“Q,” she breathed the nickname in the way that made my cock turn to stone as her hands reached up and cupped my face. “I’m okay. A little soggy… A little frizzy… but I’m okay.”
With a low growl, I reached for her hips and pulled her flush against me. I didn’t want to hear her words. I wanted to taste them.
My mouth preyed down and seized hers, taking advantage of the way her lips parted in surprise to spear my tongue inside the warmth.
I wanted to taste that she was okay.
So I devoured every inch, my tongue finding every corner of her soft satin cavern to make sure there was no taste of a lie. And there wasn’t. She was warm and hungry, the monster inside her coming to feast alongside mine on the desire that fed them.
I wanted to feel that she was okay.
So my hands rubbed over her hips, feeling the heat of her skin through the thin fabric of her dress that looked too damn much like a shirt I would’ve chained her to the bed if she’d been headed anywhere but the belfry.
“Quinton…” she trailed off with a soft moan as I pressed the length of my erection against her stomach. “I need to tell you—”
I cut her off with another kiss, biting down hard on her lip until she was practically vibrating with need against me, making my cock throb.
“I need you,” I rasped… pleaded, really.
I needed to feel her body tight and welcoming around me to know that she was mine.
Her moan drew out like a note pulled from her bow, long and melodious as my fingers began to gather the fabric of her shirt up her thighs.
My thumbs pressed on her inner thigh, right near the edge of her underwear, turning and backing her in the direction I wanted.
“I told you I’d fuck you against one of these bells,” I reminded her roughly as I lifted her, ignoring the protest of my side, and set her on the top rung of the small stepladder that was placed next to the giant bell.
“Caref—” I stepped onto the first rung and sealed my mouth back over hers.
It wasn’t good—the way the thought of losing her made me frantic—made me feral with the need to mark her as mine.
I tried to pretend it was just the thought of losing her, rather than a deeper seed that was planted somewhere between my heart and my soul that sprouted tiny roots reminding me that, after all this time, I once again had something of worth to lose.
The woman whose warmth seeped through the cracks I swore I didn’t care about.
The woman whose goodness echoed like the damn chimes with every move she made.
She made me want to confess all my secrets if it meant I could keep her.
It was a dangerous position for me to be in. A dangerous risk that could cost me my revenge.
But none of that mattered compared to the thought of losing her. None of that mattered next to the thought of forsaking it all to keep her.
And that thought was a very dangerous one indeed.
Esme
“Wrap your legs around me.”
Perhaps I should’ve hesitated—questioned what we were about to do not only because he was injured but because I hadn’t the faintest idea of how he was going to fuck me against the giant bell.
But I didn’t because I wanted him to.
Even though I was angry he’d disobeyed my instructions to wait and let himself heal, I couldn’t deny the thrill that ran through my blood, seeing him burst through the door.
I didn’t know how to tell him what I’d learned from Giselle.
I did know that when he heard it, I needed him to know he wasn’t alone.
I needed him to know he wasn’t alone in this anymore.
“If you hurt yourself…” I shuddered.
“It will be worth every pain to feel you come all over my cock again,” he finished, and I felt another rush of hot moisture between my thighs.
Gripping his shoulders, I locked my legs around his waist as I rose onto the top step. With one arm around my back, he reached out to steady himself against the giant drum before leaning me back.
Even though it only could’ve been two or three inches between me and the bell, it felt like miles before my back touched the cool surface. I let out a small gasp when my bare ass touched the metal.
“Quinton,” I murmured, rubbing my hips against his arousal.
I needed him.
Even the barest film of my thong and his pants between us was too much. With my dress hiked up at my waist, his hot length was pinned right against where I needed him. I couldn’t stop myself from undulating against him, dragging my clit greedily against the fabric covering him.
Lightning flashed somewhere behind us, lighting up the entire belfry in a brilliant flash of white, and I watched his raw need spark as it momentarily turned my shirt-dress sheer.
“I need you,” he repeated with a hoarse growl.
My stomach quivered as his hands slid over its soft curves to my belt, deftly undoing the buckle and pulling it out from the side.
The thunder boomed as he dropped it to the floor; I never heard it land. The storm was deafening, but nothing compared to my desire.
“I need you, too,” I choked, catching sight of the bandage on his side. Proof of what he was willing to sacrifice for those who would condemn him.
I arched again, my breasts straining to be set free, my nipples pebbled so tightly they hurt.
My tongue darted over my lips, holding in my breath as he dragged one finger up the center of my dress before hooking it and yanking it down. I didn’t even flinch as buttons popped free and scattered like a man-made rainstorm to the floor.
“You’re ruining all my clothes,” I said with a low, sultry voice, not upset in the slightest.
He thought he only deserved the ruined remains of a life, and if this was making me part of that, I’d let him ruin every inch.
“I told you, I was a monster,” he said with a gravel voice, shoving the material wide and putting my bare breasts on display.
Another tumultuous gust blew inside the chamber, a cold spray of rain landing mostly on his back with a few drops scattering onto my chest.
Cold reality that I was ready to burn away.
I yanked my legs tighter around him, jerking him forward with a grunt.
“Not a monster,” I declared angrily and with an intensity that startled him enough to let me get my hand around his neck and pulled his lips to mine.
With a moan, I lost myself in the kiss as the storm raged around us, just as violent with its purpose as I was with mine.
I was brutal to his mouth, biting and sucking to punish it for saying those words. I wanted to be the monster. The one that drove away his demons. The one that scared away his solitude.
The one that loved away his self-loathing.
I felt as he leaned harder against me, supporting his weight with one arm against the bell as his other hand marked a firm path from my stomach to my breast.
Now, when I bit into him, he pinched around my piercing, sending sparks of desire glittering with pain straight to my core. When I drew his tongue into my mouth, stroking against the hot velvet with my own, he kneaded my aching flesh.
I was burning.
Every inch of my skin felt so hot, I would swear it was melting.
“Q, please,” I mumbled, almost incoherent as my hands roamed down his shoulders and onto the muscled ridges of his back, desperate for more.
I felt the feral noise form deep in his chest before it escaped his lips as his hand retreated from my breast and forged a new path down between us.
A second later, the fabric of my thong tore giving his fingers unrestricted access to my core.
“So wet for me, Gypsy,” he grunted as he speared two fingers deep inside me, curling them at the tips.
I choked as my body clenched and seized around him, teetering on the brink of release.
He murmured a string of curses against my skin as he worked his way down to my nipple, latching on and pulling hard at the flesh while I shook
against the bell, my fingers scoring into his back as my monster took control from my body.
Gasping, I forced my hand up and through his hair, pulling on the wet, satin strands to tip his head back.
A hot breath leeched from my lips as he locked my nipple in his mouth, taking it with him as he looked up at me. Frozen, we tormented each other. His tongue laved over my sensitive skin. In return, my body squeezed around his fingers, the only evidence of my movement being the desire that drained from me down onto his hand.
“I don’t want to come around your fingers.” My voice was strained as the edge of my orgasm began to cloud my vision and my voice.
He grunted and speared his fingers inside me again, releasing my breast to say, “You’ll come around whatever piece of me I put inside you.”
A strangled moan broke from my chest.
Oh God.
“Such dirty words, ma Gargouille. Has all of that dirty desire been building all this time?” I asked, both of us straining for breath.
His fingers left me only to lock on my clit, sharp pleasure blinding for a moment.
“No. It’s been building for you,” he returned, the movement of his thumb driving me almost as wild as the stark, yet so irrationally smooth transition from core-clenching filth to heart-stopping sincerity.
It was a distinction reminiscent of the way his face went from smooth to scarred, right down its center.
Jarring. Two very different pieces that belonged to the same puzzle—a puzzle that needed them both in order to be complete.
“How about you, ma Gypsy?” Somewhere along the way, we’d shifted from monsieur and madame to simply mine, and I never wanted to go back. “How long has your cunt been thirsting for cock?”
The haze in his eyes mirrored my own.
“It’s only thirsting for yours,” I confessed, releasing his hair so one hand could drift down onto his chest over his heart. “Because yours is the only one it’s tasted in the flesh.” I saw as understanding flickered in his eyes, yet still, I continued with a wavering voice, “I’ve never let anyone have me like you have. I’ve never wanted to.”
I saw his lips curl, a feral growl escaped and thundered out over the city like it had come from the ravenous storm clouds above us. One moment his fingers were teasing me toward oblivion and the next, the reddened blunt head of his cock shoved through my entrance and filled me completely.
From that second—the second when, no matter how much air I sucked in, it would never fill my lungs like he filled me—there was no more taunting. No more words. No more teasing.
He pinned my wrists above my head and began to thrust into me. My head fell back, vaguely aware how my bracelets which had dropped to my elbows now jumped and chimed against the metal of the bell as he drove into me.
Twenty-nine-thousand-pounds.
And I swore it moved and shifted behind me each time my body rocked with the force of his thrusts.
The first time, he’d been injured and I’d been in control.
This time…
This time there was no question the Gypsy had fallen prey to the Gargoyle of Notre Dame.
“Q,” I cried over and over again, losing every piece of myself to him.
Each time the head of his erection rubbed against my front wall it shoved me closer to the edge, and I began to thrash wildly.
With a low growl, his mouth clamped down on my nipple, sucking hard as he swirled it with his tongue and the sensation sent me flying.
I would’ve screamed regardless of the storm—regardless of whether or not Mother Nature saw fit to mask my cry with earth-shattering sounds of her own.
If anyone were close enough, maybe they would’ve thought I was screaming for the storm itself—calling down the thunder and lightning to quake the earth just as violently as he had done to my body.
My orgasm exploded through me, convulsing my inner muscles around him, sucking him deeper inside me and then pushing against him with such force I thought I might push him from me.
Instead, he stayed wedged inside me, growing and swelling as I began to milk him, spreading my body wider to allow him to sink even deeper before a hoarse roar vibrated against my breast, his teeth marking my flesh as the hot rush of his release burst against my womb.
It was long minutes before I sensed anything except the man buried inside me. The thickness of his cock, the warmth of his body, the sound of his ragged breaths, and the rain-coated scent of his musk… For minutes, my world existed solely of him and the way he clutched me to him like I was the last thing holding him here.
Like I was the only thing that linked him to a life worth living rather than a life worthy of only revenge.
Esme
I hummed, something soft and slow, as I snapped some photos of the vaulted roof of the cathedral.
Working from the rafters the last several days while Quinton continued to heal had given me a unique network of vantage points to add to my scans.
I stepped up onto an overturned crate, making sure to keep my head low so I didn’t hit it against the wood, and winced at the delicious soreness between my thighs.
Maybe I could get used to living in a cathedral… if he was here with me.
Letting my camera hang from around my neck, I reached up, reverently placing a hand on the thousand-year-old beam above me.
There was something incredibly potent and humbling about being able to touch a piece of history that probably hadn’t been touched since the day the beam had been sealed into its place.
My stomach grumbled, reminding me I needed to go out and grab us some food as soon as my scan was done.
I dreaded this afternoon.
I looked forward to this evening, knowing I was going to take Quinton back to my apartment once the sun went down where he could have something that fell between a sanitized wipe down and a thunderstorm immersion: a warm shower and a soft bed.
But to get there, I had to make it through my seminar at L’École, and I still dreaded leaving him alone. The image of him, broken and bleeding, collapsing into the stairwell forever burned into my memory.
I stared out, watching the green light flicker over the interior architecture.
Something had changed for me. With him. Because of him.
I’d like to think it was the moment I saw his body jerk with the force of the knife—the moment I thought for sure, he was going to die. Or maybe even the moment his body finally entered mine, completing me and completely destroying me at the same time.
But that would’ve been like claiming the moment the roof was added to the cathedral was what made Notre Dame a church. Or when the rose windows were finally put in. There were big moments in the structure’s history that stood out, but it made the building no more a monument than when the first stones of the foundation had been laid or walls erected or the flying buttresses jutting out from the sides like angels’ wings.
There was no singularity that determined its significance until it was all there. Until all the pieces building the relationship between Quinton and me were there. And though there were big moments that stood out, I couldn’t pick one—big or small—to pinpoint the moment I began to fall for him. I only knew that I could see them all collectively as one formidable, imposing emotion, now that I had fallen.
Fallen for the Gargoyle of Notre-Dame.
Absentmindedly, my hand had begun to run over the rough fingerprint of the wood above me, tracing over the lines of its life as I contemplated my own. My breath faltered at my heart’s admission and how my fingers caught on something above me.
Pulling my hand down, I examined my finger where a drop of blood pooled. Drying it, I immediately looked for a splinter but there was none. I peered closer. It almost looked like a paper cut.
Of course, paper was made from trees but the giant beams shouldn’t have done this.
I looked above me, gingerly reaching back to rub the spot where my hand had been. Carefully running my hands over the beam toward the seam where it met the ne
ighboring one, my nail caught on something.
Turning so I had a better view, I looked closer.
A staple.
My brow creased.
What was a staple doing in the roof?
They definitely didn’t have staples when this place was built. Standing on my tiptoes, I looked closer, but came away with the same conclusion. There was a staple and one of the curled hooks had pulled loose and caught on my finger.
I placed both hands at the juncture of the two supports and wedged my fingers between them to realize the staple was attached to something. Papers. A booklet. Something that didn’t belong.
I pursed my lips as I fought for a small grip and began to tug.
My arms burned from being held above my head for so long with strain applied. As I glanced down, I wondered if this was why the crate was here in the first place. Granted, I was in a corner of the rafters, but still.
Had someone stood on this to hide something in the roof?
It was probably nothing, I reasoned, as the papers began to give way. Cleaners or notes from a previous restoration of the building wedged up here while the person worked. Still, my heart hammered in spite of all the logical reasons.
With an oomph, I stumbled back off the crate, just barely catching myself before I fell right on my ass, as the booklet freed from between the beams.
There were no markings on the rust-colored cover. It was dusty and dirty and every kind of worn, but it wasn’t that old.
Peeling the cover back revealed page after page of graph-lined sheets littered with names and dates that spanned only the last few decades. The rest of the scribbled notes were indecipherable as, once again, my lacking language skills failed me.
Maybe it was a list of men—employees—who’d worked on the cathedral in recent years.
If sheer will alone could’ve translated the words, mine would have.
With a frustrated grunt, I flipped the cover closed, coughing at the dust it released, and tucked it into my bag. I’d have to tell Quinton and ask him what it said.
One more thing to add to the list of things I needed to tell him.
The Gargoyle and the Gypsy: A Dark Contemporary Romance (The Sacred Duet Book 1) Page 29