinger pinched my chin and held my face steady. “Don’t work up here this late again.”
“Why? Are there other monsters lurking in the dark?”
He released me with a quick laugh. “You never know. But I’m more concerned that I’ll find your pretty little neck toppling over the edge in another attempt for a photograph.”
“So, you’re saying my neck is pretty?” I teased blithely—breathlessly—feeling the pinch as the corner of my lips turned up lightly.
His eyes didn’t look amused as he answered, “Madame, I’ve lived in this sanctuary for some time and I’ve seen many things, many people, come through it. But the first time I saw you was the first time I’ve seen something holy inside these walls. Like an angel come to life.”
What air I’d replenished my lungs with disappeared.
Was he… Was he complimenting me?
Was this real?
“Q.” His name had been reduced to a single letter—like a single love note between my lips.
“Don’t.” He raised a hand to stop me. “If you’re not careful, Madame Gypsy, I’ll leave so many scars you won’t recognize yourself any longer.”
I palmed the wall, waiting for the moment when I was stable enough to push away from it and stand on my own.
“If you’re not careful, Monsieur Gargouille,” I replied breathlessly. “It’ll be too late before you realize I’ve left some of my own.”
The air vacuumed after him as he stepped away from me and my skirt fell to rights around my legs, leaving no indication of the pleasure-weakened limbs beneath them.
“Goodnight, Esme.”
I didn’t care if he was watching, I let my eyes close once more to absorb the pleasure that came from hearing my name on his lips.
“Goodnight, Q.”
As my generous gargoyle disappeared back into his shadows, I swallowed down the sinking suspicion that the scars he’d left weren’t just on my body.
If I looked hard enough, I’d find them on my heart, too.
Quinton
I thought it was only ghosts who could haunt.
It turned out that angels could too.
Everything about Esme haunted me. Day and night. Especially night. And my body felt on the inside like my face appeared on the outside—partially pristine, locked in the hard perfection of the persona I’d become. The other part? Raw and deformed by how much I desired her.
And how much of myself I kept giving her without caution.
My knuckles rapped on Léo’s door in tight formation, wondering if this was one more mistake I was making.
A few seconds later, the door drew open to reveal my old friend, dressed casually in pants and a loose tee, his hair within his normal range of unkempt and the faintest hint of dark circles under his eyes.
“Quinton,” he greeted me and stepped back, an invitation to enter.
“You look tired,” I drawled, stepping into their one-bedroom apartment in the Left Bank neighborhood.
It was small and decorated with far too much floral fabric to be healthy for anyone to reside in for extended periods of time, yet they didn’t want to move. Even though they had the money to afford something four times the size of this. Even though they had a baby.
I’d have to add it to the list of things I didn’t understand.
“Hélène was up all night with a cough,” he said gruffly and I shifted under his penetrating stare. “What’s your excuse?”
“My fucking life,” I retorted.
A few more steps put us in the living room where Léo grabbed the few toys and clothes that littered the couches, evidence of their newborn, and dropped onto one of the armchairs, indicating I could take the sofa.
“I’d give you this seat,” he began with a rueful laugh. “But Hélène wasn’t feeling well earlier and if you knew what I had to clean off of it, you’ll trust me when I say you want the couch.”
I grimaced and took a seat, strangely more discomfited by the sudden prick of jealousy at the way my friend spoke about his daughter rather than the actual imaginings of what a sick baby would produce.
“So, is it life keeping you up at night, or a certain raven-haired professor who’s invading your space?”
The way he intonated ‘space’ made it clear he wasn’t just talking about the Notre Dame.
“That’s not why I’m here.” My lips thinned and in spite of my protest, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “You met her?”
To his credit, there was only a faint grin of success to cross his mouth before he replied, “There was a luncheon a few weeks ago with some people in the department. Lavigne invited her since she’s teaching a seminar.”
I processed the information and told myself it was purely my training that made me want to know more.
“What do you think?”
He seemed surprised by my question. “Very intelligent. Very beautiful.” But he wasn’t enamored like I was. His words were just facts. “I can’t decide whether I’m surprised or not that she’s keeping you up at night.”
I frowned.
“We spoke about you.”
“What? Why?” I demanded harshly.
He had the audacity to chuckle. “Don’t worry. When I realized who she was, I was the one who forced her to talk about you.”
“Léo…”
“I wanted to know about the woman who’d thrown you for a loop, Quinton.” He bent forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “In all the years we’ve known each other, you’ve never come to me for help with your work.” His hand rose when I made a move to speak. “I know it made perfect sense to ask me since I could get an answer from Lavigne, but that doesn’t change how you spoke about her nor how you are now.”
“And how is that?” I bit out.
His chin bobbed in a slow, knowing nod. “Like your insides were put inside a washing machine and then hung outside in a hurricane to dry.”
I drew back at his laughter and the way his words rung with truth.
Being with Esme—the thought of being with her—methodically washed away every other aspect of my life as though they were only dirty distractions, only to then lock my feelings in a storm of need so violent, I wasn’t sure I’d survive it.
“I’ve been there, mon ami. I know,” he rasped with a low, serious voice as he began to fold up one of Hélène’s blankets.
W
hether or not it was my truth, I knew it was his. I’d seen firsthand what he’d gone through because of his love for Troy, and what he’d sacrificed for it —for her.
It was hard to believe I was capable of something similar when I wasn’t the man Léo was. Hell, when I wasn’t even a man. Just a machine. A monster.
‘I don’t care whether or not you are a monster, Quinton…’
I shoved a hand through my hair, pulling the memory of her words away from the front of my mind.
“I can’t want her, Léo,” I rasped. “Not now. Not when I’m this close.”
“Did you figure out his plan?” His hands paused their task.
I shook my head. “Not yet. But I figured out who Hubert is to him.”
“Who?”
My nostrils flared. “His son.”
Léo dropped back against the back of the chair. “Mon Dieu. His son? He has another one?”
I nodded. “Maybe more.” I grunted and sneered, “Fucker is probably populating an entire army for himself.”
“But Hubert Holdings…”
“About to go under until Méchant bailed them out. And then, nine months later, Madame Hubert had a son, Gustav.”
“Mon Dieu.” His response was a tenth of what mine had been. “So, he’s your stepsibling, too?”
I growled and shook my head.
The only reason I considered Amélie to be my stepsister was because I’d known her in school. She’d started dating Léo around the time my mother began to fall for Méchant. We hadn’t been that close. Her narcissism was as bright as the sun, and though I’d tried to warn Léo about it, not even knowing the extent of her lies, he’d still been blinded.
Like I had with Sophie.
His disbelief was cut sharply by a thought. “You don’t still think Esme is a spy for him, do you?”
My head turned and I stared past the flower box in their window to the street outside. “I don’t know what I think.”
“Merde, Quinton, you’ve got it bad.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re falling for her.”
I glared at him. “Not possible.”
He ignored me. “Quinton, how many men—how many women, even—have you… removed… from Méchant’s organization over the last decade? Dozens? And with your line of work, knowing what that means and knowing your personal history with Méchant, that can only mean I’m correct to assume that you’ve never made a mistake since doing so probably would have cost your life.”
The Gargoyle and the Gypsy: A Dark Contemporary Romance (The Sacred Duet Book 1) Page 21