by Mina Carter
His heart tore in two as he cut Cal’s air off. To save the woman they loved, he would have to kill his brother.
“Please, Cal . . . wake up,” he begged as tears coursed down his cheeks, dropping from his cheeks as small crystals to ping against the floor.
Cal struggled against him, the chanting behind them getting stronger. Iliona’s moans had subsided to whimpers. Gran cast a glance over at her. The female statue was almost alive, a glow surrounding her and making her look like an angel as she hung above the table.
He was out of time.
Shoving his brother’s nearly limp body away, Gran ignored the flare of agony across his chest as the fingers buried in his chest were torn free. Whipping around, he advanced on the sorcerer with murder in his heart.
“Hold there!” he ordered and then continued chanting. “Aanal-athanari, oran septal, gorian en-thak.”
Gran just snarled, covering the space between him and the sorcerer in a heartbeat. The human looked up with a gasp, surprise in his eyes to see Gran there.
“B-but . . . you . . . you should be spelled,” he gasped, trying to back up. Gran’s hand snapped out with the speed of a striking snake and closed around his puny neck. Just one little squeeze, that’s all it would take . . .
“Guess what, asshole?” he yanked the guy off his feet and snarled right into his face. The scent of fear filled the air, rolling right out of the human’s pores. “I’m not, and I’m going to enjoy every second of killing you.”
The human went gray, his lips soundlessly moving as he tried to beg for his life, but no words came out.
“Stop . . . don’t . . . please.”
Gran frowned, looking at the human in surprise. He was terrified out of his mind, still yammering and clutching at Gran’s hand clamped around his neck. The fact he was going purple probably meant the plea hadn’t come from him.
Easing up the pressure, he turned to look over his shoulder to find Iliona watching him.
She lay motionless on the table, her skin as pale as the stone of the statue glowing above her, but her dark eyes were fixed on him. “Please . . .” she said again. “You’re not a killer. Don’t let him make you one.”
He was a killer, but that was beside the point. His female had asked something of him, and everything in Gran wanted to grant her wish. He’d give her anything she wanted, the world if he could.
“He tried to kill you,” he snarled, dragging the semiconscious human toward the table. Sparks flew from the gargoyle female above the table, and the look of pain stopped him in his tracks.
“It’s nearly done,” Iliona said. Her voice didn’t issue from her lips, but from the lips of the gargoyle. Gran’s eyes widened as he looked from one to the other. The statue’s face had changed to a mirror image of Iliona’s. “The transfer is almost complete.”
“No!” The howl of protest came from behind Gran. He half turned to see Cal stagger to his feet, the glassy emptiness in his eyes replaced by horror as he looked at the scene in front of him. “What has he done? Fuck . . . I’ll kill him. Rip him apart with my bare hands!”
“No, no, no, it’s okay. I can fix it!” the sorcerer gabbled, gasping as Gran barely allowed him enough air to breathe. “The spell isn’t complete. I can fix it.”
Cal and Gran both growled as they turned their attention to the human. “Talk,” Gran advised. “Fast. Or you and your spine are parting company.”
“Yes . . . yes, of course.” The human looked crumpled and defeated. Like this turn of events hadn’t occurred to him. He looked like he’d been given a wake-up call and was now seeing the world anew. One where his continued living and breathing was very much in debate. “Just let me have my notes. The spell is a hybrid of my own . . .”
“Here.” Cal picked up the scattered papers the human had dropped when Gran had grabbed him and shoved them into his hands. “Work fast. If she dies, we’ll see how easily humans bounce from twenty stories. Hint,” he added with a growl and a look that would terrify most paranormals, never mind humans, “they fucking don’t.”
“She won’t die. I promise.” The human almost tumbled over his words trying to get them out, his hands shaking as he reordered the papers. He looked at them, his expression blank, and jumped when Cal growled again. Quickly, he turned them the right way up. “I got it. Just a moment.”
The air filled with the sound of chanting again, both Gran and Cal bracketing the human as they closely watched his movements and for any sign of change from Iliona. Gran’s fingers flexed. One wrong movement or word, and he’d snap this asshole’s neck like a twig. He might still do that after Iliona was okay.
“Israth terravis anoth torakeen . . . Ferran othal oten verison!”
The human stopped chanting, the last word ringing in the air like a bell clap. The three of them watched the scene in front of them as magic swirled in the air, wrapping delicate chains of what looked like golden sparks around the woman and the statue above her. They got faster, brighter, and then with a pop, flared like a star going supernova.
Gran covered his eyes, blinking away spots from his vision, and straightened up. The sorcerer did likewise, his movements hampered by Gran’s hand tight on his shoulder. To the other side Cal blinked as well.
His gaze immediately cut to Iliona, and he gasped. She lay on the table, the statue above her just . . . gone. Blinking, she tried to sit up, but he was there in a heartbeat to slide his arm around her and help her.
“How do you feel?” he rumbled, checking her for signs of . . . anything. Her color was a lot better, not the grayish pallor of death it had been, and she managed a small smile.
“Like I’m whole again, not like I’m being ripped in two.” She looked up at him and lifted a hand to stroke his cheek, tears in her eyes. “It was agony. You must have been in so much pain . . .” she whispered.
He cut a glance at Cal, holding the defeated sorcerer by the scruff of the neck. “It was worth it. Without him, I wouldn’t be here today. I would have gone mad locked in stone on the roof of that church years ago.”
He pulled her tighter into his embrace, closing his eyes in relief as he rested his lips against the top of her head in a gentle kiss. “But let’s just concentrate on you, eh?”
* * *
❖
The police kept them at the station for hours. Endless rounds of questioning about the statues, the attacks on Iliona by all manner of paranormal creatures, and how exactly she knew David Wigginstein, the internet-self-trained sorcerer. Apparently, he’d lost touch with reality after his girlfriend had left him because of his online role-playing obsession, so he’d decided to turn his online wizard character into reality. Unfortunately, he’d stumbled onto a web archive of actual spells. From there, it was a short hop to bumping into Iliona in a crowded bar and fixating on her as a replacement for the girlfriend who had run off to Europe to escape him.
“And then, it seems,” Jack said, sitting catty-corner to Iliona with what she’d instantly named his “supportive father figure” face on. “He decided to make a stone girlfriend instead, enlisting the aid of all manner of nasties to get hold of you. Sheesh . . .”
He ran his hand over his head. His hair was receding at the front, but he hadn’t resorted to the usual “grow and sweep forward” style to cover it. That was what she liked about Jack. What you saw was what you got.
“I miss the days when the assholes just got blow-up sex dolls or amassed a porn collection. Trawling the internet for a spell to make yourself a girlfriend? That’s just sick . . . especially when it needs a soul to power it.”
She sighed, leaning her head back against the wall, her hands wrapped gratefully around a mug of coffee. She wasn’t drinking it. Instead, she was absorbing all the heat she could as she tried not to let her mind flitter back to being on that table. The pain had been so intense, but the cold as her soul leached out of her body had been even worse. There was no way to describe it.
A growl from Cal, sitting next to her, brought J
ack’s head up with a snap. Gran lurked on the other side of the room, a hard expression on his face as both gargoyle men looked at the detective.
“Yeah, right . . . sorry, that was insensitive,” he apologized quickly. “Anyway, the upshot of it is, it looks like Mr. Wigginstein will spend the rest of his days in a secure facility for the mentally unstable where they can look after him.”
She nodded, a wave of tiredness washing over her. “At least he won’t be able to do it again.”
“Ohhh no. He’ll be lucky to get first-grade books to read, let alone be allowed anywhere near the internet. If he can do what he did with a simple search . . . well, we can’t have him breaking out using magic. Can we? The powers that be have allocated funding for more para . . . hmm, officers of the nonhuman persuasion to deal with threats like this.” He smiled. “Looks like you did it, Iliona. Finally got them all to realize that we need these guys.”
“Well, you can’t have these two. They’re mine.” She chuckled, leaning against Cal, his very presence comforting as he wrapped an arm around her. Warm, solid. Reassuring. Safe.
“Oh?” Jack’s look was sharp. Curious. “You’ve already signed them up to your agency?”
She shrugged. “Maybe, but I didn’t mean like that.” Meeting his eyes levelly, she added. “They’re mine as in romantically. They’re my partners.”
There was a tense silence in the small interview room, both gargoyles looking at her in surprise, but she didn’t take her eyes off Jack. What did they expect her to do? Shy away and be ashamed of what they had? If so, they had the wrong girl for sure.
The look of surprise on Jack’s face was replaced with a small smile. “Not what I expected, but whatever floats your boat I guess. Congratulations . . . I think?” he said, offering his hand to Cal.
“Definitely, and thank you,” Cal rumbled, shaking it before Jack offered the same to Gran. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I think it’s about time we took Iliona home. Don’t you?”
“Of course, of course.” The human detective nodded, taking a step toward the door as Cal eased Iliona to her feet. She was tired, but the thought of home . . . somewhere safe that didn’t involve her being tied to a table . . . sounded like bliss. “Although, we may need to ask you to come back for more questions. Before you go, though, any idea what happened to the last statue? The one he was going to . . .”
She shook her head as Cal led her to the door. “Sorry, Jack. I haven’t. She disappeared into thin air.”
Chapter 14
It didn’t take long for Cal and Gran to take her back to her apartment, Gran murmuring that they’d called ahead and had Coop already secure it with heavy duty wards. She didn’t ask how they’d known to contact him, but she was glad they had. A shiver from the new magical protections washed over her skin as she stepped through the door, and she looked at the doorframe in surprise. Odd, that was the first time she’d felt protective wards.
“I’ll just get chan—” she started, but then got a good look at the room.
Candles were dotted on every available surface, a flickering display of light that would have your average health and safety inspector foaming at the mouth—and any romantic weak at the knees. Her gaze found Cal’s and then Gran’s.
“After everything you’ve been through . . .” one started.
“We wanted to make it pretty for you,” the other finished, the two working in unison as they pulled her into their arms. Their gazes, and the love in them, were perfectly matched.
“You’re ours,” Cal whispered, leaning down to brush a kiss over her lips. “We almost lost you tonight, and it nearly killed us both.”
Her heart filled with love for the two of them, her exhaustion forgotten as the need to touch them, to claim them as her own filled her.
“You got it wrong,” she whispered with a smile, reaching up on her tiptoes to kiss first Cal and then twisting to reach Gran’s lips. “I’m not yours. You’re mine. We belong to each other. Unless . . . you guys intend to make me wait.”
“Hell no!”
She wasn’t sure which one of them spoke. It didn’t matter. The sentiment was shared by them all. A pair of lips claimed hers in a hard kiss as she was walked across the room to the couch. Strong fingers massaged the skin of her neck, and she sighed, giving herself over to the delicious sensation of a tongue sliding against hers.
A hand weaved through her hair, stroked down her body, and cupped a breast on its way down to pull her shirt out of her pants. She gasped, the sound lost in his mouth as he thrust his tongue deep again, mimicking what she sure as hell hoped was going to happen next. She needed this, needed the thick cocks she could feel pressed against her stomach and ass, filling her. Gargoyles were built bigger than human men.
Heat filled her, cream slipping from her pussy at the thought. Deep rumbles of male pride filled her ears.
“You’re wet already, aren’t you?” Gran asked, his lips against the skin of her shoulder as he shoved her pants down her legs, movements slightly rough with impatience as Cal dealt with her shirt the same way. She didn’t care. She needed to be naked as much as they wanted her to be.
She couldn’t answer—her ability to form a coherent thought gone as he spread her feet with a hard foot, parting her thighs wider and leaving her totally open to whatever he wanted to do. Heat filled Cal’s eyes as his brother’s free hand trailed up her inner thigh, seeking the treasures that lay at the apex. His broad fingers parted her pussy lips, and they both moaned at the slick wetness he found there.
“Fuck yeah, you’re hot and wet.”
His voice was low, the rumble just on the edge of her hearing. Most gargoyles’ voices were too low for the human hearing range, but she felt it, an added sensation that wrapped around her body and teased her clit as he slid two thick fingers into her.
“Beautiful as well,” Cal murmured, moving into place to take one stiffened nipple into his mouth. She keened as he suckled her, shimmers of pleasure joining the dual assault down below as Gran added the pressure of his thumb over her clit to the fingers he had curled inside her, seeking her G-spot.
Cal moved to her other breast, paying them both equal attention as Gran’s clever fingers worked her toward what she was sure would be an earth-shattering orgasm. Then he stopped. “Lie down. I want to taste you.”
She whimpered as liquid heat surged through her body, letting them ease her down onto the couch. Somehow, both were already naked. Seconds later, she was flat on her back on the couch, two sets of strong hands parting her thighs wide for her gargoyle lovers. Gran slid to his knees between hers, his eyes darkened as he took in the sight she presented, thighs parted wide.
A shiver hit her broadside as Gran settled himself between her thighs with a groan of anticipation. What would it be like to have the two of them here, both touching her? Four large, warm hands, smoothing over her body. Two tongues playing . . . one on a nipple as the other curled around her clit. Two cocks . . .
Gran swept his tongue along her exposed pussy lips, a warm, wet swipe of pure sensation before he zeroed in on her clit. Sucking the small bundle of nerves into his mouth, he flicked his tongue over it in a rapid tattoo that had her gasping his name and clawing for purchase on the leather above her head. His hands closed around her hips in a warm embrace, holding her still as he feasted on her clit and pussy as though he were a starving man with an all-you-can-eat buffet laid out before him.
She shuddered and gasped as he nibbled and sucked, thrusting his tongue deep to collect the juices of her arousal with a male growl of approval. God, he was good with his tongue. The tension in the pit of her stomach expanded in waves, her pussy clenching around his fingers as he thrust them back inside her.
Arching her back, she thrust her hips upward, desperate for the caress of his tongue against her clit. She just needed a little bit more to tip her over the edge. She wanted to come, needed to come . . . needed it more than she needed air in her lungs, every fiber of her being focused on that next swip
e of wet heat.
He licked the crease between her groin and thigh. She growled, the sound deep with her need. He had to know how close she was, and now he wanted to tease?
He stroked inside her again, gentle pressure over that spot inside her channel that caused hard pleasure to spiral through her body. She wriggled, arched her back, and rolled her hips to entice him.
“I want to watch you and Cal.”
His words were uttered against her clit, surprise jolting through her as he sucked her hard and fast. The thought of being claimed by Cal while Gran watched filled her head as she tumbled over the edge and into shattering pleasure. She shuddered, gasping his name as he carried on, lips and tongue rasping against her in an overload of sensation that drew out the waves rolling through her body. Finally, he sat back, wiping his mouth and watching her with a heated expression.
She looked back at him, still spread wantonly on the couch and not stopping him as he ran a hand up her body to pinch and roll her nipple between his fingers. Keeping her hot, catching the pleasure from the release he’d just given her, and turning it into something hotter, deeper.
But no matter how blinding her orgasm had been, she couldn’t forget the words he spoke.
“You do?” Dark excitement swirled through her. She’d wondered how this was going to work. Whether . . . how they’d all share. Would she be with one of them one night, then the other the night after? Or would they really share?
Cal knelt on the other side of her, leaning forward to flick his tongue over her nipple. His hand slid down her hip, across her thigh to slide between her wet pussy lips.
“Yeah.” Great, after multisentence conversations, now Gran decided to revert to one word answers.
“And?”
Cal slid his fingers along the groove of her pussy and tweaked her clit, making her moan. Wet heat flooded her again, slipping from her pussy to run down the groove of her ass.