Stone Romance (Stone Passion #2)

by A C Warneke

  “Jenna,” he crooned again in his rocky voice, wrapping his stone fingers around her wrist and prying the pillow out from beneath her arms. A silky robe was slid onto her arms, covering her body and making her wonder what Rhys was up to; usually he preferred her naked.

  Curious, she rolled over and looked up at the gargoyle who loomed over her, a smile on his stone face, “Good, you’re awake.”

  “Barely,” she murmured, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and glancing out the small window, “What time is it?”

  “Just after noon,” he grinned, grabbing her hands and pulling her to a sitting position. Still blurry-eyed, she pulled the front of the robe closed and tied the sash. “I’m taking you flying today.”

  She looked up at him, “Aren’t there people on the water?”

  “Not so many that I cannot glamor any who might see us into believing that we’re just a large bird,” he said, pulling her to her feet without waiting for her to be ready. He guided her to the bathroom and shoved her through the door, “Hurry up; I’ll be up on the deck waiting for you.”

  Yawning, she made it through her morning routine, managing to even brush her teeth. She was incredibly excited to go flying with Rhys; the very thought of it did more to wake her up than a pot of coffee and by the time she was done in the bathroom she was more than ready to fly. Saying good morning to the minimal crew, she quickly made her way up to the deck, grinning when she saw Rhys standing there with his wings spread out and his face tilted back, soaking up the sun. His marble skin gleamed in the brilliant light and she loved him.

  Quietly, she crossed the deck and wrapped her arms around him from behind, hugging the gargoyle, her cheek resting just above the small of his back and between his wings. He was epic in his massive size. “Good morning.”

  He turned in her arms until he could enfold her in his arms, his wings. She loved his gargoyle hugs; they surrounded her completely and she felt so safe and loved. “Good afternoon.”

  She laughed at the reminder, “Good afternoon, then.”

  “I trust you slept well,” he graveled, his hands slowly moving up and down her back.

  Tilting her head way back, she rested her chin against his navel, “I slept well but not enough.”

  His hand caressed her cheek, “Do you want to put off this flight?”

  “Are you kidding me?” she asked, rubbing her chin back and forth against the smooth, hot stone. “I have been longing for this since I discovered you were a gargoyle. Just let me get dressed….”

  His smile was disturbing and beautiful as he gathered her up in his arms and she instinctively tightened her grip. He crouched down for a moment and then launched them into the air, his large, stone wings lifting them higher and higher until they were soaring over the ocean. The sky was a dazzling blue and the sun shone down at them and she had nothing but a thin robe covering her naked body. As the wind whipped through the silky material, lifting the hem over the curve of her bottom, he shouted, “Hold on.”

  “Rhys!” she cried out, pressing harder against his body as if she could crawl into his stone skin and find refuge. “I’m nearly naked!”

  “And there’s no one to see you but the creatures of the sea,” he countered, laughing loudly as he flew. His body radiated joy and the tension started to ease from her as she discovered just how much he loved to fly, as long as he was in charge. It hardly seemed possible that such a stone creature could fly but he was and his enthusiasm was contagious. “Besides, you said you wanted to fly with me.”

  She threw her head back and laughed, loving the wind tangling her hair. Tearing her gaze away from the gray muscles of his throat, she looked down at the vast, deep blue Mediterranean Sea beneath them. The monstrous yacht looked like a toy, surrounded by miles and miles of unending sea. There were a few other boats and ships dotting the water but she doubted they were looking at the sky and even if they were, they couldn’t possibly believe their eyes if they saw beneath the illusion to the robe-clad girl in the arms of a flying stone monkey.

  The imagery delighted her and she laughed harder, hugging Rhys with all of the joy and love in her heart. “This is amazing, Rhys. Thank you.”

  “Ah, Jenna,” he grinned. “Don’t you know that I’ll give you the world?”

  “You are such a romantic,” she grinned, pressing a kiss against his stone lips. It was so exhilarating kissing him while he was a gargoyle; his stone mouth was mobile and his taste delectable. His flesh was hard and yet he was fluid, graceful, and when he worked his wings she was in awe. He was able to move great amounts of air, controlling how fast, how high, they went. He could dive downwards and skim the ocean then shoot upwards and touch the sky until she was sure her stomach was going to drop out of her body somehow. It was terrifying and Jenna loved every moment of it.

  He held her against his hard body as they flew for an eternity, completely together in spirit and euphoric in their flight. When he hovered over the sea the cool water sprayed her over-heated skin, cold and bracing. But the heat of his body would embrace her and the dichotomy between his sweltering skin and the frigid sea water was amazing, marvelous. In no time the water had soaked through her robe, rendering her virtually naked but she didn’t care. Especially when his monstrous penis nudged her hip, reminding her how gargantuan he was, in body and erection.

  “How can you be hard?” she called out to be heard over the wind.

  “My cock is in love with you,” he teased gruffly as his unruly flesh leapt against her skin. “Even when it knows there is no chance of gaining admittance to your sweet body it still begs for your attention.”

  She looked up into his stone monkey face and saw her generous lover, making her heart thump madly in her chest. It was so wrong to lust after him while he was a gargoyle but the memory of tasting his gargoyle orgasm lingered; she had shattered with barely a taste. With the real world threatening to burst in at any moment, she wanted the dream; the fantasy. She wanted Rhys. “Fly us higher Rhys; until the world falls away and it’s just the two of us amongst the wind.”

  Something in her expression must have warned him of her intent because his cock grew even more, nearly scalding her thigh where it pulsed with life. Swallowing shakily, he made the ascent, soaring higher and higher until Jenna thought her lungs might burst from lack of oxygen. No, she had just been holding her breath; they weren’t that high up. But looking down, she nearly fainted; the boat looked like a dot and she could see other large boats on the water that were miles away. It was breathtaking. “That’s high enough!”

  He hovered in place, his large body wrapped around hers as he held her in a firm grip. Smirking, he arched an eyebrow, “Is there a reason you wanted me to fly so high?”

  Licking her lips, she squirmed a little, the silky robe almost too rough against her sensitized skin. Later she would question her actions but for now….“Don’t let go.”

  “Never.”

  Her robe fluttered uselessly around her, wavering in the wind and exposing her naked limbs, her naked sex, to the birds that flew as high as they did. In truth, she barely had any concept of up or down as she twisted downward so her watering mouth was next to his cock and her sex was next to his face. His massive hands were wrapped around her waist, holding her securely, as she took the massive penis in her hands, ravenous for the unbelievably delectable fluid that was oozing out of its tip and then vanishing.

  With a ravenous sigh, she began licking the marble flesh, lapping up the fluid before it could disappear and experiencing mini orgasms with each drop. The more she drank, the deeper the orgasms became, spreading outwards in rapid succession. In the thin atmosphere the taste of his stone skin was even more potent, the chocolate-infused seminal fluid as addicting as heroin. She didn’t even care that she was addicted to him, willing to do anything to have just one more drop.

  It was a fantasy. When she returned to the real world she would put her addiction away and pray that she was able to keep it there. But for now…. She twirled her to
ngue around the marble flange, dipping her tongue into the smooth slit, loosing herself in decadent pleasure.

  “Wrap your legs around my neck,” he growled and she did, bringing the swollen folds of her sex against his mouth. Something hot and wicked probed her flesh and her eyes rolled back beneath her closed eye lids.

  She could hear his wings gently flapping, holding them steady, and the world was a million miles away as she disappeared into a gluttony of sensation. His tongue was smooth and heavy, filling her almost as much as a normal penis, pushing in and out of her tight sheath in a slow, unhurried rhythm. A smooth, heated stone finger caressed the curve of her bottom, sliding between her butt cheeks and lightly touching the puckered mouth of her ass.

  Her body stiffened at the unfamiliar touch but when he didn’t press any further she began to relax, caressing his cock and drinking from the tip. More and more fluid escaped until she was practically vibrating in continual orgasms, his tongue enhancing the pleasure of each one. They spun gracefully as his body and tongue moved in rhythm to her oral attentions, his fingers continuously caressing her ass.

  When he slowly rubbed his finger into the tight orifice she felt it throughout her entire body, the sensation of it dark and overwhelming. Beyond the intensity of feeling, she felt the heavy ache of completeness, never wanting it to end. Holding her tight, he did things to her she had never imagined and she loved it. He changed his rhythm slightly, working his tongue deeper and deeper until she was burning up. As she edged closer and closer to a cataclysmic orgasm, he came, flooding her mouth with the heated, disappearing fluid and sending her soaring into the stratosphere as she came, all of her muscles and tendons convulsing in orgasm.

  Rhys’s body remained stiff as his penis pulsed in ecstasy. Waves of pleasure crashed over her as her orgasm went on and on, as they fell from the sky. Wind rushed past her, cooling her overheated skin only slightly as Rhys maneuvered her body so her cheek was against his chest, hugging her to his stone body. He rolled over until the wind had to rush around him to reach her, heightening the sensation of crashing through the sky.

  She was still lost in orgasm as his stone body crashed into the water and they were swallowed hole. Coldness engulfed her, the salty water enhancing the last vestiges of orgasm until she was sure she had died. The sun vanished as they sank deeper and deeper into the frigid, watery depths and her lungs began to burn. The urge to breathe was killing her.

  Rhys’s stone mouth covered hers and oxygen was forced into her lungs as he began to swim upwards. Even with the ocean surrounding her she could taste herself on his lips and the breath he was giving her turned into a kiss. It kept her mind off of the fact that she was in the sea, her silk robe no barrier against the cold water. She didn’t want to think about what was in the water with them, from a large pod of whales to a prehistoric monster squid.

  She wrapped her arms around his thick neck, gasping when he broke the surface and continued his flight towards the boat, which was only a mile or so away. Kissing a gargoyle was never something she had imagined doing; kissing Rhys was all she could imagine doing for the rest of her life, no matter what his form.

  Little aftershocks of pleasure still wracked her body even as the wind plastered the wet material against her skin, chilling her to the bone. Her eyes were wide as she stared at the carved monkey who had stolen her mind, her soul. He was so beautifully formed and he was hers. She wasn’t sure how she got to be so lucky to love and be loved by such an amazing man but she wasn’t going to invite trouble. She was going to enjoy every moment with him; to do otherwise would be foolish since she didn’t know how much time they would have together. Even if she wanted a life time there were so many other things she had to consider.

  All of his talk about giving up his nights and her becoming a gargoyle was thrilling and terrifying. What if he decided he didn’t want her when she was forty, that she was too old for him? It didn’t matter that he was nearly five hundred years older than her, not when he looked to be in his early twenties.

  But he had told her he would give her the world. Didn’t he know that he already had?

  “Rhys,” she whispered as they lay beneath the velvet blackness of a nearly moonless night, the stars twinkling overhead in brilliant display. There were so many and she could almost reach out and touch them, bringing one back to earth to make a wish. Only she wasn’t sure whether she would wish for a lifetime with Rhys or the strength to live without him. She knew what she wanted – him – but she didn’t know how realistic it was to love a gargoyle while she was still human. And she couldn’t even think about accepting his gift until Ferris was old enough to no longer need a flesh and blood mother throughout the day.

  As she lay beneath the blanket of night next to the man that had become so important to her in such a short amount of time, Jenna felt like a fraud. She had been living a dream the past week or so, pretending to be young and carefree and exciting and adventurous. But she wasn’t any of those things, not any longer. She was a mother, she had responsibilities and it wasn’t fair to Rhys to give him only a part of who she was. If she loved him, she owed it to him to share everything, even the parts that she kept hidden away.

  She wasn’t like Melanie or Ferris; she couldn’t step into a world of magic and accept it with the greatest of ease. At first she thought she could but there hadn’t been any time to consider the ramifications of the veil being lifted from her eyes. It had been one thing when she first stepped onto the plane, when she had had no time to think, when there was an adventure ahead, when she would be seeing Rhys. But after a week of a constant barrage of meeting gargoyles and fairies and pixies and demons, of listening to Rhys talk about his family, about Medusa, it was starting to hit her: magic was real; mythological creatures were real.

  As long as she didn’t talk about it, didn’t think about it, she was okay. But the moment a stray thought wandered into her head her heart began to race and she became light headed, slightly disoriented. And whenever Rhys tried to ask her about it she panicked, falling back onto the lust that simmered so close to the surface between them. She just wanted oblivion. She wanted to be tied to his bed because then she wouldn’t have to think, wouldn’t have to be responsible; she could just surrender and enjoy the experience, enjoy Rhys.

  She was a coward pretending to be brave, only the mask was slipping and it was getting harder and harder to act like she was the same old Jenna that she had been before. She had been forced to grow up after Jeremy was taken from her and for so long she had resented it without even realizing it. But somewhere along the way she had grown up and she found that she actually liked some aspects of the new Jenna. And now she was having difficulty finding the balance. She didn’t want to give anything up and she knew she’d have to give up something when she finally chose which direction she wanted to go.

  Out on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, Jenna could almost believe she and Rhys were the only two people left in the world. The universe. Keeping her eyes determinedly on the pinpoints of light overhead, she cleared her throat, “Why would you ever even consider giving up your nights for me?”

  “You laugh at my jokes,” he deadpanned, making her smile in spite of the seriousness of her thoughts. His fingers curled around hers, the strength a comfort to her weary soul. How could she choose a life without him? How could she give up humanity to be with him?

  “Well, that’s good because you make me laugh,” she teased, turning her head to the side and catching the depth of empathy in his dark eyes despite the dim light. In the darkness, his fingers lightly moved across her face, from her temple to the curve of her jaw. His thumb moved over her lower lip and the sense that he saw her, that he understood her so clearly, caused her blood to freeze and then boil. He knew her hopes, her fears… her weaknesses….

  “I’m with you because there is no other place I’d rather be,” he said softly, his voice rough with emotion. “You’re part of my soul, Jenna; there is no me without you.”

&n
bsp; “How can you be so sure?” she asked, her eyes welling with tears as she reached up and rested her hand against his cheek, the soft bristle of his day-old beard tickling her palm. “As wonderful as this adventure has been so far, as fantastic, you’ve never met the real me, Rhys.” Sweeping her arm to encompass the boat, the setting, the black night, she shook her head, “This isn’t who I am; I am not spontaneous, Rhys. I’m not adventurous in the bedroom, and yet with you, in this place, I get to pretend I am all of those things I could have been.”

  “You are all of those things, Jenna,” he told her, turning his head and pressing a kiss to the inside of her palm. “You are a strong, courageous, beautiful woman and I adore you.”

  “I’m the opposite of courageous,” she huffed out a laugh at the very idea. “I’m so afraid of getting hurt that I closed myself off for years. It’s a miracle that I’m even here with you.”

  “It’s fate.” She felt him shift and then his large, warm hand was wrapped around her waist, gently rolling her over to face him in the darkness. Bringing her body flush against his, the hard muscles of his body unyielding, he held her tight and she took comfort in his strength. “You’re mine, Jenna, just as I am yours. Fate brought us to this point because we are meant to be together.”

  She laughed without humor, the sound desolate and hollow, “It’s so easy for you to believe; you’re a gargoyle and you eat, live and breathe magic. You haven’t had to hold the hand of your fiancé long after he had taken his last breath.”

  “No, I haven’t,” he whispered solemnly. “But I have lived for hundreds of years while humans come into my life and are gone in the blink of an eye; I have loved some of them and yet you’re the only one I have wanted to spend eternity with. I’ve waited almost five hundred years for you, Jenna, and if you decide becoming a gargoyle to be with me is not something you want I will still love you and hold you in my arms until the day you are taken from me.”