Stone Romance (Stone Passion #2) (19 page)

“
Huh
?”

“It simply means that w
e protect the humans and the supernatural
, keeping the supernatural world hidden.” He shrugged his broad shoulders, the material of his jacket stretching tautly over the muscles. “The castle is a sanctuary for any paranormal creature that wants or needs it.”

“Are you ever in danger?” she asked, concerned for his safety despite his
obvious
strength.
“With all of the magical creatures living together?”

“For the most part, the
creatures
living in our building behave.” He paused a moment, his eyes sparkling with his irrepressible humor, “Though they are not above getting into a little mischief.”

“And I’m sure you never succumb to the temptation to misbehave.” She pressed a soft kiss over his heart, smiling as she pictured Rhys at the center of pandemonium.

“I’ve been known to flirt with the line,” he said evasively.
“Once or twice.”

She giggled, “I didn’t know there was a line.”

“It’s more of a suggestion,” he said solemnly, his eyes dancing.

“
But what do you do
?”

With a resigned smile,
he shook his head. “We protect humans from the supernatural.
W
e
straddle the line between the two worlds
in order to protect our secrecy and preserve humanity’s sanity. They have such a fragile hold on it and they don’t even realize how easily it can be broken.”

“So you hide to protect us,” she shook her head and scowled, irritated on his behalf. “That hardly seems fair to you and the others.”

“Sweetheart,” he grinned, the mischievous spark flaring even brighter in his eyes. “You have no idea how tempting humans are to supernatural creatures; we eat, breathe,
fuck
humans for all sorts of reasons, both good and bad. It’s just better if most of you remain blissful
ly ignorant of what’s out there
.”

“
But vampires and werewolves are so popular right now
,” she
pressed
.

“
Until you actually meet one
;” he grinned. “
Most of the others would just as soon fuck a human as kill them and not necessarily in that order.

“
Ew
.”

He laughed heartily, hugging her
tight. “The beings that try to go
mainstream
aren’t so bad but many more prefer to embrace their nature and prey upon the innocent, which is a huge commodity in the supernatural world, by the way. Gargoyles try to keep as many innocents safe as possible.”

As disturbing as everything was that he was telling her she desperately wanted to learn more,
more about him and
more about
his world
. Remembering the odd encounter from a few days before
, her brows still pulled together in a frown, “A woman in the elevator mentioned something about guardians
but I hadn’t known she had been talking about you. A
nd I’m pretty sure she was a fairy.”

His smile was soft, easygoing; he
wasn’t stiff as death anymore as he forgot about being in a plane and
relax
ed
into the conversation. “We do have a few fairies staying with us but they mostly keep to themselves. Describe her to me and I’ll see if I can figure out which one she is.”

“She was gorgeous,” Jenna said, picturing the exotically beautiful woman in her head. Was Rhys attracted to the red headed fairy, with her teeny-tiny waist and voluptuous breasts? “But it was her eyes… they were like cat’s eyes….”

He closed his eyes and a brief grimace shimmied across his face, “
Toulia
is actually a succubus; she has been trying to seduce Armand for decades so she has rented a room at the castle just to be near him even though she has her own place in Minneapolis.”

It was
still awfully
strange to be talking about mythical creatures as if they were real... which they were. But it was still strange. Stealing a glance at the incubus
behind her
, seeing that his attention was captured by the magazine he was reading, she
leaned forward and
asked
Rhys
in a hushed voice, “Don’t succubae have leathery wings?”

“They do but
Toulia
believes Armand will respond to her if her wings more closely resembled fairy wings.” He chuckled, “She has a weekly transmutation spell cast on her wings to keep them in their pristine fairy shape.”

“But… why?” It sounded like it would be painful to try to change one’s wings; maybe it was like getting a touch up on one’s roots, though she doubted it.

“
Most of Armand’s lovers have
been fairies,” Rhys explained. “They are just as cold and emotionless as he likes to pretend to be. But he’s a gargoyle; by nature we are not cold, emotionless beings. Even when we are stone we still feel.”

“So you’ve said,” she chuckled.

“We feel even more as men.” His voice was rough and if they were alone she was fairly certain he would have gathere
d
her in his arms and kissed her until she was breathless with desire. And then he would strip every last piece of clothing from her body….

Clearing her throat, she managed, “How
are you different from a man
?”

“I am a man,” he said softly, humor lacing his words.
At the face she gave him, he winked and explained, “
We’re stronger, we run hotter,
we have calming influences on other beings and we don’t age past twenty-five
.”

“So you’re basically the same?” her eyes moved over his face and she wanted to taste his lips; she wanted to run her hands over the hard planes of his chest and discover if his penis was as impressive as it felt behind his jeans.

“Sure.” He was laughing at her but she didn’t care; she wanted to strip him of his civilized veneer and lick him all over. Needing a distraction, she raced through a variety of topics that didn’t have any sexual connotations. 

“
And when you’re a gargoyle?
Can you see when you’re
stone
?” she asked, tilting her head to the side. Her thoughts were a little sluggish, trying to crawl through large pools of sexual desire and arousal.

He chuckled, resting his forehead against hers as he caught his breath. “I am a living gargoyle, Jenna, with a mobile body and
all of my senses.
While
I am a gargoyle, my vision is black and white and somewhat grainy but I can see.”

“So, when you’re a gargoyle you are not without sensation?” When he shook his head no, heat engulfed her cheeks as she caught her lower lip between her teeth, incredibly interested in learning everything she could about Rhys and the gargoyle world. “Have you ever, um, had sex as a gargoyle?”

“There is only one female gargoyle but she doesn’t like talking about her past, especially with her sons. She’ll talk about everything else – God knows she’
ll talk about everything else –
but not that.” His grin was breathtaking in i
t
s brilliance and she had to concentrate on the words that were coming out of his sensuous mouth and not the lips that were moving. “No, that’s not true; if rumors are correct, there’s possibly one other female gargoyle out there.
Somewhere.
But she was created, not born, if that makes any sense.”

“
Sort of?
”
It made sense, once she accepted that magic was real and gargoyles existed. But if there was only one, maybe two, female gargoyles, then… “Then where do all of the baby gargoyles come from?

“Do you really
have to ask
?”
He arched a single eyebrow
before
curving his arm around her shoulder and pulling her closer as he kissed the top of her head, inhaling deeply. When she nodded her head, he asked, “Where do human babies come from?

“Is
this a trick question?” she eyed
him suspiciously, not quite trusting the glint in his eyes. When he grinned, her body melted a little as she answered, “Um, generally a man and a woman have sex and if the time is right and they forget to use protection nine months later a baby is born.”

“It’s the same thing with gargoyles, I suppose; only gargoyles – living gargoyles – come from the same mother and father,” he
murmured
, bending his head and running his tongue along the shell of her ear. Sucking the lobe between his teeth, he nibbled on the tender flesh and goose bumps popped out across her flesh. She wanted to tear all of her clothes off and rub herself against his body. She wanted….

Her breath caught in her throat and her pulse fluttered madly as the fleshy part of her ear slipped out of his heated mouth and he blew a gentl
e
breath over the damp skin. And when she met his heated gaze her mouth went absurdly dry. She had to swallow a few times before she was able to rasp, “You make me forget myself.”

“I intend to make you forget everything, all of your worries, your doubts,” he vowed provocatively. “I’m going to pleasure you so well and so hard you won’t be able to walk once we arrive back home and I’ll get to carry you everywhere we go.”

She quirked a smile knowing that he would be able to carry her but doubting that it would be necessary. And his words only proved her earlier point: he was going to be ridiculously easy to seduce. “I’ll be able to walk, Rhys.”

“Sweetheart,” he growled, trailing a line of kisses along her jaw and to an exquisitely sensitive spot just beneath her ear. “I’ve got you to myself for a couple of weeks; you won’t be able to walk.”

“I’ll be able to recuperate during the day.”

“You do
recall
that I can move as a gargoyle, don’t you?” he taunted deliciously, his eyes darkening to pools of rich brown. When she half nodded her head, his grin grew wicked, “While my gargoyle cock may be too big for your luscious body, my gargoyle fingers are the perfect size. I’ll be able to do things to you that will make you blush and then make you scream. After all, I have ten fingers. Now, do you really think you’ll be able to walk in a few weeks?”

“All I hear is a lot of talk,” she murmured breathlessly, her eyes languid and heavy with arousal as she ran her fingers through the short, silken strands of his hair; she was mesmerized by the color, the texture. He was so finely sculpted; what if he took one look at her with his human eyes and realized she had stretch marks and small boobs and she wasn’t as beautiful as a fairy or a
succubus or a Siren.
Maybe it would be better if she waited to strip off her clothes until he was a gargoyle and could only see in black and white.

He put a finger beneath her chin and tilted her head up, “Jenna, you have no idea how fucking sexy you are, do you?”

She wasn’t sure how to answer that; he made her feel sexy but it had been so long since she had even wanted to be sexy. But what would he think of her if he knew the difficulties she had when she became a mother?
The months of darkness followed by the long, arduous struggle back into the light?
What if he discovered how relieved she had been when Melanie gave up everything to stay at home and help out with Ferris, how selfish she had been to relinquish her role as mother for so long?

Rhys’s arm squeezed her closer and he kissed the top of her head, “Thank you.”

Startled, she looked at him, catching the flare of desire still burning in his eyes.
“For what?”

“I’m flying in a steel trap and I’m able to breathe,” he grinned, his color still a bit pale but not as bad as it had been before. “I’m going to have to keep you.”

Everything could change in a heartbeat and Jenna knew she was a fool; by the end of the trip she was going to be madly in love with Rhys and she was powerless to stop it.

Resting her head against Rhys’s warm shoulder, she stared at nothing in particular, not paying attention to the two pixies that made sure everyone on the jet was comfortable. Her lids were getting heavy and even though she wanted to stay awake for Rhys’s sake, she couldn’t keep her eyes from closing.

“Rhys?” she said, her brain losing its lucidness, allowing random thoughts to pop into her head. “Why is the incubus even travelling with us? He could pass as a human without any sort of glamor.”

He chuckled; she loved the sound of his laugh. “Passengers tend to sleep on these trans-Atlantic flights, including female passengers. And when confronted with a sleeping woman an incubus cannot help but to seduce her; it’s their nature.”

“Uh huh,” she mumbled, her forehead crinkling. “But he can’t seduce me, not with you here, right?”

“Right.”
She felt him kiss the top of her head, heard the softly rumbled,
“You’re safe with me.”