Guardian of the Abyss (9 page)

She turned to face him. Meeting the black pools of his eyes with her own, she finished, "I did the same thing with you, except that I saw all of your current life and none of your past ones. It was all just sort of downloaded into my mind at once. I've seen the way the sorcerers tortured you and forced you to be with those women. I saw the way Lilith treated you. I saw it all."  She dropped her head onto his chest and stepped against him, wrapping her arms around him as he enclosed her. "I know you because I saw you. I saw your struggles, your sorrows, your regrets. And I saw that you are a genuinely noble person." She felt tears well in her eyes and was surprised that she could still cry since becoming a gargoyle. "You deserve better than me, but I'm too selfish to wish you find her."

He had to bend forward to lay his cheek on her head. "You undervalue yourself."

She looked up at him. His golden skin glowed with life, leaving a halo all around him. It fit the true nobility of his soul. "That's a thousand times truer of you than it will ever be of me."

"Sarah, even my son refuses to speak to me." Sorrow lined his face and bled into their connection, overwhelming her.

"He doesn't know the truth. He doesn't understand what really happened. And he was wrong not to let you tell him."

He shook his head. "He was right. I did terrible things."

"You chose the lesser of two evils and did your best to make things as good as possible for what remained of the lives of those families. What happened to them was not your fault, it was the fault of the men who did this to them and to you." She took a deep breath, knowing he wasn't going to like what she said next, "They served their purpose, though they would be enraged to find out that they were serving the world, not winning against it."

He snorted. "What purpose? They forced me to mate with married women in order to save their families." He looked up, away from her. "And I was too selfish to save my sons from this world."

"You don't understand the bigger picture, but I do."

"What bigger picture?" he demanded, angry. "Because I was too weak to listen to the suffering cries of a few people, many more have suffered."

"And even more have been saved." When she felt a response boiling up in him, she shook her head. "No. Don't speak, don't argue, just listen." She sat down and patted the ground. He sat beside her, and she took his hand in hers. "I see the entire picture from a less biased point of view. So let me tell you how I see these events."

She gathered her thoughts for a time. "Thanatos blames you for his mother's suffering, but not for his own. You regret bringing him into the world to suffer, but he doesn't. And the world is better off because the gargoyles are in it." He made to speak again and she squeezed his hand. "Wait, I'm not finished. Who would  protect the werewolves while they are gone each month? Who would keep their wives safe? And without the werewolves, the second strongest force against the serpents would be gone."

"We failed the werewolves," he answered, deep gloom and shame flowing through him.

"I don't think you did," she replied. "I see what you were fighting, and what the only outcome could have been if you truly had failed them." She met his eyes. "That never happened. The world wasn't taken over by Deathwalkers, ghouls, or Rakshasa. We... I mean humans, don't know that they exist. There hasn't even been a sighting of any of them. Other things, yes, but never those." She shook her head. "You may not have won directly, but somehow you won in the ways that matter. And if you're right, then the gargoyle genocide wasn't as complete as my government claimed."

"What does that mean?" he demanded. "You keep referencing that, but I don't understand."

"Years ago, the vampires admitted their existence. They met with very mixed welcome but were eventually mostly accepted. Because of what could only be considered a success for vampires, your people also came out to the world." She felt her own shame and heartbreak swell. "They were slaughtered wholesale. People thought they were demons..." A tear fell from her eye and landed on her leg where it sat lonely and black against her pale skin. "We were told they were eliminated."

"That is not your fault, Sarah."

"Neither is what was done to you. But that doesn't make either of us feel better, does it?"

He picked her up and cradled her in his lap. "It's hard to feel your sadness and not be able to help."

She took his face in her hands. "A bad man wouldn't regret, Abaddon. He wouldn't feel sorrow, or pity; and he wouldn't cry for those he injured through no fault of his own. You are a good man, a decent man, a strong man. You were given only terrible choices, and you managed to make the right ones from what you had. I feel honored to even be in your presence, and deeply humbled that you would be interested in me at all." She ignored the tears that slid from his eyes, knowing it would wound his pride if she acknowledged them. "I'm not going to ask that you marry me, and I know you won't be with me if you don't. But if I don't die, you'd be stuck with me, because you're that kind of man. A man who'll never give up, never quit, no matter what. I would like to believe that there's a woman out there good enough for you, but I honestly don't think that's possible."

He shook his head, pulling her close again. "You make it sound like I'm perfect, and I'm not remotely close."

She chuckled. "No one who's as obsessive, guilt-ridden, rigidly old-fashioned, overly serious, and rabidly moral as you are is perfect. But within your faults lie your good qualities also, so you can't give up one and still have the other."

She looked up at him then, and found what was almost a smile on his face. The skin above his left eye lifted, a strange event without the eyebrow to mark its passage. "Well, you know, Sarah... although you are reckless, thrill-seeking, overbearing, irresponsible, stubborn, arbitrary, and driven... You are also kind, compassionate, gifted, wise, generous, and deeply loyal." He stroked his hand down her face, his own serious again.

She scowled at him. "I am not overbearing." Then she gave up the pretense at outrage. "You can read my life, too?" He had pegged her rather well, if she was going to be honest about it--and she wasn't. Except about the last half, perhaps.

"I can't read minds or lives, but I can sense souls and intents," he admitted. "It must be strange to read minds and lives."

"I can't read minds," she answered. "And I didn't see much of your recent past, because I stopped the reading. It didn't seem polite to pry."

"It often feels like you can read my mind," he answered wryly. "You seem to know everything about me."

"Only about the past," she admitted. "Most of the rest of it is guesswork. You're a bit predictable in your thinking and emotional responses. Most of it comes from pretty long-term baggage."

She ran her hand across his chest. "I love the feel of your skin. It's like expensive low-nap suede over stone. So soft and smooth." She laid her head down against him and rubbed across his skin, loving the feel of it against her cheek and lips.

"Sarah," he warned her, "you are testing my resolve to do the right thing by you."

He still thought that being 'stuck with him' would be a sentence worse than death. So she told him the truth, "I'm not going to stop trying to seduce you, Abaddon. Not when your reasons for refusing are so utterly ridiculous."

Chapter 13

Abaddon stood up, Sarah still in his arms. Despite her cheerful attitude, he could feel how low her energy levels were.  They needed to gather up what sunlight remained in the day.

"We must replenish ourselves," he warned her. She shifted in his arms, and he worried for her. She still retained her human fear of the water. As a human, it had crushed the breath from her lungs when she jumped in. As a gargoyle, it would do nothing to her at all except feel like weight pushing on her.

He said nothing, however, and jumped down. For several hours, they sat as statues in the weak sunlight that barely penetrated to their depth. It gave him a lot of time to think. He found himself trying to justify the idea of marrying Sarah. She was a gargoyle. She wasn't as confused as when she first arrived, so he wouldn't be taking advantage of her.

Except that he would be, he had to admit to himself in the end. She wanted to be happy while she was dying, but if she didn't die, she would never forgive him. He wouldn't marry her, because that could never be undone. But what he could do, and would do, was make love to her.

He'd lain with women in the past because he'd been forced to. This time, he would lay with her because she wanted him. He would give her both... the freedom to find someone worthy of her if she survived, and what pleasure he could bring her until she either died or survived and finally realized he wasn't as wonderful as she told herself he was.

He was already damned. At least this time he would be damned for doing something that brought someone joy. Or at least pleasure. He knew that her soul was too beautiful and genuine to be damned. It was only his own damnation possible... and that had happened long ago.

When the light no longer filtered down through the water, he shifted and picked her up. With gentle care, he carried her back inside. As he jumped into the cavern, water sluiced off of them in sheets, even as Sarah turned back into her humanoid form.

"Oh no, I'm all wet," she said through their link. "Whatever shall I do?"

"I have enough magic to dry you off," he informed her.

She laughed and turned his head towards her. Then her lips met his as she told him mentally, "This is the kind of wet that only one kind of magic can solve."

With the words came a fuller explanation, and he felt the power of the suggestive comment blaze a path to his groin, where he grew impossibly harder. He let her legs down until she was standing, holding her mouth with his. When she was standing, he lifted her so that her legs were around his waist. Then he let the loincloth go.

She pulled away to look at him. As their eyes met, she blinked once, a furrow between her brows. He reached up to kiss that look of concern away.

"You're not even going to try to argue?" she demanded.

"No."

"Why not?" She was clearly suspicious of his easy capitulation, and he didn't blame her.

"Well, if the only way that your remaining days can be happy is to spend them under me, how can I tell you 'no'?" He tried for a grin, and it felt unfamiliar, but not unpleasant.

Her eyebrows tried to get acquainted with her hairline at that. "What if I want to be on top?"

Amusement welled up inside him and he made a strange, involuntary sound. Another came, and it sounded so strange and unfamiliar that he made another. For long moments, the strange noises continued until he realized that he was laughing. He hadn't laughed in so long that he didn't know what it was anymore.

It was wonderful, and it was because of this magnificent woman who had fallen into his world and changed it forever.

She was staring at him, bemused. "Are you laughing at me?"

"I suppose I am," he was forced to admit. "If you wish to be on top, My Lady, your pleasure is my command."

"Do you think that's going to distract me from the fact that you're laughing at me?"

"No." But now that he knew she felt he should be trying to distract her from him laughing at her--which he'd thought was a good thing--he had an idea of what might do it.

He lowered them to the floor with her still on his lap, and kissed her again. This time, though, he adjusted her so that his penis was trapped between her belly and his. Cupping her butt, he pressed her suggestively against it, pleased when she moaned and arched against his body.

Then, he grabbed her hair and pulled her body backwards until he could lean forward and take one of those perfect rosettes into his mouth. She gasped and wrapped her hands around his head, though his arms easily supported her weight. The position rubbed the wet, sleek skin between her legs up and down the shaft of his cock and made him throb with urgent need.

He ignored his body's demand and focused on tasting her skin. He ran his tongue around and around her nipple, then nipped it lightly. He gave in to his forbidden exploration of her body. Times had changed, and she did not gasp and cover herself as women once had.

He took great pleasure in the sounds she made as she clung to him, teasing each nipple in turn and letting go of her back with one hand to palm the other breast. He tested the limits of her forbearance, sliding his hand down between her legs. When he got only more moans and soft cries, he straightened his legs and laid her back on them, spreading her legs to gaze at the soft pink skin revealed there.

For a gargoyle, who should have been all one color, she was remarkably human in her beauty, even here. He reached down to play with the nub of her clit, and she bucked against his hand. He explored her, sliding a finger inside to watch her writhe and cry out.

As he teased her, though, she obviously had finally had enough. She leaned forward and shoved him backwards. Stretched out as she straddled him, he felt both vulnerable and amazed. When she reached down and took him into her hand and slid down onto him with a single stroke, he nearly shouted with the pleasure of it. It was even better than in the dream.