Guardian of the Abyss Read Online Free Page A

couldn't name, but wanted to hold onto.
    After a while, she seemed to get tired of the sniffing and nuzzling. She grew still for a protracted moment, until her hand reached out and touched his bicep. The touch was light, the merest flutter as of the tiny fish that sometimes slipped past him, a fin touching on the way.
    He had no problem identifying his response to that touch. It was entirely different from when fish fluttered past him, and he had never forgotten that particular feeling. He stayed still, wincing with a level of embarrassment that he hadn't realized he could still feel as his penis swelled beneath her. Arousal darkened the moment and he felt embarrassed.
    She stilled and her hand retreated. He felt her tension and fury at himself swirled through him. She was afraid again. There was nothing he could do, though. He didn't really have control over that part of himself, and it had been so long since he had bothered to put the appearance of coverings on his body that he would need to take time to focus on doing it. He hadn't had any warning that she was going to rub all over him like... like a cat, he remembered belatedly.
    She was stock still for a while before slowly climbing off of him and sitting on the far wall away from him. He felt his embarrassment deepen to humiliation. Reminded of a time so long ago that only the primal, torturous nature of it kept it alive in the dimmest recesses of his mind, he concentrated until he formed the loincloth that had been given him by his makers. Because it was fashioned of his own skin, he was able to draw it across in front of his penis and pull it in snug against him. He doubted she wanted to see it jutting out when he stood to go outside. That she was afraid of him because of it hurt him.
    So he scowled and stomped out of the lair, jumping down into the water not caring if it splashed her or not. Here he was, using up all of his precious energy to warm her. He was using his resources and wasting his time to catch her food and cook it for her. And what was her response? She treated him like some sort of monstrous fiend.
    He knew what 'demon' meant. Apparently 'deamonium' had not changed very much in the time he'd been in this trap. She'd called him one, which didn't surprise him. After all, the sorcerers who had betrayed and then created him in order to force him to protect their monasteries and other religious institutions, had ensured that everyone would be petrified of him and his offspring.
    Being unsurprised by it, and knowing it was certain to have been the way that she was indoctrinated from the beginning, didn't make it hurt any less. Strangely, he remembered his life before being made into a gargoyle better than he remembered life since then. He'd always been frightening to women. A big man to begin with, he had never been handsome. Other men either feared him or sought him out in order to fight him. Women generally feared him or thought him stupid... the idea of a ham-handed giant being generally accepted as synonymous with a balatro--idiot or fool.
    He caught a fish and brought it inside the cavern. As he leaped out of the water, she gasped and scrambled backwards. This time, he recognized the anger that flared in him. Not bothering to moderate his tread, he stomped back to the hole she used for her eliminating--a disgusting process about which he did not complain, thank-you-very-much-for-noticing--and extended a nail into a claw. He decapitated and cleaned the fish, dropping the viscera down the hole.
    When that was done, he stood up and took the fish in his hands. Reaching deep within himself, he called upon his sorcerer's abilities. He teased the molecules in the fish until they sped up. Soon the fish was heated and cooked through.
    He dropped it at her feet without looking at her and stomped the five paces across their tiny living quarters. There, his back deliberately turned towards her, he shifted with his gaze to the wall.
     
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    The demon