Page 2 of Bumpy, the Gargoyle Slayer

“Alain, get away from her! Don’t just sit there!” Torrance de Palma, a Spanish economist, screams at me from where he huddles behind a cameraman.

So much for our semi-circle of leading lights set to remake the global economy. They’re all quivering off-stage because of one tiny rabbit. Honestly, I’m just embarrassed for us.

As the blond begins to retreat, instinct takes over. I grab her around the waist, yanking her onto me. Her back arches as she splays against my chest.

She’s bendable. A thousand illicit positions flip through my head. I may be a holy gargoyle, but I’ve read the Kama Sutra and I’ve got an imagination. Though before I pretzel her under me, I should first find out why she’s trying to stake me.

“What are you doing, little girl?” I ask, a purr rumbling up my throat. “This is a private session. I don’t think you were invited.”

Another blink and her instincts finally rise. Her palms find my chest and push. “Let me go, you—you monster!”

“Tch, tch. Did no one ever tell you not to call a monster ‘monster’ to his face?”

“Asshole.” She spits the word like an angry wet kitty. But then her gaze clashes with mine again and the earth stops turning.

Seconds tick by. I’m barely aware of the continued chaos around the studio as the ocean of eternity envelops us once more. Her eyes are so blue above a little pert nose and plump lips. She still has that lift of youth to her cupid’s bow. And her hair… more like brushed gold than blond. Her tresses shine and glitter under the overhead lights.

My fingers seek out the soft strands, stroking the silk from the top of her head to her shoulders where the ends slightly curl. And down further… but I stop before groping the swell of her breasts. I’m not that kind of monster.

“Why aren’t you dead?” she whispers, her face crinkling into adorable creases… twenty-something-year-old creases that mean I should let her go.

But she feels so good in my arms. On my lap. In my world.

Nope, can’t do it. I want to bundle her up and take her home, explore why I’m feeling like there’s suddenly a fire burning beneath my skin, but that would be a giant gargoyle not-happening. If she was fifty, maybe I could play, but she’s at that age where her experience is only now rounding out. She’s just beginning to learn the imperfections of a man’s desires. I need someone who knows them cold.

“Why are you trying to kill me, little one?” I ask in a more reasonable tone.

Rage suffuses her features with a pretty red. I take note of it right before she skims her knuckles down my abdomen and shoots them hard right between my legs.

Pain glitters up my spine as my stomach folds into knots. Stars and stripes of light flash before me. It feels like she’s just pulverized my cock with a chef’s mallet. Which makes sense. There’s only one place a gargoyle can be hurt and she’s found it. Only one place we’re hard as men and not simply stone.

To counteract the effect, I turn my lower portion briefly into actual stone, before turning back to flesh. There. No harm done. Not that I’m planning on making children, but I appreciate keeping my options open.

“Fucking vampire,” she grits between her teeth, before she punches the base of her palm under my chin.

She’s less successful. Her cry of pain echoes up my spine.

I’m not even aware of releasing her before she’s off my lap. Her injured hand is cuddled against her chest, but she digs with the other into a large leather messenger bag that she wears with the strap draped between those glorious mounds. Suddenly, I’m doused in the face with an enormous shower of water.

“Are you suicidal, little girl?” I demand, blindly reaching out, water dripping past my eyes. Luck is with me. I manage to grab her arm and drag her back into me. No way is she getting away from me again, not before I have some answers. “Well, good for you, you’ve managed the impossible. I’m annoyed.”

“Let me go, you—you fiend!” She slaps at me, but this time, I’m prepared.

I dodge her knee, latch both her hands in mine, and set her onto my lap so she’s seated across my thighs. “I think not. You wait right here until security comes to take you away.” Though they’re certainly taking their sweet time. I could be dead six times over by now.

Absently, I lick my lips and find the taste of the water familiar. St. Anne’s, if I’m not mistaken, on Bleeker Street, blocks and blocks from where we film. Gargoyles are privileged to drink from all the holy fonts, which is especially refreshing during the summer months when we perch on sweltering roofs to await strikes by the Big Bad’s minions.

They’re always minions of low rank, whose breaths stink of sulfur, and who cry when we catch them. No spine, not like the fluffy bunny with the big bumps under her sweater that are magnificent enough to make a grown gargoyle give it all up for a peek at them.

“What is wrong with you? Why won’t you die?” she wails.

“From holy water? Talk about bringing a knife to a gun fight and then handing it to your enemy on a silver platter.”

“You should be vampire soup,” she whispers, clearly shocked that I haven’t melted into a screaming puddle of agony. But then she straightens her spine and flashes me a blinding smile. “Can I have my hands back, please?”

“Why?”

“I need to scratch my nose. It itches.” For good measure, she wrinkles the adorable little thing that sits in the middle of her face.