by Cate Corvin
My Emerald touched my chin, turning my head for a kiss while Gio hammered in. The Onyx reached around to strum my clit like a guitar, sending more electric tingles into my stomach as he pummeled me.
The second orgasm was as intense as the first, spiraling through me and making my legs shake. This time I thought I might actually collapse, but Damien held me up, refusing to release my lips.
Gio groaned when he finished, burying his cock in me and squeezing my shoulders to hold me down as she shot his pleasure as deep inside me as he could possibly get. Like Damien, there was an animalistic protectiveness to him that made me want to stay right there in the shower, possibly for the rest of the year, without a break from them. If Gio positioned his wings just right, there would be room for Sawyer, too.
After we washed up, Damien wrapped a towel around me and wrapped a lock of my dripping hair around his finger. A wry smile touched his mouth. “I think I’ve fallen under your spell,” he said, his gaze drifting from my lips to my eyes. “Maybe you’re really an Emerald with those green eyes and the ability to make me do what you want.”
My breath caught in my throat. The idea that remote, aloof Damien could possibly be wrapped around my finger was… very intriguing. In fact, I wanted to keep him there for a long, long time.
“If spells were possible, Damien, I’ve been under yours since we met.” I brushed his dark hair away from his face, my fingers brushing the smooth stone of his horns.
“What about my spell?” Gio grumbled, breaking the moment and making me laugh. “What sort of hocus-pocus do I need to do for pretty words?”
“You want pretty words, Gio?” I wrapped the towel around myself and stepped into the bedroom, sorting through my dresser for underwear and pajamas. “Go to the library and find the poetry section.”
He grinned, toweling himself dry and giving me a very good look at everything that’d just been all over and inside me. My mouth was watering for another round when my phone chimed. The sound was muffled, and I found the purse discarded at the foot of my bed.
“You’ll spout poetry to me someday, Tin Woman,” he said, pulling my chin up for his own lingering kiss. I was sure all was forgiven now that he’d fucked me senseless in my own shower and refreshed his claim on me, which meant I should probably find something else to be forgiven for, and soon.
“Someday. Let me work up a verse or two,” I said, and nibbled his lip.
He flicked the tip of my nose, once again the insouciant Onyx. “I need to reset the alarm system. Wait right there in bed, and actually, don’t bother to put clothes on at all.”
“True,” Damien murmured, eyeing his shirt askance. “I’ll get the wine.”
I unclasped my bag and pulled out my phone. Sawyer’s name lit up on my screen.
Sawyer: Come up to the roof we need to talk
Sawyer: without viridios and the onyx
I frowned at the message, my gut churning. Something must have happened at the station, and it had to be particularly bad if he didn’t want to discuss it in front of Damien and Gio. The three of them had been getting along well enough, but I supposed I could understand why he might not want to deal with them right away after letting me walk home alone.
I pulled on my pajama pants and slipped out of the room, my phone clutched in my hand as anticipation coursed through me. Whatever Sawyer had to say took precedence over round two with my gargoyles. Plus, if it wasn’t anything too serious, perhaps Sawyer could be convinced to join us. He was the only thing missing from the nearly perfect experience in the shower.
The sounds of Damien rummaging in the wine cabinet echoed down the hall as I found the stairwell to the roof and pushed open the reinforced door.
I shivered as I stepped out onto the wide, empty surface. The night sky was sprinkled with stars partially hidden by clouds and the night breeze pushed my damp hair behind me. I wrapped my arms around myself and ventured out further, looking for Sawyer.
He was nowhere in sight, not even on the far side. A chill of foreboding went through me and I turned to head back to the entry.
My scream caught in my throat as a shadow plummeted from the sky, enormous black wings spread wide to catch the air. I bolted for the door, but the fullblood cut me off and I ducked to the side, rolling several yards from the force of the impact.
My phone flew out of my hand and clattered away, and I’d just jumped to my feet when the gargoyle grabbed me in a vise-grip and ripped me off the roof.
Chapter Nineteen
My stomach dropped as we swooped into pitch blackness, ducking around the lights of the city for a denser cover of darkness.
The male gargoyle’s arm—it was definitely male, thick with muscle—remained clamped firmly around my ribcage, threatening to prevent my lungs from filling with oxygen. His ominous wings beat the air and made my ears buzz with every flap.
Whoever he was, he was clearly well-practiced at flying with squirming targets. He yanked something over my head, jerking it down to cover my face just as I caught a glimpse of a bright light in the distance.
I should’ve taken up Gio on his offer for air training. Hindsight was a painful 20/20 in this case.
I tossed my head, yelling obscenities, but the hood was completely opaque from the inside, and my stomach rolled as the winged gargoyle dropped into a steep descent. Seconds later my feet were planted firmly on the ground, knees trembling above them, and I realized I’d been dumb enough to actually believe I’d cured my fear of heights. Nothing would ever prepare me for a winged gargoyle snatching me from fifty stories up and plummeting to earth.
“Who the fuck are you? Do you have a death wish? Because as soon as I get this fucking thing off, I’d be glad to grant it!”
The unseen gargoyle ignored my threats and bluffs, clasping my arms behind my back and locking thick cuffs around my wrists. They felt strange, some sort of smooth metal without hard edges, almost like bangles.
I scuffled backwards, digging my heels into the dirt as I moved to rip up furrows in the earth. If, by some incredibly tiny and unlikely chance, Gio had seen where the rogue gargoyle had gone with me, he might be able to trace my tracks.
Literally. Even if it just meant marking where I’d stood with my heels.
“Knock it off.” A gravelly voice interrupted me and a hand knocked into my shoulder, almost sending me sprawling to the ground.
I opened my mouth to snap at him, but the sound of a massive motor firing up obliterated the sound of everything else, and a powerful wind whipped the bag that was wrapped around my head.
Whoever he was, he wasn’t alone, and they had a helicopter. A damn big one, judging by the decibels.
“Get up.” The gravel-voiced gargoyle gave me a bare second to comply, and when I remained crouching where I was, a pair of rough hands grabbed me around the waist and hauled me upwards. We left the ground as the gargoyle spread his wings and lifted us upwards, then he released me. I crashed onto a broad expanse of textured metal: the floor of the helicopter. The motor was still loud enough to drown out the world, but the driving wind of the blades was gone.
Beneath my shock at being abducted and my loud-mouthed bravado, a seed of fear was steadily germinating into a full-grown plant. Someone out there had almost single-handedly annihilated two gargoyle houses overnight, carving their hearts from their chests and leaving their bodies to become rubble… and I had no doubt that whoever wanted the Kyrillians dead now had the last one firmly in their grip.
Or rather, sprawled across a helicopter floor.
The aircraft shifted under me as another heavy weight climbed aboard, and the gravel-voiced gargoyle shouted to someone, barely discernible over the roar.
I inched away little by little, hoping I was aiming for an open door instead of the front or back of the helicopter, but a combat boot pressed against my stomach and nudged me back into place.
Fucking sharp-eyed gargoyles.
I focused on picking out other details instead: the patterned metal flo
or under my searching fingertips, how the cuffs had seemed to tighten and hum when they were placed around my wrists. Despite the buffeting wind, a scent reached my nose, even through the thick hood: one of the male gargoyles was close enough that I could smell his fresh cologne.
He shouted something to his accomplice as the helicopter lurched beneath us, but the wind ripped his words away. Sickness rose in my stomach as the helicopter ascended, vibrating and rocking in a way that felt far too precarious for my taste.
I curled up in a ball, burying my face against my knees in case one of them decided to kick me, and concentrated on my sense of hearing, letting every bit of sound wash over me so my brain could process and pick out anything that might prove useful to me. Try as I might, I could only catch bits and pieces of their conversation.
A small part of me considered trying to escape again—worst case scenario, we were already high enough that I’d just shatter into pieces if I fell, and that was probably preferable to having my stoneheart cut out—but I knew the one who’d snatched me would be watching. He was likely watching me right now, aware of every twitch of my muscles.
The thought that his eyes were running over me right now raised goosebumps on my skin.
What felt like an hour passed with the helicopter steadily humming through the air, and I’d been left alone most of the time. When a new smell hit my nose, I made the mistake of raising my head and sniffing deeply.
I was suddenly aware of a powerful presence at my shoulder. One of my captors was crouched over me. “Smell that?” he growled, right in my ear. “That’s the ocean. Try to escape now and see how fast a rock can sink.”
To my shame, a single tear escaped my eye and was absorbed by the hood over my face. To them, I was just a nuisance, not even a fellow gargoyle or human being.
He went silent and I no longer sensed him looming over me, but I remained stiff, still on high-alert for the next one of them to grab me. After so long of just lying in stillness on a vibrating floor, I’d almost been lulled into a stressed sort of sleep, but I forced myself to keep my wits.
My ears finally managed to pick out a gravelly tone nearby. My abductors were conversing only feet away and my new position made them barely audible.
“—getting harder to control. I don’t know if he’ll adapt to the changes. The boss keeps pushing them harder…”
His voice faded out under the thwap of the rotors, leaving me feeling both cold and confused. Whoever their boss was, Angelique had been trying to inch closer to him for months… and now it looked like I was going to be hand-delivered to the shadowy figure.
“Don’t worry about it, Sebastian. We all go through it, and we’ve all been just fine. All we need to worry about now is getting this last one to him in one piece.”
My stoneheart seemed to freeze over, seeming more like a stone than ever in that moment. “What are you going to do to me?” I rasped, temporarily forgetting that my best bet for answers was silence. There was something wrong with these gargoyles; my magic and mind were definitely in agreement about that, even if I couldn’t quite pinpoint what was off about them.
They fell silent and I felt their eyes on me like they’d reached out to physically touch me. With a shudder, I resumed my vigil of silence, but the damage was done and they stopped speaking. So much for gathering more intel.
Still, that one sentence was enough for me to mull over. What could they possibly mean by ‘changes’, and why were they hard to control?
My fear was a weight on my stoneheart, muting its comforting magic.
After another interminably long stretch of time, my stomach flipped as the helicopter began its descent. A pair of hands grabbed my shoulders and jerked me upright, and I caught a noseful of that clean cologne again. Whoever he was, he held onto me as the helicopter lost altitude, not allowing me to budge an inch despite his friend’s threats to let me fall overboard.
I set my lips, seeing a way to test one of my theories. My abductor could talk as much shit as he wanted, but if someone was determined to personally get their hands on me…
Without losing a beat, I kicked behind me, catching the gargoyle in the upper thigh, and launched myself into empty air. My hands tried to fly up automatically, but pain streaked through my elbows when I just tugged against the cuffs around my wrists.
Either way, I was falling, the air screaming in my ears. Last thing I wanted was to have my stoneheart cut out, so better to die like this.
My abductor caught me in his arms like a bridegroom, and it made my heart ache. Gio had carried me like this into the penthouse, and I’d threatened to bedazzle his cock. I’d give anything to be back in his arms just then. Instead, I’d had my only shot at an easy death ripped away by a man who cradled me like he cared.
Our stone skin clicked where it met, and I felt his rumbling growl in my chest. His muscles flexed with every pump of his wings.
“Don’t worry,” he snarled, and this time I caught every word. “You want to die so damn badly, they’re gonna make it happen for you.”
It wasn’t even his threat that upset me. It was the fact that he’d saved me.
Whatever was in store for me was bound to be a thousand times worse.
Instead of bringing me back to the helicopter, the gargoyle touched down on solid ground. He kept me in his arms, and I heard the sound of feet hitting dirty from yards away as the other gargoyle jumped out of the helicopter.
“You’re only gonna make it worse for yourself.” The new one touched my arm, without hostility.
I didn’t bother to respond. They clearly weren’t going to do shit to help me get out of here.
All I could do was note everything I could hear and feel around me. My sense of smell wasn’t helpful yet since the scent of the ocean still overpowered everything else.
A metal door screeched open, and the temperature dropped by almost twenty degrees as my abductor carried me into… wherever this was. Once inside, the salt of the sea was washed away by the stink of rust, dirt, and old water. Not even a hint of light filtered through my hood.
Minutes later, a humming sound like a generator starting up caught my ear. More metal scraped against what sounded like a concrete floor, and the gargoyle shuffled sideways and lowered me to the ground.
I meant to launch to my feet and start throwing punches, but my legs refused to obey. They wobbled as I rose, feeling much, much weaker than just a moment ago. “What the hell?” I whispered to myself.
I felt a hand at the back of my head, and the gargoyle pulled off my hood, tearing out several strands of my hair as it came free. I blinked, despite the dimness of the lighting, taking in the small cell made of stone, and the long corridor outside it that stretched far outside my vision.
The gargoyle messed with my cuffs and they separated, but remained around my wrists like tight bangles that allowed my arms to move freely. My shoulders were a little achy as I stretched them out, and the gargoyle stepped back outside my cell and shut the door.
It bothered me how easily he moved, like he knew I posed absolutely no threat to him. He didn’t even have to hurry, because my wobbly legs had barely carried me two steps forward before he was locking the door.
I glared at them through the cell bars, gritting my teeth. They were both huge, muscular, the kind of gargoyles that starred in Stone Cold Studs’ centerfold editions, and wearing pitch-black military fatigues.
Both of them were winged. Fullbloods, but something about their mottled horns and wings wasn’t right. Sebastian must’ve been the one in the back, the one who’d warned me I was making it worse for myself.
“See that?” The one who’d abducted me pointed to an electronic box high up on the wall outside my cell. A little red light blinked on and off in three-second intervals. “That’s a hypersonic crystal disruptor, and those—” He pointed to the smooth bangles around my wrists. “Those are the emitters. If you think you’re going to be escaping by putting your fist through the wall or bending these bars, think aga
in. You’re the weakest thing in this place, and all you’re going to do by punching things is crack yourself to pieces.”
“And I bet you’d just fucking love that.” I snarled, stumbling forward and wrapping my hands around the iron bars. Rust flaked off onto the palms of my hands.
The abductor just shrugged, his green eyes completely emotionless. He was like a statue, void of any nuance besides aggression. “I don’t give a shit if you want to pound your hands into stumps,” he said coolly. “But I’m not going to be in here feeding you with a spoon when you’ve got no fingers left.”
Those were his very pleasant parting words. He turned on his heel and strode away. Sebastian, who looked a touch younger and had warm brown eyes, hesitated for only a second before following him.
I didn’t bother to scream or shout. Nobody knew where I was, and they probably weren’t coming for me, but I did level a glare at the hypersonic disruptor.
Feeling human again was a far worse sensation than I’d anticipated. Had my legs always been so shaky? I felt like all my stamina was completely gone. Just taking the energy to breathe was exhausting.
Feeling like a human again was akin to dying.
Finally, I turned away from the bars, my shoulders bowed under the weight of holding up my heavy stone body. I couldn’t do anything about the disruptor from here, but the rest of my cell was completely empty, without so much as a spare rock to throw at the thing. It was equipped with a single tiny window that was nearly a foot over my head and lined with iron bars and stormproof glass: useless as an escape, as long as this disruptor was at work on me. If I tried to climb the wall and fell down, my softening stone form would fracture.
I finally sank to the floor, but before I curled up and waited for the next idea to strike, I pressed my fingers into my opposite forearm. My skin dimpled down to the bone under the pressure… just like human skin.
