Stone Romance (Stone Passion #2) (33 page)

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
. A
nd 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 s
ide
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.”

“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.”

“And then you will mourn for me and move on,” she said softly, staring out into space.

“I would have no choice; I’m a Guardian; it’s my duty to endure, just as Armand has and just as Vaughn will,” he said softly, his eyes glittering in the darkness. “Do you think Jeremy would want you to mourn him forever?”

“No,” she said softly, knowing that Jeremy wouldn’t even recognize the woman she had become after his death.

“It may sound cruel, and it kills me to think of you not being a part of my life, but life goes on,” he whispered gravely. He laughed without humor, his fingers entwining with hers. “I am selfish enough to be grateful that he is no longer here;
because
had he lived then I would never have discovered my heart and soul and not knowing you would be a tragedy.”

“But you wouldn’t know what you were missing.”

“I’d know,” he said softly, a hint of amusement in the serious words. “Deep down
I
would know that something was missing.

“I pray that you find a way to be with me but if you don’t then I will have to learn to live again, just as you have learned to live again,” he rasped, sliding his hand up her arm and around her neck. “I will celebrate the life you had lived, loving you for eternity. But life is for the living, Jenna; and I want you to come wholly back to life.”

A tear slid down her cheek at his brutal honesty; he was supposed to be light-hearted and amusing and he was slaying her with the truth. And she loved him all the more for it because it
was
the truth; life was for the living. She had buried herself with Jeremy when she should have been celebrating his life, the child he gave her.

His fingers curled into her hair as he cradled the back of her head, placing gentle kisses along her brow, her cheeks, her lips, “I want to be a part of your life, Jenna, in whatever
role
you’ll
have me
; I
want to share my life with the you; I
want to help you raise
your daughter.

“I want to give you the world,” he breathed, kissing her softly.
“
E
ven if it’s only for seventy
-
five years
.
But
I will always hope for an eternity. If Jeremy loved you as much as I love you he would want you to be happy and I will spend the rest of our time together making sure there are no more regrets.
No matter what.”

She choked on a sob as she wrapped her arms around him, holding him to her and burying her face against the curve of his neck. His broad palm slowly caressed her back as he murmured comforting words against her ear, silently giving her the permission she craved to finally let go. Softly, he let her know that he would be there to catch her as she fell, that he would be her stalwart haven in whatever storm came their way, no matter which path she chose.

Clinging to him, feeling the tears burn away the years of bitterness and loneliness, she vowed to return the promise and in the end she let herself fall in love. Life was too short to be buried alive and Rhys was too vital to not love completely.

“I love you,” she rasped, her throat tight with fear and love.

“Ah, Jenna,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head. “I love you, too; more than you’ll ever know.”

“Rhys,” she breathed, pressing her lips against the strong column of his throat, breathing in the scent of his clean, fresh skin. Running her hands along his sides, tracing the ridges of muscles that bracketed his ribs, she felt the shattering emotional shift, racing from the depths of grief to a torrent of lust. Sliding a leg over
t
he flange of his hip, she pulled her groin closer to his, “No matter what happens, Rhys, I love you.”

With a few deft maneuvers of his hands, they were naked from the waist down and then he was in her, sealing their bond until eternity.

Jenna looked out over the barren and desolate island fifty feet in front of her, at the scattered remnants of a once enormous temple and the scraggly trees, and her heart ached for the pain Rhys had to have been experiencing, seeing his
m
other’s island in ruin. The setting sun burned the air around her making it difficult to breathe; she couldn’t imagine how much worse it would be when the sun was directly overhead. And despite being surrounded by water the island was a desert in the middle of the sea. There was no dock, only jagged rocks that looked like they ate boats that got too close. She could imagine a siren sitting in the middle of the island luring weary sailors to their death with her seductive song.

Turning her head, she saw Rhys staring at the island but it was impossible to determine what he was thinking when he was in his gargoyle form. He had a satchel slung across his chest; it held a change of clothes since there was nothing that fit his statue form and it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to show up on his
m
other’s doorstep with not a stitch of cloth
ing
on, though Jenna had to admit that she wouldn’t mind a naked Rhys. After having explored every inch of his defined and toned body, she was eager to do it all again
and again and again
, as many times as it took until she knew every
inch of him
by heart.