Stone Romance (Stone Passion #2)

by A C Warneke

  She had such an amazing time as she delved deeper into the mythological world, as she got to know Medusa. It was painful to say goodbye to the beautiful woman, to leave her behind as her last three sons left home. Medusa had stood beneath the stars with a smile pasted on her lips even as her eyes swam with tears. Watching her hug her sons, Jenna felt an ache in her chest, a pang of sympathy for the woman who had no choice but to let her children go. Medusa had waved madly as the small group picked their way along the rocks to the harbor that held a dinghy that would take them out to their boat.

  Since they didn’t make a stop at any of the islands, they made it back to the mainland before the sun rose, arriving at the villa with a few minutes to spare. Leander, Eryx and Orion were passed out, their bodies entwined with the naked bodies of several nymphs. Sleepily, they had come awake and welcomed the newest gargoyles into their fold.

  That evening, they took off from the airport around eight in the evening but because they were travelling westward they had a lot more time to spare; they were able to take a direct flight to the cities, something that Rhys hated but suffered through all the same.

  With the extra passengers the plane ride home had been less sexy but no less exciting. Michael, Leo and Raphe had loved flying as much as Rhys loathed it. They asked a million questions and kept their eyes glued to the window as the plane took off and landed. While their enthusiasm was contagious, Jenna was more concerned with Rhys, who was only able to handle the flight if his head was in her lap. It wasn’t a hardship.

  But coming home was bittersweet and as she unlocked the door to the dark and silent house she felt as if she were returning from a fantasy that she wasn’t sure had even been real. The abrupt change back to normalcy was a weight that settled so easily on her shoulders. She tried to shake off the depressing feeling but it was just… there, as oppressive as a cold, dead weight. It was as if the previous weeks hadn’t happened and nothing had changed. As if it had all been a marvelous dream, one that she had never wanted to waken from but then the alarm sounded and when she tried to recapture the fantasy it was just out of reach.

  Pasting a smile on her face, she turned to face Rhys, determined to remain cheerful until he left. He had three boys to deal with; he didn’t need to deal with her strange mood, too. “Thank you, Rhys; this trip has been incredible.”

  “Jenna,” he breathed, his eyes searching her face, seeing more than she wanted him to see. But that was Rhys; he loved her. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course,” she said brightly, feeling the darkness seeping in through the cracks and fighting desperately to keep it from spreading further. “I’m just tired.”

  His nostrils flared but he didn’t refute her. Brushing his thumb over her lips, he looked at her with regret, “I hate to leave you.”

  “I know,” she said, the smile not quite as false but still brittle. She glanced at the car where three sets of eager young eyes watched in fascination. “But you have to go.”

  “Jenna.” Longing filled his chocolate eyes but now was not the time.

  Motioning towards the car with her head, she held his gaze and murmured, “You have to get your brothers home.”

  “I want you to come with us.”

  “You know I can’t; I have to go to work tomorrow and make up all of the work I missed,” she sighed, letting the smile fall from her face. This was Rhys; he knew her. “I plan on coming over on the weekend with Ferris. She will love having kids her age to play with and I am looking forward to seeing Melanie.”

  “Jenna,” he murmured, bending his head. His lips touched hers in a light kiss and anything she might have said became tangled in her throat. “Dream of me tonight.”

  “Always,” she promised, opening the door to her house and disappearing inside before he could see the tears fall. Leaning against the closed door, she listened until she heard the car drive off and just like that her adventure was over. She was home.

  “Mommy?” Ferris’s small voice whispered through the darkness and Jenna opened her eyes. There was just enough illumination from the nightlights to let her see her daughter standing in the entry staring at her with wide eyes. Memories crashed through Jenna as she looked at Ferris and more than anything she had to hold her daughter, to make sure she was real.

  “Ferris,” she breathed, dropping her bags and falling to her knees in front of her daughter. Taking Ferris by the shoulders she simply drank in the sight of her daughter for a long moment before enfolding Ferris in her arms and hugging the child until she thought her heart might break. “Oh, Ferris; I missed you.”

  Little hands patted her back and Ferris returned the hug, “I missed you, too, mommy. But I had so much fun with Aunt Mellie and Vaughn and Mr. Armand. And I got to go to Florida….”

  Ferris chattered on, making Jenna laugh even as tears slipped down her cheeks. They sat in the hallway for a long time because Jenna was afraid that if she moved she would wake up to discover that everything was wrong; that this life had all been a dream and the other life was the one she had chosen.

  Leaning back, pushing Ferris’s dark hair out of her face, Jenna asked, “What are you doing awake? It’s so late?”

  “One of the imps told me you were home,” she said as if having imps informing her of her mother’s whereabouts was a normal, everyday event. Shrugging her slender shoulders, she smiled, “This time they were telling me the truth.”

  Jenna scowled at the thought of the imps lying to her daughter. Touching the amulet Melanie had given Ferris a lifetime ago, she asked, “Have they tried to hurt you?”

  Ferris shook her head no, “Of course not; they are my friends. They have even pinky-swore never to try to injure me.”

  “But you said they lie,” Jenna murmured.

  “Not when they pinky swear,” Ferris countered. She looked over Jenna’s shoulder and grinned broadly, “There’s Ajreis. He’s my best friend. The others are okay but they like to fade away; Ajreis never disappears on me.”

  Jenna glanced over her shoulder and saw the gray-green fellow standing there with its wide mouth full of sharp teeth and its large pointy ears twitching. It was the same type of creature that had handed her a phone a few days prior. And as he looked at her with large, muddy gray eyes that pleaded for her acceptance she found that he was so ugly he was almost cute. Almost.

  “We’d never hurt Ferris,” the little creature said, his voice scratchy and a little eerie. “My brothers and I regret what happened with Melanie and our brother Vaughn.”

  “Mmm hm.” Jenna wasn’t sure what else to say. Her brows pulled together as the imp just continued to stand there watching her with those muddy eyes. Standing up with Ferris in her arms, keeping an eye on the unpredictable imp, she made her way up the stairs to her old room. The creature followed, keeping close to Ferris as if she were precious to him. It was a scary thought.

  Laying her daughter on the bed, she kissed Ferris on the forehead, “Good night, sweetheart.”

  “Good night, mommy,” Ferris whispered, her eyelids heavy and a sleepy smile on her lips. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “I’m glad I’m home, too,” she whispered, brushing the dark hair from her daughter’s face.

  “Love you.”

  “Love you, too, baby,” Jenna whispered, sitting on the bed until Ferris fell asleep. After kissing her daughter’s forehead one more time she turned to the imp and sighed wearily. The imp obviously wasn’t going to go anywhere and had probably been standing guard over Ferris as she slept for several weeks. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to move into the castle with Rhys; at least then she knew the gargoyles would keep the imps in line. Just in case. “What’s the deal?”

  The imp’s long tongue slithered out and licked his lips in an oddly nervous gesture, his eyes darting to the sleeping girl on the bed. “Omari was very angry with us after the fiasco; he threatened to banish us if we did not straighten out. We have no desire to be banished. He also ordered us to protect young Ferris with our lives an
d we are most eager to do so; she has become most important to us.”

  Strangely, that wasn’t very reassuring. “Why?”

  He shrugged his scrawny shoulders, his long fingers twisting together as he glanced at Ferris again, “She is the daughter of Rhys’s mate and the niece of Vaughn’s mate.”

  Jenna thought that there was probably more to it than that but she doubted she would get anything more than the imp wanted to give. Ajreis turned his head and met Jenna’s eyes, “Besides, we like Ferris very much; even if Omari had not demanded it we would protect her.”

  “Uh huh.” Out of all of the strange and wonderful things Jenna had experienced these past couple of weeks this conversation with an imp was perhaps the strangest. And she wasn’t quite comfortable leaving her daughter while the imp stood guard.

  Sighing, she took her jacket off and let it fall to the floor. Keeping an eye on the imp, she slid onto the bed behind Ferris, wrapping her arms around her little girl and closing her eyes. Inhaling deeply, she breathed in the familiar wind-fresh scent of her daughter, painfully reminded of another little girl who smelled as sweet. Tears leaked from her eyes as she buried her nose in Ferris’s hair, needing to hold onto her daughter while memoires of another life replayed themselves in her head.

  She could still remember how it felt to hold her two phantom children in her arms and she wondered if the guilt and sorrow would ever go away or if they were going to be another thing she had to pretend didn’t exist. She knew that she had asked to retain the memories she just hadn’t realized how vivid they would be once she returned home. How long was it going to take before she was able to forgive herself for making an impossible choice?

  Her mind also raced with the other events of the last weeks and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t shut off her brain and fall asleep. While she had been with Rhys it had been so easy to believe a future together was not only possible but simple to achieve. But she had a child, a job; she had responsibilities that she just couldn’t turn her back on. God, she hadn’t even been home for more than an hour and the doubts were starting to eat away at her.

  She wasn’t like Melanie, able to take a leap of faith on no more than the promise of a possibility. Jenna needed more than the words whispered in the darkness; no matter how enticing those words were. Of course, the gods smiled upon Lenni, gifting her with immortality because she drank the poison without question. Jenna simply couldn’t do that, especially if she knew it was poison. It was bad enough that she was planning to imbibe a drop or two of Medusa’s blood every couple of weeks to remain young.

  Did that make her a vampire? She shuddered at the thought, still not sure if it was such a great idea to be drinking blood at all. What if they were wrong about the dosage and she accidentally O.D.ed? Maybe it would be safer to not take the blood and simply accept Rhys’s gift when she turned forty. As long as she kept herself healthy and in shape she should still look decent and only a little bit too old for the forever young Rhys.

  She could hear the imp breathing. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and flinched when she saw the imp standing there; just standing there. “Go to sleep, Ajreis.”

  “We need no sleep,” he said in that creepy voice of his. “We guard little Ferris with our lives and we do not sleep.”

  That freaked her out until she reminded herself that the imps were also the sons of Medusa and she had adored Medusa. As long as she remembered that… she would still be freaked out. “Can you do me a favor, Ajreis?”

  “Yes,” he answered without hesitation, surprising her. Most people preferred to know what the favor entailed before agreeing to do it.

  “Can you bring me a phone?” she asked softly, needing to hear Rhys’s voice. Maybe if she heard his voice she would remember how it was to be in his arms and have far fewer doubts. If she heard his voice maybe then she would be able to go to sleep.

  A moment later Ajreis silently put the cordless phone in her hand and she smiled, “Thanks.”

  He bowed his head in acknowledgment, which was old-fashioned and disconcerting. Punching in the numbers to the Rhys’s phone, she hoped that there was someone there to pick up. As the phone rang, she watched the imp in the low light, his stillness just as eerie as his voice and his breathing but oddly comforting, in a strange, welcome to the world of mythology way. He never took his eyes from Ferris’s face and Jenna wondered how her daughter could sleep with a nightmarish creature watching her.

  “Jenna,” Rhys’s voice answered the phone and the ball of stress that had been tightening in her chest eased. “I was hoping you would call.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she murmured as the tension began to seep away once more. “I just needed to hear your voice.”

  “I’m here, love,” he said softly, fervently. “I’m right here.”

  Her eyes grew heavy as memories of the last couple of weeks played in her head. She wasn’t the same person as she was a few months ago; she had seen things, experienced things, few humans had. She had partied in London with a group of bored aristocrats, she had been to an orgy in Greece, she had talked with Medusa. She had fallen in love with a gargoyle.

  Chapter 21

  After work, Jenna rode the elevator up to the fourteenth floor, nervous and giddy to be seeing Rhys again; excited to see her sister. Going into work had been difficult, especially after getting only an hour or two of dream-plagued sleep during the night. Her job had been deadly dull and it had been damn near impossible to concentrate on but her boss had been grateful she had returned in time to help out with last minute tax filings.

  It had taken a lot of concentration to get back into the rhythm of crunching numbers but by midmorning she had gotten into the zone where she didn’t think about Rhys or her journey at all. It was as if it had never happened.

  Until lunch time hit and she impulsively called Rhys, even knowing he wouldn’t be able to talk on the phone in his gargoyle form. Melanie had answered and she gave it her best effort to bring the phone to Rhys as he sat on the roof with his brothers. Jenna had heard the little ones chattering in their rocky voices as Melanie told her the phone was simply too small for Rhys to be able to have a conversation.

  “What are the youngest Nosuntres brothers’ forms?” Jenna had asked, needing that link to the supernatural world.

  “Michael is a white lion,” Melanie told her. And Jenna wondered how they determined how he was a white lion since he was a stone statue and there wasn’t really a way to determine fur color. Which wasn’t even fur at all but carved stone. “Leo is a liger, not to be confused with a lion or a tiger I have been told, and little Raphe is a black panther. They are all really rather spectacular and so damn cute; I wish you could see them.”

  “I will this weekend,” Jenna had promised. “Um, do you think it will be okay if I come by tonight after work?”

  “Of course,” Melanie had said. And that promise of seeing Rhys had been enough to get Jenna through the rest of the day.

  The doors slid open and for the first time in almost six weeks Jenna saw her sister and the weeks had been really good to Melanie; she had gained back most of the weight she had lost and she positively glowed. Tears filled Jenna’s eyes as they hugged. Holding her sister tight, Jenna breathed, “You look beautiful, Lenni.”

  “Thank you,” Melanie whispered, emotion clogging her voice. Stepping back, she wiped the tears from her eyes and laughed, “Look at me; I’m crying again.”

  “So am I,” Jenna laughed, handing her sister the small bag she held, a little something she had picked up at the drugstore on her way over. “I brought you something.”

  Melanie peaked into the bag and quickly closed it, blushing furiously and laughing, “I really don’t think this is necessary. I mean, he can’t… I’m not.”

  “Humor me,” Jenna urged, taking off her jacket and following Melanie into the luxurious apartment. Giving her sister a kiss on the cheek, she left Melanie in the bathroom as she went to find Rhys. She quickly found him lounging in
the den with all of his brothers; the six of them were laughing as they got to know one another. Not wanting to intrude, she simply watched from the doorway as the three large gargoyles interacted with the three small gargoyles.

  A small, fluffy white creature sat on Armand’s knee, his long elegantly fingers absently stroking it as he gazed on his brothers with pride and affection. It was strange to see the large, divinely handsome man idly stroking a toy dog and she had to press her knuckle into her mouth to keep from laughing. Her heart twisted in her chest as she pictured him in the other life, full of love and not loved enough in return. It hurt to look at him and she let her gaze touch briefly on each of the gargoyles, lingering just a tad longer on Rhys.

  The six of them were definitely brothers, from the almost six year old to Armand, who even had a hint of a smile as he sat there. Quietly, Jenna backed out and leaned against the wall on the side of the door where she wouldn’t be seen, clutching a bottle of red wine in case her suspicions proved to be true. She shouldn’t be there; it was their time to get to know one another.

  “Couldn’t they have gotten you a real dog?” Rhys asked, his voice light with humor. “Like a Great Dane or a mastiff? Something that is larger than a cat?”

  “They got him a small dog because we live in an apartment on the fourteenth floor,” Vaughn chuckled. “Plus, I think Melanie thought it would be funny to see Armand with a little dog.”

  “This is not a dog,” Armand said imperiously, a hint of amusement in his cool voice. “This is a mop with legs.”

  “You love it,” Vaughn countered.

  Jenna could almost hear the smile in Armand’s voice as he murmured, “She has her uses.”

  “Apparently Toulia is repelled by dogs,” Vaughn said for clarification. “Armand carries the mop with him everywhere he goes; it’s really quite the sight to see.”