Soon after his exhaustion caught up with him and he fell asleep.

He wasn’t aware of when his stone skin began to ripple along his body in alternating waves.

CHAPTER TWELVE

When Kat awoke it was to the feel of something hot and rough surrounding her. She started and the roughness immediately dissipated and melted into heated male sinew in an arm locked around her. As her movements stirred him, she twisted around to face him.

“Were you just stone?” she asked.

“Hmm? No, I …” Then he went very still, seeming to think about it and doing an internal check of some sort. Then his expression grew shuttered and shadowed. He pushed away from her, backing out of the bed until he hit the nearby wall on that side. “We better get going,” he said after a moment.

“Wait a minute,” she said, scrambling after him. “You did! You did turn to stone. And you were lying to me weren’t you? You don’t have as much time as you led me to believe you did, do you?”

“Leave me be,” he said darkly, moving to push past her.

“That’s it!” she cried. “I’m right! You lied to me!”

“Doona fash yourself, lass. Now let me by … unless, of course, you’d rather help me with the raging cockstand sleeping again’ you has given me. Maybe that’s the stone you were feeling?”

“Oh!” She hauled off and smacked him on the shoulder … and she didn’t pull the punch. Not that it hurt him. And that was the problem. Nothing hurt him. Not his side, not his feet. Nothing. And that could only mean one thing. He’d turned to stone while he slept. Turning completely to stone state increased his healing time exponentially. “You are not going to try and use sex to scare me off. That’s what you’ve been doing, isn’t it? With the towels and now with this. Where was that blood from anyway, if not your side?”

“My feet. They were cut up something fierce.”

“Were?” She immediately knelt down at his feet and began to inspect them. This time the groan he bit back proved he hadn’t just been using sex as a device to keep her at bay. Kat down on her knees before him while he was hard as nails erect sent desire clawing through him. He shook his head and tried to stay focused.

She’s mad. Remember she’s mad, he thought to himself.

“There’s nothing wrong wi—”

She chose that moment to look up and with a gasp she realized his loosened towel was doing very little to hide the state of his body. In fact, she was so close to his erection that all she would have to do was rise up a little more on her knees and she’d be able to kiss him on it.

No! No kissing! No thinking about kissing a large, hot, incredibly hard penis, she reminded herself fiercely.

Nope. Not her. No, sir.

“I warned you, lass,” he said, one of those shit-eating grins spreading wide across his face. “You doona wish for me to lie tae you? Well, I want your mouth on me fiercely bad an’ there’s no lie abou’ it.”

Just speaking the words made his cock ache twice as hard with need. He would never have allowed it of course because she would deserve a lot of attention long before he could even think about her gracing him in such a way, but there was no curbing the hot flash of fantasy seeing her on her knees in front of him was riding hard on him. He could just imagine what the warmth of her wet mouth would feel like. The stroke of her tongue. The touch of her hand.

“Jesus woman, stand up. You’re killing me.”

Kat hastened to her feet and backed up a careful step.

“Your feet are healed,” she said. She swallowed, clearly trying to pretend he wasn’t sporting the most stellar erection of his long long life.

“When I turn stone it hastens healing,” he told her. The reminder that he’d lost control over himself did wonders for cooling his ardor. Still, ardor was becoming a constant state around her. “My side is near healed as well.”

She stepped forward at that, forgetting to be cautious as she lifted his shirt and pulled back the bandage. It had blood on it from the rigors of yesterday’s travels, but beneath the bandage his wound was knitted and well on the way to forming a fresh scar.

“Will you scar permanently or will that change as well?”

“It will most likely scar. We carry the mark of severe wounds. But only the most severe. Everything else we heal completely from.” He didn’t realize it, but when he spoke of severe wounds his hand automatically rubbed at the brand on his chest.

“What’s that called?” she asked, drawing his attention to it.

“An ouroboros. When a Bodywalker is made a tattoo of an ouroboros appears somewhere on their body. My master chose it as his brand to identify me as belonging to him so no one would question me or give me a hard time if I made demands of them. You see, no one likes a lowly Gargoyle to give them commands.”

There was anger in his eyes as he said that, but there was also a determined sort of pride as well. He would not allow his past to drag him down. That was what the lift to his chin meant. Nor would he accept any pity she might be feeling for the life he’d been forced to live. It had been what it had been. Nothing they did, nothing they felt, would change that.

She moved away from him, moving to the tightly drawn drapes. She gingerly peeked around one to look at the sky. It was nearing dusk. She stepped back.

“We have a little time. I’m going to see about getting us some food and—”

“No! You canna go out in the light!”

“I can bundle back up, use my scarf to cover my face. There’d be no—”

“I said no!” he said, his tone final and fearsome. “You’ll no’ risk yourself on account of me. Any one of a thousand things could happen and you’d get hurt. You’ve no sunglasses tae shade your eyes. ’Twould be madness and I’ll hear no more of it. We wait.”

The truth was she didn’t want to go out in the light. But she did need to check the roads and maybe see about renting a car, if it were at all possible. But she nodded to him and figured another hour wouldn’t make too much of a difference. The car rental place would not be likely to be open in any event. She looked at her watch. She was anxious to get to Walmart. She wanted to see if her ghostly friend would be able to find her note. In order for that to happen they needed to get there before nine.