Monsieur Gargouille, all of Paris thinks you are a terrorist. Also, I found this strange notebook in the ceiling, what does it say?
Oh, by the way, I think I’m in love with you.
My head tipped back, hoping my presentation of the facts would be better than I was currently imagining.
During my small attic adventure, the laser had finished its scan. As I began to disassemble and pack my things, my attention was drawn to the echoes of rustling and a faint groan coming from Quinton’s loft.
I cursed myself for the umpteenth time for not chaining that man to the bed. But just as frustration and concern bloomed in my stomach, there was a loud thud above me.
And then another.
My pulse raced. I looked around for a sign that the building was collapsing or something else equally as terrible, but there wasn’t. With no imminent danger, I hurriedly packed up my things, listening as the thuds and strains of… machinery… continued with measured consistency.
It sounded like someone was building something right on top of the cathedral.
Throwing my bags over my shoulder, I darted along the narrow walkways, almost reaching a full run by the time I pushed through the plywood door into the loft.
“What is that?” Quinton demanded and, just as I suspected, he was standing in the middle of the room with his hand at his side.
“I’m not sure,” I said, shaking my head as I set my bags down. “I just heard it too, but I didn’t see anything inside the church or otherwise.”
“Stay here.”
A small cry escaped my lips as I bolted forward and stood in his path to the door.
“You can’t leave.”
“Esme—”
“Quinton!” I ground out, placing my hands on his chest as though they could stop him.
Both of us paused as the noises stopped.
“You need to rest,” I went on before he had the chance.
He was healing well, but I didn’t need to check WebMD to know the wound to his side had been deep. He was lucky it hadn’t punctured anything important, but he was pushing his luck with the way he kept trying to rush the process. And the way we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.
“The noise stopped, just let me go see what it was, okay?” I pleaded quietly, watching him become more subdued as the silence continued.
His attention returned to me and for a moment, I thought he was going to agree.
A very foolish moment.
“I’m not risking you,” he declared, pushing right through me for the door.
“Well, then I’m coming with you because I’m not risking you either.” I followed behind him, running into the width of his shoulder and bicep as he turned to me.
“You’re too fearless,” he growled at me.
“You weren’t complaining in the bell tower,” I retorted.
Both pleasure and displeasure flashed brightly in his eyes before he grumbled to himself and began to take the stairs, using only one hand to support himself as the other was held in front of me to keep me back a safe distance.
“I don’t think it’s coming from inside the building,” I repeated though it made no difference.
A few seconds later, we spilled out into the massive silence of the sanctuary.
And then the noises began again, seeming farther away now that we were down at ground level.
I bit my tongue to hold back the questions as I followed him toward the back of the church, the rich purple of my skirt billowing behind me. Since we were going in the exact opposite direction from the front and side doors, I assumed he planned on exiting from whatever secret door he’d come through the night he’d been injured.
A few seconds later, my assumption was confirmed when he stopped at the far wall and turned to me, “Stay here.”
I wanted to say no simply because he never listened to me when I told him stay in bed but the look in his eye had me swallowing down the defiant syllable and nodding in compliance.
Placing his hand on one stone and pushing, another one down lower popped out. Grabbing the lip and pulling it forward, I watched how it was a latch that opened the panel in the wall to the outside.
Goodness. I was living in the Da Vinci code and for a second, I expected Robert Langdon to come barreling through the church screaming about Opus Dei.
Instead, Quinton slipped through the doorway and it shut behind him.
I choked and rushed toward the panel.
I didn’t expect him to disappear. I thought he was just going to peer out.
He couldn’t be out there alone. Not in his condition. Not with his newfound reputation.
I reached up for the stone he’d pressed, shoving my palm against it until the same lever popped out again. But before I could let myself out, the door opened from the other side.
Quinton’s hands gripped my waist as he pushed me back into the church, the door clicking softly behind him
“I told you to stay here.”
“I didn’t think you were going to disappear out there,” I exclaimed breathlessly. “I thought you were just going to look.”
“I told you—”
“What is it?” I cut him off.
His eyes flicked up as the creaks and thuds continued above us. “They’re putting scaffolding up around the spire.”
“Oh…” I bit into my lip, recalling the signs I’d seen earlier.
“What is it?” His hands gripped me tighter.
“I just… Now that you say that, I remember seeing pallets of boards stacked next to metal rods on the north side the last few days, but I didn’t think anything of it.” I swallowed and pieced it together with the other happenings I’d mostly disregarded, too wrapped up in the man who’d almost died trying to save me.
“But they’ve been there since they put the signs up. When I went out for food the day after the attack, there were signs out front that the cathedral was fermé.” I remembered the moment my heart stopped, coming back from one of my quests for food nearby and seeing the Closed signs in front of all the doors.
Thankfully, I’d been given a key.
“Interesting,” he said with a deep voice.
Instantly, the horrible thought bloomed that maybe they’d found him. That they’d found us.
After what Giselle had told me, fear balled like a violent mass inside my stomach. I knew I had to tell him. I had to let him know what was happening. But just like he pushed himself too fast for how much his body had healed, I worried what the knowledge would do.
I worried what he would do.
Even construction sounds had sent him into spy mode and now the toll of all the tense movement was showing in the strain on his face.
So, I held back what I’d learned, convinced it was better to wait until he was healed.
Though my heart, the thing that had no problem wandering freely my entire life, argued it was because I wanted to stay attached to him for just a little longer.
I cleared my throat. If Giselle was right—if the authorities were coming after Quinton—there would be police barricades, not construction planks and scaffolding sitting everywhere.
I reasoned. “There’s an event coming up for the Ministry of Culture. They’re doing some cleaning and restoration work on the spire to make it look like they’ve done something worthwhile for Notre Dame.”
His lips twitched because it was most likely the truth.
Just like brushing your teeth right before going to the dentist, branches of the government overrun with bureaucracy only liked to make an effort right before they asked the public for money.
“Let’s go back upstairs. You need to sit back down.” I rubbed my hands over the bulk of his shoulders.
“I need to check the candle.”
“The what?”
He cleared his throat. “I need to check the candle. One of the votives. It’s where messages for me are left.”
My lips parted slightly as I drew in a breath. Each time I learned more about his secret li
fe, there was always a moment where it felt a bit surreal.
“Okay, but I’m coming with you.”
“Of course, you are.”
I grinned. With him was a gentle way of putting how I wrapped my arm around his waist and cinched his good side to mine, careful of his bandage as I held him. Wiggling his arm around my shoulders, I waited for a moment before I felt the slight release of some of his weight onto me.
I tried not to focus on the feel of his hot skin against mine or how the weight of him reminded me of what it felt like when he was wedged between my thighs, too lost in my body to be careful what weight he put on me. Unlike what he was doing now. I felt myself tip eagerly against him, wanting more of his musky warmth—a heady mix of sex and secrets.
Man and monster.
Across the nave, we stopped in front of the trays of votives. With a low grunt, Quinton bent down to the bottom shelf.
“How do you know if something is there?” I asked, watching as he reached in for a specific candle. “Because it’s lit?” I surmised when he selected one of the few on the bottom shelf with a flame.
“It’s always lit.”
“Then how do you know something is there?”
“I don’t. I just always check.”
Reaching carefully underneath the base, I watched as he teased out a slip of folded paper. The bottom must be hollow.
With another grunt, he rose, not bothering to open it as the contents would be written in the code like he had explained to me the other night, needing his copy of Hugo to translate them.
“Who’s it from?”
“Probably… Hopefully… my man on the inside of Méchant’s organization,” he admitted as I made sure we moved steadily but carefully back over to the stairwell to his loft.
“You have someone on the inside?”
His grunt as we climbed the stairs was my only confirmation.
I finished putting some green grapes on the paper plate which was already filled with a selection of meats, cheeses, crackers, and fresh bread that I’d picked up from the market earlier this morning.
When we’d returned to the loft, Quinton released me and headed for his desk and his copy of Hugo to decipher the note.
Feeling the questions burn against the tip of my tongue, I busied myself by getting out our food for lunch as he flipped through pages and scratched down words.
I didn’t need to read it to read his body language—to read the concern and engrained determination that flicked through the array of flexing muscles on his face as he read over the message.
It wasn’t news that fell to either good or bad. It was the kind of news that evoked foreboding. Something was happening whether he did anything about it or not.
Still, I heard myself ask, “What does it say?”
I walked over to him and gently set the plate down on the desk with a little push toward him.
“Nothing,” he clipped, pulling out a lighter and setting the paper on fire.
Whatever chance there was for me to take a glance at it vanished. There was no way I could translate ash.
Reaching out, he roughly grabbed a slice of the baguette and began to layer it with some of the charcuterie. “Why are you still here, Esme?” he rasped, forcing himself not to look at me as he put the food in his mouth.
Now was not the right time to mention the whole ‘falling for you’ bit.
“I’m making sure you’re okay.” My bracelets clanked against each other as I put one hand on my hip.
“I’m going to be fine.” He took another bite. “You don’t need to stay—you shouldn’t stay.” He glanced around. “This is no place for you.”
I moistened my lip, taking in the meager amenities that a lofted attic in a thousand-year-old cathedral had to offer.
Living inside Notre Dame for the last several days had been like a sort of camping.
Cathedral camping.
There were restrooms, but they were a hike to get to. No showers. Food had to be foraged and brought back from outside. But there was an actual mattress and a real roof over our heads, so perhaps that was a step up from a sleeping bag and a tent. And there were no wild animals to worry about.
Only the hard, hot body I slept next to each night. The one that killed decisively. Protected ferociously. And loved ravenously.
Maybe I was roughing it, but I hadn’t really given much thought to the circumstances other than rational acceptance that this was the situation in which I was now living.
“I want to stay with you,” I confessed, feeling my tongue stumble thickly over the words.
It was as close as I could come right now.
It was as close as I’d ever come to admitting to feelings like these.
For all the worlds I’d wandered, this was a territory I was not only unfamiliar with but petrified of.
Hard eyes jerked up to mine, almost animalistic in their nature as they took in how close I was standing to him.
“Why?” he demanded, and I felt myself sinking deeper into the pit of quicksand I’d never make it out of.
Before I could answer, the warm expanse of his palm flattened on my abdomen. The tips of his fingers running just under my breasts and the base of his wrist teasing the elastic waist of my skirt.
“I kill people, Esme,” he breathed, letting his hand slide higher until the weight of my breast rested on it. “I gutted a man and stabbed another in the throat with this hand.” His voice was almost that of wonder as he stared at his fingers holding my flesh.
The memory of those incidents flashed in my mind. Such violent images compared to the softness with which he touched me now.
My breath rushed out unsteadily as goose bumps climbed down my stomach.
I watched the battle inside him, fighting to convince him he wasn’t worthy.
“You kill bad people to protect good ones,” I murmured, clutching his wrist and holding his hand to my breast just as he moved to pull away. “You are not the monster.”
“Murder is still murder, ma Gypsy.”
I met his gaze. “And want is still want, mon Gargouille.” I dragged his hand down from my chest, over my stomach and pressed it tightly against my core.
“I have nothing to offer except a life of secrets and lies, Esme,” he said hoarsely even as his thumb began to rub firm circles over my clit.
My heart began to race and need spread like wildfire through my limbs. I saw my other hand thread through the inky black curls on his head, forcing it back until he stared at me, his gaze mirroring the ravaged need in my own.
I watched the forceful pulse in his neck and let my eyes drift lower, drinking in the dangerously muscled man who thought to frighten me away.
Too bad the only thing he was a danger to was my heart, and it seemed there was no saving it now.
He pressed and plucked harder at my clit through the fabric and my mouth watered as I eyed his thick arousal bulging against his shorts, the blunt head straining at the waistband.
I whimpered and dragged my eyes back to his that seemed to scream his warning—a life of secrets and lies.
I breathed out raggedly, “So then lie with me, Q, and let what we have be one more secret.”
Quinton
Lie with me and let me be your secret.
I reached up and crushed her lips to mine.
I tried to care that she didn’t know what she was getting into, but I couldn’t any longer. She knew everything about me. She knew about my past. My scars. She knew about the things I’d done, and the type of man I’d had to become.
And still she wanted me.
And fuck, did I want her.
I imprisoned her lips to mine as my tongue stroked and speared inside her. But the first touch of my mouth sparked a need just as great in her. She was so damn hot and sweet. So alive.
Now that I had her, I found myself needing her every waking minute. Even before I had her, I’d needed her. She was like a drug. I wanted, wanted, wanted… until I got. And once I got, the addictio
n made me need.
My fingers dove through the wrapped layers in the front of her skirt, searching for her hot cunt that had been burning against my fingers.
I didn’t know what made my feelings more violent for her—the way I felt when I thought she was in danger… or the way she reacted—protected—when she thought I was.
No one protected me.
No one looked out for me.
Not in a very long time.
A groan ripped from my chest as my fingers met no further resistance before encountering the damp curls covering her pussy.
“Always so wet for me, Gypsy.”
“I need you,” she gasped into my mouth as she shoved herself against my hand.
Growling, I tore my fingers away long enough to spin her around and pull her onto my lap. Wedging my knees between hers, I kicked them wide open, spreading the two layers of her skirt with them and putting her pussy on display.
“You need to eat,” I rasped.
One hand rubbed torturously through her slit as I reached for the plate she’d made with the other, grabbing a single grape from the generous pile.
With her head tipped back onto my shoulder, it was easy to position the small round fruit against her plump lips.
“Eat,” I commanded.
She rolled her hips, both against my hand and against my cock that was pinned against the softness of her ass. I didn’t have to ask again though before her mouth parted and took the fruit inside its warm depths.
In reward, I pushed the tip of one finger inside her, immediately feeling the way her cunt clenched around me.
“Relax,” I said roughly, reaching for two grapes this time.
She let out a little whimper when I removed my hand in order to take one of the grapes and bring it back down to her slick, lower lips.
“Relax,” I whispered again as I rested both tiny spheres against her openings.
She shuddered and parted her lips and as one green orb disappeared into her mouth, I pushed the other inside her cunt.
“Q!” she gasped desperately even with the grape in her mouth as her hips jerked at the unlikely invasion.
I grunted as I felt the juice, warmed by her pussy, squirt against my fingers as she crushed the grape.
The Gargoyle and the Gypsy: A Dark Contemporary Romance (The Sacred Duet Book 1) Page 30