any rate. I have no idea what it’s like for gargoyles.”
I told them what little I knew from Mr. Tom.
“Probably a very similar setup to shifters.” Kingsley scooped up some of his dessert. “But you don’t choose. You don’t will the bond to come. It’s a natural process your animal mostly decides. It happens or it doesn’t. You feel it, and give in to it, or you don’t.”
“What if you don’t give in to it?” I asked, then slid a spoon of custard into my mouth. As with everything Austin had made, the flavors exploded on my tongue. I moaned and put my hand on his arm. When we’d moved inside so he could finish preparing dessert, I’d claimed the middle seat so I could sit next to him.
“Damn, brother, I might have to start moaning too.” Kingsley scooped up more custard. “This is good.” He swallowed before he continued. “Sometimes you do get a bullheaded shifter, usually female—”
Austin laughed. “He just says that because he was the one who tried to dig in his heels.”
“If she digs in her heels,” Kingsley went on with a smile, “then it might never happen. But I’ve never heard of anyone strong enough to resist forever. Still, nothing can force one person to stay with another. If two people are bonded and one of them leaves, they’ll feel each other, always, but some people don’t want the settled life. They prefer to stay solo.”
I stopped with the spoon nearly to my mouth and looked at Austin. “Is that what happened with you and Destiny? You told me you thought she’d be your mate.”
“I thought it would happen between us, yes”—his lush lips closed over the spoon, and I couldn’t help but watch—“but now I realize it was never going to happen.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
He shrugged, daintily loading the end of his spoon. A big, strong man, still in his apron, dainty with his dessert. It stoked my desire to impossible levels.
“Because I’m older now,” he said. “Wiser. If I found my mate, I would never leave her. I would always protect her. Nothing would tear me away from her.”
The pressure on my chest made it hard to breathe. Hard to even think. His cobalt eyes burned with fire and determination, and my heart and core had started to throb in tandem.
“The good news, for those that are a lee-tle wary about commitment, is that it usually doesn't happen all at once. It is a slide,” Kingsley said, tilting his dish and scraping it clean with his spoon. “You’ll feel it happening, and everything might seem a little topsy-turvy, but you’ll have time to get used to it. As someone who got used to it very slowly, I know this is true.”
I finished off my crème brûlée and immediately looked over at Austin’s to see if I could steal a little more. Finding half a dish, I smiled and leaned over with my spoon out.
“Are you going to eat all of that?” I asked.
“Take whatever you want, milady,” he answered softly.
Smiling, I tried to take a dainty spoonful, but I scooped up more than I’d planned and couldn’t find it in me to feel guilty. It was simply that good.
“Before you ask,” Kingsley said, standing with his dish and walking around to the sink, “I don’t know if there is one special mate for everyone, decided by Fate, or a few for everyone and you just go with the first one you find.”
“I’d like to think there’s only one.” Austin’s deep voice rumbled, and shivers skated down my body. “I’d like to think Fate plays a hand in bringing us to our perfect mate, even if the road to finding her is long and lonely.”
The moment reduced down to him and me, and I felt the power of it beating in my chest. The need to clutch on to him and never let go.
I wondered if the situation was the same for female gargoyles. Was there one possible mate or more?
Was this slide Kingsley had described what was happening to me?
“You never got a look at the upstairs.” Austin led me away from the kitchen and Kingsley, who was doing dishes. “Would you like to? Or maybe we can sit out on the deck with a glass of wine. Of course, I can take you home if you’d prefer.”
I slipped my arm around his middle, sighing when he pulled me into his arms. “You have a deck upstairs, don’t you? I thought