Enslaved by Fear

by Claire Ashgrove

  A shiver raced down his spine and he closed the journal. Indeed, this would drive Brigid to the end of her limits. As his gaze met Fintan’s again, a slow smirk danced at the corner of his mouth. “This ought to be an entertaining next few days.”

  “Keep it safe, Micah. Don’t let her get a hold of it unless you’re certain she means to stand with us, not against. She’ll destroy it the first chance she gets.”

  Mm…Not if Micah knew Brigid as well as he believed. Her curiosity wouldn’t allow her to destroy it. Oh, she might want to, but once this little hide-covered tome worked past the dark shell that ensnared Brigid and seeped into her heart, the flame-haired beauty might just surprise her family.

  Then again, she might surprise him. Better to be safe than sorry.

  He swept his palm over the face, murmuring another Celt phrase, almost as old as those contained in the pages. His newest fail-safe against Brigid’s relentless attempts to outmagic him. It would take her several weeks to realize he’d lucked on to her native language and used it against her. Until then, Nyamah’s spell would remain safe from Brigid’s dark half, even if Micah left it directly in front of her nose.

  With a short nod of understanding in Fintan’s direction, he rose to his feet and tucked the journal under his arm. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  Fintan reclined behind his desk, speculation narrowing his gaze. “What exactly do you intend to do with it?”

  Micah shrugged. “I’ll play it by ear.”

  “Don’t leave her alone with it.”

  “Right.”

  Like that was going to happen. Short of hiding the book in his private bedroom, he didn’t have a place to put it. And he damn sure wasn’t going to give Brigid more reason to invade his personal space and leave her compelling perfume clinging to his clothes. Knowing her, he’d find her naked in his bed if he left the bedroom door unlocked.

  If she tried that little stunt he would be toast.

  “Micah?” Quieter now, Fintan’s voice held unnerving weight.

  “Yeah?”

  “You don’t realize what that spell means for you, do you?”

  For him? He glanced at the book in his hands.

  “You’re with her every day. She’s locked inside this castle. She can’t meet someone else who can trigger Drandar’s curse.”

  Micah blinked. Brigid? Fall in love with him? Even as he shook his head and forced a grin, his heart skipped a beat. He refused to acknowledge the odd tumble behind his ribs. “That’s not going to happen. She hates me.”

  Fintan’s brow lifted, but he remained silent. The quiet grated Micah’s nerves. Brigid and he flirted. Sure, desire sparked curiosity, but he wouldn’t allow things to go further. He couldn’t. Besides, Brigid might have her tender moments, might give him a glimpse of a gentler, hidden soul now and then, but love would be as terrifying for her as confronting her sire.

  “That could change.”

  Right. She was a demon; he’d spent his adulthood banishing her kind. Not going to happen. He grinned at Fintan. “And Taran is up for sainthood.”

  The jab at the darkest McLaine sibling at least made Fintan crack a smile. The sudden pressure squeezing down on Micah lifted, and he bid goodbye with a lift of his hand. “Off to torment your sister.”

  Chuckling to himself, Micah jogged up the stairs again. At least this discovery would provide some entertainment for a little while. He couldn’t wait to see her expression when she laid eyes on the bound pages. Sometimes paybacks were simply a bitch.

  When he opened the door, he found her sitting on the couch, her feet tucked beneath a slender hip and her nose tucked into his spell book. Damn it. Served him right for forgetting to lock it away in his room. At least it was one he hadn’t used anything from yet.

  She looked up at the sound of the shutting door. “That didn’t last long. Did you decide it wasn’t as much fun as I could be?”

  Her smile shoved a fist into his gut. Good Lord, those taunting amber eyes knew how to suck him in. He could almost believe she meant her flirtations. Could almost convince himself that in that warm glow lay deeper affection, not just the amusement of a woman trying to break him with sensual play. He choked down a groan and ordered his voice not to fail, despite the images that burst to life in his head of the many ways he could be spending his afternoon.

  “I brought you something to relieve the monotony.”

  “Oh?” She uncurled never-ending legs and rose with grace. Like she was fully aware of exactly how to move to get under his skin and fire his blood.

  Why, oh heavenly why, did she have to be a demon? He might get a full night’s sleep if she weren’t. He could explore the open invitation that lay on her sultry lips until he passed out from exhaustion.

  Micah cleared his throat and framed the book between his hands, face out, so she could read the front cover. “Think this will do the trick?”

  As Brigid’s curious path across the thick woven rug ground to an immediate halt, a grin upturned the corners of Micah’s mouth. One point for me. It required phenomenal amounts of self-control not to laugh aloud.

  Instead, he counted to himself, watching as her eyes scanned the cover and flashed with immediate understanding.

  One.

  Two.

  A snarl ripped from Brigid’s elegant throat, as dark and formidable as her sire’s unholy purpose. She lunged across the short distance between them, amber eyes glinting with sheer rage. A yellow-orange glow infused her open palm and spread between her splayed fingers.

  Fire meant for him.

  Micah lifted his hand in front of his body with a simple, quiet uttering. “Christus.”

  No less than three feet away from him, Brigid fell flat on her rear. A sharp yelp escaped, and she pressed a balled fist to her sternum.

  Damn, he hated having to play the low card. Calling in the one ward she couldn’t begin to override felt a little unfair. Not to mention, it dealt physical pain. And much as he despised the fact, hurting her hurt him just as much.

  He set the book on the end table and went to her side, his hand extended in offering. She eyed his fingers through a narrowed scowl. But she made no attempt to accept his aid.

  “Are you going to sit there all night?”

  “I might.”

  “Which is better than accepting my help, right?” He bent down and grabbed her hand, locked his fingers around her wrist. Ignoring how she reared back to scramble away, he pulled her to her feet. “You are a pain in the ass some days.”

  ****

  Arrogant jerk.

  Brigid jerked her hand away and brushed it on her lightweight pants. She turned her back to him, arms folded across her chest. “I hate you.” Some days she really did. Today, however—not so much. Just that damned journal he brought into her prison.

  “Mm-hm.” As if he heard the lie for what it was, Micah had the audacity to chuckle.

  On second thought, today she particularly hated him.

  Another low growl bubbled in her throat. She thrust an arm at the journal. “Why would you bring that horrible thing in here?”

  “Why?” Micah’s rich laughter increased, resonating through her veins until they hummed with awareness of his undeniably masculine presence. “You know what it means—you’re next. Thought I’d let you get comfy with your fate.”

  Comfy with her…Had the man lost every bit of sense he’d ever possessed? She choked down a furious scream. “Did you forget why you’re here? I refuse to be a part of my siblings’s scheme to destroy my sire.”

  Micah’s gaze held hers in silent challenge. Those pale blue depths prodded deep beneath her surface where he didn’t belong. At once she felt small and powerless.

  “Why?”

  She hugged her arms tighter to her chest and ducked her chin in a valiant attempt to shrivel inside herself. How could one word be so threatening?

  “Because he’s my father.” Because he’ll kill me.

  A timeless moment spanned between them, Micah
’s pale blue eyes holding hers as if he sought to see through clear to her black soul. Then with a shake of his head, he looked away and started for his closed bedroom door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To shower. I’m going out,” he answered without looking back.

  “Out?”

  “I have a date.”

  Date? Brigid blinked once. Twice. He was dating someone? A ball of something hard and foreign formed beneath her sternum. Someone…else? She wrinkled her nose at the uncomfortable sensation under her ribs and gritted her teeth. Ancestors below, she couldn’t be jealous. Micah and she were as opposite as two people could be. Sure, sex might be phenomenal—she could entertain herself for hours with his long, muscular body. But other than that?

  She bit back a scoff.

  “You’re just leaving that thing there?”

  At the bathroom doorway, he stopped to throw her a puzzled frown. “What thing?”

  Brigid pointed at the end table and the journal atop it. “That.”

  “Yep.”

  As his devilish smile worked its way across his mouth and spread into his knowing eyes, she fought the distinct urge to claw that amusement off his face. He would find torturing her funny. He knew that damned scroll would drive her slowly insane. She could no more turn away from it than she dared to open the ancient pages. One way or another, some part of her would pay.

  Micah shut himself inside the bathroom with a snick of the door. Two seconds later, Brigid clapped her hands over her ears at the sound of his merry whistling and gave in to the fierce growl building in her chest.

  One of these days he’d regret tormenting her. One of these days when she was free to do as she pleased.

  Her mother’s journal drew her attention as she turned toward the window and the sound of a bird screeching in the woods. She squinted at the bound parchment, loathing it and loving it all at the same time. Could one thing be more polarizing? Drandar had ordered her to tear the scroll in two, burn it—do whatever necessary to insure it could not bring him further harm. If she refused, he would haunt her eternally. Bide his time, wait for when she was at her weakest and turn his full power on her. If she became mortal…

  A shudder rolled through her body.

  Still, her mother’s light, which she had long buried, beckoned her to open the pages, read the ancient words. It couldn’t hurt. Drandar would never know why she read the pages, if he even discovered she had done anything other than burn the thing.

  Slowly, cautiously, she crossed to the end table, inspecting it from a distance. No trace of Micah’s annoying wards lurked on the leather-bound manuscript. It must be a trap of some sort. He surely wouldn’t be that stupid. He must know she’d destroy the ritual if given enough time alone with the spellbook.

  Tentatively, she reached out a hand and closed her eyes to the radiant heat of her mother’s ancient powers. Such strength. Such conviction.

  Such courage.

  Like someone drew a knife down her center, Brigid’s dark half recoiled in recognition of the immediate threat. Brigid opened her eyes and gritted her teeth.

  Nyamah be damned—the book had to go.

  She slapped her hand on the old and worn binding, intending to deliver it directly to the hearth. But as her fingertips neared the surface, an electric shock burst forth. It sizzled down her fingers, up her arms, and squeezed all of Micah’s goodness around her heart.

  A cry tumbled off Brigid’s lips, and she fell backwards on the floor for the second time in fifteen minutes.

  One thought worked its way through her stunned mind:

  Damn you, Micah!

  Chapter Three

  At Brigid’s high-pitched yelp, and the simultaneous thud Micah smirked. He lowered his hand and set his electric razor on the sinktop, inhaling deeply to stop a sudden rush of laughter that would only fuel her fire more. Priceless. She was so damned predictable. He’d known that the minute he left her alone with the scroll she couldn’t pretend indifference.

  And he’d also known that she’d never think to look in her own Celt tongue to see the ward.

  Unable to resist, he opened the bathroom door and poked his upper body out. She lay on the floor, staring straight at the ceiling, muttering curses he was certain were meant for him. But damned if in that moment, she wasn’t the most breathtaking woman he’d ever seen. Her long fire-red hair spread out on the rug, haloing her uniquely tattooed forehead in a rich blend of red, orange, and pale yellow. Delicate feet poked from her lightweight white pants, revealing trim ankles and defined bones that the ancient tattoos there accentuated.

  Long, lean legs drew his attention up her body, across her flat waist, over breasts that would fit perfectly into his palm, to amber eyes that glowered with fury.

  His smirk broke free again, and he leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest…totally unprepared for the way those angry eyes turned bright with appreciation and canvassed his torso.

  He cleared his throat as he edged back into the bathroom before Brigid’s wandering gaze could land on the sure evidence of the effect she had on him. Behind his fly, his cock stood at full attention. A man could only ignore so many things. The way Brigid McLaine could eat one alive, wasn’t one of them.

  With his lower body safely hidden, he tugged at the open fly of his jeans to create some much needed room. Sweet heaven above, she could make a statue fall at her feet.

  When those startling eyes landed back on his face, he cleared his throat. Time to grab control over this situation before she completely rendered him senseless. He’d put that ward there for a reason. One she’d just driven home—she couldn’t resist the scroll. Half of her wanted it, no matter how she might protest.

  He held her stare, issuing a challenge he knew she couldn’t miss. “Think about it, Brigid. You choose to be afraid of Drandar.”

  Before she could recognize he’d dropped his personal wards and could do him bodily harm, he shut the door and locked himself in. He would pay for that remark. Maybe not tonight, maybe not this week. But one way or the other, he would pay.

  Right now, he needed to get his mind off the temptress Brigid and on his date. But after the rounds he’d gone with his demoness, that feat was like asking him to play dead. His body ached for the satisfaction she promised with the sway of her hips, the smooth invitation in her voice. Hell, he was so damned hard a cold shower wouldn’t do much good, let alone the steam rising from the water now.

  Micah stepped beneath the spray and allowed the water to rain over his head and shoulders. His brain had backfired somewhere. Attracted to a demon? Good lord. He’d rather walk through hell alone than get tangled up in that mess. At least amidst those eternal flames he’d have better luck of getting out alive.

  If he let Brigid in the way he wanted to, he ran the very real risk of losing his soul. If not his life.

  ****

  You choose to be afraid.

  Still seated on the floor, Brigid squeezed her eyes shut against the drone of Micah’s voice. How dare he? She didn’t have a choice. She knew all too well what Drandar was capable of. She had witnessed half his atrocities, unlike her righteous prison guard.

  Micah hadn’t been there when Brigid, Belen, and Cian followed after their mother the night she fled the hideaway she’d created for her three children, promising to return before the sun rose with their newest sibling. Micah hadn’t seen the way Drandar nearly pulled the babe from her womb and held it to the light of the moon, bathing in the blood that ran down his forearms.

  Micah hadn’t witnessed how Drandar ignored her mother’s pleas and took the child to the altar, where he sliced it open from sternum to pelvis while its screams filled the night.

  He hadn’t been forced to run from Drandar, hadn’t watched the destruction of an entire tribe of people, innocent lives whose only fault was that they finally came to see him as the scourge he was.

  An entire tribe, laid to waste.

  Brigid twisted her head against
the cacophony of noise that erupted in her head. Visions of the night Eleasaid stood against Drandar, the night Nyamah died for her people, for her children, flashed through her mind. Blood. There had been so much blood. So many terrified screams.

  A gasp broke through her tight throat, and she clamped a fist to her teeth to stifle a budding sob. How dare Micah accuse her of choosing.

  Either she followed the dark calling of her blood and her sire’s expectations, or she subjected herself to immortal torture. Drandar might not be able to kill her unless she offered her life, but he would make sure she never knew peace.

  “Screw you, and your date,” she muttered at the closed door as the water stopped running.

  He didn’t have the first idea what it was like to be one of Drandar’s damned. She wasn’t afraid—it was merely self preservation.

  As she picked herself up off the floor and dusted off her pants, the bathroom door swung open. Micah stepped out, dressed only in his jeans. His bare chest glistened with droplets of water that trickled over the taut curves of muscle. A tiny line of dark hair between his pectorals lay flat against bronzed skin.

  Her stomach fluttered. Her lungs cinched more closely together.

  He walked directly in front of her on his path to his bedroom, and the scent of shampoo, aftershave, and soap nearly knocked her to her knees. She grabbed at the tabletop to keep from wobbling. Ancestors above, how she yearned to touch, to smooth her palms down those cords of muscle and revel in the feel of his warm skin. Press her nose to his chest and breathe in deep.

  A groan tumbled around in her hollowed-out belly, and she gripped the table more tightly. No way could she let him know he affected her this strongly. If she wanted to get out of this mess and return to freedom, she must maintain the upper hand. Let him think she was indifferent to him, that this was all a game.

  She summoned a false smile as he walked by and allowed her gaze to drift appreciatively down his body. Though ignoring the obvious state of arousal behind his half-open fly was like asking her to denounce Drandar, somehow she managed to pretend indifference.