Ice-Cold Lover
Page 7
Huge bat-like wings sprouted from his upper spine and fanned out.
And suddenly how Pascal came to be on her apartment roof all made sense.
From a great distance her ears rang. Tears slid down her cheeks as she silently wept, but she didn’t try to swipe her face dry. If these wet tracks were the only signs to show for her years of mental agony…years she’d believed only she and her father carried the gargoyle gene…years where self-loathing, aloneness and pain for being different, inhuman, winged, had become the norm, then she’d be damned if she’d try to hide them now!
“Sweetheart, don’t cry,” he muttered, looking awkward now, unsure. But still too damned sexy for her peace of mind. He was like some dark angel with a pure soul that’d been exposed to too much wrong.
“Are there any other secrets I should know?” she asked, gathering the bedcover around her.
“This is pretty much everything.” His sigh sounded harsh as he raised his hands and dropped them to his sides. “Only I’m not cursed and don’t turn to stone at the rising of the sun. I’m flesh and blood like anyone else.”
She abstractedly tugged at a wedge of her long hair, her mind whirling with endless questions. “Does this mean your father is—”
“No. He’s not a gargoyle. Saul isn’t even my real father.”
It clicked then—his acknowledgement of being a bastard. Something stirred deep inside and tugged at her heartstrings. The fact that he wasn’t the self-assured man everyone believed him to be, only made her want him more.
“And yes, Saul knows all about me,” Pascal added. His expression hardened momentarily. “My mother—his lover, could shape-shift into a gargoyle too. In fact, being a gargoyle was her preference. She loved the freedom her wings gave her, loved gliding through the sky. But it was too risky.”
Her tears dried as amazement kicked in, pushing every cell in her body into a high. Holy shit! There were other gargoyles!
“My mother met Saul when I was five years old.” His shrug was forced and she could see the pain shadowing his eyes. “She left us a year later, and Saul took me under his wing.” He managed a wry smile. “His proverbial wing.”
His mother had abandoned him? The idea was almost as incomprehensible as the fact there were other gargoyles out there.
“And now he is as obsessed as I am in finding other gargoyles. It’s why he said what he did to me earlier. He truly believes you are the key to finding others of our kind…finding my mother.”
“So you didn’t set me up?”
He frowned. “No!” he said, then sighed. “Though clearly my stepfather took advantage of my obsession with gargoyles…with you, and let me do all the footwork.”
“But how did he know about me, about my…wings?”
He pushed a hand over his face. “He’d seen you a few times at some of the parties we’d both attended. He would have been a fool not to have noticed my interest in you. And soon after when he discovered the image I’d sculptured of you, saw your wings I’d imagined and carefully crafted…”
He’d made a statue in her image?
“My god,” she whispered, bunching the bedcover in her fists. “I can scarcely take it all in.” Silence gathered around them for a minute before she acknowledged, “At least he’s only after me to seek out your mother. He really must love her.”
“It would appear so.”
“Do you know where she is?” She gulped in a breath. “Where other gargoyles are?”
“Maybe, on both counts,” he said, walking to the window and pulling the blind to stare outside, his dark wings flowing down his back, hiding the raised script along his spine. “There’s a clan of gargoyles living in secret somewhere in the inland of Australia.”
No. Way.
“Your mother told you this?” she asked, barely able to comprehend, to believe, what he said.
“Yes.” Pain thickened his voice. “She was desperate to go back there, but worried about me growing up in such a harsh environment.” He shook his head. “She hated watching my initiation, smelling my flesh burn while the elders branded our ancient clan name, Triskellon, into my flesh.”
“But you would have been just a child?”
He nodded. “Yes. I was five.”
She shuddered. Little wonder the lettering was raised. His skin would have been baby soft when it had been charred. “That must have been hell.”
He shrugged. “It’s one experience I’ll never forget. I’m sure my mum won’t either. Little did she realize, growing up with a mobster stepfather was the harshest environment of them all. I saw and did things no child…no adult, should.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, aching all over for him.
“No, don’t be sorry.” He swung around, his eyes becoming almost tender as the shadows seemingly buried there started to fade. “If I hadn’t been left behind, I would never have met you.”
Hurt and anger suddenly bubbled up, made the blood boil in the middle of her brow. “Then why didn’t you tell me you knew?” she asked with gritted teeth. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were? Why deceive me?”
He remained still, but his quivering wings gave away his own taut emotions. “You hate your inhumanness,” he said roughly. “There was never reason to believe you’d come to love someone who had more to hide than just a pair of wings.”
Her hands clenched, gripping the bedcover. “Yes, I hate my wings—but not how you think! It’s what they represent that makes me despise them!”
“And what is that?” he asked, his tone gentling, his face knowing.
“Aloneness!” she burst out, hating that he seemed already to know. Hating that he’d probably guessed long ago. “My wings relegated me to a life of secrets where I hid my body and pined for what other ‘normal’ humans had! Touching…intimacy…children!”
Tears poured down her face now, not just for her, but him too. “All I ever wanted was what my parents had, and no matter how many times I told myself I didn’t care, I always did.”
Pascal’s unearthly yellow eyes glistened too. As she pulled her knees up to her breasts, he said softly, “Can’t you see what’s right in front of you? Your mother was human, your father a gargoyle shape-shifter.” He swung out a hand. “What makes you imagine you can’t find that same love with a human? With a gargoyle?”
“I don’t know…” She bit her bottom lip as rage drained away, feeling the pain of her sharp teeth but glad of the distraction as her head whirled with possibilities, with wild hope. She swiped at the wetness on her cheeks. “I don’t…know.”
“Then tell me one thing?” He stalked forward, not quite human now, a powerful creature all but bristling with emotion. “Do you want me enough to live away from mortals? Are you willing to give up everything you know to be with me…to find my clan?”
She pressed her head onto her knees and closed her eyes. To be free from all the trappings of human life, to be able to glide through the heavens without fear of discovery. But most of all—to start a new life with the man…gargoyle, she loved! Did he really think there was any other option?
Her eyes flicked open as she felt his weight depress the bed beside her, his hand stroke the side of her face.
She lifted her head, absorbing his touch. “I want to be free.”
His hand moved to cup under her chin and she added, “I want to meet other gargoyles.”
His thumb moved back and forth, causing her voice to rasp. “I want to be with you, wherever that may be.”
He drew her toward him, his own voice husky as he said, “I love you.”
His kiss was long, tender and straight from the heart. And as his lips moved from hers she whispered, “I love you too.”
About the Author
Mel Teshco lives in rural Australia with too many animals, too many children and not enough hours in the day to write!
Her loving husband is in training as a real-life hero and waits patiently to retire on the success of his wife’s writing.
The author welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Mel Teshco
Kallie Revealed
Stone-Cold Lover
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