Sinister Intentions & Confiscated Conception

by Heather Graham

Kit stood up and wandered over to the fire, automatically stretching her hands out to it. She bit her lip against the sudden onslaught of pain that assaulted her. It was awful, she thought miserably. She missed him so badly, and in so many ways. For years she had just waited, almost like a dormant flower. And she had gotten by, day to day. But now...

  She missed him because she wanted to talk to him. To point out something, to ask a question. She missed his slow, lazy—yes, arrogant—smile. She missed his warmth, his fingers curling around hers. She missed his eyes, his voice, the lilt that came back to him in excitement or anger.

  She missed being loved.

  She felt almost immoral for wanting him. She wanted to run her fingertips along his arms and across his chest, wanted to touch the crisp, enchanting darkness of his hair.

  She missed his kiss sliding along her spine...his whisper against her cheeks, his lips covering her breast. She missed him inside in a way that made her ache and yearn, and she marveled at the way that merely thinking about him could make her shiver before a blazing fire.

  How many times had she almost forgotten everything and walked over to the castle? And why hadn’t she? It would be so easy to apologize. So easy...

  And yet...what for? Apologizing couldn’t solve what lay between them. Could anything? At this moment she was desperate. If she saw him, if she just had him before her at this very moment, she might forget that they were from two different worlds, that time would be their enemy if what he really wanted was a woman he could rule and command. That her love for him would die forever if he hurt her son—their son—in any way.

  Her fingers were trembling uncontrollably. She squared her shoulders, thinking that she could fix herself a cup of coffee with brandy and calm down, at least enough to sleep. Enough to make it through another night.

  She didn’t quite make it to the kitchen, though. The moonlight falling on the lawn caught her attention, and she walked over to the window. All Hallows’ Eve was barely a week away. The thought made her shiver, and she wondered again why she didn’t just leave. But she knew why. She had to be here. She had to find out....

  Find out what? she wondered wearily. Nothing had happened since she’d found the doll. And Michael McHennessy had been dead for so long now.

  Kit looked around the room, shaking her head with regret. The room, the cottage, should have reminded her of Michael, but she could barely picture him here. Of course, they had never sat in the parlor together. They’d barely arrived when he’d disappeared.

  She smiled with sweet nostalgia, remembering their few moments upstairs. And then her smile faded painfully, because his words were what she remembered most: the story of the virgin who was given to the priest, to the goat-god.

  And then Molly had told her that the O’Nialls had been the kings, and before that, the priests....

  Kit walked decisively into the kitchen. She poured her coffee, added the brandy, then moved out to the living room again. The coffee was hot, and she drank it quickly. She needed its solace.

  No good. She wanted Justin. Nothing else would do.

  A movement drew her attention to the window. Instantly she tensed, set her cup down beside her and ran over to the window.

  There was nothing outside but the darkness. Bracken and grass lay flat, crushed by the wind, a wind as old as time.

  Kit realized that she was still shivering. She pulled her robe more tightly around her, then closed the drapes and frowned. It wasn’t exactly true that nothing had happened since the incident of the doll.

  She was certain that she was being watched again. Watched and followed. She never left the cottage in the dark, but on Tuesday she had driven to Cork, and she could have sworn she had been followed. She’d tried to convince herself that it wasn’t true. After all, Justin had laughed at the idea.

  Damn him anyway! He was supposedly worried about her, but where the hell was he? She had thought that he would come back. She’d hoped; she’d prayed. But there had been no sign of him.

  With a weary sigh, she lay down on the couch and watched the fire. After a while, her eyelids began to droop, and she felt herself slipping into a doze.

  The dream came again.

  She was surrounded by mist, and she could barely see, because it was so thick. The wind was moaning like a hellish chorus, loud and anguished. Beneath that sound, though, she could hear movement: footsteps, coming toward her.

  She couldn’t move. At first she thought she was paralyzed, but then she realized that she was tied. Her wrists and ankles were bound to a slab of stone....

  Just like the doll. The doll with the angry red ribbon of blood around its neck. Like the doll, she was naked and bound on an altar of stone, and someone was coming nearer and nearer....

  She opened her mouth to scream, but her scream never came. It was Justin.

  He, too, was naked. Naked and graceful as he came toward her through the mist. She could see his eyes, see his striking satanic smile.

  He was coming closer, coming to her. She didn’t want to scream anymore. She wanted to reach out to him.

  Then the mist passed between them again, and he wasn’t Justin anymore. He was the creature. The goat-god. The priest in the cape and the mask, with the horns and the evil leer.

  The wind had died, and what she heard now was chanting. She realized that they were all around her; Liam and Barney, Molly and Douglas and Old Doug, Meg from the pub and even Julie McNamara. They were smiling, looking at her, saying words in a language she couldn’t understand, repeating them over and over....

  The god was almost upon her. He towered above her, reaching inside his cape. His arm suddenly rose high into the air, slashing it. She looked up and saw that the moon was glinting on an object. Glinting and glittering...on a knife. A huge broad dagger with a silver edge. A dagger that dripped blood...

  “Ohhh!”

  Instinct brought her awake before the dagger could fall. Shaking, she lowered her legs to the floor and covered her face with her palms. And then, before she could really react to the terror of her dream, she was jolted into full alertness. There was someone coming up the walk.

  Kit stiffened, then jumped to her feet. She felt dizzy, and she wished fervently that she hadn’t drunk the spiked coffee. She looked at the clock over the mantel. It was nearly midnight. No one would be coming at this hour to make a social call.

  She brought her knuckles to her lips as the footsteps drew closer. Desperately she looked around the room. The only possible weapon was the poker from the fireplace. She grabbed it hastily and waited, her body strung as tensely as wire.

  There was a soft tapping at the door.

  Compelled, Kit moved toward it, wide-eyed, her fingers wound tightly around the poker.

  The tapping came again. Harder. More insistent.

  She stepped closer to the door, barely breathing. If it was someone on legitimate business, he would go away when she didn’t answer his knock. And if not...

  What if the whole village was in on it? she wondered in wild panic. What if Justin was their goat-god and they were all ready and willing to serve him, eager to cast her into the sea?

  “Kit! Open the bloody door! Let me in!”

  “Oh!” Panic and tension eased out of her. She was relieved, because of course she didn’t really think that...

  “Kit—” he demanded.

  She swung the door open, the poker still at her side. Immediately, she got a potent whiff of him. He smelled of cherry tobacco and the dark beer served in Meg’s pub. His hair was an unruly mess, with one lock of it almost covering his left eye. His smile, crooked and rueful, was devastating, and he wobbled slightly in the doorway.

  “Justin...”

  He bowed. “Excuse me. Mrs. McHennessy, please, may I enter?”

  “Justin, you’ve been—”

  He cut her off, stepping in, eyeing the poker
in her hand with an arched brow. “Please?” He reached for the poker. “I haven’t been that rude, have I?”

  Still smiling, he walked—or swayed—over to the fireplace and set the poker back where it belonged. Then he turned to see her staring at him, wide-eyed, wearing a pair of absurd red fuzzy slippers that at least matched the color of her velour robe.

  “Justin...”

  He didn’t give her a chance to talk. With startling agility he suddenly swept her a deep bow, falling on one knee to take her hand.

  “Justin...”

  “Ah, Mrs. McHennessy, I do beg your pardon.”

  “Justin! You’re drunk.”

  He looked up at her, a satanic light gleaming from the depths of his eyes. “So I am, love, so I am.”

  Before she had a chance to reply, he was up as quickly as he had knelt before her. Astonished, she watched him amble over to the couch she had just vacated, offer her a crazy grin and fall onto it. He was on his back, eyes closed, dead still.

  “Justin?” Torn between anger and amazement, Kit tiptoed over to where he lay, staring down at him.

  Drunk! The damn fool had gotten drunk, and then he had come over here to make fun of her. And then he had passed out on her couch. Well, he was over six feet tall and probably weighed close to two hundred pounds. She wasn’t going to be able to move him.

  She sighed and ran upstairs to get an extra blanket. She checked the bed and saw that Mike was sound asleep, as comfortable as...

  As comfortable and as dead to the world as his father.

  There. She had really, truly admitted it for the very first time.

  She bit her lip, found a blanket and walked thoughtfully back down the stairs. When she neared the couch, she couldn’t help staring down at him. She loved the way his dark brows arched over his eyes. She loved the straight length of his nose, the fullness of his lower lip, the devilish sensuality of his mouth and the slight smile that remained even in sleep.

  With a little sigh, she leaned over to tuck the blanket around him, and as she did, her breasts brushed his chest. Suddenly something warm slipped around her waist, and she gasped, looking at his face and seeing that his eyes were wide open.

  “Kit...”

  “Justin...” she began warily.

  But it was too late. She was suddenly stretched out on top of him, and before she really knew what was happening, her lips were molded to his in a hungry kiss, hot and demanding.

  Either he wasn’t really drunk, or he was amazingly adept considering his inebriated state. He had untied the belt of her robe and slid the hem of her thin nightgown high on her thighs, and his hands were warm on her bare flesh. He was stroking her hip, her midriff, the heavy undercurve of her breast. When his lips released hers at last, his eyes sought hers. She couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to, because his left arm was still locked around her, while his right hand caressed and roved.

  “You cheat,” she whispered.

  “I need you.”

  “You smell like a brewery.”

  “There are worse things,” he said, wounded.

  “Like what?”

  “Well... I don’t smell like a sewer.”

  She started to laugh. He caught her lips again, and by that time his hand had moved between their bodies. Moved low, to a spot where she began to feel a constant throbbing.

  He broke off the kiss, and his hand moved, his fingers stroked, penetrated. She gasped sharply.

  “I dreamed of you,” she said quickly. “I dreamed that you were coming for me. That you were the goat-god.”

  “You dreamed that?” he asked, stricken. And yet the sweet torture he was inflicting on her didn’t stop.

  “I am no evil beast, Kit. Just the man who loves you.”

  She couldn’t speak. She felt as if hot honey were rushing through her veins, pooling at the center of her being, at the sweet spot where his fingers wrought their magic.

  “M-Mike is upstairs.”

  “Sleeping.”

  “What if—”

  “He won’t.”

  “But we can’t—”

  “But we can.”

  Her eyes went very wide, because suddenly she was straddling his bare flesh. She had never felt more intimately joined in her life. Cool on the outside...burning in the middle. Decadently filled and inwardly stroked with a startling, incredible impact that was erotic beyond imagination...

  “I...”

  “Kiss me,” he urged her softly.

  And that was the beginning of the end. She unleashed the dreams and the hunger and the longing and felt with delicious fever the ache being assuaged and assuaged...and assuaged.

  Later, when the fire had nearly died and the wind had become a gentle breeze, she laid her head against his chest. “I have to move. Michael might come down.”

  “Aye.” He kissed her cheek, but he didn’t release her, nor withdraw himself from her sweet sanctuary.

  Kit frowned. “Justin...this can’t solve things.”

  “Not murder, no.”

  “I meant other things.”

  “No,” he whispered. “No. But I feel so much better,” he told her. “So much better just to be with you.”

  She felt better, too. She felt him in her, and all around her. She inhaled his scent and felt him down to her soul. She was too languorous to dispute him. Too lazy even to move. She would, though, in just a few seconds.

  * * *

  “Mom?”

  Kit heard the voice dimly at first. She was so sleepy, so comfortably ensconced in the warmth of the blanket. Then she remembered the night.

  In a panic, she opened her eyes, realizing that Mike was standing beside her and that she was still on the sofa and that she had fallen asleep there after...after being with Justin.

  “Mike!”

  In desperation she looked around, but Justin was gone. She was on the sofa all by herself. Her robe was even rebelted, and the blanket was tucked in all around her.

  “Oh!” she breathed in relief. But she wondered where he was.

  Mike was dressed and smiling and very pleased that he had gotten himself ready for school. “Mom, can I get some cornflakes? It’s almost time for Douglas to come.”

  “Oh, uh, of course,” she said quickly. Justin wasn’t the type to hide in a closet, she realized. He had left, carefully, discreetly.

  She reached for Mike with a broad smile and gave him a little hug. He squirmed a bit and gave her a peculiar look.

  “What’s that for?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Just that I love you. Come on, I’ll feed you whatever you want.”

  He wanted cornflakes and toast. He’d barely eaten the last of his breakfast when Kit heard Douglas’s horn blaring. She walked outside with Mike, kissed him quickly on top of his head, then waved to Douglas, who waved back cheerily.

  When they were gone, she fixed herself toast and coffee in a curiously light mood. She half expected Justin to appear, but he didn’t, so she bolted the door and went upstairs to take a long hot bath. She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and smiled at the dreamy quality in her eyes.

  “Well loved!” She laughed aloud.

  By the time she had bathed and dressed it was almost eleven, and she didn’t feel like working. She hesitated, then decided to take a walk through the woods over to the castle. He had come to her last night—no matter in what condition—so she would hold out the olive branch and go to him this morning.

  Halfway there, she regretted her impulse. There was only a glimmer of sunshine, and it didn’t reach through the dense foliage. And there was a mist. She could barely make out the little trail through the trees because of the low-lying ground fog. For once there wasn’t even a wind, and the silence was eerie.

  It was only a ten-minute walk, she told herself, but she quickened her pace.
She wanted it to be a five-minute walk.

  Sweat had beaded her forehead, and she was breathing heavily when she finally saw the walls of the castle rising before her. She began to feel a bit silly.

  Molly answered the door and eagerly ushered her in. “Justin’s not in, love, but come, have some tea,” the older woman urged.

  Kit swallowed her disappointment and told Molly that she would love some tea. Molly headed into the kitchen, but Kit hesitated at the door. The counter was covered with potatoes that had been carved into gruesome jack-o’-lanterns.

  Molly winked at her. “All Hallows’ Eve this week. The young ones do love my potato men!”

  Kit smiled and forced herself to admire Molly’s work. They went on talking about how much Mike liked school, and Kit was glad to see how proud Molly was of Douglas.

  “Old Doug, well, he’s a good man, he is, but a gravedigger all his life. I was glad to see me son a teacher.”

  Kit commented on how much Mike admired Douglas, and how grateful she was that Douglas had taken such an interest in her son. “He’s been very kind.”

  “He’s a good man. And he likes the boy. Who would not? He’s a well-mannered, handsome lad.”

  Kit thanked her for both the compliment and the tea. Justin hadn’t returned, and she felt too restless to sit.

  “I’ll tell him ye were here,” Molly promised, seeing Kit out.

  Once she got outside, Kit noted with irritation that the fog hadn’t lifted yet. She toyed with the idea of taking the long way home, by the highway, but that would have taken her half an hour. Swearing beneath her breath, she started down the path again.

  The wind was picking up, and Kit was actually glad of it; she didn’t like the silence in the forest. But the fog was just awful. She lost the trail for a moment, and when she found her way back onto the path, she had to dust leaves from her sweater. Just then a flash of movement caught her eye, and she screamed.

  There, right in front of her, was the goat-god. Clothed in the black cape, tall and malevolent. His horns were long, his eyes were diamond-bright, and as dark as death against the sky.

  “No!” she cried in terror.