Page 23 of Fated to the Gargoyle

“I have walked this earth for six hundred years.”

“Holy hell,” I say, grinning.

“Does that displease you?” he asks, and he sounds sincerely worried about it.

“What displeases me is you still won’t tell me why you’re in my apartment.”

“Can you love a monster?” he asks again, softer.

“Listen.” I fold my arms. “I don’t care if my soulmate is a whole demon, okay? He better help me with these bills and take some of this mental load off my shoulders. That’s the requirement.”

He drops to one knee so fast I step back. All of that size goes down without a sound, and he bows his head, his wings settling low around him.

“Treasure,” he says. “I have guarded the treasure of kings, and every crown and coin of it was practice. Fate carved me, set me on rooftops, and made me wait for you. I am yours to command.”

My heart is doing something new in my chest. “What are you doing?”

“I am offering myself to you.”

“That explains the loincloth,” I manage. “You are really out of touch with the times.”

His gold eyes lift to mine. “Are you rejecting me?”

“You need to tell me what’s going on.” I put my hands back on my hips.

He finally lets it all out. “You read differently the first time I saw you. It was yesterday, your first day at the diner. When I rest in stone, I read heat. Humans read gold, every one of them the same, but you…” He drops his voice so low I lean in to catch the rest. “You read red, with light around the edges. I have watched from rooftops for centuries and I have never seen it.”

I keep my mouth closed, which is growth for me.

“Then your scent reached me.” He breathes in like he’s doing it right now. “Strawberries. It cut through everything, and I knew.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

He nods once. “You are my mate, Treasure. I will do anything⁠⁠—”

“Get up.” My whole body is buzzing, and I cannot have a gargoyle on his knees on my secondhand rug while I figure out my life.

He rises and shuts his mouth, and I look him over from his pointed ears down to his clawed feet. What exactly am I supposed to do with a big-ass gargoyle?

Well. There’s one way to scout the situation. I lean in and try to sneak a peek under that loincloth.

He steps back. “What are you doing?”

“You are big as hell, Soren. I don’t know if I can handle all of that.”

His claws wrap around my wrist, not one sharp point of them touching my skin, and he pulls my hand back. “I will fit you, Treasure.”

Oh, okay then. I pull my hand out of his and tuck an invisible lock of hair behind my ear, since the real ones are wrapped up in my bonnet. “I know I shouldn’t be blushing right now, but.”

He tilts his head, studying me like I’m the confusing one in this room. “You aren’t afraid of me.”

I roll my eyes. “Sir, I watched a grown man strut down the middle of the freeway in nothing but cowboy boots. I stood in line behind a lady who walked her raccoon into the club on a leash, and the bouncer checked the raccoon’s ID. Two men dragged a whole ATM down the sidewalk with a bungee cord at rush hour one time, and every single person kept on walking.” I pat his arm. “I promise you, gargoyles are the least of my worries.”

“How hard was your life,” he asks, “while you waited for me to find you?”

I snap my mouth shut, because no, we are not doing that. I have known him for minutes, and I am not about to trauma-dump on a gargoyle in my living room.

He watches me hold it all in, and he doesn’t push.