Fairytale

by Maggie Shayne

  He kicked free of his jeans, and climbed into the bed with her, his flesh hot, burning. His mouth demanding...no, enslaving hers when he took it. One hand tore at her panties, ripping them apart rather than sliding them off her. And then that hand cupped her, parted her, invaded her with its calloused fingers. He pinched and he entered and he took. And then he used both hands to press her thighs open, and he settled himself on top of her. His hardness pressed into her, nudged farther, entered her.

  Brigit closed her eyes, clutched his shoulders, and gave a soft cry when he slid himself into her body in one sudden thrust.

  And that cry galvanized him He froze, right where he was, his eyes popping open, his face stricken. “Jesus, what am I doing?”

  “Adam,” she whispered, searching his dark blue eyes, knowing he’d been lost for a few moments. But he was back now. And this was what she wanted. Him. Not his body, but him.

  She threaded her fingers into his hair, and drew his head downward. But he resisted.

  “Brigit...” he whispered, searching her face. “I’m the first for you...”

  “Yes,” she told him. “I’ve waited a long time to find you, Adam Reid.” And she kissed him. One second. Two. Three, and more. And then he kissed her back. His lips moved, nuzzled, tasted, and his body rocked slowly with hers. His arms cradled her tightly and closely, and he made slow, exquisite love to her. He kissed a hot path down her jaw, over her neck, and sucked the skin between his teeth, nibbling, tasting.

  “My God, Brigit,” he whispered as their hips met again and again. Not roughly, the way he’d begun. But with such exquisite tenderness it brought tears to her eyes.

  “You taste so sweet...so sweet...so good...”

  He was kissing her again, then. Her neck, her shoulders, her chest, her arms. Her breasts. He couldn’t seem to get enough of kissing her skin. And as he kissed he moved, and she moved with him, bringing him deeper and deeper inside her. Every thrust sent her spiraling higher, her insides seeming to twist tighter, in preparation for the final release.

  When it came, it blinded her with its intensity. She screamed aloud, clinging, clawing him, her entire body convulsing and her mind vanishing in the chaos of sensation. And Adam moved faster, plunged deeper, arched his back and growled her name out loud, before he slowly relaxed and sank on top of her.

  He gathered her into his arms, and she held on tight, kissing his face.

  He rolled her onto her back, and laid beside her, propping himself on one elbow. His eyes took their time, roaming up and down her utterly naked body, and there was a look of confusion and wonder about him.

  He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have done that. Dammit, Brigit, I shouldn’t...but damn you, you made it impossible. Jesus, where do you get this power over me? This freaking magi...” He stopped speaking, and she saw his gaze skid to a halt, focused on her abdomen. His eyes widened, and he shook his head, blinked, and stared some more. “What the hell is that?”

  Brigit sat up fast, defensive, and looked down at herself, wondering what he’d seen to shock him so. “What?”

  His hand came forward, forefinger tracing the little red mark just above the triangle of jet curls. “This.”

  She frowned harder. “Adam, it’s only a birthmark.”

  “In the shape of the crescent moon,” he whispered. “And it’s blood red.”

  “So?”

  He lifted his gaze slowly, met her eyes, his own narrowing, searching. “Brigit?”

  “What?”

  He licked his lips, swallowed hard. “Brigit, you told me that when you were a child, you believed in that Fairytale of yours. That you believed it was true, and that you really were—”

  She shook her head quickly. “A childhood fantasy, Adam. That’s all it was. A silly dream.”

  “What if it wasn’t?”

  Brigit frowned at him, shaking her head in confusion. “What do you mean, what if it wasn’t? It had to be. There are no such things as fairies. Everyone knows that.”

  “But what if there were? What if you really—”

  She shook her head hard, and started to turn away from him. But he slipped his hands into her hair, and gently made her face him. “Have you ever really considered the possibility, Brigit? Have you ever put it to the test?”

  Her lips thinned. “Sure I have, Adam. I check behind me every day for wings, but so far—”

  “I’m being serious here.”

  She didn’t want him to see the tears forming in her eyes, but he wouldn’t let her turn away, so see them he did. And he leaned closer, to kiss the tears away. “Why does the thought of it make you cry, if you’re so sure it’s all nonsense?” he whispered.

  “Because I believed so strongly once, Adam. And when I found out the truth it was like someone took away my heart. It hurt to grow up, and face reality, and put fantasy away where it belongs. In a little box of childhood memories. But I did it. I don’t want to have to do it all over again.”

  He blinked and shook his head as if trying to shake water from his hair. “Okay,” he said softly, stroking her hair with his soothing hands.

  “Okay, I won’t push it. Not now. Not if it’s gonna make you cry. But...”

  “But, what?”

  He shook his head slowly. “Nothing. Never mind.”

  She didn’t want to “never mind.” She wanted to ask him if he were actually considering what he’d said to be a possibility. And she would have...except that she wasn’t sure she was ready to hear his answer.

  Chapter Eleven

  Her mind was clearer when she woke, sometime later. And the sensation that had drawn her out of sleep’s warm embrace was one of loss, of emptiness, of coldness.

  Blinking in the newborn sun’s soft amber light, she struggled for memories. Her eyes shot wider when she found them. She’d fallen asleep wrapped tightly in Adam Reid’s arms. Right after making incredible love to him.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered, scanning the room in search of him, not seeing him, feeling her face heat anyway. “God, tell me I didn’t.” But she did. She knew perfectly well she did. And she’d been so determined not to. Not to let him too close. Not to let him care.

  She could only hope it had been no more than physical to him. She could only pray he hadn’t let himself develop any feelings, not even a passing fondness for her. Because she might be forced to betray him in the end. She closed her eyes, bit her lower lip hard. Not “might be,” she told herself with brutal honesty. She would be forced to betray Adam. She’d tried buying Zaslow off, and his response had been that. . . that horrible delivery last night. That coffin-shaped box. His message, delivered loud and clear, as to what could so easily happen, should she resist his plan in any way.

  What a cruel, malicious bastard to torture her that way! For a few unbearable seconds she’d believed Raze lay still and cold in that box. God, the feeling that had swamped her then—the very thought of that sweet, gentle man dying at the hand of one so evil...

  She slammed her eyes closed as that desolate image crept into her mind.

  Fight him, said the one inside. Don’t let that bastard do this to you!

  No, she couldn’t fight Zaslow again. Not while he still had Raze. She would have to betray Adam. And he didn’t deserve to be hurt like that. Not again.

  She knew what lay at the heart of Adam’s old pain. The one she saw in his eyes, shadowing his soul, never leaving him. She knew it was centered on betrayal. The betrayal felt by a boy whose own father turned on him like some vicious animal. The betrayal felt by a husband whose own wife takes everything he has and slips away like a thief in the night. The kind that was the most deadly. That which came from someone he loved. Trusted. Believed in.

  He might seem tough and hard-nosed, but she could see through that shell to the man inside. He was fragile right now. It wouldn’t take much to do him in.

  She hoped to God the killing blow wouldn’t be the one she had to deliver. And she assured herself it wouldn’t be. Not as long as he ha
dn’t let himself care.

  Where was he?

  Frowning at the new thought, Brigit got out of the bed. His bed. The pillow beside her was still sunken where he’d laid his head. Everywhere there were signs of Adam. His scent filled the room, and his clothes lay strewn on the floor. Golden strands of his hair clung to the brush on the dresser, glimmering like fire in the morning sunlight.

  But Adam wasn’t here.

  She snatched his robe from the bedpost and wrapped it around her as she hurried to the French doors matching those in her own bedroom. She pushed the latch down, stepped out onto the deck to look up and down its wrought-iron length. But he wasn’t out here, either.

  And then she saw him. He was standing on the outcropping of rock where they’d sat in the rain. The one where she’d given in to the wildness inside, and dove into the lake on a whim. And nearly got herself killed for her trouble.

  He stood there, just staring out over the water toward the fiery ball of the rising sun. And he seemed...God, he seemed tortured. The wind came rushing off the lake to whip his pale hair into chaos. He stood, braced against it, facing it. His hands shoved into his jeans pockets, his eyes distant. Staring out over the wind-tossed waves, but, she thought, not really seeing anything there.

  Oh, Lord, what had she done?

  Ducking back inside, she raced to her own bedroom, yanking a pair of black stirrups on just because they were the first things she grabbed when she opened the dresser. No time for the hairbrush. She snatched an oversized gauzy black shirt from a hanger in the closet and pulled it on, fastening the big gold buttons with trembling fingers. Black tails, front and back, reached to her knees. She stuffed her feet into her favorite leather thong sandals and ran into the hallway and down the stairs.

  Outside, the air still held the chill of night. But dawn’s warmth was already invading. The breeze drew goosebumps to the surface of her skin, but the sun on her eyelids warmed her. She folded her arms over each other and ran along the path that skirted the house, just in time to see Adam disappearing in another direction. He hadn’t taken the path that led down to the lake’s grassy shore. Instead, he’d gone off into the woods nearby. A steep hillside, thick with pines, rose regally on the western side of the house. State land, she knew. Not Adam’s own. He headed up the hill, and vanished as soon as he passed the first row of thick-needled sentries.

  Where in the world was he going?

  Brigit licked her lips, tilted her head to one side, and debated with herself for no more than a minute. Then, her decision made, she started after him.

  Adam could no longer see the old path. The one he’d followed as a small, adventurous child. It hadn’t been made by man, anyway. Probably a deer trail or something. And deer changed paths all the time, to keep a step ahead of their predators. There were new paths trodden into the mossy forest floor. Mazes of them, going off in a hundred directions, and criss-crossing themselves often along the way.

  Where was it? And how the hell was he supposed to fulfill his destiny—to show Brigit the way home—if he couldn’t even find the trail that had once led him there?

  He remembered crossing a stream. And there’d been a rise within the hillside, a hump of sorts. He’d had to climb it. He’d had to do that on hands and knees, he recalled, because the hump had been wearing a coat of blackberry briars. The cave was partway down a grassy slope on the far side of that briar-riddled hill.

  If there ever had actually been a cave. Adam had long ago convinced himself—with a lot of help from his father—that there hadn’t been. That it had all been in his imagination. But now, he’d swung the other way. He’d decided that he’d been right all along. Even as a child. He really had found some kind of mystical doorway to some enchanted realm. He really had talked to a fairy there, who’d shown him his fate.

  And his fate really was the woman he’d made love to last night. The woman he’d left sleeping like an angel in his bed. His fate, it seemed, was to have his heart broken by that beautiful half-fairy enchantress, and he’d likely waste away with longing for her the rest of his life, just the way Keats had tried to warn him he would.

  Too bad he hadn’t listened.

  He’d got out of bed this morning, determined to get it over with. If he could find the spot in the woods, he’d show it to her, take her through to the other side, and be done with it. The longer he put it off, the more it was going to hurt. He was getting too damned used to having her around.

  But now he faced another roadblock. One he hadn’t even considered before. What if he could never find that place again?

  It felt good, in a way, to let himself explore the possibility that his childhood fantasy had been real. That he really had crossed some invisible threshold into a fantasy world called Rush, and he really had met a fairy princess there, a pregnant one, who’d shown him his future. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed believing in fantasy until he’d started to let himself do it again. And it was all because of Brigit.

  Her presence made his houseplants thrive, and she could tell a man was lying to her by looking into his eyes...

  Goddamn, but that was something, wasn’t it? The way she took one look into Mac’s eyes and just knew. Just like that. She knew he was lying. Goddamn.

  Her footfalls always seemed soundless and she could predict the weather. And that birthmark...only, it was more than just a birthmark, wasn’t it? It was the mark of the crescent moon that was talked about in that old Celtic text. The sign that marked her as a fairy of royal blood.

  God, he could barely believe he’d let himself be convinced by all of this. But he had. And in doing so he’d regained something he’d thought he’d never find again.

  And it had driven him to come out here. He hadn’t trusted in his own mind enough to do so in nearly thirty years. He’d try now. Maybe, the small part of his mind that remained stubbornly skeptical told him, maybe being here again, in this forest where it had all started, would trigger something in his memory. Some logical explanation that would account for everything. All of it.

  Or maybe he’d find that doorway he’d been trying for so long to believe had never existed.

  Her skin was sweet.

  He stopped in his tracks, frowning as the realization hit him right between the eyes. He’d kissed her, he’d kissed her all over. He’d tasted her skin. And it had truly seemed as if there was a flavor to it. A sweetness.

  Honey. Just like in that Celtic text.

  “Christ,” he muttered, and forced himself to continue walking. But after an hour trudging through the woods, he realized he wasn’t going to find the place. Not now.

  And for some reason, even that didn’t convince him that it had never existed in the first place. It only made him worry that he’d be unable to complete his destiny, and to give Brigit the help she wasn’t even aware she needed. Or maybe it simply wasn’t time yet. That fairy had told him he had to show Brigit the way to her sister, and then the way back home. Maybe he had to do this in the proper order, if it were going to work at all.

  Or maybe...maybe he really wouldn’t be able to find it again.

  Sighing in defeat, he sank down onto a damp, rotting stump and wondered what the hell his next move should be. Hell, if he couldn’t find the doorway, did that mean he could keep her here, with him?

  “Whatever it is, Adam, you can get past it.”

  He jerked his head up at the sound of her voice, squinting in disbelief when he saw her. Her sudden appearance there seemed to add even more credence to his theory. No normal woman could follow a man through the forest without making a sound, could she?

  She came closer, sank down onto the forest floor, hooking her elbows on her knees, feet crossed at the ankles. “When I’m in a place like this, it reminds me how insignificant our troubles really are. I mean, what do they matter, in the scheme of things? We could disappear tomorrow, and the world would keep right on turning. The wind would still blow...” She closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and inhaled nasally.
“...Mmm. And forests would still smell like no other place can smell. And the pines would still whisper their secrets to one another...”

  He frowned, but found himself listening in a way he never had before. And suddenly he heard them. As the wind brushed through the needled boughs it seemed as if the trees themselves were whispering in a million hushed voices. He’d been able to hear them once. He’d been in on those secrets, a long time ago. It had been...magic.

  He lowered his head, caught her staring at him.

  “I’m sorry about last night, Adam. I,.. know you didn’t want anything to happen between us. And I. . . pushed you into it.”

  He was surprised at her heartfelt apology, and he couldn’t stop himself from smiling at the embarrassment in her huge, ebony eyes. Hie color in her cheeks. Her take on what had happened between them...What had happened between them had been incredible. It had been beyond anything he’d ever experienced with a woman.

  “It wasn’t exactly rape, Brigit. I don’t recall begging for mercy.”

  She dipped her head, gnawing on her lower lip.

  “I wanted it as much as you did,” he said, and his voice tightened and roughened. “I still do.”

  Her head came up, eyes glittering. “No you don’t, Adam. It was a mistake and I—”

  “Don’t tell me what I want. I know. I’ve been lusting after you since I laid eyes on you. Maybe even longer than that.”

  “How—”

  He gave his head a firm shake. “Don’t ask. Believe me, angel, you don’t want to go there.”

  She looked alarmed, frightened for him, as she searched his face. “I didn’t come out here for this. This isn’t what I—”

  “The point is,” he said, interrupting her deliberately, “I resisted everything my body was screaming for, for one simple reason.”

  She tilted her head, waiting.

  “I didn’t trust you, Brigit.”

  He saw the flash of guilt in her ebony eyes, the remorse, but the truth, too. Right there. She didn’t duck it or try to hide it. She took his direct hit, and she never even flinched.