“I have no desire to hurt you. Quite the opposite. I’m offering you and the Betrayer sanctuary. I want to keep you safe from those who would try to use you.”
“Forgive me if I don’t feel safe in the bosom of your family after last night.”
Miach sighed. “Last night was an aberration. You can be assured that Liam and Nial are contrite, and Brian won’t be leaving the island until he repents.” Then he narrowed his gaze. She felt his attempt to attack her mind as a change in the air pressure.
That was all.
His mouth quirked. “You’ve grown stronger,” he said. “But your body is still human, frail.” He swept his hand up in an arc. Beth heard the water churn beneath the pier. The planks under her feet swayed and groaned. Foam boiled on both sides of the dock, then jetted into the air to form a murky brown tunnel, the roof directly overhead. She threw her hands up to shield herself, held her breath, and thought, stop. The water hung, suspended in midair for a second, then burst like a rain cloud and splashed down on Beth, leaving her soaked but otherwise unharmed.
She was as surprised as Miach.
Another splash, this time behind her, and she turned.
Conn stood at the edge of the dock, looking over. Elada was in the cold, gray water, and to judge from the profanity rising out of the channel, not happy about it.
“Beth stays with me,” Conn said.
Elada said nothing.
“Miach?” Conn prompted.
“Fine.” His frustration was palpable. “The woman stays with you. Under guard.”
“You insult me,” Conn said.
“You are in violation of your geis, weak from it, and besotted with her. I will not judge you for it, but tell me you can be vigilant even while you are having her, and I will let you go.”
When Conn didn’t answer, Beth knew Miach had won. And hurt Conn’s pride. Miach must have known it, too, because he added, “The Prince Consort is not to be trifled with. And the sword is still at large.”
Beth had forgotten. Until Conn had the sword, she was a pawn in a larger game.
“French fries,” Beth said. Conn had insisted on taking the Porsche. Elada was trailing them in the Mercedes. They were stuck in the morning commute, wending their way back toward Somerville, and from the dorms and apartments and restaurants they passed Beth could smell bacon frying and coffee brewing and toast burning. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon,” she explained.
“Then we’ll find french fries for you. You’re going to need your energy.”
Her stomach flip-flopped at the thought. Just a taste of what Conn could do to her, in the kitchen hours ago, had set her body alive with anticipation. The feeling hadn’t ever quite gone away. The geis again, she supposed. She considered telling him to take her straight home. Then her stomach growled, and she thought better of it.
The Pilgrim Diner near her house was crowded, and Beth was about to accept two stools at the counter when Elada strode in. They waited in awkward silence together for a booth. Once they were seated, Beth scanned the other tables. Her Fae companions, even with their hair shorn, were strikingly handsome. And yet no one was even stealing a surreptitious glance at them.
“You’re using human glamour, aren’t you?” she asked.
Elada frowned. “Of course.”
“How many Fae are there?”
“Free?” Conn asked. “Or in our richly deserved Otherworld hell?”
Elada shot him a speaking glance. “In Boston there is Miach, myself, Finn, his two brothers, and Deirdre, though she is a recluse,” answered Elada. “A hundred or so are scattered across the world. The majority of the Fae—and most of the ancient powerful nobility—are imprisoned, thanks to the Betrayer here, though no one knows how many are in the Otherworld with the Court, and how many are still entombed in Druid mounds.”
“You mean there are Fae who’ve been imprisoned in tombs like the one at Clonmel for thousands of years?”
Elada shrugged. “It stands to reason. There was chaos after we were defeated. The Druids chose the Fae they wanted to exploit, and spaced our prisons well apart, so we could not communicate with one another.”
“Why don’t you search for them, get them out?”
“I rescued Miach,” said Elada blandly. “There was no other I had any obligation to.”
A cold, unfeeling race, as Conn had told her.
The waitress brought Elada coffee. Beth sipped her tea. Conn, she noticed, drank only water, and never took his eyes off the Fae seated opposite them.
“This is swill,” Elada complained.
“They aren’t really known for their coffee,” Beth said. “It’s a diner. Try the french fries.”
Elada ignored her and spoke to Conn. “I would not have to be here at all if you had been sensible and gone to Miach’s. He has a fine house at City Point, with a view of the water. You could have bedded the woman in comfort, and I could be having a decent cup of coffee.”
“I do not need help protecting my woman.”
“History says otherwise.”
Beth didn’t even see Conn move, but he was leaning over the table, his knife at Elada’s throat, faster than she could swallow her tea. She choked and sputtered.
“I have no quarrel with you, Elada, and I am sorry if you suffered for my actions, but do not pretend you would have let such an insult stand had you been in my place.”
An insult. His daughter abused and driven mad, and Conn thought of it as an insult, not a tragedy. Every time Beth started to think of him as human, she was reminded, painfully, that he was not.
Elada made no move for his own weapon. “You are right,” he said.
Conn withdrew his blade and sat back down.
Beth’s french fries arrived, steaming hot, but she had no appetite for them now.
Elada, however, did. He reached across the table, and started to devour her feast. Between bites he confessed, “I hated you then, for betraying us, and did not understand. They carved Miach down the center before I could rescue him, though, and I started to learn. I have lived among humans long enough now to know why you did what you did.”
Conn said nothing, and the meal proceeded in silence until Beth was wrapping her french fries to go and Conn was at the cash register paying for their meal.
“You said you knew why he did it,” she prompted.
“Don’t you?” Elada asked.
“No.”
“That’s because you’ve started to believe the same lies we Fae tell ourselves. We aren’t incapable of feeling. We’re out of practice. He condemned us all because he was mad with grief for his daughter. Because he loved her.”
Conn wondered if they should have gone to Miach’s. The sorcerer would have made some effort to give them privacy. As it was, he did not think Beth would feel comfortable coming to him with Elada outside her bedroom door.
He was wrong.
He had taken his time in the bath off the hall, the one that was not so intimately hers. He’d washed, and cut away more of his hair to emulate the close crops Miach and Elada both wore.
He’d knocked on her bedroom door, and when there was no answer, he’d padded inside in his bare feet and stretched out across the bed. He did not remove his clothes, because he did not want to embarrass her or presume.
The quilt was back. Muddy in spots, but familiar and comforting and right. He took in the other details about the room. The photos, many of places he had known in another age, where Beth had gone seeking the Fae. Empty mounds, most of them, belonging to Fae like Miach who had rejoined the world. He contemplated the chances that his would be the first occupied tomb she found. Small.
A gift then, from unknown gods. Dana, the goddess of the Fae, would never be so kind.
The door opened. She was not wearing a towel this time. She wore a long robe, belted around her wai
st, with wide kimono sleeves. The cotton was trellised with roses and nearly sheer. She smelled like rosemary and mint, and he found he was so hungry for her at this moment that he might very well be the one who bore a geis for her.
“Beth,” he said. It came out like a plea.
She placed first one knee, then the other, on the bed. “Let’s try this again,” she said, reaching for him. “I promise not to pass out this time.”
“We’ll see about that.” Then he hesitated. “Elada is in the next room,” he confessed. “‘Protecting’ us.”
She looked at the closed door. “I can be quiet.”
“I don’t want you to be quiet. Perhaps we should—”
As if on cue, the television flicked on in the living room, blanketing them with muffled sound, and Beth kissed him, silencing further debate.
He did not like what she had been through for the last few days, but he was grateful they had not done this sooner. He would have botched it. Oh, he would have taken care to assure her pleasure as well as his own, because satisfying a woman fed his vanity. And after he saw the images in her mind, of Frank and Egan and their snickering molestation of her helpless body, he would have taken the time to dispel her fears. Even if she couldn’t consciously remember being pawed and fondled by her ex-husband’s loathsome friend, the ghost of that experience haunted the corners of her mind. He might, a few days ago, have treated her like glass because of it, but he knew now that there was steel beneath the silk that was Beth Carter.
He wasn’t going to treat her like a toy or a fragile doll for his pleasure. He was going to treat her like . . .
“I’ll make that inspection now,” she said, her mouth curving into a wide smile.
He laughed. “I did promise you the opportunity, didn’t I?”
He stood and removed his coat and draped it over the chair beside the bed, followed by his shirt. He knew how much she liked his chest, the tiny gold rings he wore, the patterns that she had studied in stone, now etched across his living flesh. She crawled across the bed to kneel on the edge and unbuckle his belt, flick her tongue into his belly button. He groaned, and she did it again.
She had no idea how erotic she looked, kneeling on the edge of the mattress, the swirling colors of her gown framing her pale skin, one shoulder slipping down to reveal his mark as it trailed below the veiling fabric and over her full breast. Her hair was piled loosely on top of her head, and while he wanted to run his fingers through it, he refrained. He liked the way it allowed him to see his mark, and what she was doing to him.
She hesitated when she reached the buttons of his fly, and he saw the nervous flicker in her eyes. And saw her conquer it. He knew her experience was limited, and with men, entirely disappointing. He shouldn’t allow her to disrobe him like this, kneeling in front of him like some ancient worshipper. If he let her go on, his cock would spring free at eye level and brush her full lips, and he suspected she’d never been that close to a man.
Another button popped open and blood rushed to his cock to take advantage of the freedom she was granting him.
“Beth,” he said, trailing his finger along her shoulder. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” she said.
He pushed the robe down, revealing his mark on her shoulder, then tracing it, the quicksilver dancing beneath his fingertip. “My mark is making you bold, but I don’t want to take advantage.”
Another button. She was looking up at him, gauging his reaction. Little minx. There were pinpricks of light in her eyes now, whirling, Druid stars. Magic.
She pushed his jeans down over his hips. “There’s power here,” she breathed, and cupped his heavy balls. “Power over you, touching you like this.”
He caught her hand and stopped her. “I’ve seen inside your mind, Beth. I don’t want you to do anything that will trigger your memory of what Frank Carter and his friend did to you.”
“You are nothing like them,” she said. “And I have hidden from that memory for too long, let it eat at me and isolate me. I don’t want to be alone anymore.” She took a deep breath, and something in his chest ached for her, for the effort she was taking to confide in him.
“They drugged me,” she said, “and after a while I couldn’t move, but I was conscious through it all. First, they tried to get me to find Frank another site to dig. The funny thing was that I looked at the map and it was alive. I could feel all kinds of different sites, some stronger, some weaker. It was like there was something inside me that came awake under the drug. And it was stronger than I was, because it stood up to Frank. When they realized I wasn’t going to do what they wanted, Egan . . .”
This was the hard part. “He pulled my shirt up and my pants down and jerked off on me. It sounds so simple, crude, almost comical. But I couldn’t bare to be touched by anyone afterward. Didn’t want to touch anyone. Until you.”
She tugged her hands free of his and demonstrated how she wanted to touch him.
It was good. So good. He’d never felt anything like this before. He’d always been the aggressor. If anyone had felt fear, it had been his lovers. Fear of his beauty, fear of his strength, fear of the pleasure so intense it was addictive.
Now he was standing in front of the first real Druid he had encountered in two millennia, with his balls in her hand. He was giving her complete control, because she needed that to feel safe. It should have been terrifying, but it was arousing as hell.
And then frustrating as hell, when she dropped her hands. “Kick your jeans off and turn around,” she ordered.
He obeyed. A first, for him, in the bedroom. He felt her fingers explore his back, his buttocks, the inside of his thighs. Her touch felt so good, he worried that if she went on like this, he would embarrass himself. “What are you doing?”
“Making my inspection,” she said. There was an edge to her voice.
“Beth, there is only you.”
She paused, but the inspection continued.
An ordinary man would have said anything to be inside her now, to end this torment and have her. But he was Fae, and his word, in this case, would be his bond.
And he was willing to give it. He turned and seized her questing hands, pushed her onto her back. When she made no protest, he kneed open her legs until he was poised over her center.
“There will only, ever, be you.”
The geis moved. She felt it, although it was difficult to feel anything that wasn’t Conn’s hardness poised against her softness. But it moved. He saw it. His eyes followed as the quicksilver writhed and danced.
Conn’s words—his sincerity—had done it. She’d felt the magic in the air. He’d made a binding vow.
Without requiring anything of her in return. But she gave it anyway, the answer to his unspoken question: “Yes.”
She expected him to enter her then, and she hungered for it. Instead, he slid his length back and forth over her most sensitive flesh and watched the play of emotions across her face.
“That’s it, my love,” he coaxed as she widened her legs and arched her back. She lifted her hips, tried to capture him, but he chuckled and eluded her, and resumed his measured pace.
“Please,” she begged, wrapping her ankles around his waist and trying to drag him inside her.
“Not yet.”
“When?” She tried to put a pout in her voice, but it came out a moan.
He didn’t answer. But he should have said, “When you least expect.” Because when her eyelids fluttered closed and her head fell back and she didn’t think she could get any closer to heaven, he slid inside her to the hilt.
She convulsed. It was the most complete and perfect connection she had ever known, a world removed from the cold, clumsy prodding Frank had treated her to. Her back arched, her toes curled, every muscle in her body tensed and then released, and she relaxed into a boneless heap beneath him.
>
He placed a hand at the small of her back and rolled them, still joined, onto their sides. Every move he made sent aftershocks coursing through her body, made her shudder and gasp. She snuggled her head into the curve of his shoulder, wondering if he had enjoyed that as much as she had. She’d been too caught up in her own pleasure to share his. And she was too spent now to reciprocate the small touches he was showering her with, the feathered kisses, the soft stroking, that kept her on a high plateau of sensation.
He was banking the fires of her arousal, and she wondered if that meant the Fae recovered faster than human men. With Frank, she had been grateful for his general lassitude. Once, disappointing as the experience always proved, was always enough.
Then Conn flexed his hips and she realized he was still hard. She looked up, startled, and he smiled at her. “Didn’t you . . .” she trailed off.
“I enjoyed your pleasure,” he said, fondling her nipple and trailing his hand down her belly. “I plan to enjoy it many times before I join you. Put your knee over my hip,” he instructed.
“I don’t think I can—”
“You can. Trust me, Beth.”
She lifted her knee tentatively. He tugged it higher over his hip, ran a hand down her calf, then back up her leg, and touched here there. While he was still inside her. To that he added the slightest movement of his hips, creating an irresistible rhythm between their bodies.
It was good, almost too good. But also embarrassing. “You’re not supposed to have to touch me there.”
Conn laughed. “Who told you that? Let me guess. Frank. He said that, Beth, because he was selfish and lazy.” He captured her hand, which had been toying with his nipple, and pushed it down between them. “I suppose Frank told you not to touch yourself either.”
She blushed furiously.
He pressed her fingers against her swollen nub. “Dare now. Show me how you touch yourself when you’re alone. Blame it on the geis if you like, but don’t deny me this.”
She didn’t. She moved her fingers tentatively, and she felt him twitch inside her. It gratified him, her self-pleasuring. His hand rejoined hers, first mimicking her movements, then offering counterpoints.
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