by Mina Carter
He had because the first thing he’d seen had been Gran.
How, after hundreds of years, could he tell his brother the truth? That they were linked, one soul residing in two different bodies? That whatever Gran felt, so too would Cal. Whoever Cal fell in love with . . .
He would leave the city. Tonight.
He’d head up to the Arctic. It was a long journey, but a traditional retreat for those of the paranormal persuasion sick of the human world. Unlike humans, most of them could handle the cold and knew enough to realize that anyone up there wasn’t looking for company.
Pushing himself to his feet with renewed purpose, he turned to leave the alley. He had made three steps before a bellow of fury and challenge echoed across the city.
It was the roar of a gargoyle. A male. He’d know it anywhere. It was his brother. Cal was in trouble, lots of trouble by the sound of it.
Gran froze in place, turning his head to listen for where the sound came from. It came again, and he spun on his heel, isolating the direction. Then he began to run.
It didn’t take him long to find them. Although made of stone, gargoyles were fast and agile, particularly over rooftops and buildings, the domain they’d been created to inhabit. It was their natural habitat, and they ruled it like a lion did his pride. And they were just as ferocious, something their creators had failed to consider. If they hadn’t bound their creations with magic, gargoyle kind would have hunted them to the ends of the earth.
Perched high on a building a block over, Gran easily spotted his brother and Iliona. They’d been penned in by redcaps. Cal clung to the side of the building, doing his best to shield the small human woman with his bigger stone body.
They had no way out.
Fear almost held Gran immobile. Fear up through his veins at the threat to Iliona. Redcaps were small in stature but vicious and nasty. They couldn’t be reasoned with and were just as likely to turn on a friend as a foe, all for the joy of the kill.
He had to save her. The thought broke him from his frozen spell, and he roared, bellowing his fury to the sky. These assholes were threatening the woman he loved. She might belong to his brother, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t love her until the day he died.
Chapter 11
Her life was over. Done. She was either going to become a red, bloody smear over the wall behind her or fall to her death, her body shattered and broken on the concrete many stories down. Option three was even less appealing—filled with redcap arrows until she resembled a grisly porcupine.
She hadn’t even known they had archers, but they were devastatingly accurate, keeping Cal pinned in place easily. With the positions they’d taken, if he moved, even slightly, it would leave her exposed. One of them took a potshot at her.
“Let me go,” she begged Cal. “Save yourself.”
She stroked her fingers over his stone jaw, and he looked down at her. His eyes were filled with worry as she sheltered in his protective embrace.
“No,” he growled, jaw jutting out stubbornly.
His face in this form seemed strange to her at first, but the more she saw it, the more she liked it. Unlike other paranormals, whose alternative forms often looked nothing like their human one, Cal in his gargoyle form still looked like Cal. The same features but more pronounced. Stronger cheekbones, a heavy jaw, and a clifflike brow bone were joined by small horns on his head. His former muscular build was dwarfed by his stone one, and she was endlessly fascinated by his wings and tail.
Pity she’d never get a chance to check them out more.
“I’m going to let go,” he warned her. “If we can make it to the ground.”
She wasn’t an idiot. By “we,” he meant her.
A roar split the air behind them, and she flinched, convinced that some new enemy had joined the fight. As if the redcaps weren’t enough. But Cal’s head whipped up and around, hope in his eyes. He opened his mouth and bellowed back, the wordless sound obviously some kind of communication.
To whom, though, she had no idea.
“Cal?” she asked, but his attention was elsewhere. Before she could take another breath, he swung from the brickwork on one hand, hefting her in the other, and then, unbelievably, threw her into the air.
She screamed, a sound of pure terror from the very depths of her soul as she fell. The air around her became thick with flying arrows, the redcaps screaming in triumph. She closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly so as not to see the ground rushing up to dash the life from her.
She hit something hard and screamed again, trying to grab on to it. Unbelievably, a strong arm wrapped around her waist, and she opened her eyes to find herself held against a broad, stony chest.
“Oh my God, Gran,” she gasped, wrapping her arms around his neck as he leaped through the air. His taloned feet touched down on a window ledge of the building across the way from her apartment, but then he pushed off again. She closed her eyes as they flew, feeling every jolt as Gran landed on a building or swung from a parapet onto another rooftop. She daren’t look. The speed they were traveling at was dizzying, and the last thing she wanted was to throw up down her rescuer’s back.
It seemed like an eternity before, finally, he stopped. She heard the squeal of a window being raised, and then he adjusted his hold on her to climb through it.
Opening her eyes, she found a small apartment. Two ratty couches were set in front of the old TV. Open doors of the room revealed a small kitchenette and a couple of bedrooms. But they didn’t hold her attention. Instead, she turned to look at Gran.
“Where are we?” she demanded.
He straightened up, watching her all the time as his stone form folded back into his human one. She gasped, hand over her mouth, fascinated by the display.
“At my place. Are you hurt?” he asked, surging forward to grab her by the upper arms. His keen gaze swept over her, obviously looking for injuries.
“No, no . . . I’m good, thanks to you,” she managed with a small smile, trying to make the events of the last ten minutes make sense in her head.
“Good,” he bit out, yanking her against him and covering her mouth with his.
* * *
❖
She froze in his arms, hands clawed against his strong biceps. She knew she should resist. It was Gran, not Cal. She knew that. Even though he looked like his brother, he wasn’t. His lips moved over hers, hard and demanding . . . the kiss raw in its intensity.
She whimpered, the tiny sound lost under the onslaught. She should resist, but he felt so good. His hand slid down the curve of her back, cupping her ass, and he yanked her up hard against him. She gasped at the thick evidence of his desire for her against her soft stomach, and he took the opportunity to slide his tongue deep into her mouth.
Her hands clawed, her body still rigid as she tried to push him away. This was wrong. She should resist, but it was hard to remember why when his tongue stroked against hers. Tangled with it. Demanded a response. She should say no. They looked so similar that no one would blame her if she said she couldn’t tell which brother it was.
But she could tell the difference. Despite the fact they were identical, she could tell. It was there in the way that they kissed and in the way they held her close to their harder than human bodies. Cal was heat and need, tempered with a sweet gentleness even when desire rode him hard—a slow burn that was smooth and intense. Whereas Gran was just as hot, but more demanding—spiky, edgy heat that exploded like an inferno through her veins.
She whimpered again as he rocked his hips against her, his hand buried in the hair at the nape of her neck. He tilted her head for better access to her lips, demanded she respond to him. His growl of pleasure and need broke her control. Every cell in her body clamored to respond to him, demanded that she did. Before she realized what she was doing, her hands had slid up his broad shoulders, tangling in the short hair at the back of his head.
The kiss was hot, scorching hot . . . openmouthed and erotic as she pressed closer, part
ing her legs as he thrust a hard thigh between them. He lifted her slightly so she was forced to ride his thigh, a whimper in the back of her throat as the friction rubbed her needy clit, sending spirals of pleasure through her body.
She lost all sense of time and place. All that mattered was him, his lips on hers, and his hands on her body.
Then the sound of the window opening behind them brought her to her senses like a dash of cold water had been dumped all over her. She gasped, tearing herself away so quickly and violently she tumbled backward. With a horrified look, she saw Cal climbing through the window, his hard gaze flicking between the two of them. There was no hiding it. No hiding what they’d been doing. So she didn’t even try.
“Cal . . . I’m so sorry,” she whispered, reaching a hand out toward him. She didn’t know what else to say. There was no excuse. None. She knew the difference between the brothers, and she’d wanted, no, needed to kiss Gran.
Cal ignored her hand, and she swallowed the tiny sound of distress at the small hurt as he squared up to his brother.
“Granite?” Cal’s voice had dropped from the near human timbre she usually heard to something so deep that it almost hurt her ears. Like a grating so far inside no amount of cotton buds would reach and itch it.
The two gargoyles faced each other, locking gazes. She watched as they grew taller and their shoulders broadened, stone flowing over their skin and hardening it. Tension mounted between them, the potential for violence hanging in the air like the crackle of static electricity.
“Please, no. Don’t do this,” she begged, getting in between them.
A hand on each clifflike chest, she tried to push them apart. Or at the very least, stop them from attacking each other. Either one of them could have snapped her in two like a twig without breaking a sweat. Her heart ached, bleeding, that she was the cause of anger between them. She didn’t want that. Had never wanted that.
“Why?” Cal asked.
To her surprise, he sounded more curious than angry. His big hand closed around her wrist, but not to push it away as she expected. Instead, he held it in place, his thumb gently stroking the skin on the inside. Her gaze flickered up to his stony face, and she was forced to bite back a gasp as tension of a different kind flowed between them.
She was a slut. How the hell could she be getting turned on when two men were about to fight over her?
“Why do you think?” Gran snapped back, his voice full of anger and something else.
Pain. Loneliness. Frustration.
Her heart ached for him as she recognized each, and all she wanted to do was wrap him up in her arms. Comfort him. The pull to touch him, to stroke her fingers over his skin was as strong as her need to touch Cal. This time the small sound she made was one of distress. The need for both of them, at the same time, was wrong. Wasn’t it?
“I don’t know.” Cal’s voice was filled with the same confusion that rolled through Iliona. She had no idea why Gran had kissed her, especially when he called her Cal’s girlfriend. Most paranormals were highly possessive, so it didn’t make sense. She’d assumed gargoyles were the same. Cal and Gran were the only two examples that she’d had anything to do with, though, so . . . perhaps they were different?
“Because you’re in love with her, that’s why!”
Gran broke away with a cry of frustration, his gargoyle form receding until he was just a man. Shoving his hand through his short hair, he paced the room like a tiger on the prowl. Iliona was caught by the predatory grace of his movements, the way the heavy muscles slid over his frame and the potential for violence in every line of his body.
“So because I am, you have to try to steal her away?”
This time she couldn’t just hear the hurt in Cal’s voice, she could feel it. It radiated from his pores and vibrated through his skin. She moved her fingers to gently rub his chest, trying to comfort him.
“No! You don’t get it!” Gran’s expression was anguished as he whipped around to face them, his voice a cry. “Because you are, I am! I can’t help it. We share the same soul . . . When you love, I love. There’s nothing I can do about it, and it’s tearing me apart.”
“What?” Cal still sounded confused, his expression matching. “That’s not possible . . . We were created at the same time, yes, but you can’t make two gargoyles from one soul.”
Iliona looked at Gran. He locked gazes with her, his expression open, and she could see directly down to his soul. There was pain, anguish, and something else. Something within her own heart clicked and shifted, as though it were locking into place.
“Yes. Yes . . . You can,” she breathed as she realized the truth. “Somehow you can.”
She took a step toward Gran.
He watched her warily as she grew closer, a wretched hope in his eyes that almost broke her heart. Like he wanted to believe but expected to be rejected and turned away anyway.
She didn’t let go of Cal, though. Her hand slid through the grasp of his until their fingers entwined. She came to a standstill in front of Gran and looked up into his handsome face.
“He feels the same,” she said aloud. To him, to Cal, to herself . . . She wasn’t quite sure whom the words were for, but they hung in the air between them all. “You kiss differently, but here inside.” She tapped the center of her chest, right over where her heart beat erratically. “Here . . . you feel the same.”
She reached for Gran, her fingertips whispering over his jaw. The stubble there rasped against the soft skin of her fingers. He hadn’t shaved for a few days, and she shivered, wondering how that would feel against the skin elsewhere on her body.
His hands snapped out to capture hers in an iron grip.
“Don’t play games with me,” he begged, his voice little more than a growl. “Don’t touch me if . . .”
“If what?” she challenged, turning her hand and easily breaking his grip.
For all his snarling, she knew it was all bluster. He wouldn’t hurt her. She’d seen inside his soul and glimpsed his deepest secret. He wanted to be loved and was scared that nobody ever would.
“If . . .” His Adam’s apple worked as he swallowed. “Don’t touch me if you don’t mean it.”
His gaze flicked over her head to Cal behind her, and this time she could almost hear the communication between them.
“I never knew . . .” Cal breathed, an edge of anguish in his voice. Iliona stepped aside as he reached for his brother, bringing the other man in for a bear hug. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
Gran closed his eyes, a shudder rolling through his big body as he held on as though Cal was his only lifeline in a stormy sea. “I felt it. When he tore the soul inside me apart,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “The worst pain you’ve ever felt right inside you, when you can’t get away from it. I screamed and screamed, but it made no difference. He tore . . . me down the center, and then half of me was you.”
“I’m sorry . . .” Cal breathed, cupping Gran’s face and making him look up to meet his eyes. “I never knew. I thought . . . The body my soul had come from had just been moved before I woke.”
Gran shook his head. “I didn’t want you to feel guilty for my suffering, so I told you that you were slow to wake.”
“I wasn’t, was I?” Realization rang in Cal’s voice, and Gran shook his head again.
“No. You were awake instantly, as soon as he put the soul . . . the half of the soul . . . in your stone form.”
Iliona kept quiet, aware that this was a very intimate moment and not wanting to intrude. Her heart wept for the two gargoyles, not brothers but something closer, as she realized the horrors that had been inflicted on them. The need to step forward and wrap them both in her arms to comfort them almost overwhelmed her.
She must have made some movement, some tiny noise, because they both turned to look at her as they broke their embrace.
She stood in front of them, unsure how to proceed. Cal reached out, and gratefully, she slid her hand into his.
Gran didn’t move, his eyes dark. Then, slowly, he extended his hand too, a silent question in his eyes.
“Don’t touch him unless you’re prepared to accept both of us,” Cal said softly. “I’m sorry to have to ask you this, because I know humans are different, but there’s no me without him. I can’t . . . I won’t leave him to suffer alone.” His voice grew in strength and determination. “If you want me, you have to accept both of us.”
There was no question. There was no debate about whether she was saying yes or no. It was a yes. Unequivocally, unrepentantly, yes. Her heart ached for both of them, needed both of them, and there was no way she could separate the two.
Slowly, she nodded and slid her hand into Gran’s as well. She gasped as electricity arced between the two of them, the soft sound echoed by a deep growl from his throat as he drew her toward him.
She went easily, finding herself pulled up against his hard-as-stone body. Her breathing hitched when she felt the thick bar of his cock pressing against her soft stomach. His arms slid around her, holding her close, and his breath whispered over her lips as he bent his head to claim them.
Cal moved in behind her, his hands sliding up her the curve of her waist and around to cup her breasts. His lips left a trail on the side of her throat even as Gran parted hers with a hard sweep of his tongue.
She moaned as he thrust deep, sliding his tongue against hers. Cal moved closer, the rigid thickness of his cock pressing between the grooves of her ass. Heat washed over her, rolling through her veins, as she realized that she would have to take the two of them at the same time. Not have to, wanted to . . .
The thought of the three of them, naked in bed together, the two men claiming her one after the other, and then together, made her whimper in need and desire. Her pussy clenched, liquid heat escaping her to dampen her panties.
Behind her, Cal groaned in response, one hand abandoning her breasts to slide down and around. With an ease that spoke of experience, he undid her pants and slid his hand beneath.