Stone Passions Trilogy (121 page)

Fray’s self-conscious chuckle washed through her and then she felt them inside: the wings. They became a part of her body, an extension of her shoulder blades. She could feel her blood coursing through her new, golden wings and if felt as if she had always had wings. Cautiously, she pushed the wings down and then laughed in delight as the wings obeyed. Closing her eyes, she pushed off the ground, her golden wings manipulating the air currents until she was flying.

The warm air drifted over her face, her skin, and she knew that she loved flying. Her bubble wasn’t very large but it was enough to spread her wings and fly in circles and loops. No wonder why Armand was so cranky, to have wings and not be able to fly because someone might see. When she got back she would take him to an island and they could fly to their hearts’ content.

If he was willing to listen to her.

If not, she would go to that island with her children and fly with them. Of course, she would have to find them their own pocket dragons so they could have glorious dragon wings with which to fly but that was just a minor detail. It would take years before they would be able to fly with her but they had the time. Maybe the three terrors would like to join her.

Hell, the entire family could settle on the island and spend their days flying without worry of being discovered. Of course, now that the veil was gone it didn’t really matter if they were seen flying or not. All of the creatures were coming out to play, who would care if a few gargoyles decided to join them?

Why do you not let go of the mask, Dragon-Mate?
Fray’s voice rumbled in her head.

“I don’t want to lose my humanity, Fray,” she told him for the millionth time, gliding in a wide circle. “It would be too easy to let it all go but it isn’t what I want. I want my life with Armand and if not with him then my family.” She laughed irreverently, “Besides, I have been pretending for so long that I forget what I am. I still think I’m human.”

Fray’s low, rumbling laughter echoed in her head.
But you’ll always be Ferris
.

She sighed in amused resignation, “Yeah, I will be.”

Chin up, Dragon-Mate
, Fray consoled.
The sun is shining, the breeze is warm, you’re in an enchanted time bubble and soon you’ll be home with no one the wiser.

“Isn’t that the story of my life?” she chuckled, strangely melancholic that Fray was the only one who knew her completely, who lived her life with her. Even after telling her mom about spending years in the enchanted world while only a few weeks passed back home she never told Jenna about her experiences. She never talked about how difficult it had been to learn how to control her new, unwieldy powers, or how she had to beat them back into submission or how she had to learn to be human again so she didn’t freak her family out when she returned.

It saddened her that no one knew what an incredible father Marick was to their children, how devoted he had been. They never got to see his unguarded smile as Gwen and Gavin took their first steps, spoke their first words, threw their first lightning bolts. The twins had been raised in an idyllic environment befitting their demi-godhood, surrounded by magic and love.

But Armand was the only one in her heart. After the difficult pregnancy, Marick seemed to accept the truth that her heart beat only for Armand and they became true friends once more. He knew that she was counting the minutes until she could be reunited with the other half of her soul.

She just hadn’t expected the reunion to be so damn short and painful.

At first she had struggled so hard to control her goddess, especially on days when she thought about what Armand did, how he gave up his nights to another woman, how he slept with a stranger to do it. Rage and jealousy ignited the powers that bubbled within her and Marick had been the only one who could calm her. He was the one who taught her how to master her new abilities instead of letting them master her. It would have been so easy to turn their genuine friendship into something more but that was never something she wanted.

Had she been a different person she would have been able to give in to temptation, have sex with the gorgeous man, indulge in her most wicked fantasies. But she wasn’t someone else. She was Ferris, the destined mate of Armand. No matter how much she wanted to deny it when she was in a state of fury, it was the truth. Knowing that he was her destiny, that they were meant to be together, got her through some of the darkest moments of her life.

Knowing that she might have to let him go ate away at her soul. But she couldn’t keep chasing after him because at some point it became pathetic and she feared that she was long past that point.

Shaking off the past, she closed her eyes and laughed with the utmost pleasure, “I could fly forever, Fray, absolutely forever.”

Ferris idly drifted through the sky, her wings gently undulating and keeping her afloat. After several weeks of flying it still wasn’t old, at least for Ferris. Poor Fray was exhausted from being outdoors all day long, every day and so he slept while she flew, gliding around the bubble and closing her eyes to pretend there were no barriers between her and flying off into eternity.

She was finally at peace with her decision to let Armand go. And if she occasionally had a twinge of regret or despair she ignored it because in the end all she really wanted was for Armand to be happy. Before, when she had let him go she had hunted him down and dragged him back to her. This time he was going to have to return on his own.

A sad smile curved her lips at the thought because she doubted he would actively seek her out, not after the way they had parted, not after the finality of their last goodbye.

Maybe when she got back she could expand the number of classes she taught at the college or maybe offer a few classes at the local community center. God, she was going to be another year and a half older than her mom when she got back. It was better, she supposed, than being five hundred years older, which would have been the case without Omar… Apollo and his time bubble. Hell, if that were the case, she would be almost as old as Armand and possibly just as jaded.

No, he was jaded because the woman he thought he loved turned her back on him. Ferris cursed. Maybe they were simply destined to spend eternity hurting one another and it had nothing to do with love.

She was going to have to move far away from the Castle when she got back, at least until she was able to handle being in the same room as Armand and not want to cry or jump his bones. “Fray? You awake?”

The little dragon grumbled an incoherent answer so she took it to mean he was awake and eager to talk with her. “Fray? What do you think about an island in the South Pacific? Someplace in the middle of nowhere?”

“Too hot,” he growled.

“Then maybe we can find an uninhabited place close to Medusa’s old island?”

“Why not just use Medusa’s island?” he rumbled.

“Too many gargoyles know of it,” she answered. “And with the curse lifted it’s a favorite vacation spot for said gargoyles and their families.”

“You mean your mom and aunt,” Fray corrected, since the older gargoyles were perfectly content in not taking on human mates and the youngest gargoyles had no desire to settle down just yet.

“You know me too well,” she smiled. “What do you think….”

“What do I think about what?” Fray asked when she didn’t finish her question. But she couldn’t because the air inside of the bubble had abruptly changed, becoming super charged somehow. “Dragon-Mate?”

“Someone’s here,” she whispered, keeping her eyes on the line of trees that concealed the door. The line of trees she had planted to hide the temptation of sneaking out to find Armand before he became too jaded, thereby screwing up the timeline completely. She had used a dollop of her power to make them grow to full size in a matter of hours.

She felt Fray awake completely, his senses on full alert, as they drifted back to the ground. If some creature discovered its way into the time bubble it could mean disaster, for them or for the creature. The wings shrunk back down as Fray pried himself from her back and wrapped around her ribs as a tattoo to be an element of surprise should the visitor prove to be dangerous. Waving a hand over her body, she covered her nudity with a simple white dress as she slowly moved closer to the trees.

Her heart was pounding furiously in her chest and anticipation bubbled in her belly, almost as if she knew who was coming but was afraid to think it out loud for fear that she was wrong.

Besides, the sun was – of course, the sun was always out – so it couldn’t possibly be….

Yet, the man who stepped out of the woods looked like him. For a split second she thought that perhaps Katrina had died and the Armand of the past was no longer encased in stone. But just as quickly she realized that it was her Armand.

No, that wasn’t true because he was never her Armand for more than a heartbeat. It was simply Armand and he was walking beneath the sun as a man and her heart shattered into a million pieces. Squeezing her eyes shut, she promised herself she wouldn’t cry. So she pasted a smile to her frozen lips and opened her eyes to welcome the other half of her soul to her temporal prison. Holding out her hands, she murmured, “Armand.”

“Ferris,” he rasped, her name a prayer on his lips as he crossed the distance between them and sunk his fingers into her hair. Without another word, he covered her mouth with his and breathed life back into her broken heart. His tongue stole between her lips and lay siege to her body, claiming her, branding her, with a heated kiss.

But he was a gargoyle walking as a man beneath the sun.

Wrenching away from him, she covered her bruised lips with her hand and glared at the man who was so cruel and wonderful. Laughing derisively, she glared at him, “Do you make it a habit of giving up your nights to strangers and then spending the month fucking me?”

The look of confusion that twisted his face was almost adorable but she was furious. The powers she thought she had managed to beat into submission were writhing within her, bubbling and boiling over, threatening to burn away every remnant of humanity she desperately clung to. His lips parted in awe as he gazed at her, “Ferris, what are you talking about?”

She sputtered, enraged that he should play the fool when it was obvious what he had done. “You. Are. A. Man. Beneath. The. Sun.”

He tilted his head back and looked up at the sky, squinting his eyes as if just realizing the sun was shining. With a surprised laugh, he turned back to Ferris about to say something until he saw the look on her face and took an unconscious step backwards. Holding his hands up in submission, he spoke slowly, “Ferris, love, I didn’t give my nights to anyone. I swear! Ferris!”

The air was crackling around her as fury pierced the skin over her ribs. It took her a moment to realize it was her dragon digging his claws into her tender flesh. The bite of pain yanked her out of her anger as she clutched her side. “What the hell, Fray?”

“Foolish Dragon-Mate,” the dragon chuckled, pulling away from her body and becoming corporeal once more. Skittering up her arm, he settled on her shoulder and nodded his head at Armand in greeting. “Greetings, Armand.”

“Fray,” Armand said warily, nodding at the dragon while keeping a close eye on Ferris.

“Dragon-Mate,” Fray calmly said in his low, deep voice. “We’re in the land of faerie; the rules don’t apply here hence your gargoyle is a man beneath the sun.”

Her chest was rapidly rising and falling as she struggled to contain the power that had surged within her. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on her breathing but Armand’s sensual scent wrapped itself around her brain and choked off her common sense, twisting the fury she had been riding into something far more erotic. Without opening her eyes, she reached out and curled her fingers into the front of his shirt, pulling him to her.

Sliding her arm around his waist, she plastered her body along the front of his and finally opened her eyes to find his beautiful, green eyes staring back at her. Apprehension and lust burned in the jade depths but she didn’t care; she had too much power coursing through her system to worry about his fear.

Stretching up on her toes, she pulled his head down to hers and kissed him, devouring his lips, taking him into her soul. He didn’t even hesitate, kissing her back with fiery hunger as he wrapped his arms around her body and held her even closer. The material of his shirt was shredded as she tore it from his body to get to the hard muscles beneath. Running her hands over his heated flesh, she pushed the ruined shirt off his broad shoulders. Then she pushed him to the ground, chasing him down with her lips fused to his.

Straddling his waist, feeling the ridge of his erection against her groin, she raked her nails across his chest, drawing blood. His hiss was a combination of pain and pleasure and it fed the frenzy boiling in her blood. Trailing wet kisses along the strong column of his neck, over the hardened muscles of his chest, she tore at his pants, unbuttoning and unzipping them.

With free rein, she ran her hand along the heated length of his penis, giving it a gentle squeeze on every upstroke. She flicked her tongue over his nipple before she clamped her mouth on the pulse point of his throat. Sucking deeply, tasting his moonlight skin, marking him. She wanted to devour him. Her nipples brushed against his hard chest as she continued stroking his straining cock.