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“E xcuse me?” I blurted. “Linked for life ?”

“Yes, you are my mate, and I am yours.” Xaniban sounded beyond himself with excitement. “ Anima and animar .”

“No, no, no.” I tried to get away from underneath him, but he was practically molded around me, his wings like solid walls. “I haven’t married you. The sex was mind-blowing but with no strings attached, you told me so. You never mentioned a lifelong relationship–”

“I did not know you were my mate.” His hand cupped my cheek tenderly.

“I started to suspect something the more time we spent together. But I did not dare hope for the greatest blessing of the Gods! When I tasted your honey and then when I accidentally bit you during the claiming, it all clicked into place. I had been blind. I should have known the moment you touched my wing on the battlefield and gave my regeneration a boost. You are my anima. ”

“No, don’t you anima me!” I removed his hand from my face. “One night of otherworldly sex doesn’t make me your wife.”

“I could put a ring on your finger, if it would appease you,” he continued in a soothing tone.

“But in time you will understand that the mate bond is not a marriage. Some mated humans here call it so, but it goes way beyond that. You will understand once I explain in the morning, when you are rested.”

Like hell. “I won’t understand crap and rest until you get off me.”

“I cannot let you out yet.”

“Dammit, Xan!”

“I really cannot,” he said apologetically.

“My wings have to unfold on their own; it is a reflex triggered by the mate bond clicking into place. It has something to do with the fierce need to protect the newly found mate at her most vulnerable moment: a claiming-turned-mating. I could switch positions, though. Do you prefer to be on top?”

I dragged my hands down my face with a groan. This was not happening to me.

Xaniban’s response was to roll us both. I ended up lying on top of him, his wings now imprisoning me from above.

I let out a heavy sigh. “This is just as bad.”

“No, it is worse. I am no longer inside you.”

Freaking unbelievable . “Will you stop it?” I snapped. I didn’t need any reminders of how good it had felt to have his cock deep in my pussy and how empty I felt now.

It had all been a huge mistake. What had I been thinking, letting a gargoyle in my pants? I should have known better. There were always consequences when I let my guard down, apocalypse or not.

How was I going to get out of the mess I’d made? I couldn’t even get out from underneath Xaniban’s wings, let alone leave the palace and the homecloud. Fuck .

My anger slipped toward desperation. My next words came out more as a plea for mercy than a demand. “Let me go.”

“Hmm, you are not happy about our mating,” he muttered.

“You think?” A bitter laugh rose in my throat. I pressed my face into Xaniban’s chest in an attempt to stifle a sob.

“I see.” His hand and tail began to rub my back.

If his intention was to sooth me, he failed. The deep sense of contentment at his touch made me sadder. How stupid and easy to manipulate could I be?

“Someone is afraid of commitment.”

“What?” I lifted my head to stare at him. I couldn’t see his features in the gloom but could tell by his voice that he had a smile on. “I’m not afraid of commitment!”

“No?”

Yep, he was definitely smiling. The jerk.

“No! I’m not afraid. As a matter of fact, I’m all about commitment.

Always have been.” The more I talked, the more ardent I became once again.

I guess that was an improvement to the weepy version of me.

“However, finding a man who won’t cheat on me or abandon me, who is willing to commit long-term, is like looking for a needle in a haystack. ”

“I am your needle.” He patted my ass. “You found me.”

“We barely know each other.” I accentuated every word in the hopes of him hearing me, really hearing me, amid the mate fantasy he was lost in. “We’re not the same species. And you’re talking about us having a long-term relationship?”

“To death and beyond,” he politely corrected me.

If I could throw my hands up, I would. “Precisely! Commitment ‘to death and beyond’ with a stranger from another species–can’t you hear yourself?” I was truly in the Twilight Zone. There was no doubt about it.

“We are not strangers,” Xaniban stated ever so calmly, as if he were speaking to an unreasonable child. “I know your body, and you know mine.”

“Yeah, as if that’s all that matters–”

“I know you are a brave, caring, protective, possessive, smart, strong-willed, stubborn, curious, and sensual little human,” he said without a single pause in hesitation. “Let me paraphrase: you were made for me. By the Gods themselves.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Me, brave and smart?

If I had been any of those things, I wouldn’t be here, lying naked on top of a gargoyle who had no intention of letting me go.

Instead, I would be trying to find my way back home in the dark, having left that office building immediately after the bombings.

Not a very smart move, but definitely smarter and braver than leaving in Xaniban’s arms.

“See, that’s the thing,” I kept arguing with the besotted king. “You speak of Gods , while I speak of God .”

Xaniban chuckled. “Religion cannot be an obstacle to our mate bond. Nothing can be an obstacle, anima .”

“It’s not about religion per se.” I pressed a finger to his lips before he could interrupt me.

The more he talked about this mate crap, the more I lost hope of convincing him no such thing existed between us.

“I’m talking about beliefs, culture, upbringing…

There is so much more to a person than some qualities you can pick up on quickly, provided you’re a good judge of character.

I’m clueless about your world, your society, your history.

Your life’s history, Xan, or that of your family and your people–I don’t know any of that! ”

He kissed my finger. “You will. Time is ahead of us.”

I groaned. I was getting nowhere with him.

“I’m not your mate! You link your life to someone when you’ve learned many things about them and like what you’ve found out.

How can you claim I’ve been made for you when you don’t yet know anything about my past, habits, and hobbies?

I bet you already hate how much I talk–imagine how many other things you’ll discover you don’t like about me in a day or two.

And yet, you talk about us being together forever. You’re making zero sense!”

“I am making perfect sense, little blessing.” Xaniban patted my rear with his hand again.

I only now realized he hadn’t removed it from there. His hand had been resting on my ass for our entire conversation, and I hadn’t noticed. As if it belonged there.

“You, on the other hand, are acting human,” he finished.

“I am human,” I said firmly. And just as firmly removed his hand from where it did not belong.

“You are, deliciously so,” was his reply, coupled with a fangy smile and his tail taking the place of his hand. “But you need to stop thinking like a human, anima .”

Agh! He seriously had to stop calling me that. Just like he had to quit caressing my sensitive places with a fifth limb I had no idea how to deal with. I had enough on my plate as it was, given the hot rod growing harder under my belly by the minute.

But I did not tell him to stop. His tail started drawing little circles on my ass cheek and his hands began moving up and down my back, and the word enough got stuck in my throat. The multiple orgasms must have completely scrambled my brain.

“Marriage doesn’t exist here,” Xaniban explained.

“There are no rings to exchange, vows to make, hearts to break when the marriage turns out to be a mistake. The mate bond makes no mistakes, because it exists to prevent the mistakes from happening. It comes into being, linking a male and a female, not because they could exist as one based on a liking for each other’s qualities, beliefs or past. But because they have existed as one once.

They have belonged together and they will again, to death and beyond. ”

Ridiculous . “I think you Gargoyles have watched too many astrology videos on YouTube and taken the whole soulmate concept too seriously.” Make that taken the concept to a sky-high level of cheesiness.

“I do not know what tube you speak of, but I sense you are being sarcastic.” That sarcasm of mine won me a light tail slap.

I gasped. Now was the time to protest. I should tell him to stop immediately–

He pressed a finger to my lips. I was the one who had to listen this time.

The words of protest died on my lips. Perhaps it was a good idea to hear him out. In the meantime, why not allow myself the guilty pleasure of his caresses, just for a few more minutes? Then I was getting away from him, one way or another.