Stone Passions Trilogy (Stone Passion 1, 2, & 3) Read online

  Armand’s lips lifted in a rueful smile, “I was young and impetuous, Vaughn. You don’t have the same excuse.”

  Vaughn looked away, regretting the spiteful words he uttered as they hit the mark. But as Armand shrugged out of the silk robes, revealing his naked body, Vaughn growled and pushed himself off the wall. It took everything in him to stop himself from walking over and grabbing Armand by the short hairs. “Is it necessary to cast the spell using sex?”

  “She is resilient,” Armand said coolly, the flame of the candle bathing his hard body in golden light. “In orgasm, she will be vulnerable and the spell will be more… effective. Besides, there will be no actual intercourse since it is in the spiritual plane.”

  “Then it’s even more insidious,” Vaughn sneered, not wanting his brother to know Melanie in such an intimate manner, even if it wasn’t truly physical. “Try something less… invasive.”

  Armand’s smile was dark as he looked at Vaughn, belying the seriousness of the threat. “If you had done the spell when you fucked her this night it wouldn’t be necessary for me to do this now.”

  Vaughn closed his eyes in remorse. What Armand had said was true and he had failed to protect his family’s best interests when it came to the girl. He had failed to safeguard the girl. After she was safely back where she belonged, maybe he would take a few days and find a place where he could spread his wings and fly for more than a few minutes at a time. He would get his thoughts back in order, remember where his loyalties lay.

  Armand watched his brother go, wishing there was more he could do for him but there was no way he could allow a human to remain aware of them, of their home. He remembered the madness of falling in lust with a human female and he also remembered the fall out. It had been a painful lesson, one he wouldn’t wish on anyone, especially his brother.

  He hadn’t been completely honest with Vaughn, though. The girl was an anomaly, that much was true, but she was also intriguing. She had been able to withstand his powerful hypnosis. No one, not even Katrina, had been able to do that. There was no choice but to invoke the power of sex. He could justify himself by saying it wasn’t truly sex, that it was necessary to ensure the girl’s compliance, but that wouldn’t be the entire truth, either. Armand wasn’t sure a less intimate spell wouldn’t have worked, but he wanted to discover for himself the unique girl.

  Picturing her in his head, he felt the power ebb and flow around him. She was a pretty, little thing with a classic oval face and a small, tip-tilted nose. A smattering of freckles danced across the bridge of her nose and the apples of her cheeks, giving her an air of freshness and sweetness. Her eyes were blue, which had surprised him when he had stared directly into her blue eyes. Her damnable blue eyes. The color reminded him of the summer sky, of a brief moment in time he still dreamed about. He could feel the heat of the sun on his flesh, see it behind his closed eyelids. It had been so long since he had seen that color….

  He forced himself back to the present and forced the memories away. Concentrating on Melanie, he conjured her face once again, her eyes, her nose, her lips…. She had a wicked, seductive mouth, with full, blush-colored lips. It was a mouth made to fuck.

  He had actually liked the girl when he had danced with her. She had made him laugh with her irreverence and determination and if things were different, if he and his brothers weren’t who they were, he would have encouraged Vaughn to pursue her. But they were what they were and when all was said and done the girl was only a human and she would never choose Vaughn. Armand would rather carve out his own heart than see his brother suffer. So he had no choice but to invoke sex to erase her memory, he didn’t want to take the chance of a lesser spell failing.

  His only regret was that he wouldn’t be able to see her face when he brought her to orgasm. He was still a male and could appreciate a beautiful woman, even if she belonged to Vaughn.

  Closing his eyes, he blew out his breath and started to chant. The physical world fell away as he entered the ether between realities. Perception was so skewered in the mists surrounding him and he had to rely on memory to find the girl’s essence. In a short time, she had filled her entire apartment with her energy, with the strongest concentration coming from the bed.

  He let his conscious mind fade, letting the magic course through him to create a proxy with which to cast the spell. In her dreams, she would see him as he appeared in human form. If the girl were to wake, all she would see was a nebulous mist hovering over her, clinging to her skin and she would believe she was still sleeping. It didn’t matter because after she came and the spell was cast, she wouldn’t remember anything.

  Slowly, he mentally moved his hands over her body, his mind filling in the blanks that did not translate into the ether realm. That was one of the drawbacks of sex in the spiritual realm. He enjoyed the physical aspect of sex, of feeling a woman’s lush breasts, her wet arousal. His voice low, thick, dreamlike as he asked, “Do you remember me?”

  “Yes,” she breathed, her heart rate accelerating in arousal. “You were at the club tonight; you and two others.”

  Armand smiled to himself, or what constituted as smiling in the ether world. The girl did not seem disappointed to have him in her dreams as compared to Vaughn. Perhaps if things had played out differently, he would have been the one to have sex with her in the bathroom of that club and he would have been able to mind wipe her then. He also would have been able to leave a back door in her head for him to visit in her dreams. The good thing about knowing the rules so well was the ability to also know how to break them, something his brothers hadn’t learned.

  “Let me into your body,” he breathed, the syrupy sound of his voice lulling her further. “Your mind.”

  “Yes,” she repeated. He could picture her chocolate hair spread out on the pillows, her face flushed with arousal. He could almost smell her feminine musk.

  His hands moved over her body and he imagined the feel of her nipples puckering beneath his palm, her stomach quivering under his fingers. “Remove your barriers.”

  He felt the rustle as she stripped out of her night clothes, laying herself bare literally and figuratively. An image of Melanie wearing a pair of flannel pajama pants and a tank top flashed in his head and he had an unexpected flash of guilt for doing this to her. He quickly reminded himself that it was for her own good, his brother’s as well.

  Sexual energy came off her in waves, mingling with his energy and fueling his power. Her response pleased him, even if he found it somehow lacking, even if he couldn’t explain what he had been hoping for. Forcing himself to concentrate on what he had to do instead of fantasies and wishes he couldn’t indulge, he sent a surge of lust directly to her feminine core. “Touch yourself.”

  When he didn’t immediately feel a surge in her desire he was a little concerned; was she resisting him even in her sleep? But then he felt another energy source and grimaced for she had grabbed a masturbatory enhancer. While it wouldn’t interfere with his spell, it was going to be annoying. The rhythmic pulsing of the droning, electric cock played havoc on a body in the ether realm.

  Gritting his teeth, he continued to send his own pulses of lust through her body, concentrating on the spell he was forming even as her passion built. Ignoring the humming, he continued whispering, “Tonight you experienced a normal New Year’s celebration. There was nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Oooo,” she moaned, the pressure building. He didn’t have much time.

  “You did not meet anyone interesting,” he continued, trying not to rush the words, the spell. “You want to keep your life normal. You have no interest in magic or gargoyles.”

  He doubted she was even hearing what he was saying, which was as it should be. Why, then, was he so disappointed? The spell was doing exactly as it was supposed to do, and in a way that was far less challenging than he had expected. Perhaps that was what was bothering him, he wasn’t being challenged. Her body was tightening as she fought for release and it was time to finish
it, finish her association with him and his brothers.

  “You no longer wish to remain in this building and you never want to return. In a few moments you are not going to remember any of this, my brothers, this building. When you wake in the morning all of it will be a dream that quickly fades.” As he said the last word, her sexual energy spiked and he felt her climax tumble over him, trying to suck him into the abyss and failing to do so.

  He could feel his essence being pulled back into his corporeal body, the coldness that reminded him that he was still part of the living. As tempting as it would be to remain in the ether world indefinitely, he enjoyed the physical realm too much to give it up all together. Even if he returned with an erection that required a manual release because the spiritual orgasm failed to bring him off. That was strange. Usually when he cast a spell of that magnitude, where sex was a necessary element, he returned bodily sated.

  Curling his fist around his cock, he frowned. He felt … betrayed because the girl had proven all too easy to seduce. Her submission was, well, anti-climactic. He had been hoping for more of a struggle on her part, a willingness to fight for Vaughn. All in all, it was best that he was able to ensure her capitulation so easily since she obviously wasn’t worthy of Vaughn’s affection.

  His body still bristled with latent power, power that he thought he was going to have to use but did not. Perhaps he had been mistaken about the girl, perhaps she was just like everyone else. But how to explain her ability to resist his powers of suggestion while he held her in his arms? It had to have been a fluke, some quirk of fate.

  It would be better not telling Vaughn how easy it was to ensure their secrets. It would only hurt him to know the girl wasn’t worth the effort after all, that she would not have been worth the sacrifice Armand was sure Vaughn would have made. In that, he was grateful.

  As Melanie lay in her bed and stared up at the ceiling, Vanessa’s soft snoring was the only sound in the room because Frankie had taken a cab home rather than crash at the small apartment. Melanie’s thoughts tumbled and somersaulted over one another. S few hours ago she had sex in the bathroom of a bar with a complete stranger. The Whimsical Melanie temporarily disappeared and for that moment she had been replaced with the Daring and Adventurous Melanie. The slightly stupid Melanie.

  The sexually satisfied Melanie.

  If she were to get involved with Vaughn – she loved that name, it suited him so well – she would be able to retire Simon. She would never have to bring herself to orgasm again. Hell, if she continued to have sex with Vaughn, she knew that personal, sexual gratification was going to disappear altogether because nothing she did to herself could ever compare to how it felt having Vaughn between her thighs.

  She could still feel his cock deep within her and she was pretty sure he had been very well endowed. Sadly, the only thing she regretted from their encounter was the fact that she didn’t get to see him naked, didn’t get to see the penis that had impaled her and made her body burn. A small shiver whispered through her body just thinking about what she had done and who she had done it with. Heck, she was still a little tender from Vaughn.

  With her brain still buzzing from the aftermath of having sex with a perfect stranger, she knew she wasn’t going to be getting to sleep any time soon. How could she sleep when she was torn between euphoria and anxiety? Having sex with Vaughn was so outside the realm of normal behavior for her she wondered what she had been thinking. More importantly, when would she see him again?

  Heaving a sigh, she flung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, stretching and feeling a pleasurable ache between her thighs. A small smile played at her lips at the reminder of just how phenomenal the sex had been. Making sure Vanessa was covered, she walked the short distance to her kitchen and turned on the hot water maker. She was going to make a cup of hot chocolate, sit down at the kitchen counter and try to figure out where the hell her brain went when she had sex in the bathroom with a man she hardly knew.

  Granted, she had drunken a bit more than usual but she had been by no means drunk, just slightly tipsy. She had gotten far drunker before and not ended up in the bathroom with a gorgeous stranger between her legs. Even before she had her first drink she had been tempted by Vaughn, before she even knew his name. In fact, it was his fault that she had drunk so much to begin with… not that she was blaming him for what she voluntarily did. He had simply been the inspiration for her recklessness. Unfortunately, she was pretty sure she still would have had sex with him even if she had been stone-cold sober because he had been that intoxicating.

  Would she have had sex with him had she still been dating Peter? A rush of guilt swept over her as she realized she would have seriously considered it and she thanked God they had broken up all of those months ago! Although, he had left a strange message on her machine sometime before she got home saying he was planning on coming over to ask her something in the next few days. Hopefully he was all right since they had parted on such good terms. She had even seen him around town and he had looked happy. She briefly wondered if he was okay.

  With a shrug, she dismissed her thoughts of Peter; she would listen to whatever he had to say and then maybe she would tell him to give Vanessa a chance. Vanessa would help loosen him up a bit and he could be a stabilizing influence on her. She felt like she should be uncomfortable with the idea but she was strangely okay with it, almost as if Peter and Vanessa belonged together. Maybe she had been standing in the way of true love for all of those years, maybe….

  Vanessa started to moan and Melanie looked up from pouring hot water into a mug. At first Melanie thought her friend was having a bad dream. But the moaning was quickly sounding like moans of pleasure, of ecstasy. Stirring the decadent chocolate powder into the water, she was grateful to her friend for distracting her from her depressing thoughts.

  With a wry smile, she took a sip of her hot chocolate. Maybe that was the reason why Peter had been so down on Vanessa when the two of them were dating – he was secretly in love with her. Thank God he had been too honorable to cheat on her to pursue a relationship with Vanessa. Of course, Melanie probably shouldn’t have been feeling so pleased with herself since she had admitted, even if it was only to herself, that she probably would have slept with Vaughn had she met him before.

  She wondered when she would be seeing him, seeing Vaughn, again. She knew that it wasn’t likely to lead to anything permanent – after all, how many one night stands turn into something more? It didn’t even matter because there was that nearly combustible spark that flared between them and he practically gave her an orgasm by looking at her. Of course she knew that lust didn’t last but she was hopeful that there could be something more than physical desire, that whatever was between them might lead to something more.

  “Yes,” Vanessa’s sleepy voice filled the small space of her apartment, making Melanie jump from the unexpected sound. Had she spoken her thoughts out loud and woken her friend?

  No, Vanessa was still asleep. At least her eyes were still closed. Odd, there seemed to be a faint mist covering her friend’s lithe body. Even as she watched, Vanessa grabbed the hem of her slinky top and whipped it over her head. Squirming, she pushed the covers away as she pulled her panties off her body. Melanie’s eyes widened in disbelief as Vanessa writhed on the bed in all her naked perfection.

  Wow, that had to be some dream. Melanie almost felt that she should leave her apartment and give her friend some privacy. She was about to do just that until she heard the soft, seductive voice. Even though the words were barely audible and almost seemed to be coming from another world, she knew at once who it was: Vaughn’s brother, the black-haired one. Armand. It was eerily similar to the dance they shared a few hours before.

  Much to her shock and alarm, Melanie saw Vanessa twist around in the bed, reach into the bedside dresser and pull out Simon. She watched in horror as her friend slid Simon between her slender thighs and began pleasuring herself. The mug of hot chocolate slipped from her fingers,
clunking down on the countertop and spilling the hot liquid over her front.

  “Damn it!” Melanie swore, not sure if she was swearing about her hot chocolate-stained tank top or Vanessa stepping way over the lines of friendship. Grabbing a few paper towels, she mopped up the mess, her attention morbidly focused on the scene that was taking place on her bed. As she cleaned, she strained her ears to hear what the man was saying.

  “New Year’s….” Armand’s disembodied voice murmured, the drugging quality wrapping itself around Melanie’s mind. But a few words made it through the fog that seemed to have coalesced around her: “Ordinary…. Normal…. Magic…

  “Gargoyles.”

  That word forced Melanie’s attention back to the present. Vanessa was humping Simon as her long, slender fingers moved him in and out of her body. Swallowing the bile that was rising in her throat – it was time to replace Simon, if nothing else was true – Melanie forced herself to listen to what the black-haired man was whispering in Vanessa’s ear. She chose to ignore her friend’s actions.

  “You no longer wish to remain in this building and you never want to return. In a few moments you are not going to remember any of this, my brothers, this building. When you wake in the morning all of it will be a dream that quickly fades.”

  Melanie sucked in her breath, the spilled hot chocolate forgotten. He had tried to make her forget her apartment and his brothers earlier. The auburn-haired man – Rhys – had tried to do the same thing only she thought they were playing around. She had no idea that they were serious, nor how far they were willing to go to make her forget.

  But why would they want to do such a thing? She loved this building and the three gargoyles that guarded it. She was hardly what anyone would consider a threat. Besides, if they were trying to cast some sort of… spell, well, that would mean that magic truly existed and she wasn’t completely crazy for believing in it. But then, that would mean magic truly existed and that was actually a scary thought. If they could use their power to make a little nobody like her forget that she just had the most amazing sexual experience of her life, than what else could they do with that sort of power?