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I nearly dropped my book onto the wet floor at seeing the notification box pop up.
We had a match.
I got up and went inside, tossing my book onto the bed before grabbing a towel to dab the droplets of rain from my skin.
We had a match.
With shaking fingers, I clicked onto the notification and took a long breath. I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high. It could be a ruse. Someone making a joke about us. I had prepped myself for the usual onslaught of messages asking questions about our kind. If we were always hard as a rock. If our cocks were stone cold.
I had heard them all.
Sitting down on the bed, I watched as the swirls on the screen cleared up and showed me a picture of a woman. Long brown hair. Slim and yet curvy. Deep-brown inviting eyes.
Her name was Malinda.
And she was matched to us. In fact, looking at her profile, it seemed that her only interest, as far as mating, was for a pair of gargoyles. She worked as a graphic artist. And a fine artist too.
The problem with finally finding a match? Someone who actually wanted to mate or potentially be mated to a gargoyle or two?
I hadn’t told Koruk what I had been doing. I signed us both up but never told him. I used one profile with both of us on it and considered mentioning it but decided to wait and see if a miracle occurred. Hadn’t been a problem until now.
A sinking in my belly made me think that this match might be fake or some kind of prank on us. The last thing I wanted to do was to get Koruk’s hopes up only to have them extinguished because I wasn’t careful enough.
So, I clicked on the little envelope and tested the connection.
Hello.
Pathetic message, but it was the only thing I could send without risking coming off creepy or overly interested before I knew if this was real or not.
Now, I would wait. Not say a word to my friend yet. Not a hard task since I’d kept this secret for so long, but now, now I had something to smile about.
Chapter Four
Malinda
I woke up with sandpaper throat and eyes glued together by alcohol. At least that was how I interpreted the difficulty I had getting them open. And when I did, a ray of sunlight pierced my brain and I snapped them closed again. “What did I do?”
I reached for the glass of water I set next to my bed each night and realized that Miss Irresponsible Drinker had forgotten that. I was also still mostly dressed in my clubwear, having only kicked off my thigh-high boots and left them on the floor next to my bed.
“This is why I don’t drink,” I grumbled, opening my eyes again and sitting gingerly up. “Apparently not even water.” It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but that didn’t really matter now. I had a glass in the bathroom, along with a bottle of painkillers, and I staggered there, hating myself for breaking my rules of not getting drunk. Ever. I’d learned early in college it always meant a hangover from hell. Most of my friends seemed not to suffer from the affliction, so let them drink, be the designated driver, and not make myself miserable.
With a couple of tablets and a tall glass of water inside me, I took the next logical step and undressed, splashed water on my face, and brushed my teeth, then put on comfy clothes. Padding barefoot down the stairs, I was still hurting but not nearly as bad as when I woke up. If not for a project looming over me, I’d have just gone back to bed, but my choices last night were not an excuse for missing a deadline. If anything, I could call it reaping the rewards of stupidity.
On my way to the kitchen, I spotted my phone on the couch and scooped it up with a sense of dread. Since I didn’t remember much of the previous evening, there was no telling what sort of pictures my so-called friends might have posted on social media. And since they rarely got drunk me in their lenses…oh gods. I needed coffee before I looked at any of them, so I set the phone down on the breakfast bar. But as I plugged in the electric kettle and measured dark-roast grounds into the French press, my phone went off with so many notifications, I cringed. Still, I held my ground and didn’t pick the device up until I had a cup of java in front of me. And when I did… What the hell did I do last night?
Oh, there were some goofy bachelorette party shots, but the only one mentioning me called me a party pooper/wimp for leaving before “things got good.” I scanned through, but apparently I had gotten smart and left before I did anything truly photogenic.
But the other notifications? Something on an app I had never heard of or seen in my life. The Mail-Order Matings app? I was about to delete it as spam when it all came back to me in a rush.
I’d sat on the sofa, phone in hand, drunk and feeling sorry for myself. Then I saw the ad for the Mail-Order Matings app. Learned even with drunken fumble fingers that it was for shifters but other paranormals were allowed. I knew they existed, although to my knowledge, I’d never met any. Curious and sure nothing would come of it, I hit download. And it worked. I installed and signed up. Admitted to being a mere human, and they didn’t cut me off. So I’d continued filling out the questionnaire, making it as ridiculous as possible. What kind of paras was I looking for…click on monster category. Who knew there were so many kinds of monsters in the world and that they were all looking for love. Like orcs? Cyclops, centaurs, basilisks? Wow. But the one that caught my attention was gargoyles. Weren’t those just statues guarding old buildings? Surely they weren’t live people? But I clicked on it. They sounded like the strong silent type who wouldn’t bother me while I was painting. Especially if all they did was guard the porch.
Still laughing at myself, I remembered gargoyles always seemed to come in pairs. So I said I wanted two. Preferably at least a thousand miles from here and then I added a lot of details. Most of which I couldn’t manage to pull back into my conscious mind even after two cups of coffee. And probably didn’t want to. Once again, I was about to delete when I looked closer at the notifications. Apparently a whole bunch of people wanted a girl who wanted gargoyles.
Or maybe there were that many gargoyles? What would they look like? I mean, wouldn’t I notice if they were just strolling down the street in their stony selves. Or could they move? Okay, I had to know more.
I clicked on the first notification to find someone suggesting that if I was looking for rock-hard males, they were the one for me. The next dozen were similar, some more graphic than others, and I deleted them one by one. None were even pretending to be gargoyles; just garden variety perverts. Guess we humans didn’t have a lock on that. I cleared my inbox of all notifications for the third time ready to delete when I got another notice. The words you’ve been matched blazed across the screen. None of the others said that…
Oh, what the heck. If it was another perv, I’d just shut ’em down like all the rest. But it wasn’t. It was a real person, two persons, who said they were gargoyles. And I replied. It wasn’t as if I was going to date them, but who could resist the opportunity to meet.
