“No.”
I slammed the door in his face, snorting when he yelped and started cursing up a storm. Hopefully this time I broke his nose and it’d take him longer than a few days before he tried the same thing again. Grinning like a fool, I turned the lock, adding the couple of chains I left out earlier. Still snickering under my breath, I went back to finish my calming tea. It’d be lukewarm by now, but it’d do.
Wiggling in the armchair, I strained my ears until I heard the faraway hum of his large truck. Only then did I fully relax. I had no idea how I missed it when he arrived on my property. I must’ve been lost in my daydream about the dark-haired male. It’d serve me right for drooling over some guy like a hormonal teenager again. Finishing the tea, I nuzzled deeper into the chair, and sleep pulled me into its soothing embrace. Drifting between dreams and wakefulness, I almost missed the scraping coming from the door. When it happened again, I bolted upright in the chair. When the pawing continued, fury made me see red.
Jumping up, I stormed to the front door, my feet slapping like applause over the wooden floors. Magic swirled around my fingertips, prickling my skin in my rush to open it and teach that entitled, arrogant jerk a lesson. Josh would learn once and for all that no meant no. There were enough single human women in this town that he could bother instead of me.
“Get the hell off my property, you asshole!” Jerking the chains off and yanking the door open, I snarled like a feral beast.
With a yelp, I jumped back.
The body of a man fell forward, his blood-covered arms wrapping around my knees so he didn’t drop face-first inside my home. It wasn’t only his arms that were covered in blood, either. His dress shirt was in shreds, cuts visible through the openings that were oozing the red liquid. Bits and pieces of golden hair poked through the matted hair around his head as he panted. Frozen in shock, it took me a moment to realize this wasn’t Josh. The stranger was shaking, tremors raking his powerful frame while he kneeled at my feet and bled all over my floor, all the while holding onto me like I was a lifeline. My magic fizzled out and I leaned over him, sticking my head out to see if whoever had done this to him was coming to kill us both. Only silence and darkness stretched outside of the open door.
“Please.” The raspy plea pulled at my heartstrings and snapped me out of my shock.
“I got you.” Maneuvering around his large form, I managed to lift him up, throwing his arm over my shoulder and leading him inside. “Let’s get you inside.”
Huffing under the heavy weight, I closed the door and locked it behind me before taking him to the living room. After placing him on the sofa, which was not big enough for him—his legs actually hung over the side—I rushed to the bathroom and filled a bowl with water, grabbing face towels. My mind whirled with all the reasons he was barely alive or how he had managed to end up at my door. He could be a criminal, and if he survived, he might end up killing me, but I didn’t have it in me to turn my back and pretend I didn’t see him.
There was so much blood everywhere.
He might die.
Criminal or not, I couldn’t leave him to bleed out. If he was a bad person, I’d deal with him later. As he was at the moment, he couldn’t hurt me if he tried. With that thought, I ran back to him, dropping on my knees next to the sofa where he was sprawled. Why couldn’t I stay away from trouble? Why?
“I’m here,” I whispered as I started mopping the blood from him. “Everything will be okay.”
Something inside me told me that nothing would be okay ever again.
Chapter Four
Tylor
“Hold on big guy,” the incubus drawled from behind me, tugging on my belt to keep me in place. “It doesn’t look like she’s in trouble. If you barge in now, you’ll fuck us both over when she kicks us out.”
My body was vibrating in anger as I kept my eyes glued on the damn human male doing his best to enter my mate’s home. The second she came into view, my entire world shifted on its axis, lodging her so deep in my soul I felt like I’d shatter into million pieces. Then the human appeared and I was seeing red.
“I have no intention on barging in on her, demon. I’ll just break all his bones and remove him from her property.” If I was sure it wouldn’t hurt my mate, I would’ve killed Vaser earlier in the night. Like a pest, he didn’t know how to talk without mocking me.
“She’s a tough cookie, look at her. She’s putting him in his place.” Stepping up shoulder to shoulder with me in the thick of the orchard where we were hiding and had a clear view of her front door, the incubus bumped me with his elbow. “I could almost hear the human grinding his teeth from here.”
“I want to grind his bones for daring to approach my mate.” My skin was tightening, and without looking down, I knew I was shifting and changing into a stone because of my anger. Nostrils flaring, I reined it down before it could turn me into a mindless beast. “If I crush his skull, he’ll never dare lay eyes on her again.”
“Neither will we if we start killing everyone who approaches her. I told you she’s a feisty one, and she’ll kick our asses out of here if she sees us. Calm down.” Grumbling in annoyance, the demon didn’t look away from our mate either, regardless of his words.
The female was everything I could’ve hoped for and more. Shocked to see she wasn’t one of my kind, I still couldn’t say it bothered me. Just because I’d never heard of a gargoyle mating with another breed didn’t mean it never happened. We were solitary creatures, keeping to ourselves unless we were in heat. When the mating season hit, we sought out a matching female to procreate, but we went on our way as soon as it was over.
Unless we found our fated mate.
I’d managed to stay in control of my mind and keep to myself even in those times. It wasn’t easy to deal with the fevers that made my mind work against me until I saw things that weren’t there, but I persevered. The idea of having younglings that I’d never see didn’t sit well with me. It was the way of things for my kind, though, so I guessed I was the oddball. It never bothered me until that moment when I was looking at my mate.
I had no idea how to handle a female.
She was like the most beautiful flower I had ever seen. A lot smaller than a female of my kind would be, my mate was all lean muscle covered in smooth, porcelain skin. Her long lavender hair was brushing the small of her back as she took a threatening step toward the human, her body poising as if ready to spring into action at any moment. She might look delicate, but the fire flashing in her eyes I could see even from this far away kindled a burning in my loins. My feet shuffled as I gave the incubus a side-eyed glance. I bet he knew how to handle a female. That only made me want to grind his bones along with the human’s.
“If you are plotting my death, I’ll have you know I might not be as strong as a gargoyle, but I’m fast as fuck. I’ll rip you limb from limb before you have time to shift,” Vaser growled and that’s when I noticed his body was rigid despite his nonchalant appearance. “And stop snarling. You sound like a rabid dog.”
Startled, I stepped away from him.
My control was slipping, and fear racked my insides, forcing me to turn my back so the incubus didn’t see how disturbed I was. Nearing the age of five hundred without a mate was a death sentence to my kind, and I was four hundred and ninety-nine years of age. The madness was creeping in at the edges of my mind, reminding me how precious the soft-looking female truly was to me. Not simply for the honor to be her mate, but for the fact that she was the reason I would live for many more years. Something not many gargoyles could say.