Stone Destiny (Stone Passion #3) (2 page)

He looked at her, his green eyes piercing her from across the short distance. His jaw clenched as he saw… everything, “What happened?”

In spite of her misery, she had to smile. Only Armand would look so ready to do violence while trying to comfort. Shaking her head, she waved her hand through the air, “It’s nothing, Armand.”

Heaving a sigh, he pushed himself up from the piano bench and crossed the room to where she
sat, his large body fluid with natural grace. For some strange reason, her heart kicked her ribs as he stood over her and glared down at her with his hands on his lean hips, “What happened, Ferris?”

“It’s nothing,” she repeated, feeling her heart pick up even more speed as she looked up at the gorgeous brute. Suddenly, butterflies began to flutter in her belly and she pressed a hand against her stomach, trying to sooth the treasonous insects. She had no idea why she would react to Armand in such a way
. He was… Armand.

With a huff, he sat down on the couch next to her, refusing to accept her words. Looking into his serious green eyes, she suddenly didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t want him to know how she had been humiliated and she didn’t want him to look at her as if she were weak or pathetic. But his gaze compelled her to speak even as she desperately tried to hold her tongue. “Well, there’s this guy….”

A knowing smile curved his decadent lips and her heart did that stupid rib-kick thing again. “Ah, this is someone you like?”

“God, no,” she denied vehemently, the thought of Mitch filling her with disgust. A shudder wracked her body, and she grimaced, softly repeating the words, “God, no.”

He became deathly still and when she looked at him it was like looking into the face of God: terrifying and mesmerizing. “Did he hurt you? I will kill him.”

She stared at him for a moment before his words sunk in and she realized what he was thinking. Holding her hands up she waved them in the air, shaking her head violently to dissuade him of those thoughts, “No! It was only a little humiliation
. He didn’t touch me.”

The wrath eased from him but only slightly. He still looked ready to do violence on her behalf and her heart threatened to break right through her ribs and go crashing into him. Pressing her hand against the unruly organ, she shook her head again, “He’s a senior and the captain of the football team and for the past couple of weeks he has been… flirting with me.”

“And you did not want this?” he asked, arching his perfect eyebrow.

“No,” she said softly, not wanting to admit that she had never liked Mitch but that it had been nice to have someone look at her as if she weren’t a freak, as if she were human. Lowering her lashes, she confessed, “But I didn’t discourage him
, either. And today he told the entire class that I had slept with him but I didn’t. I’ve never even seen him outside of school and he isn’t someone I would ever have sex with. But everyone believed him because he's captain of the football team and I'm me.”

“Oh, Ferris,” he murmured, pulling her into his arms and hugging her against his hard chest. His midnight masculine scent filled her nostrils and she wanted to b
urrow deeper into his embrace. Clutching his shirt in her fingers, she squeezed her eyes shut as he stroked those long, elegant fingers of his through her hair, comforting her.

In that moment, between one painful heartbeat and the next, she realized she had fallen in love with the man that she had adored for most of her life. And until that moment she hadn’t even realized that she had fallen in love with him. That was an incredibly stupid move on her part and one she was going to ignore until it went away.

“Why can’t they just leave me alone?” she asked, choking on her tears. Her heart was furiously pumping away in her chest and she wanted to rip it out and stomp on it. The stupid thing was so inconvenient. How dare it try to tell her she was in love with the man holding her? She was sixteen and he was… he was Armand. She wanted to wallow in her misery, not discover how incredibly foolish she was for doing something so stupid as to fall in love with a gargoyle.

With Armand.

“You’re a beautiful girl,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head with tender lips. “And you present a challenge to those Neanderthals because you straddle the line between the two worlds and they can’t touch you. You don’t belong in their world.”

“I don’t belong in your world, either,” she said softly, the butterflies swarming every crevice in her belly until she thought she was going to be sick. How could she have fallen in love with him? She was going to have to bury her feelings very deep inside of her
. She couldn’t risk losing him because of a silly girlhood infatuation.

Pushing against his solid chest, she sat up and wiped the tears from her eyes, laughing in mortification, “God, I’m a mess
. I don’t know why I let that buffoon bother me.”

He leaned back in the couch, spreading his arms out across the top, his pose arrogant and imposing. But he smiled at her with rueful kindness, “You’re only human.”

“Ha ha,” she muttered, his words striking a blow to her idiot heart. She looked at him and the truth slammed into her with the force of a three ton wall. How could she not love him?

Armand looked at her with concern, “What’s wrong now?”

“N…nothing,” she stammered, feeling the heat flooding her cheeks as she realized she had to get out of there. With her fragile emotions raging and her newly discovered love, she was bound to do something incredibly stupid and then Armand would never talk to her again. Forcing a smile to her frozen face, she shook her head, “Nothing’s wrong.”

“You just got an odd expression all of a sudden,” he continued, oblivious to her life altering, earth shattering realization. Concern colored his green eyes as he looked at her, studying her as if he could determine what she was hiding from him.

Widening her eyes and brightening her smile, she repeated, “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Are you sure?” he persisted, narrowing his eyes, not letting it go.
Stubborn gargoyle.

“Positive,” she lied
. Of course something was wrong! Everything was topsy-turvy and her whole world had just been flipped over. Abruptly standing up and hitting her shin against the coffee table, she ignored the sharp pain and muttered, “I have to go.”

Armand looked at her as if she were nuts but she didn’t care. She’d rather he thought she was insane than discover she was in love with him. Her heart raced madly in her chest as she tried to gather her scattered wits and make her legs move towards the exit. But her shin really hurt and she still didn’t want to go back to her grandparents’ house
. But what choice did she have?

“I'm going to send
a few pixies to keep an eye on you,” he said, startling her out of her rampaging thoughts.

She blinked at him, not quite sure what he was talking about for a moment, “Why?”

“To make sure no one tries anything that would make me have to hunt them down and kill them,” he said solemnly, his green eyes lit with dark humor and she smiled at his words. Standing up, he chucked her playfully on the chin with his knuckle, “There’s my girl. I hate seeing you cry.”

Everything coalesced inside of her and for one perfect moment she knew that he was her destiny. But the moment passed and reality came crashing back in: she was sixteen years old
, what did she know about destiny?

A plan is devised

On the fifth anniversary of discovering that she was in love with Armand, Ferris decided it was time to act upon it. She could not continue acting as if he was just a beloved friend when he was her world. She needed more and if she didn’t at least try she was going to go dragon shit crazy. Nothing was worse than living in this limbo, knowing she and Armand were meant to be together and being too frightened to do anything about it. She was going to show him that she was no longer a child, no longer off-limits. It was a difficult task but one for which she was sure she was ready.

Ever since she was a child she had been physical with him once the sun went down, hugging him whenever she entered the room or looping her arm through his whenever he joined them for a night out on the town. But over the past couple of months she had been ramping up her efforts. No excuse was too small or too flimsy for her to touch him, running her hand along his arm to flatten out a non-existent wrinkle on his smooth skin; ‘accidentally’ brushing her breasts against him when she had to pass too close because she didn’t want to knock over a table that was five feet away; putting her hand on his arm when they chatted and then leaving it there long after she had made her point. And the more she touched him the more she wanted to touch him, to strip him of his clothes and run her hands all over the heated flesh of his hard body.

He had looked at her upon occasion, a strange expression on his too-handsome face and she knew that she was acting like an idiot. He was just trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with her. But he
had
looked at her. Overall, she was proud of how unaffected she acted when she was around him. He hadn’t a clue that her skin was clammy, that her heart was thumping, that the butterflies were rioting. Over the years, their conversations occasionally touched on more personal subjects before they just as quickly flitted away. The possibility of more gave her the courage to risk everything to be with him.

Of course, she wasn’t a complete fool. When she had first gone off to college she had tried
dating the college boys who didn’t know she was a freak. While she had laughed and had fun and even kissed one or two boys, none of them were Armand and she had grown almost desperate to find a resolution to her dilemma. It simply didn’t feel right being with any of them and she had finally accepted the fact that she was meant for Armand, that he truly was her destiny.

When that happened it was as if a huge burden had been lifted from her shoulders and she no longer had to fight against something that was meant to be. The future was suddenly a much brighter place and she no longer dreaded going into it alone
, she’d be with Armand. After that, she enjoyed herself so much more, hanging out with a handful of humans but mostly hanging out with her other-worldly friends. Ajreis was a lot more entertaining to an adult Ferris than he was to a child Ferris and some of the hijinks he could cook up….

Ajreis
was the one who had helped her plot out her seduction, taking great delight in the prospect of bring Armand to his knees. The relationship between imps and gargoyles was peculiar: they were half-brothers but didn’t exactly get along. The imps enjoyed making the gargoyles’ lives difficult… they pretty much enjoyed making everyone’s lives difficult. After an incident involving Aunt Melanie and Vaughn they had backed off for a while but they enjoyed their pranks too much to stay away for long. Except they had made a vow to keep Ferris safe and for the most part they did that by keeping their distance.

All of them except
Ajreis, who wasn’t like the other imps. Intelligence danced in his muddy gray eyes and sometimes, when the moon was dark or the cloud cover exceptionally heavy, he could shift into a man, something none of the other imps could do. On those nights, the two of them would go dancing and just enjoy being able to spend time with each other in public. Like her, he was in love with someone completely inappropriate, in his case a young college coed that he had danced with the year before. It was difficult to have a relationship when you spent most of your time as a green-skinned creature with too many teeth and not enough human-ness.

She was confident he would make it work – somehow.

Ferris took a peek around the corner and grinned when she saw that Armand was alone, sitting on the couch and reading his book. Slinking into the room, she flung herself down on the couch and draped her arm over her eyes. She sighed as dramatically as she could, just to make Armand smile. Risking a peek she saw that he was unaffected by her performance and she sighed louder. The frustrating man simply ignored her and turned the page in his book.

“My life is over,” she groaned, keeping that little spy-hole open so she could watch him.

Without looking up, one corner of his luscious mouth quirked upwards into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Come now, Ferris, it cannot be that bad.”

She smiled to herself, loving the reluctant concern he showed for her drama. From the time she could remember she always had to spend a fair amount of time warming him up to talking to her but in the end she always managed to drag him into a chat. Wiping the smile from her face, she let out another sigh, “It
is
that bad and worse.”