“I miss him so much and Marick has been so amazing and it’s just everything is happening and the world is changing so fast and time won't slow down but it isn't passing quick enough,” she rambled, knowing she was rambling and unable to stop the words from spewing forth incoherently. “And I love him, of course I love him, but I promised myself that I would wait for Armand but then I didn’t and somehow I gave in but now I hate myself and I want Armand back.”
Omari stared at her with a blank expression, having probably lost track of the conversation somewhere around 'I miss him.' Taking a breath and letting it out slowly, trying to gather her words into something more coherent, she said, “I can’t separate sex and love and I don't want to fall in love with Marick. I love Armand. Does that make me a bad person?”
A slow smile spread over Omari’s face before he threw his head back and laughed. Ferris was not amused and struggled to pull away from his hold but his grip was unforgiving. “Oh, Ferris. Your heart is so big you can love both of them and still have enough love left over for any other stray that comes along.”
“I only want Armand,” she admitted in a small voice, her eyes drowning, her heart breaking. “I’ve only ever wanted Armand. But Marick is… he’s so loving and attentive and he’s everything I should love in a man but he’s not Armand. I don't want to hurt him but I can't be someone I'm not.”
Omari pulled her into his arms, hugging her against his chest and suddenly she knew that he was much older than she had ever imagined, much more powerful. “Armand has been with so many women, Ferris. Do you really think he would begrudge you one man?”
Her brows furrowed at the reasoning Marick had used the night before, the night….
“Knowing Armand,” Omari continued, derailing her thoughts before she could piece them together. “He was probably very noble and told you to find someone else, to fall in love and get married, have children.”
Her breath stilled, her heart stilled, her spirit separated from her body, as she tilted her head back and looked up at him, seeing the familiar lines of Marick beneath Omari’s wrinkles, seeing Marick’s warm, hazel eyes. A horrible realization stabbed her in her chest as she saw what she hadn’t wanted to see. Softly, nervously, she reached up and ran her fingers over his lips, “It’s you.”
“You and your aunt have always been so good at seeing beneath the surface,” he chuckled, kissing the tips of her fingers. “It is both exciting and terribly inconvenient, my love.”
Trembling with fury, she stepped out of his arms and watched as he morphed into the familiar Marick she had spent the last five years with, the man she thought she knew. Covering her mouth to stifle the cry of outrage, she glared at her treacherous friend. In a voice soft with rage, she hissed, “You lied to me! You’ve been lying to me the entire time. My God! I trusted you, I… Oh, God.”
“I told you I needed sanctuary,” he said softly, his hazel eyes so familiar and so painful to look at.
“What is sanctuary, Marick?” she breathed, her soul slamming back into her body with a jolt. “Or should I call you Omari?”
He shook his head, “I am Marick in this form.”
“Great,” she sneered. Through clenched teeth, she repeated her earlier question, “What is sanctuary?”
“It’s peace, Ferris,” he growled, stepping forward and crowding her space. Reaching up, he curled his hand around the back of her neck and held her in place as he stared down at her. Power blazed in his hazel eyes and she knew that he could wipe out her entire existence in a heartbeat if he wanted. She also knew that he would never do that to her. “It’s the peace of being with you, of being in your arms.”
“That’s bullshit,” she seethed, her voice trembling at his nearness. The heat of his body wrapped itself around her and tried to fog her mind but she wasn’t having any of it. Her anger kept her head clear even if her body wanted to melt into the intimate stranger standing in front of her. “You should have told me the truth, Marick. I thought we were friends.”
"I once told you that I would do anything to taste a human," he admitted softly.
Her eyes widened in alarm as her lips pressed together in a hard line. Hurt and betrayal flowed freely in her blood as she sneered, "Including deception? Why?"
“Because an ancient wizard is so very appealing to a young girl, especially a young girl in love with a fucking gargoyle,” he said with a cruel smile.
"But you're not a wizard, are you?" she asked, trying to wrap her brain around the last five years and the friendship she had believed to be so strong. "You're a god. Why me, Marick?"
"I don't make you sick." At her look of disbelief, he gave a mocking shrug as he brushed his thumb over her lower lip. His eyes softened as he looked at her and murmured, “You have no idea how long I have waited for you. It's been an eternity.”
Her brows drew together in a bewildered frown. Swallowing thickly, she whispered, “You've waited five years, Marick! That’s hardly an eternity.”
He smiled that glorious smile that made her blink even though she was still furious with him. With a negligent shrug that belied the honesty of his words, he murmured, “Ah, Ferris, I have waited forever for you.”
She shook her head at him, her emotions blistering through her, burning her up from the inside. “Who are you?”
He carefully considered his words before he softly said, “I've told you but you just don't want to listen."
At her look of bewilderment, he sighed, "Do you remember the girl in the bar?"
She started to shake her head no before she stopped and thought about it. After a moment, she nodded, "The girl being sucked dry by a vampire, the one who saw you bathed in light."
"Do you remember how sick she became the closer she got to me?" he asked solemnly. At her nod, he gave her a half-hearted smile, "Do you know how painful it is to desire a human and be unable to get near one because they got violently sick?"
"Why me?" she asked softly but she already knew the answer: she didn't get sick in his presence.
"Because it was fated?” he said with a forced smile, sadness and loneliness writhing in the depths of his eyes. “Because I'm selfish and wanted something I never thought I would be able to have? Gods, Ferris! I never expected to like you."
Her brows drew together at his words that sounded like they were supposed to be cruel but weren't. He was too surprised by the confession for the words to be anything but honest. He looked at her with those ancient and sad hazel eyes, "Can we still be friends?"
“I need some time to digest all of this,” she rasped, her voice barely more than a breath.
Nodding his head, he swallowed, never taking his hands from her. After a moment, he softly asked, “Will you ever be able to forgive me?”
She nodded her head once, her heart going out to the manipulative bastard who only wanted to be accepted. “But I’m not sleeping with you again.”
“Fair enough,” he said but his eyes twinkled with secret laughter as if he doubted her words.
“Marick,” she growled. "I'm not."
He put his hands up and stepped away from her, taking his heat and overwhelming-ness away. “I’ll head back to Chicago and if you change your mind you know where to find me.”
Nodding her head, she kept her eyes on him as she walked out of his shop, out of his life. Her thoughts were punching her in the face, urging her to take him up on his offer, chastising her for even considering it, kicking her for betraying Armand even though he was the one who chose to be a stone statue instead of spending eternity with her.
Chapter 12
The Wages of Arrogance
Ferris sat up on the roof of the Castle, her knee bent and pressed against her chest as she painted her toe nails. Her anger simmered in her belly and she was still just so confused. She had thought spending time on the roof during the day would help but she didn’t count on Toulia wanting to join her.
Toulia was absolutely stunning, with vibrant red hair that hung to her slender waist in
thick, lustrous curls and eyes that were pale gold with vertical slits like a cat. Her nails, well, talons really, were long, lethal and black as an empty soul and she had a pair of wicked looking wings. When Ferris was younger, Toulia used to do a monthly treatment to keep her wings looking gossamer thin and glittering in the light but Ferris preferred the blazing red leathery wings so much more. They suited Toulia’s personality far better than faerie wings.
They were friends of sorts and when Ferris was twenty, she had gone to Toulia for advice on how to seduce Armand. The succubus had laughed at that, as if Ferris had said something terribly funny. But when she saw that Ferris was serious, her laughter abruptly died. She stared at Ferris with those eerie, pale gold, cat’s eyes. “If I do this for you what will you give me in return?”
Knowing that it was stupid to bargain with a supernatural being, especially a demon, she took a shuddering breath and met Toulia’s gaze full on, “What do you want?”
A smile had curved the woman’s generous lips as mischief sparkled in her eyes, “I wish to sample a human who can see me as I truly am. May I sample you?”
Ferris’s eyes had rounded in shock, “I’m not giving you my virginity.”
“Oh, you’re so precious, but no, I don’t want to fuck you,” she said, drawing out the words as she ran a finger along Ferris’s jaw. When Ferris didn’t flinch away, a pleased smile lit Toulia’s face. “I just want a taste and you hardly have to do anything.”
Wearily, Ferris studied her, torn between her desire for advice and a need for self-preservation. But Ferris had grown up in Toulia’s world, she believed she could handle it. “What do I need to do?”
Toulia’s grin became truly wicked, “Think of your beloved Armand.”
And so Ferris had. Within moments, her first orgasm tore through her body, leaving her breathless and panting in the middle of the floor. Trying to catch her breath, she looked up at Toulia and saw that the woman wore a similarly battered expression. “My gods, that was marvelous but I don’t think I ever want to experience that again, at least not very often. Your desire for him is too much I think. I will stick with lonely men who see what they wish to see.
"Now, if you wish to seduce him," she said, flowing instantly into the part Ferris was most interested in. "Just be yourself."
As far as advice went, it pretty much sucked. Until Ferris seduced him by being herself.
Normally, Ferris adored the sassy succubus but today she just wanted to stew beneath the sun and bury her wounds and regrets. Only partially listening to Toulia’s words, she concentrated on her nails, ignoring the glares from the three gargoyles who glared at her with stone faces. Michael, Leo and Raphe could suck it if they didn’t want Toulia on the roof. The succubus was mostly harmless to them so they shouldn’t worry about it.
“I have a niece who is half-human,” Toulia said from a distance, shaking Ferris out of her own contemplations that didn’t seem to be going anywhere anyway. “Beautiful girl but strangely monogamous. Of course, if Scott were my mate I might consider giving monogamy a try, for a little while at least. But then I doubt an angel would be all that interested in fucking a pure demon.”
Ferris’s head whipped up at that, her eyes wide in her face as she looked at Toulia who so casually talked about an angel being mated to a half-demon. “Pardon?”
Toulia smiled at her with a knowing look in her cat’s eyes. Shaking her head, she relaxed back down on her lounge chair, putting her sunglasses back over her eyes. “Things are so different now that the veil has been ripped away. It’s no wonder your poor Armand is having such difficulties.”
“He’s frozen in his gargoyle form,” Ferris muttered, glancing over her shoulder at the gorgeous griffin gargoyle and heaving a sigh. The other gargoyles shimmered with life beneath the warmth of the sun but Armand was lifeless. Suddenly, she wanted to cry, even though she had cried far too many tears over the years. Bitterly, she scoffed, “He isn’t having any difficulties.”
Toulia tossed her head back and laughed, the red locks like flames beneath the sun. “He still suffers.”
The darker side of Ferris was glad he was suffering because she had been suffering for five years. Hell, she had been suffering for years before that. The rest of Ferris wanted to wrap her arms around the stubborn gargoyle and hold him until he woke from his accursed state.
A cramp rippled through her belly and she pressed her hand against her side, trying to ignore the ache. Looking over her shoulder at Toulia, she softly asked, “How do you do it? How do you separate love and sex?”
An elegant brow arched over the top of her glasses, “Sweetie, I’m a demon. We fuck, we devour souls and we get on with our lives. It’s not a big deal.”
Ferris couldn’t help but smile because Toulia was so matter-of-fact and at ease with who and what she was. She opened her mouth to say something but another rippling pain took her breath away and she had to concentrate on remembering how to breathe. From a distance, she felt Fray nudge her shoulder, feeling the concern as it emanated off the dragon in waves.
“Jesus Christ, you have a dragon!” Toulia gasped, scrambling to her feet and staring down at Ferris in awe and surprise. “I just thought it was a statue, like the gargoyles only, you know, a statue.”
Ferris tried to smile but the pain was becoming stronger, pulsing along her nerve endings and setting her skin on fire. Turning her head, she met Fray’s worried jeweled eyes, “Find Ajreis.”
With a nod, the dragon flew off. Ferris pushed herself to her feet, trying to ignore the three gargoyles who had suddenly came to attention. Ajreis wasn’t too far away, he was never too far away, but he didn’t like the succubus and had returned to his room when Toulia showed up.
“Ferris,” Raphe’s rocky voice grated over Ferris’s skin as the panther gargoyle reached out and touched her with the tip of his claw. It was as if were touching her with liquid nitrogen, his paw searing through her burning skin all the way to the bone.
Pressing her hand across her stomach, she gave Raphe a reassuring smile, “I just ate something that isn’t agreeing with me. You might want to stay away from the pudding. I think it’s gone bad.”
Staggering over to the door, it was with relief when Toulia’s long, slender hands gripped her upper arm and eased her down the stairs. “Easy, Ferris, I’ve got you.”
“Thank you,” Ferris muttered, feeling the sweat beading on her brow. She just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for a thousand years, or until the waves of cramps passed. The succubus helped her to her bedroom and into a nightgown before laying her on the bed.
Kneeling on the floor next to Ferris, Toulia stroked her fingers through Ferris’s damp hair, “Don’t get sick on me, Ferris. For a human I am quite fond of you. Besides, Armand would never forgive me if you died in my presence and I have very fond memories of that gargoyle.”
Ferris smile was closer to a grimace but her eyes were already closed.
Omari shuffled around the small shop in a heightened sense of anticipation. The signs had been flaring up all week, ever since the night he had seduced the lovely Ferris. She had been everything he had hoped for and more, a delicious human that responded with exquisite passion. A twinge of guilt still gnawed at his innards for taking advantage of her when she was lost in grief and alcohol but, damn it, he had waited for five years for her to get over Armand. He had lived as the perfect man for five years to be with her, living up to every ideal she had ever imagined and then some.
He had waited nearly five hundred years before that. All of that waiting was exhausting so when the opportunity came he seized upon it. And in the process of fulfilling his selfish desires he ruined something that he hadn’t realized he cherished: Ferris’s friendship. After she came to his shop in tears, after she realized he and Marick were one and the same, she looked at him differently. She no longer trusted him and asked him – asked Marick – for some space, begging for some time to figure things out. But he knew the truth: she was unable to engage in
an affair with a man who lied so easily and for so long just to fuck her. Any love she might have harbored for him died a quick and violent death.
Letting out a melancholy sigh, he realized it was time to return home, to put away his foolish disguises and simply return to Mount Olympus. The pisser of the thing was he truly liked her. Hell, he probably even loved her. He could be himself with her and simply enjoy life. Had he waited just a little while longer he was sure he could have won a piece of her heart. Not all of it, of course, or even half of it, but a piece of it. Most of her damn heart belonged to Armand, the lucky bastard. The fool had been too stubborn to see what a jewel Ferris was until it was too late.
Like father, like son.
The bell hanging over his door jingled and he looked up from his musings with a wide smile on his lips, prepared to greet the poor soul who stumbled into his shop. His mouth dropped as Ferris’s little imp struggled to break through the barrier that was erected to keep his kind out. The creature was determined, ignoring his blistering skin in his efforts to enter.
Intrigued by such fortitude and resilience, Omari waved his hand, allowing Ferris’s friend entrance. The imp staggered into the store, blinking its muddy eyes in surprise at finding itself on the inside. The surprise didn’t last long before it turned its head and speared Omari with a glare of pure venom. In a low growl, the imp bit out, “Come. Now.”
After working so hard to gain entrance, the little bastard simply turned around and walked out, clearly expecting Omari to follow. His feet were moving before he even realized he was going to follow, curious in spite of himself. Or maybe because the imp was Ferris’s friend and he was pathetic enough to admit he was a little bit desperate to hear from her, even if information came from a loathsome imp. Though there was something refreshingly different about Ferris’s imp even if the little creature kept to himself when Ferris was around other people.
Stone Destiny (Stone Passion #3) Page 15
