The Immortal Highlander

by Karen Marie Moning

  He made a small sound then, a tired sound. Not a sleepy sound, but an immortally weary one. Then he turned and resumed walking away.

  She heard the refrigerator door open and close. Then silence. Then his deep, rich burr floated softly through the suite, “Since 847, Gabrielle.”

  It was one in the morning by the time Gabby pulled out the sofa bed, still mulling over what Adam had revealed. She’d not missed the significance of the dates. Morganna had died mid–ninth century, had refused his offer of immortality and, right around that time, Adam Black had been seen by not just O’Callaghans but oodles of others, on a violent rampage through the Highlands.

  Over Morganna?

  Had Adam Black gone into a rage when he’d lost her? And if so, why had he permitted her to die? He’d been all-powerful; he could have forced her to stay alive, forced her to take his “elixir of life” (which was a mind-boggling concept in and of itself!).

  Who was Morganna? What had she been like? Why had she refused it? How long had Adam spent with her? Had she lived her whole life with him? Woken up each morning with a Fae prince beside her in bed? Been spoiled every day by his crazy excesses, gone to sleep sated each night in his arms?

  What had been so special about her that he’d tried to make her immortal?

  “I could really hate that woman,” she muttered beneath her breath.

  Adam Black had had a relationship with a mortal woman, fathered a son with her, tried to make her live forever.

  And Gabby was feeling . . . oh, for heaven’s sake, she thought, exasperated, jealous. Envious that she kept denying herself, but Morganna hadn’t. No, Morganna had taken what he offered, plunged right into it, taken all of it. She’d touched him and kissed him and gone to bed with him. She’d played with all that silky dark hair, felt it sweeping over her naked body. She’d tasted gold-velvet fairy skin, had sizzling hot fairy sex with him. Even borne his son.

  And when she died, he’d razed the Highlands. In his grief? Or had it merely been the petulance of a child denied his favorite toy?

  Who cares? I wouldn’t mind being that man’s favorite toy for a lifetime, a teenage voice cooed dreamily. Beats the hell out of the boyfriends you keep picking. Why settle for normal when you could have a life full of fairy tail?

  “Shut up,” she muttered. “I’m having a hard enough time without you tossing your two cents’ worth in. And spare me the juvenile puns.”

  Scowling, she punched the pillows, plumped them, then snapped the blanket out, spreading it over the sofa bed. She’d just gotten it arranged when he came up behind her, slipped his hands around her waist, and pulled her back against him, her shoulders to his rib cage. The heat of his big body scorched her through her clothing and she could taste his exotic spicy scent on each shallow breath she drew.

  “Did you never wonder, Gabrielle?” he said softly, ducking his mouth close to her ear.

  “Wonder what?” she managed, holding very, very still. He’d left just a tiny bit of space between their lower bodies, a tantalizing, tempting amount of space. She would not let her traitorous body bridge it. Would not let herself lean into him, searching with her bottom for that rock-hard arousal he always had. She realized then, with a bit of a start, that she liked that he was always hard around her. She’d grown accustomed to his incessant seduction. It was a heady thing, to know that the sin siriche du was so turned on by her. And the fact that he was so turned on fed her own desire. Being the focus of such intense lust from such an intensely beautiful man/fairy was the most potent of aphrodisiacs.

  God, he was dangerous. But she’d known that from the beginning. He’d come packaged with O’Callaghan warning labels: Avoid contact at all cost. Didn’t get much clearer than that.

  “In all your years of watching us, of being forbidden to look at us, and having to pretend you couldn’t see us, did you never wonder what it would be like to touch one of us?” He slid his hands slowly up from her waist, and she knew he was giving her time to pull away, wagering that she wouldn’t, and God help her, she knew she should, but she couldn’t seem to get enough breath to do so. Her heart was pounding like a sledgehammer against the wall of her chest.

  There was a long tense moment where neither of them moved or spoke.

  Abruptly, he filled his hands with her breasts.

  The breath she’d been trying to gather exploded from her lungs in a hiss. Her skin sizzled beneath the fabric of her shirt, as nerve endings arced to instant, insatiable life. She could only imagine how incredible it would feel to have his bare hands on her bare skin; those big, strong blacksmith hands all over her body. With that extra brush of Fae he had, she fancied she might go up in flames from the sheer erotic heat of it.

  He made an edgy sound that was so animalistic and full of sexual hunger that her knees nearly buckled, and she swayed for a moment. His grip tightened on her breasts, causing her to draw in a long ragged inhalation, but he didn’t offer her the full support of his body; he still kept himself, from the waist down, that slight, provocative distance away. “You have beautiful breasts, ka-lyrra. I’ve been wanting to fill my hands up with these since the moment I saw you. Plump and full and soft and . . .” he trailed off with a little purring noise deep in his throat.

  Gabby closed her eyes; her breasts felt tight in his hands, swelling from his touch. His unshaven jaw rasped against her hair, then against her cheek as he nudged aside her hair. The sleek wet heat of his tongue traced a velvety trail down the side of her neck, sending shivers of sensual delight skittering up her spine. She was going to pull away, to stop him. Any minute now . . .

  “Did you never fantasize about us? Tell me you didn’t. Say, ‘No, Adam, I never even thought about it once.’ “ He laughed huskily, wickedly, as if endlessly amused by the thought, his thumbs tracing light circles on her breasts, just beneath her nipples, on the soft underside where she was so sensitive. Her nipples were so hard they were poking through both her bra and her shirt, hungry for touch.

  He closed his fingers on the puckered peaks at the precise moment that he bit down on the nape of her neck, and she clenched her teeth to keep from crying out. He knew, damn him, he knew. Her secret fantasies, the inner, eternal battle she waged. He knew all about it.

  “Why so quiet? Why won’t you say it, Gabrielle?” A pause. “Because you did think it. Many times.” A sleek glide of his tongue down her neck. Another gentle nip on the tender, sensitive cord that ran from her neck to her shoulder, making her whole body shiver with desire. A delicious light pinch on her nipples. “Is it so hard to admit? I know you did. You wondered what it would be like for one of us to take you to bed. To strip you naked and make you come so many times that you couldn’t even move. To give you so much pleasure that it left you limp and exhausted, unable to do anything but lay there while your Fae lover fed you from his hands, tended you, and rebuilt your strength so he could do it to you again and again. So he could ride you slow and deep, take you fast and hard from behind. So he could lift you astride him and feel you shudder on top of him when you came. So he could lick and taste and kiss every inch of your body until nothing else existed, until all else ceased to matter but what he was doing to you, the completion only he could give you.”

  She was panting softly. Damn him. She’d imagined all those things and more. And his words were painting much too vivid pictures in her mind’s eye: Adam doing all those things to her. Being lifted astride him; on her hands and knees for him as he thrust into her from behind . . .

  God, she thought feverishly, had she always been picturing him? Try though she might, she couldn’t recall the face of the dream prince that she’d so lovingly detailed in her teen fantasies. Either he’d blasted it right out of her memories, replacing her imaginary lover with his dark eyes, his hard body, his seductive voice and devastating touch, or it had always been him.

  Pull away, O’Callaghan, you know this will get you nothing but screwed—and not just physically, the inner, very faint voice of reason warned.
/>   Right, in just a minute . . .

  “You fantasized,” he continued, his voice low and hypnotic. “You may be virgin in body, but not in mind. I feel the heat and passion in you; there’s a fury of it inside you. I felt it the moment I saw you. You’re not normal. You’ll never be normal. Give it up. Stop trying to fit in a world that will never accept you. Nobody can understand you the way I can. You’re a Sidhe-seer. You want to spend your whole life denying it? What you see. What you are. What you want. Sad way to live and die.”

  There was silence for a moment while he just held her, hands gone still on her breasts, breath warm against her neck, unmoving.

  She knew this was her moment to rescue herself. To rage at him. To tell him he was wrong, that he didn’t know the first damn thing about what he was talking about.

  But she couldn’t, because he did.

  Everything he’d said was true. She wasn’t normal, and no matter what she did, she would never be normal. She’d been torn between worlds all her life, trying to ignore the one and fit into the other—both equally futile ventures—wondering if all there would be for her in the end was the kind of life Gram had lived. A baby, no husband, a big empty house. Telling herself it would be enough, if that was what had to be. In the meantime, giving it her best shot, trying to make things work with a boyfriend.

  But no boyfriend had ever been able to compete with the fantastic Fae males she’d been seeing since childhood. No human boyfriend had ever been able to vie with a world that was intrinsically so much hotter and brighter and more sensual. And not with any boyfriend had she ever truly been able to be herself. And the sad fact was, a large part of why she was still a virgin was because she didn’t want a man, damn it, she wanted a fairy. She always had.

  And she was tired of wondering what it would be like with one, of forcing herself to look away, to turn away, to never touch. Tired of repressing all those sinfully seductive fantasies.

  The silence stretched between them.

  Abruptly one hand slipped from her breast and cupped her snugly, intimately, between her legs, grinding her bottom back against his erection.

  An incoherent little cry burst from her throat.

  He answered with a spate of words in an ancient, unfathomable tongue that tumbled with the rough vehemence of curses from his lips. Then in that ancient, exotically accented English of his, he growled:

  “You wondered what it would be like to fuck a Fae. Well, here I am, Gabrielle. Here I am.”

  15

  The last vestiges of her resistance eroded with his words.

  Here I am.

  Take me; do anything you want with me, in essence. And she wanted. Oh, God, did she want. She’d been wanting for a lifetime. Her fantasies about the Fae had always been basely sexual, and though she rarely used the f-word, on his lips, it was pure seduction. Something about the way his accent and deep burr shaped it made it sound, not harsh, but sexy and inviting, secret and forbidden and enticing. It didn’t sound crude when he said it; it sounded like an invitation to dance a timeless dance that was innately earthy and animal, for which he would make no excuses and offer no apologies. Raw man, raw sex, was what he offered, in a world airbrushed into soft focus by his sheer beauty and seduction.

  Of course, later, after the intense no-holds-barred-marathon-sex, her fantasy prince always fell for her in her dreams . . . but not until the frenzy of mating had been met. Not until lust’s due had been paid. If it could ever be fully paid with a Fae.

  She melted back against his body.

  He sensed it instantly, the precise moment she yielded. He spoke in that strange tongue again, the masculine triumph in his voice unmistakable. She was lost and he knew it.

  She expected him to turn her in his arms, crush her against him, but once again, he defied her expectations.

  Hand still snug between her legs, pressing her relentlessly back against his hard-on, he splayed his other hand against her jaw and turned her head, guiding her lips to his. Standing behind her, he kissed her. She’d not have believed it possible to kiss at such an angle, but she’d never kissed anyone as tall as he was, and not only was it possible, it was bizarrely, intensely erotic. Dominant. Possessive. A kiss of branding and claiming. She was captured hard against his body, his big hand warm between her legs, his silky hair falling over her shoulder, his mouth sealing over hers.

  She whimpered against his lips, but it was lost to the hot glide of his tongue, probing deep, retreating. Mating, escaping. Playing with her, dancing a slow, torturous, blatantly sexual dance.

  Somewhere he’d learned—oh, probably a few thousand years ago, she thought with a tiny, almost hysterical bubble of laughter—exactly how much to give a woman before taking away, exactly how to keep a woman on a brittle desperate edge, merely with his kisses. The moment she melted into it, he would change it, take it some other way, give her less. Then come back for more the second she was about to scream. With him behind her, she had no control over the kiss. He had it all, and was exploiting it mercilessly. One hand on her face, one between her legs, holding her immobile while he tortured her with his lips.

  Intense, breath-stealing, mind-numbing kisses, then gone. A soft, sultry brushing with that full lower, sulky lip of his, creating a delicious erotic friction that made her ache far more than it satisfied. More deep, toe-curling kisses, but not lasting long enough . . .

  And, oh, God, if he devoted the same languorous, teasing attention to all parts of a woman’s body, she was never going to survive him. She’d be an incoherent mess before he even got to the important ones.

  And speaking of the important ones, she thought peevishly, he could start moving his other hand anytime now. She wiggled in his implacable grip, trying to communicate the wordless message. She was so close, had been since the moment he’d slipped that big hand between her legs, hovering on the edge. If he’d just move his hand the tiniest bit!

  But if he understood her silent plea, he chose to ignore it. His hand remained implacably there between her legs, keeping her excruciatingly aware of her warm, wet readiness, of that sensitive bud begging for friction, for even the smallest movement, but stayed mercilessly still. He had her trapped between two things that could bring her endless erotic pleasure, and was giving her nothing of them. Only the tantalizing promise, but nothing to ease the intolerable pressure building inside her.

  Kisses. Slow and long, hot and hard. Tongue gliding satiny and sleek, tangling, withdrawing.

  They were kisses to die for, she thought feverishly, trying to get more of him in her mouth, trying to suck his tongue deeper, refusing to release his lower lip when he pulled away with a soft laugh. She tried desperately to arch against his hand, but each time she managed to gain a tiny range of motion, he shifted his hand, backing off the pressure. Testy with impeded desire, she nipped at his lip.

  “Bloody hell, Irish, you after blood? Trying to kill me?” he said with a soft, rough laugh.

  “Me? Quit teasing! Kiss me deep! And anytime now you could move—”

  He shushed her complaint with his kisses. Small laps, nibbles, kisses at the corners of her mouth, a long slow pull of her bottom lip. Deep again, then away. More torture. He kissed, she realized then, as perhaps only an immortal would. Kissed like a being that had all the time in the world, lazily but thoroughly, savoring every subtle nuance of pleasure, drawing it out, prolonging it. No clocks ticked in his world, no hours sped by. There was no work to get up for tomorrow, nothing more pressing than the passion of the moment. He existed as an immortal lost to immediacy, and being kissed with such in-the-now intensity was devastating. And she had a terrible suspicion that he might dole out the orgasms the same way—only letting her have one when he’d milked from her every bit of anticipation and need that he could.

  She was drowning in sensation, the feel of his mouth on hers, the swollen hardness of him against her bottom, the heat of his big hand between her legs.

  Then suddenly he broke the kiss and the hand cupping her
jaw slid to her waist, raked up inside her shirt, and popped the clasp of her bra. He closed his big hand over one of her bare breasts. She shuddered in his arms, her body bucking forward against the hand between her legs.

  “Adam,” she gasped. “Move your hand!”

  “Not yet.” Coolly, unyielding.

  “Please!”

  “Not yet. Has any mortal man ever made you feel like this, Gabrielle?” he purred, a hint of savagery in that smooth deep voice. “Did any of your little boyfriends ever make you feel this way?”

  “No!” The word exploded from her when his fingers closed abruptly on her nipple, pinching the hardened peak.

  “No mortal can. Remember that, ka-lyrra, if you think to go back to your silly human boys. Do you know how many times, how many ways, I’m going to make you come?”

  “I’d settle for just one if I could have it right now,” she hissed, so intensely aroused that she was bordering on hostility. She’d never felt this way before, had no idea how to handle it.

  Laughter spilled around her, husky, erotic, alien, dark, purely Adam Black.

  “You aren’t falling for me, are you, Irish?” he purred against her ear, that infernal hand finally moving up to toy with the button-fly of her jeans.

  “Hardly,” she forced out, her whole body straining with need as she waited breathlessly for his hand to slip inside her pants. With each button that popped, a tiny shudder shook her.

  Her eyes fluttered closed and her head plopped limply back against his chest as his hand slid into her jeans and, palm to her skin, he pushed beneath her panties.

  The moment his hand touched her bare skin her knees went out from under her.