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  “Oh dear god.” Max rubbed a shaky hand over his sickly green face. He shot her a look of disgust. “It’s him, isn’t it? He’s the one you fucked at the cabin.”

  He made it sound so dirty, so vile. How could he get it so wrong? She raised her chin while she watched Cray inch forward in the peripheral vision of her good eye. “Yes.”

  Max curled a lip and shook his head. “How could you sink so low?”

  “That’s rich, coming from a man who hits women.” She took a steadying breath as his mouth tightened defensively. She didn’t need to hear his excuses. “Being with Cray…” she paused, her voice softening as she recalled their intimacy. “It was the most beautiful experience of my life.”

  Something between a howl and a snarl burst from Max’s compressed mouth, followed as suddenly by a wild laugh. “Isn’t that sweet? I just hope you enjoy taking that memory with you to your grave!”

  He jammed his foot on the accelerator and spun the steering wheel toward the cliff face. The vehicle skidded sideways and bounced across ruts, before pitching, smooth as silk, through the air.

  She cried out, but no words sounded. Breath hitched in her throat as Cray surged forward on the tilting hood, the heel of his hand shattering the windshield.

  Time seemed to slow as she flicked Max a look. Why had he done this? What had happened to the man she thought she knew? Impossible to believe they’d both die like this.

  She turned back to Cray. God, regrets, so many of them, flashed through her head in that instant. She couldn’t lose him. Not now.

  The vehicle careened into some part of the hard cliff face. Breath whooshed from deep in her chest. Her left shoulder slammed against the doorframe and she let out an agonized cry before her head struck the side window with a sharp crack.

  She closed her eyes against a flood of scalding tears. Metal crunched, more glass shattered, and then silence. Her eyes flew open. Out the side window, the world righted itself as the SUV again arced through the air.

  This was it, then.

  Her eyes caught and held Cray’s. I love you.

  His stare widened and glittered bright and sharp as diamonds scattered beneath the sun.

  Max took hold of her hand and gave it a squeeze. His fingers slipped away as Cray unbuckled her and grasped her upper arms.

  Cray’s muscles bunched and flexed as he lifted her close. She gripped his shoulders and he abruptly vaulted through the broken windshield. A vacuum of air greedily sucked, then his wings snapped out and halted their freefall and they drifted gently on the breeze.

  A heavy thud sounded, followed by an awful screech of metal. A bright flash lit up the night sky as a sharp explosion shook the ground and impacted the updraft that carried them.

  Cray tucked her head under his chin, shielding her from the acrid smoke. His lips brushed her hair, and he said gently, “Close your eyes.”

  Cray felt a twinge of sadness as he watched the flames twist and warp the blackened metal below. The emotion dissipated quickly when Loretta moaned and moved weakly in his arms, her profile revealing her bruised and bloodied face.

  Anger rose inside him. That the bastard had dared lay a hand on her was almost beyond his comprehension.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart.” They were descending fast, but amongst the treetops in the distance he could see the old tin roof of a farmhouse. “No one will ever hurt you again.” I’ll make sure of that.

  He dropped to the ground and immediately shifted into human form.

  Minutes later, an elderly woman with her gray hair pulled back into a tight bun, opened the sagging front door and peered through the screen door.

  Cray swallowed an impatient urge to push his way inside. “We need help.”

  Alarm radiated from the woman like something tangible and she put a mottled hand to her mouth, suppressing a gasp.

  Her reaction was understandable. He was stark naked and Loretta lay bloodied, bruised and trembling in his arms. “Please,” he said. Loretta looked deathly pale and it took all his willpower to wait outside.

  The lady hovered uncertainly at the doorway, relenting only after glancing once more at Loretta’s ashen face. She stepped aside and peeled open the door before motioning him in. “Of course.”

  He stepped through the door and she swept an arm toward an outdated couch. A frayed, crocheted blanket did little to hide its condition.

  “Put her there. I’ll ring for an ambulance.” Brisk now, she marched into another room. A moment later, he heard the muted, no-nonsense tone of her voice through the open door.

  His focus stayed with Loretta. God, she was pale. At least her breathing had steadied. Pushing some hair off her blood-crusted brow, he murmured, “You’ll be taken care of now. I wish I could stay but the medics will be here soon.” With dawn on their heels.

  “You’re going?” asked the gray-haired lady.

  He jerked his attention to her. She stood straight-backed and clearly scandalized beside the door. He mentally cursed his second-rate human senses. He should’ve focused his gargoyle abilities—the elderly lady was as spry as a cat!

  He rubbed a hand over his face. “I have no choice.” Hell, to admit it was like tearing out a piece of his heart.

  “Young man, we all have choices,” she said primly. Her eyes didn’t stray below his neck as she approached. Her floral scent tickled his nose and masked the aged, moldy odor permeating the house. “The trick is making the right one.”

  He stood, well aware that he towered above the old lady, dwarfing her. Add the fact that he was naked and he almost smiled at her tenacity in giving him a lecture. “I only wish you were right.”

  With one lingering look at Loretta, he headed for the door. He didn’t look back when he pushed it partway open and added, “Thank you for your hospitality.” He would ensure the little old lady was rewarded well for her help.

  With that, he strode outside, cursing the hex that now forced him to leave Loretta alone when she needed him most.

  Chapter Three

  Loretta shivered as she watched her father pay his respects at Max’s graveside. Stooped and trembling in a wheelchair, he seemed so very much older than ever before.

  The smell of freshly dug earth brought back haunting memories and she swallowed back a sob. This was all her fault. No one was safe to love her…to protect her. Her selfish core tainted anyone who did.

  “Retta. Let’s go home.”

  She started at her father’s torn voice, at his feeble touch. His ropy-veined hand looked frail on hers, his upturned face was grief stricken and…broken.

  “Yes.” She hadn’t realized the funeral had concluded, and the mourners were now all heading back to their cars.

  It was still hours until dark. The unseasonably hot, midafternoon sun beat with relentless force on her bare shoulders with just the spaghetti straps of her black dress for protection.

  She desperately needed to feel Cray’s arms around her, hear his soothing voice. Only, since the accident and their one night of passion, he’d distanced himself from her both physically and emotionally.

  It was as if his human form was the one carved from stone. Didn’t he know how much she needed him now, how much she missed him?

  She watched as the gravediggers threw soil onto Max’s coffin.

  Despite the heat, a rash of goose bumps spread over her arms. She might never understand Cray’s indifference but at least he was safe. Alive.

  A tear slipped down her face. On heavy limbs she turned, following her dad’s burly nurse as he pushed the wheelchair back to the waiting car.

  * * * * *

  The last few evenings Cray had found a savage kind of comfort in the agony of returning circulation and unlocking muscles. If physical pain helped him forget the constant ache deep in his chest, even just for a moment, then he’d welcome it anytime.

  But no amount of painful reawakening could dim the gut-wrenching misery as he watched, frozen in stone and outwardly silent, while Loretta paced before him. Her
stress and grief were etched into every fragile bone of her face. Her joy sucked right out of her.

  “Cray!” Relief filled her voice when she realized he’d come to life. Elation sparked in return but was quickly snuffed. Fool. He didn’t expect Loretta—any woman—to become attached to a man who was a slave to a string of words chanted almost a century ago.

  Bad enough that he was stone much of the time but to one day be forced away from her while guarding someone else, perhaps half a world away…

  He inwardly shuddered then stiffened as she threw her arms around him. God, what he wouldn’t do to return her embrace. Her curves pressed against his nakedness felt so right—too right, according to his body’s instant reaction.

  She smelled divine—subtle notes of vanilla and frangipani. He took another breath and forced himself to step back, his wings snapping closed behind him. “You shouldn’t be here right now.”

  Her thick-lashed eyes dropped, her pretty-as-a-pansy mouth drawing tight. “Don’t worry. You’re safe. No one followed, no one saw you come alive.”

  Damnation. She’d been through hell and back, and he worried about preserving his identity! He moved back to her and tugged her close, wrapping his arms around her as he indulged in the simple intimacy. “Of course no one followed you. And I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, her breath warm on his bare chest. She looked up. “I had to see you…after everything that happened…after nearly—”

  His arms tightened their hold with her unfinished sentence, too many years of repressed emotion flaring within. Damnation. He didn’t need reminding that he’d almost lost her.

  “I came here to talk,” she said. “To explain.”

  His pulse kicked up a gear, his chest compressing tightly. Her anger he could endure—but her trust? It might well be the last nail in the coffin to his heart. “I don’t expect…you don’t need—”

  “I do.” Her stare was oddly imploring. “Please.”

  He sucked in a painful breath. Raising a hand, his knuckles gently outlined one side of her face. “Of course.”

  She nodded and he stepped aside and opened the pool gate, motioning her inside to a bench seat. Aqua water sparkled beneath the muted light of a tall lamp, and down along the harbor, lights blinked and glowed.

  They sat side by side, their bodies touching and yet emotionally worlds apart.

  She stared off into the distance and he waited silently. He realized she’d find it tough to detail her history, relive it.

  Finally, she cleared her throat. “Max was a young man, perhaps twenty, when my father hired him almost a decade ago.” She paused, her thumbs fidgeting over her interlaced fingers.

  “Go on,” he encouraged.

  She took a breath. “At some point along the line, he stopped being an employee, and became almost part of the family.”

  Almost, but not quite. Cray didn’t need a psychology degree to imagine how that would have affected a man who was perhaps already close to the edge.

  “Max looked out for me and for a short time it felt…nice.” She sighed, her slim shoulders rigid and yet fragile against the tiny straps of her black dress.

  Cray drew her close. “What happened?”

  Her head came to rest on his shoulder. “It was the anniversary of my mother’s death. Max came to comfort me.” She shrugged. “I was hungry for affection—for love, of any kind.”

  Cray scowled into the darkness. Max was nothing but a predator. He swept her a long look. “He found you at your lowest ebb and took advantage.”

  “If I hadn’t been intimate with him he’d never have—”

  “What, tried to kill you as well?” He took a long, deep breath. Just the thought of that man trying to harm Loretta churned his gut like a spin cycle. “He was an adult obsessed with a woman who didn’t return his feelings. That’s hardly your fault.”

  She sighed and he felt her tension ease. “I guess…I guess you’re right.”

  “Where was your dad when Max came looking for you?”

  She blinked hard then examined the dark night sky. “He’d left that morning on some urgent business. I knew better though.”

  She swiped a hand over her face. “Their wedding anniversary, Mum’s birthday…he always made himself absent after she died. All those memories, it hurt too much for him to be home.”

  Cray frowned. That would have offered no comfort to a grieving young girl. A child who’d witnessed her mother’s abduction. He didn’t know the whole story but he knew she’d been home when kidnappers had stormed the Shaw house and taken Kaitlin, her mum.

  Loretta had opened up about Max, perhaps now was the time for her to release a little of her burden about her mum. “What do you remember about your mum’s disappearance?”

  Her shoulders drooped and her stare fell, her voice low and distant. “I don’t remember a lot. But the men who broke in wore masks. They ignored me. I stood frozen, unable to move.”

  She spoke without emotion and Cray realized that shock still paralyzed her, all these years later.

  “They took Mum captive, and I watched as she kicked and struggled. Her screams were muffled by something they’d pushed into her mouth.”

  His heart twisted. He hated having her relive the pain but, as with a splinter buried deep and spreading infection, she had to get it out. “If you hadn’t stayed silent and still, you might very well have been taken too.”

  But she didn’t seem to hear him. Instead her eyes stared out over the city lights. “They dragged her outside and finally I made myself follow. From the doorway, I watched them shove her into a van with black windows. They didn’t even spare me a glance as they took off, tires squealing.”

  His muscles clenched with the futile need to track down the animals who’d taken away Loretta’s mother and emotionally tortured an innocent little girl. “I’m sorry,” he rasped. “Sweetheart, I truly am.”

  “I waited and waited. But they…she never came back.”

  Lincoln had told Cray that he’d found his daughter some two or three hours after the kidnapping. She’d stood in the doorway, frozen and silent.

  Apparently she’d been questioned. But through everybody’s cajoling and coaxing, she’d not uttered a word.

  Cray stifled the urge to soothe the taut lines of her slender body, somehow heal her emotional wounds. But he couldn’t yet. She needed to cleanse the torment eating at her soul. He should know. He understood firsthand the suffering endured by losing family.

  “You can’t blame yourself.” He needed her to open up and accept her loss. Grieve for her mother. Yell and scream if need be.

  “I let those horrible people take my mother,” she said woodenly. “The same people who sent a ransom note three days later, demanding an outrageous sum of money.”

  He knew Lincoln had paid the money. But he needed her to spill the story, accept what had happened. “Your dad wouldn’t have given up on her.”

  “No.” A bitter line pulled at the corners of her lush mouth. “Dad agreed with their terms. The kidnappers responded by delivering three large parcels, with pieces of Mum inside each one.”

  Cray had seen more in his century life span than most mortals could imagine. What she’d gone through was a horror he knew few would contemplate. Or survive. He’d heard it had taken over a year before she talked again.

  “I didn’t see those parcels. But I saw Dad’s grief, felt an anguish all my own. And I finally came to realize that loving someone, needing a person…well, it’s just too painful, too scary.”

  His heart melted. “Thank you,” he said softly. For trusting me. But a sickening despair chased away any trace of optimism. Her blind faith wouldn’t spare her from further pain. He was cursed, never to be free.

  Chapter Four

  Her jade eyes glistened, her inner beauty reflected in her soulful stare. The male in him shouted adoration, a devotion that had nothing whatsoever to do with his guardian role.

  Her stare widened. Her
lips parted. And as she turned to him fully, his head swooped, their lips meeting on a breathless sigh. He cupped her face, deepening a kiss that was more about a sharing of their souls than even the physical need soaring between them.

  She whimpered beneath his mouth and pressed closer against him, the friction of her body beneath the satiny-soft dress driving him slowly mad with need. When she slipped a hand low to stroke his arousal, he knew without a doubt there would be no turning back.

  Blood rushed to his cock and he growled before he wrenched his head back and said thickly, “I told myself this wouldn’t happen again.”

  “And I told myself it would,” she countered in a whisper. “I want you.” Her eyes glinted when her hand moved to cradle his swollen balls. As she filled her palm with their weight his breath whistled from between clenched teeth.

  “And if having you now is our last time together,” she reiterated, “then—”

  He pressed an unsteady finger to her lips. He couldn’t think upon the possibility of their separation, much less hear it. Not right now.

  Loretta half smiled when his hand turned over, his knuckles grazing her parted lips and following the contour of her porcelain-smooth cheek. He clasped her nape and drew her closer still and they kissed with a slow, aching tenderness that turned his blood from a simmer into a boil.

  “You’re right,” she murmured against his mouth. “We’ve said enough this night.” With a decisive touch, she scored her nails into the flesh of his scrotum before trekking a torturous path to the base of his cock.

  He hissed with pleasure-pain, shivering reflexively as she clasped his hard length and began to stroke up and down.

  Hot damn.

  Something fierce, primitive and altogether too possessive burned from him from the inside out. That she even wanted to touch him in his repulsive gargoyle form, worshipped him as if he were some sexy Adonis, undid him in ways nothing else ever could.

  His wings unfurled from where they were tucked close to his spine. The tips fluttered, fanning the air above and reminding him only too well of his ugly deformities. Shit. What was he thinking? He needed to be human. Now.