Stone Passions Trilogy (94 page)

She had always loved her studio, especially during the day, but after her nights with Armand it had become even more special to her. There was a skylight in the ceiling that flooded the room with sunshine, giving her the natural light that she craved. She planned on enjoying it while she could because once she accepted Armand’s gift she would no longer be able to enjoy the sunshine with human eyes.

It was worth it in order to spend eternity with Armand.

The door to her studio opened and she smiled, wondering what Jenna forgot. Her mom always said goodbye every time she left, even if she had done so only an hour earlier. Turning around, her world shattered and came crashing down around her feet. Armand stood there, beneath a beam of sunlight, a grim expression on his
human
face as he stared at her in defiance and regret. Horror filled her soul as her legs gave out and she crumbled to the floor, unwilling to comprehend what she was seeing with her very own eyes.

He was by her side in an instant, wrapping her in his strong arms, comforting her even as he was killing her. “Shh, don’t be upset, Ferris.”

“How could you?” she choked out, the future she had been dreaming about turning to dust in an instant. Betrayal clawed at her gut and she wanted to rage and scream and wail.

“I wanted you to stop looking at me as if I hung the goddamned moon and stars,” he said solemnly, stroking his long, elegant fingers through her hair, holding her head against his heart. “I’m not for you, Ferris. You must know that.”

“How can you say that?” she cried. “I’ve loved you all of my life! I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen.”

“You’re a child,” he murmured softly. “You have your whole life in front of you. How can you even begin to think that a life with me, a life as a gargoyle, is what you want when it is all you have ever known?”

“So you took the choice away from me,” she seethed, teetering between despair and fury. Wrenching her head around, she glared up at him, “She’s never going to accept your gift.”

“I know,” he bit out, resignation in his voice. “I never expected her to. It’s why I left her behind.”

Morbid curiosity made her ask, “Who is she?”

He shook his head, “It doesn’t matter because I’ll never see her again.”

“Who. Is. She?” she ground out.

He stared at her, his green eyes moving over her face, absorbing her features. Finally, he relented and rasped, “A woman who needed a bit of luck. She had lost her husband and child during the Rapture and she agreed to the terms I offered.”

“You don’t even know her name, do you?” she asked.

“It's not important,” he stubbornly told her, his jaw clenching in ragged determination. “I needed someone I could never love so I could give you a chance to find your true love.”

She swung her arm and slapped him across the face, for the betrayal, for taking away her choice before it was even offered. “I love
you
, Armand. You were supposed to give your nights to me and we would have been gargoyles together.”

He stared at her for a long moment, his lips pressed together in a thin line, a muscle ticking in his jaw, his pulse pounding in his throat. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the effort, “It would have destroyed me had you refused my gift.”

She laughed mournfully as tears slipped heedlessly down her cheeks. Gently covering the angry red welt on his face with her hand, she shook her head at him, “Do you honestly think I would have refused you? That I would leave you? I haven’t left your side since I was six years old.”

The corners of his mouth tilted upwards in a sad, rueful half-smile, “Exactly.”

She stared at him in incomprehension. He gazed at her with longing as he turned his head and kissed her palm, “I’m all you've ever known, Ferris. It would be cruel and selfish of me to ask you for more knowing that you would give it in a heartbeat.”

“Of course I would.” She simply didn’t comprehend what would drive him so far away from her.

“We have a month, Ferris,” he said softly. “Will you be able to forgive me and spend the days with me?”

Her lips parted in horrific understanding as sorrow clasped her heart between its cold and cruel hands and squeezed. As tears welled in her eyes, spilling over in a torrent of despair, she wrapped her arms around him and held onto him as if that would be enough to keep him with her. In desperation, she pressed her lips to his, kissing him, devouring him, taking him into her soul so that he would never leave her even though he would be gone in just a few short weeks.

With strength born of desperation, she pushed him onto his back, clawing and tearing at his clothes until he was naked beneath her, her lips kissing and nipping along his skin. She wanted to punish him for breaking her heart and cherish him for his misguided selflessness. Panting heavily, she tore the clothes from her own body and sprawled out on top of him, wanting to touch him everywhere, wanting to be touched everywhere by him.

Straddling his hips, she slowly took him into her body, feeling the pleasurable ache as he stretched her and filled her. His hands covered her breasts as she rode him, needing to forget everything beyond the four walls of her studio. In that room it was just the two of them. Nothing else mattered, nothing else existed. She slid her body down until her breasts were pressed against his hard chest and then she ran her hands along his arms, pushing them above his head until her lips were a breath away from his. “What the hell were you thinking, giving up your nights to a stranger when you could have given them up to me?”

“I wasn’t thinking, Ferris,” he admitted. “I only knew that I had to save you from yourself and I couldn’t bear it if you refused me.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Yes,” he agreed readily, sadly. “I am.”

“You can’t leave me, Armand,” she breathed, kissing him softly. Against his lips, she rasped, “You’re my destiny.”

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, lifting his head and deepening the kiss.

Raphe looked through the skylight, a frown marring the otherwise immaculate line of his gargoyle face. “It appears as if Armand has given up his nights.”

The other two crowded around and looked in, seeing the naked limbs of Ferris and Armand entwined together, surprise evident on all three gargoyles’ faces. Michael’s stone lips parted and then slammed shut and then parted. He finally managed to ask, “How could he have given Ferris his nights? She spent most of the night at the bar with us.”

“I don’t think he gave Ferris his nights,” Raphe murmured, thoughtfully.

“Are we going to have to take a chisel to our older brother’s body?” Michael asked savagely, taking apparent glee in the idea.

“No,” Leo growled, grabbing his smaller brothers by their arms and hauling them away from the window, giving Ferris and Armand the privacy they deserved.

It wasn’t going to end well for the two lovers. What had Armand been thinking when he gave his nights to someone else? Anyone with eyes could have seen how much Ferris loved him, more than he would ever know. She may have thought she was discreet but her eyes lit up whenever Armand entered the room, her smile grew a little brighter and she was just a touch more animated.

Raphe just never thought Armand would do anything about it and had assumed Ferris had finally moved on, especially when Michael had taunted her about taking a lover. Of course, if Armand had been the mystery lover that would explain Ferris’s barely contained nervous energy over the past weeks even though Armand had been gone. The others might not have been aware of it, though Raphe doubted that was true. For the three of them who had grown up with Ferris it was unmistakable. Raphe had just assumed, had
hoped
, she was giddy over her new lover.

“He’s going to break her heart,” Michael glowered.

“That was always inevitable,” Raphe agreed with sad acknowledgement.

“I don’t think so,” Leo said quietly, his broad nose twitching in the breeze. “I think maybe one of us should offer up their nights for her, then they can be together as gargoyles when he wakes up.”

If marble could pale then the three of them would be white. Michael visibly shuddered, “While I adore Ferris I don’t think I could sleep with her. She’s, well, she’s Ferris.”

“That’s not the part that scares me,” Leo balked, even though he was the one who suggested it. “Imagine Armand waking up and discovering that one of us gave up his nights to her, that one of us
slept
with her. It is bound to end badly and I am pretty sure whoever did it would end up with a chisel being taken to his body.”

“And I’m pretty sure I know which piece would be chiseled,” Michael said grimly and the three of them winced, taking a moment to evaluate the risk.

“You know she would accept the gift in a heartbeat to become a gargoyle so she could be with Armand.” As Leo’s words sank in, the three brothers nodded their heads in agreement. After a moment, Leo suggested, “I say we draw straws. The loser seduces Ferris and gives her his nights,”

“Let Raphe do it,” Michael piped in. “He’s even less experienced than Ferris so if he fails to give her an orgasm he can just blame his virginity.”

A low rumble came from the back of Raphe’s throat and his ears slicked back against his head as his hackles rose. Before things could get out of hand, Leo stepped between then and grabbed each of them by the back of the neck, easily lifting his brothers off their feet. He was sorely tempted to smash their heads together but he refrained. “Behave! We don’t need to draw attention to ourselves.”

“It’s not like it matters,” Michael complained. “The whole world knows magic exists. I don’t know why we remain hidden.”

“We simply do,” Raphe said, his head cooling much faster than Michael’s.

Leo glanced at his youngest brother and set him down. The panther walked a few yards away and hunched down, contemplative once more. Looking at his older brother, Leo set Michael down as well. He promptly batted Leo’s hand away and stalked off in the opposite direction, grumbling and swearing under his breath.

Chapter 7

The Calm Before the Storm

Ferris lay snuggled against Armand’s chest, listening to the steady rhythm of his beating heart. Everything would have been perfect if he wasn’t going to be leaving her in less than a week. Darkness followed them wherever they went so they could never be perfectly happy, not for more than a heartbeat at a time. They had to live an entire lifetime in a month.

They had flown off to ski resort in Colorado and spent the first days in a state of euphoria as they explored one another’s bodies. Growing up, she had always been reserved but with Armand she wanted to experience everything because she trusted him with her soul. One night as they sat curled up in front of the fire, she turned to him, a twinkle in her eyes, and declared, “I want to drink all of the liquor in this place and get as drunk as I can possibly get.”

He brushed a strand of hair from her face and smiled at her in that hot, indulgent way of his, “You’ve never had more than a sip or two of wine at dinner and you’ll pass out after your first shot.”

“I won’t,” she readily denied, standing up and heading over to the well-stocked bar, comfortable in her nudity. Armand made a strangled sound as she moved and she smiled, knowing that she was having such a profound effect on him without even trying. Grabbing a couple of beers from the mini fridge, she looked over her shoulder and asked, “How does it go? Beer before wine and you’ll be fine?”

Slowly, he stood up and stretched his long, supple muscles, his erection straining in front of him. Ferris’s mind went blank as he stalked across the room, a knowing smile curving his lips. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he pulled her into the heat of his body and placed his chin on her shoulder, “I don’t know. Gargoyles don’t have any difficulties with alcohol.”

It took her a moment to find some working brain cells as she basked in his heat. Fuzzy memories of the three younger gargoyles getting drunk brought her back to the present and she cleared her throat. Moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue, she rasped, “But you can get drunk.”