“Don’t leave me,” she said to him. Charlie sat down, though he still did not look at her. He turned her hand over in his large palm, tracing it gently with the tip of his finger. Aggie shivered.
“I am touching you,” Charlie whispered. “I am touching your hand. Do you know what a miracle that is?”
“I think I do,” Aggie said, smiling. “Would you like to touch more?”
Charlie froze. “Don’t Aggie. Not unless you mean it.”
“And why wouldn’t I?”
He finally looked at her, red eyes blazing, but before he could say a word Aggie sat up fast and kissed him, pushing her mouth hard against his, burying herself into his body. Charlie shuddered, groaning, and she thought, Maybe gargoyles don’t kiss. But then his tongue touched her tongue and he was so damn good at it that all those thoughts fell down dead and it was all she could do not to shout with joy as that kiss surged through her body, right down to her soul.
She broke off with a gasp, a burst of laughter, and Charlie’s arm snaked hard and strong around her body as she clung to him.
“Are you real?” he murmured, burying his face in her neck. “Aggie, please.”
“Please,” she echoed, uncaring that his eyes were red or that his face was silver and his body was inhuman. She did not care, she did not care…because all she could think of was that voice, that spirit named Charlie that was here with her now, warm and strong and alive. “Please, Charlie. I love you.”
“Aggie,” he breathed, and it was enough to see the emotion in his eyes, to remember his sacrifices. It was more than enough to know that he felt the same.
Charlie lay them down on the bed and curled around her body. His wings draped and Aggie ran her fingers along the fine delicate skin, which was soft as silk, with a sheen to match. He shuddered.
“You hide these?” she asked him. “I want to see you fly.”
“Later,” he said. “And yes, I hide them. I make them smaller and fold them around my body. I look like a very large man in human clothes.”
Aggie tried to imagine, but could not. Time, she told herself. You have time for all of that.
“Emma’s safe,” Aggie said to him. She pushed up so close their noses rubbed. “If she doesn’t have any other family, my boss, Roland, is going to try and intervene with foster care.”
“That would be good,” Charlie said. His large hands moved in slow circles around her back. His strength felt new and different; inhuman, but with enough similarities that Aggie thought she would be able to find her way around his body. The idea—and his touch—made her breathless.
“I was thinking of taking her,” Aggie managed, trying to remain coherent. “If she wants me.”
“That’s a hard job,” he said. “Raising a child.”
“I could use some help,” she admitted, and then bit her bottom lip. Her heart, which had just been so full of joy, shriveled a little as she waited for him to say something.
Charlie wrapped his hands in her hair, kneading her scalp, hugging her tight against his body. She kicked off her sheet and draped a leg over his hip, drawing him near. Charlie did not have much in the way of pants on. She felt him, hard and hot and long, against her body.
“I would be honored,” he breathed. “I can’t imagine anything else I’d rather do with my life.”
“Good,” Aggie said, and kissed him.
He broke off after a minute and said, “Maybe we’re moving too fast.”
“Like hell,” she said. “I want this.”
“I’m not human. I don’t even look human. You might change your mind.”
“I might change my mind?” Aggie sat up. The sheet fell away; she did not miss the hungry way he stared at her breasts and it made her so hot she felt woozy. “Charlie, I died for you today. And now you think I’m going to run—change my mind—because of the way you look? Who the hell do you think I am?”
“Well,” he stopped. “Never mind.”
“Damn straight.”
“I mean, I could make myself look more human.”
“No.” She grabbed his face, pressing her palms against the rough bones pushing up through his skin. She savored the differences, the beauty of them. “I want you just the way you are. You don’t scare me, Charlie. You won’t ever scare me. And,” Aggie added, trailing her hands low across his stomach, “I won’t change my mind.”
His breath caught. She watched his face—and he watched hers—as she reached down and touched him. There were some differences. Charlie had…ridges. Nothing that she thought would hurt her. On the contrary, her curiosity was piqued. She was also quite mesmerized by his size.
“When was the last time you had sex?” she asked.
He did not immediately answer; Aggie realized she still held him and that her thumbs were doing all kinds of interesting things. She did not stop. Simply, increased the pressure and got the rest of her fingers moving, too. Charlie sucked in his breath; his eyelids fluttered closed.
“Charlie,” she said quietly. “When was the last time?”
“I don’t remember,” he muttered, and gasped as she used her nails. He grabbed her arms and said, “If you keep this up—”
“Just you keep it up,” she said, laughing, and scooted down the bed.
Charlie’s legs began trembling before she even put her mouth around him, and she raked her nails down the sides of his thighs at the same time she wrapped her lips around his hard jutting head. He cried out, grabbing her shoulders, and she stroked her tongue over the curious ridges, tasting them, feeling them in her mouth as she sucked and licked. The tips of his wings draped against her hands. She reached higher and fluttered her fingertips against the thin membrane. Charlie growled.
“You like that?” she asked, breathing against his shaft, rubbing her cheek against its immense swollen length.
“I like it too much,” he whispered. “I won’t last for you.”
“You’ll last,” she said.
His hands relaxed around her arms. “Come back to me, Agatha.”
She was not done with him, but she moved back up the bed because there was something in his voice she could not disobey—hunger, desire, all those words for pleasure—and this time it was her legs that quivered and she was sure if he kissed her she would explode. Sure enough, when he pressed his mouth upon her she did feel sparks fly, but Charlie caught her in his arms and held her tight against his body, one hand behind her head, the other cupping her tight against his hard hot length. His mouth tasted so damn good she wanted to curl up inside his body and purr.
“Oh,” she breathed, when his mouth left her and traveled up her cheek, to her ear. “Oh, wow.”
And then she was on her back and his hands were on her breasts, lower—his tongue, lower—and it was even better than she had imagined, better than the last spectacular time when all he had been was an apparition of pure warmth.
She felt the tip of him at the edge of her body, and she did not wait for him to hesitate, just moved her hips, swallowing him in one quick thrust, and she said, “Wow. Just…hold on a minute.”
He went very still. “Did I hurt you?”
“No, no…I just need to get used to you. You’re…big.”
Charlie buried his face against her neck, but it was no use. She felt his grin as he kissed her cheek. And then he began laughing. Which made him move in different ways, and that was good, too.
All of it, deliciously, wonderfully, good.
And at the end of the night, when the sky began to lighten beyond the window, Aggie curled up inside his massive arms, draped in his wings, and listened as he said, “I love you very much, Aggie. And it’s not the sex talking.”
“I know,” she said. “Same to you.”
He laughed, and then, quieter, said, “We don’t know a thing about each other. Or at least, you don’t know anything about me. My family, my kind. Doesn’t that scare you?”
“No,” she said, and it was true. Always, she had feared for her heart, for the unknow
n. All her life, she had seen what the future held for others, but never herself. And that had made her cautious. Too cautious, too afraid of choices, of taking the wrong step and falling down into an unwanted future.
Until now. She was not afraid now. Not with Charlie. And that in itself was miracle enough to take a chance on.
“The two of us together,” Charlie whispered. “We are impossible, Agatha.”
“It won’t be easy,” she admitted. “But we’ve come this far.”
“And if we don’t last?”
“I think we will. The probabilities are high.”
“Is that what the future says?”
“That’s what I say,” she told him.
“Well,” he said, “that’s good enough for me.”
And he kissed her.
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author Marjorie M. Liu is an attorney who has lived and worked throughout Asia. She hails from both coasts but currently resides in the Midwest, where she writes full-time.
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Also by Marjorie M. Liu
Within the Flames
In the Dark of Dreams
The Fire King
The Wild Road
The Last Twilight
Soul Song
Eye of Heaven
Dark Dreamers (anthology)
The Red Heart of Jade
Shadow Touch
A Taste of Crimson (Crimson City Series)
Tiger Eye
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Dream of Stone & Shadow originally appeared in the print anthology Dark Dreamers, published in paperback in 2006 by Dorchester Publishing Company.
A DREAM OF STONE & SHADOW. Copyright © 2006 by Marjorie M. Liu. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition MARCH 2012 ISBN: 9780062193919
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