Stone Passions Trilogy (87 page)

She knew he had caught her staring but she couldn’t have dragged her eyes away if her studio was on fire and the flames were licking at her skin. Hell, she wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the heat coming from within and the fire consuming her from without.

In the space of five minutes his expression had gone from mildly amused to aroused to angry to confused and for the first time since she decided Armand was destined for her she had hope that he might realize it, too.

She knew that she was taking a huge risk in pursuing Armand but all she could see was a fairytale ending, loving and being loved by the most amazing man she had ever known. She had it all planned out: he would fall madly in love with her and offer her his nights, which she would accept in a heartbeat. In fact, she wouldn’t leave his side from the moment they began the ritual on a new moon to the moment it was completed on the following new moon. She would give him no reason to doubt or worry and when the sun rose she would turn into a gargoyle, maybe even a griffin to match her beloved Armand.

Smiling to herself, she walked around her subject, sitting so proudly on the stool. Ideas were flying through her head and she sketched as quickly as she could, capturing his arrogant brow, his carved jaw, his luscious, uncompromising lips. The painting itself was going to take a few days so she wasn’t going to come at him with all of her guns blazing… she was going to have to try being subtle. By the time the portrait was complete he would be hers. She just had to tread carefully so as not to spook him.

“So, Jenna is pretty excited to be doing the ritual in a few weeks,” she said casually, carefully gauging his response. He did not disappoint as his spine stiffened and his jaw clenched. Smiling to herself, she sketched a few lines into her book. “They’re heading to the Caribbean to spend their days in the warm, tropical sun.”

“I’m surprised Jenna convinced Rhys to go anywhere,” he grumbled, the familiar Armand reasserting himself. “He hates flying.”

“Yes,” Ferris agreed, smudging one of the lines she had drawn to add depth to the image. “But he loves my mom and would do just about anything for her.”

His response was a grunt, which Armand was able to make sound almost elegant. For a moment Ferris doubted the wisdom of wanting more from him. Their relationship was already so incredible she was a fool to desire his love and devotion. But she was also a fool in love with the man that had made her childhood bearable, the one person she could talk to about the difficulties of being the odd man out, she in the human world and he in his own. As wonderful as Ajreis was, his solution was to ignore everyone or kick their collective asses. He wasn't very helpful even if he made her laugh.

“Did you love the woman for whom you gave up your nights?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light and just a shade uninterested in his answer even though his answer was so important. Her belly constricted in anticipation and she tightened her hold on the charcoal until it snapped. Hoping he didn't notice, she clumsily set one of the pieces down and continued working with the other half.

Armand was silent, thoughtful, before he answered, “I thought I loved her.”

She arched an eyebrow at that and he smiled ruefully, “She saw me for what I was and wanted me anyway. It was a heady experience for someone young and stupid.”

“I know you for what you are,” she reminded him. That probably wasn’t so subtle but she doubted he would recognize it in the way she meant it.

“I know,” he acknowledged. “And I appreciate that you do not differentiate. Back then, when magic was even more taboo than it is currently, being a creature that transforms from a man to a stone beast was not something to shout about. It's still not entirely acceptable.”

“You’re not a creature,” she said quietly, fiercely. He blinked at the passion in her voice and she had to remember to dial it back some, “I mean, you’re a gargoyle.”

His lips quirked into a half-smile as he shook his head, “It’s the same thing, Ferris. I’m not a human and that is all that mattered at the time.”

When it was apparent that he wasn’t going to continue, she pushed, “So, this girl… what did she look like?”

He chuckled at her ploy, “Katrina was beautiful. She had hair of the palest blond and eyes… well, I don’t exactly recall her eye color. Rhys insists they were brown but I could have sworn they were light teal, almost the color of your eyes. It was her expression when she saw me transform that I remember most. She was enthralled.”

Freezing her smile in place, she ignored the praise he heaped on the wretched woman’s head. She had to remind herself that had Katrina accepted his gift then Armand wouldn’t be single now. “How did she ever get the chance to see you change? I mean, you guys are hyper-sensitive about that kind of thing.”

He grinned, a smile that was almost boyish and completely devastating. It was a smile she hadn’t seen before, something that was light and carefree. “When we were young we were not always so careful. We also liked pissing off our older brothers and so during the night the three of us would ride our horses as far away from the estate as we could and still make it back it time; we didn’t always make it back before the sun rose.”

She had to smile as the memories warmed his voice. Shaking his head, he continued, “When that happened, we’d have to find a place to hide. And occasionally we were seen.”

He laughed as he reminisced and Ferris found herself listening to him instead of drawing. “We were such hellions, Rhys, Vaughn and I. We deliberately provoked our older brothers – our guardians at the time – because we could. They were so full of themselves, already bored with life and unsure how to deal with the three hell-raising gargoyles.

“On the night I met Katrina we had spent the night carousing – drinking, gambling, whoring,” he shook his head, oblivious to the stab of jealousy that hit her at his words so easily spoken. “We wagered on how long we could stay out and still make it back to the estate before the sun rose. Vaughn was conservative with forty-five minutes, Rhys said forty and being the cocky bastard I was I said thirty.

“Needless to say, I didn’t make it back in thirty minutes.” He smiled, the sight so beautiful she wanted to weep. “I was still miles from the estate when I changed and I ended up stuck in a squire’s garden, amidst other statuary and sending my horse home without me. I had been wise enough to strip off my clothes before I changed completely but in my conceit I thought no one would notice an extra statue, even a great, huge hulking beast of a gargoyle that was blatantly out of place in the middle of graceful nudes.”

“You’re pretty spectacular in your gargoyle form,” she murmured, blushing when he arched an eyebrow at that comment.

“I’m pretty sure you’ve never seen me in all of my glory,” he countered. “I’ve always been very careful to shield your eyes.”

She simply smiled, unwilling to tell him about the time she was seventeen and had snuck up onto the roof at noon. Ajreis had provided a temporary shadow spell to hide her presence and Armand had never known she was there. Her first glimpse of a male’s anatomy was eye-popping and she had almost given herself away by gasping out loud. Since then, she had discovered through art class that human males have much, much smaller penises. Thank God. “Go on, Armand, what happened?”

He gave her a look but continued with the tale, “I thought I had gotten away with it until the beautiful Katrina came out into the gardens just as the sun was setting. I willed her away but I was still young and didn’t have that kind of influence yet. As the sun set she watched me change.”

“I’m sure you were quite the sight for young, virginal eyes,” Ferris muttered, slashing a few lines onto the sketch pad, jealous that the beautiful Katrina got to see what she had hungered to see for so long: Armand’s transformation. She wanted to watch him change from a human to a gargoyle and back to a human.

He chuckled, “Well, she didn’t scream and for a gargoyle that was something. Within a few days she gave me her virginity and back then that actually meant something so of course I offered her my nights.”

There went that flare of jealousy again because virginity still meant something, at least it did to her. Despite being the freak in high school there were still plenty of opportunities to lose her virginity, had she decided that was what she wanted. Clearing her throat, she asked casually, “So, do you offer your nights to every girl who gives you her virginity?”

He chuckled and shook his head no, “Not after Katrina.”

“Do you make a habit out of taking girls’ virginity?”

He laughed harder, “Not at all but occasionally the situation arises and I accept. It’s not that big of a deal.”

Her heart was hammering in her chest, wanting to scream at him that it was a big deal, that a girl only lost her virginity once and she wanted to give hers to him. Even if it didn’t mean anything to him it meant everything to her. “What happened? I mean, why didn’t she accept your gift and become a gargoyle? Did she not want to lose her family?”

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging his broad shoulders, his muscles flexing and bunching in the golden ambient light. He stared off, lost in the past, and she quickly sketched the wistful, heartfelt look in his green eyes. When he spoke his voice seemed to come from another place, another time, “There was a moment that I felt our souls connect and I knew – I
knew
– that we were meant to be together. But in the next heartbeat she was telling me that she couldn’t go through with it, that it was for the best.

“And then she disappeared and left me to face my last night alone,” he spat out, the resentment twisting his voice. He looked up and met her eyes, almost pleading with her to understand, “I was furious, Fer. She left me and I had to face my final night as a human alone since my brothers had gone out to give us time to ourselves.”

Her heart was breaking for him and the sketches she was working on blurred with tears. There were no words to make it better, even time didn’t seem to ease the pain he had experienced.

“They returned home just before the sun rose,” he continued. “They were as devastated as I was but they stayed by my side for the next sixty-seven years as she went about her life, finding someone else to love, someone else to marry, someone else to have children with.”

He was lost in the past, his emotions playing out on his handsome features, the sorrow, the bitterness. Softly, she whispered “I am sorry, Armand. You didn’t deserve that.”

Blinking, he looked at her and returned to the present, “For a long time I was so mad but now I think that it was for the best. If it hadn’t been for that one fleeting moment that we connected I would have been relieved that she had not accepted.”

“Would you ever give up your nights again?” she asked, trying to keep the hope out of her voice.

“Hell, no,” he vowed vehemently. “Hell, no.”

She tried to laugh but it sounded forced so she ended up clearing her throat instead as she captured the intensity in his eyes. “So you plan on never falling in love again?”

“Naturally,” he said, the arrogance oozing in his voice.

Laughing uneasily, she shook her head in wonder, “How do you plan on preventing it?”

“It’s not that difficult, Ferris,” he claimed matter-of-factly. “I don’t allow anyone to get close enough and I keep things simple: it’s only ever about the sex.”

Wow, her quest to seduce him into offering her his nights was suddenly exponentially more difficult. Well, she didn’t have to have his nights. She could have a lifetime with him, grow old while he stayed young. It wasn’t what she wanted but it was better than nothing. Or maybe she could find the wizard that helped her mother and aunt and buy enough time to make Armand see that what he needed was right in front of his eyes.

There was time.

Chapter 3

Pushing the Boundaries

A few minutes before the sun was set to rise, Armand tied the belt of his robe around his waist before he stood up, leaving his torso naked and nearly bringing Ferris to her knees with the sheer beauty of his body. His muscles gleamed beneath the bright, artificial light, flexing and bunching as he untwisted the material of his robe and slid his arms into the sleeves. He had devised the system on the third day, keeping the robe on until he was seated and then letting the material drape the chair beneath his body and denying her the pleasure of catching a glimpse of his gorgeous backside.

The material gaped open and even though she had spent the past couple of hours ogling his chest, the peek-a-boo effect was still incredibly erotic. Her grip on the palette tightened until it felt on the verge of cracking and she had to forcibly set it down.

“It’s much easier to sit in one position when I’m stone,” he said with a wry smile, twisting his torso first one direction and then the other, stretching the stiff muscles

As his bones popped and cracked, Ferris grimaced. It was unfair of her to keep Armand sitting in her studio when he didn’t really have to be there. She could have taken a photograph and worked from the image. Hell, she probably could have done the entire painting from memory. Of course, it also would have gone quicker if she didn’t keep getting sidetracked by their conversations – or his jade green eyes or his occasional smile or his naked flesh… In actuality, she simply enjoyed spending time with the taciturn man who rarely grinned, chatting with him about anything and everything, even if he was oblivious to her seduction attempts. “It shouldn’t be too much longer.”