Stone's Kiss (19 page)

“Gregory, come and sit. We need to talk.”

Without a word, he came to stand before her, head bowed.

She cleared her throat. “About earlier, I owe you an—”

“I did not mean to frighten you,” he cut in.

“You didn’t frighten me.”

“You ran.”

“I wasn’t afraid.”

He furled his brow. “Yet you ran away.”

Lillian sighed. Damn, he was like a bloodhound with a scent. “Yes, I did. And I’m sorry. I was surprised and handled it badly. I’m an idiot. Give me an honest threat, and I’m game for battle, but toss me into an embarrassing situation and I turn tail and run, every time. Not something I’m proud of, and I’m sorry.” She reached for his hand and pulled him down to sit on the bed next to her.

“I’m glad you were not afraid,” he rumbled.

With a smile, she began to pull the brush through his mane. He turned to give her better access. In the end she sat on her haunches behind him. She was working up the nerve to ask him one question which burned brighter than the rest when he turned and looked at her with dark eyes full of knowledge. She was touching him. Of course he already knew what she was going to ask. She folded her hands in her lap, and prayed for composure and that her nerve wouldn’t give out. The question lodged in her throat and didn’t want to come free. After three more tries, she got her voice working.

“Do you want to … I mean … clearly you’re mature … with needs.” Lillian winced at her word choice and had a sudden urge to whack her head against a wall.

“What occurred earlier isn’t something I’d normally let happen. My control is usually better, but after all that’s ensued tonight, the power of the dance riding us, then you and the other dryads feeding me blood—both acts are very similar to courtship, and I reacted.”

Lillian sobered at his words, her reaction far closer to disappointment than relief. He wasn’t actually interested in her. She was just a warm, willing body, and she’d been all over him—literally. What a mess. She scrambled for something to say to him, something to throw him off track so he wouldn’t know how his words hurt.

“What I’m trying to say is … if you want to spend time with one of the dryads, go ahead. You seem to think you need to guard me every waking moment, but you should take some personal time too.”

“Personal time?”

She didn’t dare look up at him. “If you want to take one of the dryads as your lover, you should.”

Another long silence followed. She started to worry at her robe tie.

“There is one I want.” He said the words like they were dragged from his soul.

“Then go to her and find what solace you can. You have my blessing.” The lie tasted bitter on her tongue, but it was better than shackling him with the truth. He was so loyal; he’d forgo his own needs if he thought it would make her unhappy. In this case, a small lie served the greater good—even if it was gnawing at her heart hard enough to dampen her eyes. “Go be with your chosen one.”

“I am.” He shifted, the bed rocked under him as he moved. Coffee–dark eyes bored into hers a second before he embraced her, drawing her against his chest. He hid his muzzle in her hair and drew on power. Eyes closed, she shivered at the delicious sensation. There was a moment of great heat and the world shifted around her. When she opened her eyes, she was lying on her back with him hunched over her. A look of tenderness crossed his now human face.

He leaned toward her. She turned her head at the last moment and he landed a kiss on her jaw instead of the lips. His miss didn’t seem to upset him and he nuzzled her neck, inhaling her scent. Warm fingers stroked her breastbone. “You are the one thing that both calms and arouses me, my greatest and most forbidden desire.”

Panic and arousal beat her heart against her ribcage. He had said “forbidden,” hadn’t he? She needed some answers. It was hard to think with him nuzzling his way along to her neck and his nimble fingers working loose the tiny row of buttons running down the front of her nightgown. He was entirely too distracting, but she gathered her thoughts. “What’s forbidden, and why?”

He jerked like her words were a bucket of cold water. “This.” His expression turned sober. A moment later he jumped from the bed and began to pace around the room. “I …” he let the sentence die as shadows thickened, hiding him.

“No. Don’t go. Please answer my question. What’s forbidden?”

“My love for you, my desire, it is forbidden.” His disembodied voice floated to her from a different corner of the room. Even invisible he still paced back and forth.

She wished she could go invisible, too. “Go on, I’m listening.”

“I haven’t told you everything. I should have, but I was afraid.” His voice shook and she could hear the torment within his rumbling tones.

“Gregory, I know you withheld information when you said we shared one spirit.” Lillian stood and walked in the direction of his voice. “And I’m not so naive that I don’t see how much it hurts you to keep things from me. Talk to me. I promise I’ll try to understand, and even if I don’t understand it all, I’ll still accept it and you.”

He continued to pace, his feet padding softly against the carpet. His voice now came to her from near the bathroom door. “We are the Avatars of the Divine Ones.”

He’d said it like those eight words explained everything. A smile tugged at her lips. At least she’d pinpointed where he stood. “Explain what that means, my love.”

“As their Avatars, we wield a portion of their power. That same power always wishes to reunite and create, but we are forbidden to join outside of the Spirit Realm, for it is too dangerous. Any child we birthed would be more god than flesh.”

“I can see how that could be a problem.” The scent of gargoyle was stronger in the Northeast corner of the room.

“Duty was enough for us in the beginning. But over time we craved a closer link, like what we had in the spirit realm. More so than we had any right to continue, we encouraged each other to deeper love. While the Divine Ones forbid us to mate with each other, we sometimes found orphaned younglings to raise. Or one of us would seek a mate elsewhere and bring the child back. Over the last few lifetimes we couldn’t even do that because something had changed.” He paused.

With her hand outstretched before her, she encountered his warm skin before she could see him. After a moment, the shadows hiding him receded and she found him still in human form, standing with his back braced against the wall, eyes staring unseeing at the floor. The need to hold him, to comfort him in whatever way she could, had her moving closer. She embraced him before he could bolt again. Then with an arm around his waist, she urged him back toward the foot of the bed. “Talk to me.”

He took a great, sighing breath and pulled her against his side. “Six lifetimes ago I’d chosen a gryphon mate and was guarding the young when you came and dramatically claimed all of them as yours. And then, five lifetimes ago, I nearly killed your mate. You were a dragon, as was your mate. If he’d been of a more fragile nature, he wouldn’t have survived.”

“I was a dragon?” Lillian interrupted. While she
did
want to learn about her past, she was more interested in distracting Gregory from his melancholy. “Guess that would make me taller than you,” she said with a lopsided grin.

“Superior size didn’t offer your dragon mate much protection from my wrath.”

Lillian’s smile wilted. So much for a lighter mood. “We chose mates in an attempt to resist the deep love growing between us, didn’t we? But it didn’t work, jealousy got in the way.”

“Yes, and after those two disastrous events we wisely never tried again. We could do nothing but endure. If we weakened, even for a moment and came together as lovers, it would lead to our deaths. The Divines Ones would have no option except to hunt us down. And there would be no rebirth this time.”

She rested her elbows against her knees. “I’m so sorry Gregory. If I’d known, I’d have… .” She paused when she realized she didn’t know what she’d have done differently. He was in pain, and she wanted to help, but if what he said was true, and she had no reason to doubt him, he could never be with the one he loved. She couldn’t make the leap to picture herself as the Sorceress, his beloved. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? You couldn’t have changed anything.”

“No, but if I was your Sorceress, then she’d understand and share in your pain. You wouldn’t be so alone.” Her throat tightened. Gregory was the noblest man she knew. If anyone deserved a bit of happiness, it was him. She wasn’t the Sorceress he remembered, but perhaps she could still give him something he craved. Her fingers trace a line over the curve of his shoulder, down his arm and along the inside of his forearm.

“If I understand the restrictions correctly, it isn’t that we must remain chaste, instead we must ensure we never have a child together.” She caressed his side, and he shivered at her touch. The contrast of warm, soft skin over hard muscle enticed her to do many things. The strongest urge was to kiss and stroke him until he was frenzied, then take him into her body and hold him within the protection of her arms while he was vulnerable.

He rumbled something unintelligible in her ear and then sat stiffly beside her. Oh, he had picked up on her train of thoughts. Her cheeks warmed.

“Gregory, I’m not familiar with the world you came from, but in my world there are things I can do to insure I don’t get pregnant. There are protections we can use … or ways to share pleasure without the risk of a child. I care for you and want to see you happy.” She paused and glanced up to his face, then blushed deeper and ducked her head.

“Protection?”

“Yes,” she cleared her throat, “Please don’t make me show you the visuals. Remember about embarrassing conversations—I might bolt.”

“I doubt whatever your world has invented will work in this situation. We are Avatars, and as such we carry the potential of creation within us. The two sides of our power yearn to be together and create.”

He stroked the side of her jaw and on down the column of her throat to rest his palm between the swell of her breasts. His fingers feathered lightly against her skin. Her lids fluttered shut at the heat his touch aroused in her. Warm breath caressed her face a moment before his rumbling voice broke over her.

“If we tried to come together as lovers our magic would assure fertility—we must never allow this to happen.” He got up and began pacing again. Between one stride and the next his human form vanished and he was all gargoyle again.

Mortification burned hot in her soul. She plucked at her robe as she smoothed out the wrinkles, welcoming a distraction so she wouldn’t have to look up at him until she had her hormones under control. She’d just tried to seduce her gargoyle—again.

Another thought occurred to her, and anger awoke. “How could the Divine Ones be so cruel?” She folded her arms across her chest. “And their rules are pure bullshit. We’re not allowed to have a child because the child would be too powerful. Yet we’re so fertile that birth control won’t work. If we’re not allowed to reproduce, why the hell not make us infertile? Or disinterested in sex? I don’t understand why these Divine Ones would do this. Is our loyalty being tested or some shit like that? ’Cause if they reward their loyal servants with that kind of shit… .”

“It’s not like that,” Gregory replied as he came to stand in front of her. “The Divine Ones only ask us to endure what they themselves endure. All of creation stretches out between them, and if they were to reunite, it would unmake all they have made. As a way to overcome this problem, the great God and Goddess use our mortal bodies to bear their children. They imbibe us with their power and spirit, then in a moment of fire and ecstasy, we die as the Divine Ones birth their newest child into the Realms.”

“Holy shit! And that’s supposed to make me feel better about all this?”

“It’s a great honor.”

“Fire and death. Some honor.”

Gregory sighed with annoyance and bunted her thigh with his tail. “You only say that because you don’t remember the pleasure …”

“Death… .”

“We have been reborn each time.”

Lillian frowned. “How many times have these Divine Ones knocked us up?”

“Such disrespect.” Gregory chuckled. It was the first sign of humor she’d seen from him all evening. When he had himself under control he continued. “While our duties to the Divine Ones are many and varied, they have only honored us with their greatest gift three times during our long existence: once each for the Shieldbearer, the Lord of the Underworld and the Lady of Battles.”

“I’m sorry Gregory. I’m not angry with you, and I promise I’ll try to accept the whole Avatar thing. What you need is your Sorceress of old.” Leaning forward, she wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him closer so she could rest her cheek against his chest. She needed him to know she wasn’t scared of him. “And now, for the first time, I’ve been born in the form of a dryad. That must make it a little more difficult for you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, but I don’t care. I will fulfill my duty to the Divine Ones.”

“Got any idea what that is?”

“Hunt down evil.”

“And?”

“Destroy it.”

“You’ve certainly got a one–track mind. I mean, do you have any specifics?”

“No.” He exhaled then leaned in to sniff at her hair. “But I’ve found evil here, so I’m in the right place, for now. Once we’ve defeated these ones, we can return home and learn what the Lady of Battles has been up to. Even imprisoned she’s been busy.” He settled upon the bed next to her.

After a few moments his muzzle dipped close to her neck. Before she could say anything, his warm tongue brushed under her ear. He pushed her robe off her shoulder as he nuzzled her, his eyes half closed.

She wasn’t certain if he was aware of his actions. A warm weight bumped her hip and settled in her lap—his tail, the tip flicking gently. She brushed her fingers along the bladelike end. He allowed a few caresses and then his tail shifted out of her grasp and wound its way around her waist. She frowned at his tail. This was what had gotten them into trouble before.

Forbidden, forbidden, forbidden
she chanted to herself, then said aloud, “Okay, so we’re a little weak in the plan department, but for what it’s worth, I’ve got your back. And now that I know the rules, I think I can play along. Kill the bad guys, preserve the Light, no contact bed sports, return home, and do nasty things to this Lady of Battles. Got it.”