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I hear the man chuckle, and I chance a glance at his eyes. No glare. Nope, he’s smiling broadly, his eyes full of mirth, and … is that desire in his amber-gold depths? He walks closer, but not so close that his snakes can touch my face. His grin turns lopsided as he tilts his head.
“But did you die?” he asks before bending to pick something up from the ground.
He places it in my palm. It’s a tiny stone bee, the very bee that started all this.
I smile and give a soft laugh, completely disarmed.
No, I didn’t die.
chapter
two
Gideon
I notice the cute little human the moment she walks in the door. Her long brown hair is twisted and pinned at the back of her head, and the strands shine in the sun, encasing her head in a halo like an angel.
She’s a curvy woman with a gorgeous hourglass figure, beautiful brown eyes, and high cheekbones. Her nose tilts at the tip and is sprinkled with fourteen freckles (yeah, I counted).
Her blue dress looks like it belongs on a runway from the 1950s, but she makes it look modern and chic, paired with practical black shoes.
She’s as cute as fuck.
Maybe not a woman who would catch most men’s eyes, but I felt a pull toward her the moment I laid eyes on her. Something tugged and tightened in my stomach, something … odd. Powerful. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It’s possessive and protective, an intense mixture of emotions I don’t understand.
“Ah, that’s Verity. She’s Adrian’s language tutor. Quite a brilliant young woman,” Gerald Lancaster says at my side, his voice filled with pride. “Adrian wouldn't have been accepted into that language program without her, you know.”
I nod as if fascinated with what Gerald is saying, but I’m so focused on the woman that I barely hear the other man’s words.
“Is she single?” I wonder aloud. I have an overwhelming need to talk to her, but I stand rooted to the spot, watching her as she talks with Gerald’s wife, Della.
Gerald clears his throat. “As far as I know, but she’s very private. Studious, as well. Always has her nose in some ancient book or other when she isn’t tutoring Adrian. Oh, excuse me, Gideon,” he says, wandering off after a gnome who seems hell-bent on rolling away one of Della’s glass garden orbs.
I frown for a moment, looking in Verity’s direction.
The little human is making her way around the back garden filled with raised beds of roses and exotic flowers. But I don’t notice those. I’m a monster by nature, but I’ve adopted some of the more human qualities over the years. One of those qualities is curiosity about the humans themselves. And this beautiful human interests me. A lot.
I move, my feet taking me in her direction, when I notice a look of alarm pull her dark eyebrows together. I push one of my snakes away as it hisses and slides along my cheekbone, responding to my observation. “Calm down. You're tickling me.”
Like many of the males of my species, I have a large, thickset body and a face that could grace magazine covers across the world, but I’m no air-headed fuck boy. I’m not vain about my looks, merely realistic. It’s part of the deal with gorgons—our great beauty is designed to draw in the opposite sex, but I’ve spent the better part of my life fighting my natural instincts.
However, I own a security business, and Verity’s look of alarm wakes my inner bodyguard. I know she’s in trouble when she knocks a lizard man into the large fountain.
The other guests chuckle as if she’s the entertainment. Assholes. Can’t they see she’s genuinely scared?
By the time I spot the bee, she’s knocked over a table of cakes and liberated a few glasses of champagne from guests’ hands. But it’s when she freezes in terror right before she starts screaming hysterically that I know she isn’t simply worried about being stung. She’s terrified. Is she allergic? She must be. And the Lancasters insisted that everyone left their phones and bags inside. She must not have an EpiPen.
Must save the human, my inner gorgon/bodyguard roars as I race over to turn the bee to stone. I know I’ve made a terrible judgment call about how much oomph to put behind my gaze when her skin turns the same deep blue as her gown, with veins of golden pyrite branching along her skin. Ah, fuck.
But, holy crap, she makes a beautiful statue, not that I want her to stay that way. I only meant to stun the bee, but I’ve managed to turn Verity to stone too. I know the spell will only last a few moments because I didn’t hit her with my full death gaze, so all I can do is wait patiently. But, man, I love how the pyrite laces along her arms, up her neck, and into her face. Perhaps I’ll commission a statue of her in the same stone one day.
The chatter of astonished voices and whispered gossip swirls around me, but I ignore it all. My sole focus is on Verity. She has the most incredible expression of abject fear on her face, yet she’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
In the blink of an eye, she’s back to her usual self, her eyes blazing as she admonishes me about turning her to stone. Before she can tear me a new asshole, I hand her the little bee, still frozen in pyrite. I frown because it should have come back to life by now, but perhaps it likes life as a stone bee. It has to be less work for the tiny thing.
“… you can’t just go around turning people to stone like that. What if your magic disappeared suddenly, and I was stuck like that forever? You don’t even know me!” Verity finishes her tirade.
“But did you die?” I ask, watching as her anger dissipates and her full mouth twitches with a slight smile. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to turn you to stone at all. I was aiming for the bee. I assume you’re allergic to them?”
