As was admitting he felt the same pull she did. She was a human. Humans and gargoyles didn’t mingle. And gargoyles didn’t feel. Whatever was happening to him now was due to the sorcerer, and the wearing off of the spell, not her. It couldn’t be her.
“Someone in the machine tried to run you down.” He laid the words in front of her, stated them as the fact they were.
“Someone . . .” Her eyes widened and her fingers pressed against her lips. “Someone tried to run me down,” she repeated. She caught his gaze. “And pushed me. Someone pushed me off that ledge. I remember now. I felt a hand.” She pulled her shoulders back, as if the fingers still pressed against her skin. “Why?”
He waited, made sure her reality had sunk in, then headed towards the door. He’d done his part, made her aware of the danger she was in. Now he had a bigger threat to search out, one potentially disastrous to humanity as a whole - the chimeras.
“Wait!” She hurried after him, grabbed him by the arm.
A shock shot through him like a chisel hitting marble. He contracted his still-hidden wings, felt them reverberate in his back.
“You can’t leave yet. You haven’t told me anything, or explained who you are, how you are.”
He gritted his teeth and took another step towards the door, but not far enough, not fast enough.
She moved with him, wrapped her hands around his biceps. “You can trust me,” she murmured.
The one word that could stop him cold: trust. He’d believed in trust once, before he’d been betrayed by his brother ... or the one being he’d let close enough to think of as a brother.
He turned. His shoulders pulled back and his eyes narrowed, he looked down at her. “Who can you trust? That’s what you should be thinking about, not letting your mind run wild with some fantasy you created while you were falling.”
She dropped her hand. He started to turn again, thought he’d shaken her, put her in her place.
Then she smiled. “So, I did fall. Over twenty floors? And what? That fountain saved me?” She laughed. “Now who has the imagination?”
He huffed. He wasn’t used to humans — anyone — talking back to him. His wings tingled beneath his skin, screamed to be unfurled. That sight would overwhelm her, force her back into her place.
And it would reveal with absolutely no doubt that he was a gargoyle. A hiss escaped from between his closed teeth.
She placed her hand on his chest. “I know you were stone and so
mehow came to life. You flew. You saved me.”
Her gaze was intense. It threatened to burn through him.
He wrapped his thumb and index finger around her wrist, plucked her hand from his chest. “Believe what you want. I can’t stop you.”
“Who . . .” Her hand shook. He could tell she wanted to touch him again, and damn everything, he wanted it too. She swallowed, glanced at the block of alabaster beside them then back. “Are you a man or a statue?”
He needed to leave.
“Did someone create you?”
He stopped at that. She was right; someone had created him, had created all of his kind. A sculptor turned sorcerer. He’d carved Mord, carved all of them, then infused them with life. He stared at the female with new interest.
Could she create more gargoyles? Did her touch awaken him? Could she awaken the others without awakening the chimeras?
“Touch me,” he ordered.
Three
Touch him. She wanted to do nothing but touch him. Afraid he’d change his mind, continue on his trek out of her apartment, Kami placed both hands on his chest.
His skin was smooth and firm, colder than hers, but not as cold as the marble creature she’d touched on that ledge. And he was perfect, every inch of him. She ran her hands down his sides, let her fingers dip where his muscle dipped, rise where it rose. If he had been carved, his creator had been a master, better than she could ever dream of being.
She looked up at Mord, placed one hand on his chin. It was smooth too, no sign of stubble. There was a cleft in his chin. She hadn’t noticed it before. Now she focused on it, ran the pad of one finger over it. What care had the sculptor used to perfect that?
Her heart was beating loud and fast, as if she’d sprinted up three flights of stairs. She exhaled. Her hand that had been resting on his chest moved upwards. He had inhaled.