She exhaled a big breath. There. She’d said it.
Fingers under her chin, he turned her face to look at him. His eyes were dark, the pupil now big, swallowing up the pewter and gold of his. “Did your father abuse you?”
She blushed. “No, it was nothing like that.”
“Then what was it like?”
She pulled away from his hold and looked down at the quilt. “My father used to beat my mother. She didn’t want me to be alone with him because she was afraid that he’d take his drunken anger out on me, instead of waiting for her to get home.”
His expression was fierce. “My people would have shred him to bits. In my world, a woman only feels the passion in a man’s touch. Never his anger.”
“Your world?” she said with a nervous laugh. “Aren’t you from Earth?”
His expression changed, his gaze narrowing.
“How did you meet your friend Rowan?” he asked.
“In the library at Our Lady. I was looking through books and she was drawing at a table. We’ve been friends ever since.”
He lifted a strip of bacon to her mouth. “Has she no family?”
She took a bite and chewed. “No, none. She was dropped on the doorstep when she was five. She lived there until we went away to college.”
“Neither of you has had an easy life.”
She squirmed beneath his scrutiny and bristled against the concern she heard. “No worse than a lot of people.”
He pulled back, giving her the space she needed. But Mairi still felt his gaze on her, roving her body and finally settling on her face. “We have much to learn about each other.”
“And you still have to explain what I saw.”
He smiled and raked his knuckles down her cheeks to her throat. “After. You need rest.”
“I’ve been asleep for two days.”
“And you will sleep as much as you need.”
She laughed, thinking of all the people she had nursed, and now here she found herself on the receiving end. It was very strange to be the helpless one.
“You must take every care, Mairi.”
“Why?”
“Because I cannot lose you again.” The words fell from his lips, wrapping around them. When their gazes met, she could not detect any regret on his part for speaking so openly. “Somehow our fates were destined to cross, and now our futures are entangled. I know we’ve only just met, but I swear to you, I need you in my life. I want to know all your secrets, your fears. I want to pleasure you, to protect you.”
She looked at him with an expression of awe. “What are you?” she asked. “Where did you come from? Because I’ve never met a man like you before.”
He caressed her skin, but did not answer her questions.
“Who are you?” she asked in a low voice as she studied him, wondering how a man she didn’t know could mean so much, could break past her barriers of mistrust and crawl inside her heart.
He pressed forward and brushed his lips below her earlobe. “Tell me who you want me to be. I can be that person.”
“Bran,” she whispered, allowing herself to just feel the fluttering sweep of his lips against her throat, his incredibly long lashes against her earlobe. “Just Bran.”
His big body softened against her. “I love the way you smell here. I love the way you taste.”
His words were followed by the slow flicking motion of his tongue. Her belly flipped. Before she knew what she was doing, her hand was resting low over her belly, trying to relieve some of the empty throbbing she felt.
“Do you feel me there?” he asked in a dark whisper. His palm rested on top of hers, then slowly began moving. Her breath left her mouth, her lips brushing his cheek, which was faintly dusted with a five-o’clock shadow.
Lower he pushed her hand till her heel rested on her pubic bone and her fingers were between her thighs.
“Tell me where you need me, Mairi.”
Oh, God! Her heart was bounding and her breathing was all erratic. She couldn’t tell him what she wanted. Not when she didn’t know him, or understand what had happened. What the hell was she thinking?
“I won’t hurt you, Mairi. Trust me.”
“I . . . I’m trying, but . . .” She lifted her gaze to his face. “I have questions.”
“Later,” he said, trying to catch her lips with his. “I will answer everything later.”
She turned her face away. “I saw what you did in my apartment . . . magical stuff.”
“Mairi, let me do this, let me make you come. Let me use my fingers, my tongue, my cock, to make you feel better.”
“Bran—”
“It’s the only way I know how, Mairi. The only way I know how to be with your kind. Let me . . . heal you.”
She was melting. She truly was, but she couldn’t allow herself to weaken—especially when he said things like “your kind.” But Bran reached for the tray and set it aside. Then he grabbed the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head, allowing the garment to fall to the carpet.
Mairi looked her fill, from the thick cords in his neck to the broad shoulders, down to the defined pecs and abs, to the fine line of hair that disappeared beneath his pants. On the left side, the tangle of gold and silver tattoos snaked over his shoulder and around his nipple, then over his ribs, disappearing beneath the waistband of his pants, just like that tantalizing trail of hair.
His skin was golden, smooth. She could smell him, as fresh as the woods after a cool spring rain. She felt the heat radiating off him and the sexual aura that seemed to wrap around her, pulling her in deep.
“We both hunger for this,” he growled. “So why do we try to resist, pretending we don’t?”
She shook her head, and he reached for her palm, sliding it down the tattoos on his chest. “I don’t want to resist anymore, Mairi. I don’t want to pretend that you’re just another woman. I don’t want you to treat me like a stranger.”
“We are strangers—sexually compatible strangers.”
He crawled on top of her as she sank low beneath the covers. “It is not just sex,” he whispered in her ear. “There is more here binding us. Can you not feel it?”
She could and it scared her.
“Give me your fears. I’ll keep you safe.”
Mairi allowed her fingers to run through his hair. “Please. First I need to know how this has come to be.”
He avoided her gaze as he lowered his mouth to her lips. “How what has come to be?”
“How did you know where I live?”
He pulled back, his gaze narrowed, the gold and pewter darkening. Mairi sat up, pulling the sheets around her. He growled, heaving himself up off the mattress, but she reached out to him, tracing the twining vines of ink on his arm. His hair was brushed back from his forehead and she saw that the same marks adorned his left temple. As her finger slid over the tattoos, his skin quivered and the design seemed to move, to curl in and out as if the ink were absorbing her touch.
Shoving away from her, he moved from the bed and walked toward the arched window, which was draped with black velvet. He put his arm on the window casing, his hair shifting with his muscles. And there on his back she could now see a long silver tattoo in the shape of a sword running along the length of his spine.
Her breath caught and Mairi knew for certain who he was. He was the man from her dreams, her midnight lover. And he was . . .
“Why don’t you tell me how you think I found you?” he asked as he stared out the window.
Taking a deep breath, Mairi couldn’t quite bring herself to believe what she was going to say. “I think you knew where I lived because you were the raven I picked up from the road and brought home.”
His fingers curled into a fist. “And why would you think I was a bird?”
She paused, trying to understand how she could believe something so unbelievably impossible. It didn’t make sense, but neither did this consuming passion she had for Bran.
“Because I felt the same connectio
n to the bird as I do to you. I don’t understand it, but it’s true. We had a night of . . . of pleasure and now I can’t stop thinking of you, or wanting to be with you. And the bird, every time I looked at it, I thought of you.”
She slipped from the bed. Her legs were unsteady and she reached for the post of the headboard for support. Before she knew it, Bran was beside her, his thick arm around her waist. He held her, steadied her, and that arousing hum from his body ebbed into her. “Are you going to faint?” he snarled. “Shouldn’t you be screaming and running the other way?”
She saw fear in his eyes. The first time the emotion had ever been there. He was right, of course. What he was defied physics, God . . . even the devil himself. She didn’t understand it, couldn’t grasp it, but somewhere deep inside her, waiting to be acknowledged, was the fact that from the very beginning he had attracted her because he was different from other men.
“I don’t know how I can think this. How I can bring myself to believe. I—I—” she stammered, licking her dry lips. “I know this is crazy, but I believe you’re not a man. You’re something else, part raven, part . . . I don’t know what.”
“Sidhe.” He forced her back on the bed and helped her to sit, then looked her in the eye. “I am king of the Night Sidhe.”
“A faerie?” she asked incredulously. When he nodded, Mairi felt her eyes widen in shock. “I didn’t think they were so huge and—where’re your pointed ears?”
He glared at her. “There are many species of faeries. The Night Sidhe resemble humans, only we’re bigger.”
Mairi looked her fill and had to agree, he was much bigger—in every place that counted. He was looking at her, too, studying her. The pieces suddenly seemed to fit. She remembered Rowan saying that the Celts had believed the raven was the ruler of the Otherworld. That the name Bran was Gaelic for raven.
“Are you from Annwyn?” she asked, needing to confirm her suspicions.
He nodded and smoothed her hair back over her shoulder. The hospital gown she wore slipped down, baring the crest of her breast. His touch slipped down through her hair; then his fingertips caressed her exposed flesh. So many thoughts were now swirling in her head. But they weren’t the right thoughts. Like how was it possible he could change his shape and create electricity? How could he be a faerie king and live in a magical world, yet be sitting here beside her? What did he want with her? What did he mean their futures were entwined? Those were the thoughts she needed to concentrate on, not the thought of falling back on the bed and having him cover her with his tall, strong body.
She tried to formulate a question in her mind and not allow herself to become distracted by Bran.
“Is any part of you human?” She closed her eyes, waiting to hear her worst fears confirmed.
“Not in the sense you mean,” he said, stroking her creased eyelid. “I look like a man, but I am a Sidhe, capable of great magic, and a raven.”
“Do you . . . feel like a . . . ?” She trailed off, unable to finish her question.
“Do I feel like a man?” he finished for her. “I don’t know. Why don’t you feel me, Mairi?” He pushed her down on the bed and brushed his long body against hers. He felt like no man she had ever known before. He was incredibly big and strong, and that vibration his body gave off—no man had ever felt like that.
“Well?” he asked silkily. “Do I feel like a man?”
She nodded, afraid to say more. Even now she could feel his erection pressing eagerly at the apex of her thighs.
“Do I have feelings like a man? Do I feel pleasure? Passion? Pain? Yes. Do I feel for you the way a man feels for a lover? Yes. Do I want to part your thighs, sink into you, and crawl up inside you? Yes.”
She couldn’t breathe. She struggled beneath him, but he caught both her wrists in one of his hands and held them above her head.
“Do I want to get inside you everywhere I can and come, hot and hard, inside you? Yes.”
“Stop,” she panted, but he used his strength to hold her, pin her to the bed.
“Why, Mairi? Do I not feel like a man to you? Do you not want me like you have wanted other men?” Their gazes collided. “Or can you not bear to be with such a creature?” Silence blanketed them. “Truth. You owe me that much.”
“No,” she said. “I have never wanted a man like I want you. I have never felt what I feel with you. That’s the truth.”
“Then allow me into your body, Mairi. It’s what I know, how to please, how to pleasure. I want to bring you satisfaction, happiness, but this is the only way I know how. Accept it, accept me.”
She wanted to. Oh, God, how she wanted that. “First, tell me what I need to know, Bran. Make me understand you, your world, and what is happening in mine.”
He groaned. “But I need you, Mairi. I need you so much. Your skin is so soft,” he murmured; then he leaned in and kissed her beneath her collarbone. “You taste so good, like honey and spice. I want to bury myself in you and forget what I am, forget what you are. Pretend that our worlds do not exist outside this door.”
“But they do.”
“No! There is only one world for us, the one we are creating now.”
Her entire body liquefied. He was utterly perfect. “We can’t run from the truth, Bran. You are . . .”
“Immortal.”
“And I am mortal. What world can there be for us?”
“One of undying pleasure.”
This was getting worse. She was ready to forget her questions and open to him. But she couldn’t—not yet.
“Tell me about Annwyn.”
He began suckling her skin, marking her. “You read the book. You know of my world already.”
She pulled in a deep breath as she felt her skin being gently tugged into his mouth. “You’re a . . . a . . .” She sighed, tilting her head to give him better access to her throat. The gown was down to her waist, his fingertips gliding down her throat to the crest of her breast. “You’re a magician?” She managed to get the words out before he traced the outline of her nipple.
“Yes. In Annwyn,” he said, “my power is unmatched. And here in Velvet Haven, the gateway between our worlds, I am strong. But outside, in the mortal realm, I am easily and quickly drained of my powers.”
“Really?” The word was a hiss as he cupped her breast. His thumb rubbed the tip of her nipple, in slow, teasing circles.
“I am king of the Sidhe and coruler of Annwyn,” he said proudly. “There is only one who is my match, and that is Cailleach.”
“Does Cailleach rule with you?”
His touch stilled. He looked up into her eyes; then he lowered his mouth to her breast. “Yes. It is the way of our world: The Sidhe and the goddess rule together.”
He licked her slowly, teasingly. Much too light to satisfy. Her legs shifted, sliding against the comforter. Her foot rubbed his calf up and down.
“I like this form of interrogation,” he said before he caught her nipple between his teeth. Carefully he bit down, just enough to arouse, not hurt.
“You haven’t asked me many questions.”
His palm skimmed down her belly, and she felt the heat of it burning her skin. “I don’t need to ask questions. I’m being given all the answers by your body.”
She shivered, turned on by his words and by the path his hand was taking. “No questions? Are you sure you don’t want to know something?”
He glanced up and smiled wickedly as his hand crept lower and lower. “Maybe one.”
“And that is?”
“Are you wet for me, Mairi?”
Persistent. She’d give him that. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”
His hand slid slowly down, the heel of his palm fitting over the mound of her sex, his fingers slowly parting her folds. “Slick. Hot. Wet.”
Her lashes fluttered closed as he delicately touched her, tracing her folds. She tried to concentrate, to learn what she could, to try to make sense of something incomprehensible. “So are you and Cailleach . . . y
ou know . . . together?”
He smiled while his finger continued to play. “No. Not in that way. My turn.” Slowly he circled her clitoris with his thumb. “Do you want my mouth on you here, Mairi?”
Her hips arched up, meeting his stroking finger. She’d love nothing more, but if she allowed him that, she’d never have this conversation with him. “Tell me about Cailleach.”
“First tell me you want my tongue on your pussy.”
“Yes,” she said on a husky sigh. “God, yes.”
Leaning down, he spread her folds and covered her sex with one slow swipe of his tongue. “She is a goddess. Her element is air. She commands the winds and the Summerlands.”
“Is she beautiful?”
He rubbed his cheek against her inner thigh. “Not like you. No one compares to you.”
She melted. Truly turned into a puddle at those words. “And you’re her . . . what?”
“Consort.”
“Do you love her?”
He looked up at her, holding her gaze. “I do not.”
She nodded, relieved, and ran her hands over his shoulders. “The sword on your back? It’s an amazing tattoo.”
He lowered his head, then placed a kiss on her core. “That is not a tattoo.”
“What is it, then?”
“It is a brand.”
Mairi gasped. “Who branded you?”
“I offered Cailleach a sacrifice so that my uncle could abdicate his throne and be with the mortal woman he loved. The sword is the emblem of her curse upon me.”
“Oh, no! That’s terrible. What kind of curse?”
“Mmm,” he mumbled. “You taste so sweet, Mairi, you don’t know how sweet. I need more of you on my tongue.”
She pulled his hair as he tried to go down again. “Bran! Tell me.”
He groaned. “A mortal-needing curse.”
Suddenly Mairi’s stomach fell to her feet and she wanted to press her thighs together, but Bran’s massive shoulders prevented that. “As in you need mortals how?”
He closed his eyes as if not wanting to look at her. “I need the sex of mortal women so that I can exchange their pleasure with energy to make magic.”
Her thighs tried to clamp shut, but his palms stopped her. “Open.”
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