“Get away from me,” Khiara growled. “You haven’t won yet.”
“I look forward to my victory in only a few short hours, so I think I have a right to appreciate my prize.” He leaned toward her, but she shoved at him. “You can’t win,” he said as he moved closer. “I realize that I haven’t been showing you nearly enough attention, Khiara. The other fae have tried to claim you for their uses. Clearly I need to remind both my people and my consort who is in charge here. Everybody must know that you belong to me.”
His gaze slowly moved over her face with the leisure of a predator that knows it has trapped its prey. His hand rose to her collarbone, gripping her just tightly and painfully enough to keep her from moving. With his other hand, he caressed her cheek. She could feel him trying to work his seductive magick on her, but she also realized that as long as she did not want it to affect her, it would not. However, hard as she tried to summon her fire magick, it would not answer her call. Why not?
Ronan stepped closer to her and brought his lips alongside her ear. “I can feel your heart beating faster,” he whispered. “I wonder how it will respond when I touch you here.” The hand on her face drifted gently over her neck and then settled lightly on her breast. She turned her head away from his, unable to move away as long as he held her collared against the tree, and unwilling to look into his eyes.
He gave a throaty chuckle and slid the hand down along her side to rest on her hip. “You haven’t been touched like this in a while,” he said against her neck. “I think you underestimate the possibility that you might actually be happy with me, that we belong together. You would enjoy the feel of a chain around your neck, a subtle reminder that you belong to me. When I met you, I fashioned that chain with nothing but my hopes and dreams. And in those dreams, that is all you wore.”
The silent forest somehow made her feel even more trapped as Ronan pressed his body against hers, his lips at the base of her throat. She could feel her pulse there. She willed it to slow down; to betray neither her excitement nor her dread.
It was true that, other than her one night with Matt, sex had been a rare event over the past several years. Her body felt starved for it. But her mind certainly was cognizant enough to remind her that Ronan was not the one she would choose to satisfy those needs.
The hand at her throat, though, held her captive.
“I think…you need…to leave her… alone,” panted a voice behind them.
Ronan turned to look at the person who spoke. “You again,” he ground out, and his hands tightened on Khiara’s body.
“Sean?” Khiara gasped, uncertain that she was seeing clearly.
“Leave her… alone,” he said again, taking a step toward the faerie.
Ronan lifted an eyebrow as he looked at Sean, then back at Khiara. “You think you’re a match for me, human?” he asked, laughter in his voice. “Come then, and we shall see.”
“Yes, let’s see.” Sean drew a short dagger from his belt.
Ronan’s hands tightened reflexively once more, and Khiara wondered if he would choke her then and there.
“This time,” Ronan said, “I will let you go. When next I see you, I will not be so nice.” With that ominous warning, the faerie prince turned away from them and faded.
“You’re not really here,” Khiara whispered, still looking at Sean, her hands clutching the tree for support. “I’m hallucinating.” She closed her eyes and kept repeating, “I’m just seeing things. I’m just seeing things.” When she opened her eyes, Sean stood in front of her. She shook her head. “Are you really there?”
His lips were on hers in that moment, one hand tangled in her hair, the other gripping her waist. Khiara felt him press her against the tree as he kissed her, her fingers splayed over the rough bark as she tried to process her thoughts. The kiss felt so strange – not unpleasant, but unexpected and oddly familiar.
She waited for him to step back, to give her a chance to breathe, but he did not.
As they fell to the ground, Khiara could feel her heart racing, her blood boiling, and her entire body begging her to give it the release it craved. She kissed him back, trying to sit up and roll him beneath her.
He forced her to the ground, his hands gripping her wrists, his mouth hard on hers. She wanted desperately to open her pants and get to it. Her whole body ached with need. It was a sensation that Ronan had exploited, but now it took on a momentum of its own. His knee was between hers, and she began to rub against him like a cat in heat. She could not remember feeling so crazy with yearning in her life.
He seemed to feel the same. One of his hands moved purposefully down to unlace her pants and she kicked them half off, freeing one of her legs. In that moment, he unzipped his jeans and now she could feel his pulsing erection against her body. The mingled heat of his skin next to hers was more than she could bear, and she unerringly moved her body to position herself for entry.
He thrust easily into her and she moaned against his mouth.
For too long she had waited for him to need her as much as she needed him.
As he pushed into her, she felt her body convulse with orgasm, her legs wrapped around him. He growled in response, thrusting harder than she had thought possible, much to her delight and relief.
This time his release immediately followed hers.
For a moment, they lay intertwined on the ground, breathing heavily. Without a word, he gathered her close to him and, before Khiara knew it, she had drifted off to sleep.
****
She sat up slowly, pushing her hair back from her face as she blinked the sleep from her eyes. Glancing down, she realized her pants were still completely out of place. She pulled them back over her legs and took a deep breath.
The air was cooler this morning, the ever-present mist an earthy shade of gray. Khiara stretched her back and chest, turned to the right and then to the left.
There she saw the person who had kept her warm through the night.
She gasped in horror and pushed herself to her feet.
“You bastard!” she cried.
Liam rolled over and eyed her balefully, then slowly stood to face her.
“You did not do that,” she choked. “Is this real?”
“What if I did and what if it is?” he asked.
“Oh shit, it is real.” She stepped back away from him.
He shrugged. “So what? It was what you wanted.”
“So what? So what!” she screamed. “I left you far behind and you still managed to follow me and fuck up everything I’ve worked so hard to accomplish! I knew it was too good to be true!” She turned and clenched her hands into fists, trying to make sense of everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.
“If you knew that, why did you do it?” he asked.
“Liam, I swear to the gods, I’m this close to kicking the shit out of you!” she shouted, turning back to him.
He spread his hands before him. “Go ahead and try.”
With a shriek of rage, Khiara swung a punch at him, pleased to hear a satisfying crunch as her fist connected with his nose.
“That was good,” he said, reaching up to staunch the bleeding. Then he surprised Khiara by slapping her. She stumbled back from him, her hand against the pulsing red mark on her face.
“I can’t believe you did that!” she gasped. “You are such an asshole!” She stormed toward him and leveled another punch, this time at his stomach. As he doubled over in pain, she aimed another, but he rushed her, knocking her to the ground. They grappled with one another for a moment, before he finally stood and pulled her with him. Setting her on her feet, Liam backed away and reached into his pack to find a handkerchief to cover his nose.
“Now maybe you’ll listen to me,” he said. “Everything I have done, I have because I love you. Not to incur a debt from you or to give you over to Ronan, but to have you here with me. You have to forgive me.”
“Forgive you? How can I?” Khiara snapped. “Everything you’ve done, y
ou have done out of your own selfishness. Because of what you did to me, I violated your brother’s terms. I can’t leave here now, no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I want to leave. Is that what you wanted? Me trapped here forever?”
“Yes.”
Khiara’s eyes widened as she stared at him.
“I won’t lie to you. That is exactly what I wanted.” Liam did not look in the least contrite as he regarded her over the bloody cloth. “You’re right. I did it out of selfishness.”
She opened her mouth to retort, but could think of nothing more to say. Now that Liam had told her the truth, she realized there was no way to respond to it.
“You might as well make your choice,” he said. “It’s Ronan, Kieran, or me.”
She shook her head, trying to ignore the nausea that threatened to choke her. “I am sick of you men giving me supposed ‘choices’. I will find a way home, and when I do, I never want to see any of you again.” Khiara turned on her heel to walk away from him.
“You can’t,” he called out behind her. “Even though Sean has come searching for you, you have bound yourself to the faerie realm by your actions.”
She stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. For a moment, she thought her heart had stopped beating when he spoke to her once more, but she lifted her chin. “No,” she finally said, strengthening her resolve. “You are the one who tried to bind me to the faerie realm. It was not my intention. Therefore, I shouldn’t be punished for what happened. I thought you were Sean. You deceived me. I do not choose you.”
“That is what faeries do,” Liam said. “They try to turn any situation to their advantage.”
“Then is it any wonder I would rather live in the mortal world?” Khiara answered turning her head away from him once more. “You told me that you had a heart. Maybe you do, but you certainly don’t know how to use it. In the mortal world, there might be plenty of people who would take advantage of me or try to harm me. But most of them wouldn’t force me into something I don’t want. The beauty of the mortal world is that we believe in free will. For good or for evil, that is how we live our lives. I will not stay in a place where choices are constantly imposed upon me by others, especially choices calculated to give someone else what they want and to leave me with nothing.”
“I wouldn’t leave you with nothing, Khiara. I want to give you everything.”
She took a deep breath and continued her journey northward, tears falling from her eyes. “Our definitions of nothing are very different, then. You didn’t disappoint me though, Liam. I knew I couldn’t trust you, and at least you finally proved me right.”
Chapter 18
Khiara was relieved to see a palace in the distance. It had to be Ronan’s. She would not let herself believe it belonged to anybody else. The familiar earthy, dark energy around her had only intensified as she walked. It was Ronan’s magick and it was calling to her.
She walked on, intent on her goal.
As she left Liam further and further behind, she thought she would be glad to be alone. But, no. His presence during her journey had alleviated the loneliness she had felt for so long in the mortal world.
I want him, and I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t acknowledge that.
When she woke in the morning, the first thing she wanted to see was his face. Even when he deceived her, he still came back to protect her, and she appreciated that. He had betrayed her, not to deliver her to Ronan or anyone else, but to stay by her side.
On the other hand… She sighed.
The thought that his attempts to control her were romantic went against every modern feminist sensibility in her. He had been nothing more than a temporary way to ease her need for companionship. Love was not about controlling or being controlled. It was about showing you cared for a person by trying to make them happy.
Liam doesn’t want to make me happy, she told herself. She had to accept what she had done with him and move on, back to the real world.
Now she thought she should feel relief to be on her own once again, just as she was in her own world. There was nobody to tell her what to do or how to do it, nobody to try to bend her will in a direction she would never go. But her mind continued to play over everything that had happened; the fact that she had indulged in one of the pleasures of faerie; the fact that she had begun to count on having Liam by her side.
The fact that she wanted him by her side…
“I won’t hold onto this,” she said out loud to herself. “I can’t feel guilty about something done out of any sort of unfulfilled need.” She kept walking, focusing on the palace that was getting closer and closer. Her journey could and would end tonight.
She had already decided that how it ended would depend entirely on her.
****
The land sloping up toward the palace was treacherous and rocky. The earth itself showed now more than grass or moss. Everything was brown and pulsed with the dark, cold, smothering energy of the land.
Khiara looked up the hill. It was just one more thing in the way of her going home. The very land itself seemed intent on keeping her from reaching her destination.
“Khiara!”
She turned. “Sean?” she gasped in surprise, looking into the face of her best friend.
He stood at the bottom of the hill looking messy and exhausted, but alive. She took a step toward him, then another.
“Is that really you?” Her voice was full of skepticism.
He shrugged awkwardly with none of the grace of a glamoured fae.
“How did you get here?” she asked, approaching him warily. “And why would you be here?”
Sean’s smile faded. “Your friends helped me get here to find you. They had a spell that got me into the Otherworld.”
“Why would you do that?” Khira stopped a few feet away from him and stood there staring at him in disbelief. Too many questions were going through her mind.
“Do you really have to ask why?” He reached out to take her hand. “Because you’re my best friend and… Shit, Khiara, I don’t know if I could get used to a life without you.”
“That isn’t exactly my idea of a heroic speech.” She laughed and squeezed his hand.
“I’m not exactly anybody’s idea of a hero,” he answered with a shake of his head.
She let his fingers interlace with hers. It was such a strange feeling. They had been friends for all this time, but never touched one another. At least, they had never touched in such an intimate way. “Is it really you?” she asked again, feeling certain of the answer in her heart.
“Who else would it be?” He looked confused by her question.
“Me.”
Khiara looked up past Sean’s shoulder. “You’re not welcome here,” she retorted.
Liam stepped up beside her friend. “I know, but you can’t expect to beat Ronan on your own. He’s far more powerful than you are, whether you have faerie blood or not. And as for him…” He gestured toward Sean. “He doesn’t have any magick whatsoever.”
“I’ve done just fine on my own,” Sean responded defiantly. “After your little trick with the guards, I managed to get out of that cage they left me dangling in, and find my way here.”
“You were in that cage?” Khiara stared at him.
“Hanging over a pit and everything, but I’m here now.”
“So you came to rescue her? By all means, go in there and get Ronan to release her from his requirements,” Liam challenged. “Tell me how you plan to fight him – with your sloppy sense of fashion or perhaps by rolling a couple of twenty-sided dice?”
“Whoa.” Khiara stepped between them. “I don’t expect anyone to fight for me, but myself. I’m finished with you, Liam. I’ve been enough of a fool where you’re concerned.”
“Are you?” he asked softly. “Do you really think that you can be finished with me?”
She tried to ignore his question, and especially the answer that came immediately to mind when he had asked it.
“
Khiara?” Sean put his hand on her shoulder. “We can’t stay here all day. You only have today. We need to get moving.”
She turned her back on Liam and let Sean take her hand. The two mortals started to climb the hill, ignoring the faerie behind them.
Even as they climbed, Khiara could not get Liam’s question out of her head, or the fact that she was not sure she wanted to be finished with him. She hated herself for doubting her feelings for Sean, especially when he loved her enough to move between the worlds to find her. She hated herself for enjoying the thrill of Liam chasing her. And she hated herself for thinking this was the most exciting thing that had happened to her in a long time.
Although she was concentrating on making it up the hill, she couldn’t help but look at all the possibilities before her. Sean was her best friend. She had loved him for the past five years. He had rejected her when she finally spilled her guts, but now here he was – at her side, seeking the gate between the worlds, so that he could take her home. Was he her happily ever after?
At the top of the hill, they took a short moment to catch their breath.
“Are you ready?” Sean watched her as she let her gaze assess the castle looming ahead of them.
Khiara looked back down the hill to see Liam climbing effortlessly, not far behind them. Nothing here had made her feel more sheltered than his presence. The only nights she had slept easily had been the nights he was at her side. Their magick and energy were in sync so comfortably, that everything about being with him felt natural.
Looking into Sean’s hopeful face, Khiara tried to remind herself that this man had never betrayed her. He had always been completely honest with her, even when it hurt her feelings. He had traveled through another world just for her.
Her gaze strayed back to the castle that held her fate. No matter what happened, she knew she would fight for her freedom, whatever the cost.
She heard a low whisper and felt Sean let go of her hand. Turning to ask if he was alright, she saw him crumple to the ground. She knelt next to him and, after a few frantic moments spent checking him for injury, realized Sean was asleep.
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