“Your shell is the envy of all hermit crabs,” he says, dipping his head to kiss the space between my neck and shoulder. “I think everything I’ve learned about you, I’ve had to convince you to share with me.”
I wrinkle my nose reflexively. “That's not true.”
Exhausted, I let myself truly crumple against him. It’s safe. He's safe. If it were up to me, he would wrap his wings around us for the rest of the night, and we would just stay out here.
“Let's see...you should probably be taking some time off,” he teases, and looking up at him in his arms, I'm kind of glad I didn't.
“I think that's your personal observation,” I return. “Not a hard-hitting fact.”
He presses a kiss to the top of my head, and it's so sweet, I swear I can feel it all the way down to my toes. Maybe ten more of those will cure everything that ails me, or maybe they’ll hollow me out with the need for an endless amount of them.
“Oh, believe me, I've got facts too,” he presses on, a hint of a smile in his voice.
I prepare to hear him tell me a list of boring tangible things, like my height.
“You advocate for everyone but yourself. You’re passionate about making work environments more hospitable, and you’re talented. You bring an admirable level of patience to the people around you.”
There is an overwhelming urge to flee.
“Wow. I think that’s almost enough to steal my identity,” I joke, hoping the humor will provide me with some kind of escape hatch. Honestly, what I wouldn’t give to have my identity stolen about ten minutes ago. “I'm not sure if you think I have a praise kink or if you're really bad at it.”
He chuckles, but ignores my skepticism. “Maybe a praise kink would make it easier to accept it. I think it’s a rare and compassionate person who actually puts people first in your job. Anyone else would have had a lot less patience for Kathy and Ted’s particular relationship.”
I feel held by him, and not just literally. Beheld, perhaps. Like he sees me unequivocally, without any of the mess or distraction of the little things.
And for some reason, that only intensifies the unease in my stomach. My throat feels uncomfortably tight.
I'm quiet for too long, maybe he thinks I've accepted his assertions as fact. I don't know what I've done to make him think any of that, or how to begin to correct it.
“There’s an age-old urge to...climb the highest peaks. To claim the biggest mountain as my perch, and bring my mate there,” he murmurs, his voice so low it reverberates through him like a purr.
I pause and blink at this gargoyle. It's such a vast change in topic, for a moment I'm not sure I'm actually keeping up.
I frown. “Your mate?”
“Someone to take back to my lair, share our lives together.”
“You have a lair?” I wrinkle my nose and, yes, deflect. I need just a little more to figure out what exactly I missed.
“It's a timeshare,” he shrugs, before giving his head a little shake, and making a verbal U-turn out of that line of inquiry. “Gwen...it'd be nice to see you around there sometime.”
I watch the way his wings shift around us, opening just enough to frame the night sky reflecting into the water. I can't help but wonder if the view from his lair has twice as many stars.
I halt in his grasp, identifying one of the many fluttering sensations going on in my abdomen, realizing how it differs from the usual in-heat ones. It’s too soft, too achy, too fragile and hopeful. As much as I need this trip to end, I don’t want to see him go, I want to spend more time with him, as much time as I can.
It would never work.
Him being a gargoyle, he's probably centuries old. Not exactly my age bracket. And yeah, he's big and broad and stoic and nice and really just a bit of a nerd.
But there’s a reason I would never go back to work in the Peaks. It’s nothing but seeking out corporate power. Admittedly, I don’t know what the dating and or mating scene is like for gargoyles, but I can only imagine he’d want a mate that would be that same high-powered, high achiever type. Not someone who doesn’t have her shit together.
It feels wrong in my gut. I know he’s not like that, everything we’ve ever talked about, every moment we’ve been alone together has shown me that. But I know I’m still wrong for him.
Clearly, I’ve fooled him into thinking we have something here. It wasn’t on purpose. I mean, I like him a lot. I like him so much. He’s been nothing but kind and understanding towards me, but the person he thinks I am doesn’t exist. He doesn’t know the slacker me, the person I am most of the time; the greasy, wearing yesterday’s dirty clothes every day for weeks, with a vibrator propped up on my laptop’s keyboard typing gibberish on an empty document so that my icon always shows as “Busy” so I can play video games during work.
I know what’s good for me, and it would be to crush this feeling with my bare hands. Fragile as the sensation is, I’m powerless to do anything to destroy it.
I can only hold it hostage in me, while it gouges my heart from the inside out.
