“I love you, Gabrielle O’Callaghan.”
The words slammed into her; she stared at him mutely.
He kissed her then, his mouth slanting hard over hers, his velvety tongue gliding deep. And she gave herself over to it. Dream or not, it was real enough for her. She was in his arms and he was saying he loved her and if she was asleep, she just hoped she could stay asleep forever.
Even his kiss was different, she realized dimly, as her body flared to frantic, sizzling life in his arms. It held a touch of urgency that had never been there before. It was no longer shaped by immortal leisure but held a very human desperation, a mortal hunger and passion.
And it shook her so deeply that she went wild, kissing him back fiercely, pushing him back to the floor, clambering on top of him, burying her hands in his hair. Kissing and kissing him, with weeks of grief and longing and need.
How their clothing came off, she had no idea, only knew that moments later they were both naked on the floor of her bedroom and she was beneath him, and he was pushing inside her.
And she was alive again. There was blood in her veins, not ice. There was a heart in her chest, not—
“Adam,” she gasped, stunned, “I can feel your heart beating.” She’d never felt it before. Even though he’d been human, not once had she ever felt the powerful thud of his heart beneath her palm, the throb of a pulse at his neck.
And she’d never even noted their absence until this moment, when she was feeling them.
He drew back, his darkly beautiful face taut with lust. “I know.” He flashed her a brilliant smile. Then he began moving inside her and she forgot all about a heartbeat she’d never felt before. Gave herself over to pure sensation. And the turret bedroom was filled with the wild, impassioned sounds of a woman and her Fae prince making love.
Later, Adam told her everything.
Well, nearly everything. He omitted that he’d almost taken her soul. And since she didn’t know that he’d tricked them to begin with, he didn’t bother mentioning that he’d told Circenn and Lisa the truth about the elixir of life, then taken them to the queen so she could restore them to their mortal state.
He’d made amends as best he could. He refused to be damned for wrongs righted, or for things he’d “almost” done. He wasn’t the man he’d once been.
He told her what had become of Darroc. He told her how time moved differently between the realms, and that he’d never meant to leave her alone for so long.
Speaking quietly, holding her close, he told her how he’d realized that there was no way he would be able to stand living with her and watching her die, as he’d done with Morganna.
The moment those words left his lips, Gabrielle tensed in his arms, jerked from his embrace, and shot straight up in bed. “Oh!” she hissed, eyes flashing furiously. “Then, what did you come back for? Are you telling me you’re leaving me again?”
He shook his head hastily, and explained that—although he’d believed he was human—he’d never been. That the queen had only made him think he was mortal to punish him. He told her what the queen had said about such a transformation being irreversible for a Tuatha Dé.
And he told her that he’d finally realized that, since he couldn’t bear to live without her, yet he couldn’t bear to watch her die, there was only one choice left to him.
“The reason you can feel my heartbeat, ka-lyrra, is because now I really am human. It’s for real this time.”
Gabby’s eyes widened and she stared at him, her lower lip trembling. “But you just said it’s irreversible.”
He nodded.
“You mean, you’re going to die?” she whispered.
Cupping her head in his hands, Adam pulled her down for a deep, possessive kiss. “No, ka-lyrra, I mean, I’m finally going to live. Here. Now. With you.” He drew a breath. “Marry me, Gabrielle. I’ll give you the life you’ve always wanted. I can now. I’m human, just like you. Let me be your husband and give you babies. Let me spend the rest of my life with you.”
“Oh, God,” Gabby breathed, tears welling up in her eyes, “you gave up your immortality for me?”
He caught her tears with his tongue as they slipped down her cheeks, kissing them away. “No tears, Gabrielle. I have no regrets. Not one.”
“How can you say that? You gave up everything! Immortality. Invincibility. All that it is to be a Tuatha Dé!”
He shook his head. “I gained everything. Or at least I’ll think so,” he growled, suddenly impatient, anxious, “when you give me a bloody answer to my bloody question. How many times are you going to make me ask you? Will you marry me, Gabrielle O’Callaghan? Yes or yes? And in case you’re still managing to miss the point, the correct answer is ‘yes.’ And, by the way, anytime you’d like to tell me you love me, I wouldn’t mind hearing it.”
She pounced on him delightedly, straddling him, slipped her hands into his hair, and kissed him. He luxuriated in the bliss of her sweet body, closing his arms around her, his tongue gliding deep, tangling with hers.
“I’m going to take this as a yes,” he purred, catching her lower lip, tugging playfully at it.
“I love you, Adam Black,” Gabby breathed. “And, yes. Oh, abso-freaking-lutely yes!”
EPILOGUE
FIVE YEARS LATER
Gabby finished unloading the dishwasher and cocked her head, listening. The house was quiet; their two-year-old son Connor was already down for the night. Soon she would go upstairs, kiss their daughter, Tessa, good night, and lead her husband off to bed.
Professor Black.
She shook her head, smiling. Adam couldn’t look less like a professor, with his chiseled face and those sexy dark eyes and that long black hair, not to mention that rippling, powerful body. He looked more like . . . well, a Fae prince masquerading as a professor, and doing a rather shoddy job of it at that.
When he’d first told her that he intended to teach history at the university, she’d laughed. Too everyday, too plebeian, she’d thought. He’ll never do it.
He’d surprised her. But then, he often did.
He’d planned everything out so carefully. Before he’d petitioned the queen to make him human, he’d established a detailed human identity for himself as an extremely wealthy man with vast bank accounts and a thousand acres of prime land in the Highlands. A human identity complete with all the necessary paperwork and credentials to permit him to live a normal life in the human realm.
And when she’d gently scoffed at his announcement of his choice of career, he’d waved those credentials at her—transcripts from the top universities in the nation, no less (of course, he’d made himself brilliant)—and gone off and gotten himself a job.
He’d developed a reputation as a renegade in the field, with all kinds of controversial theories about things like who had built Newgrange and Stonehenge and the true origin of the Proto-Indo-European tongue.
Students had to register for his classes a year in advance.
And she, well, she had her dream job. She and Jay and Elizabeth had opened up their own law firm and just this year had finally begun pulling in the kinds of cases she’d always hoped to represent. Cases that mattered, that made a difference.
They’d begun a family immediately, neither of them had been willing to wait. Time was far too precious to them both.
And, oh, he made beautiful babies! There was Tessa, with black hair and green-gold eyes; Connor, with blond hair and dark eyes; and yet another on the way.
She pressed a palm to her abdomen, smiling. She loved being a mother. Adored being married to him. She doubted any woman had ever been more completely and unconditionally loved.
She knew her husband would never stray, so highly did he value that which he’d waited nearly six thousand years to know, so precious was it to him: love. She knew he would be there with her until the very end, that he would cherish each wrinkle, every line in her face, because in the final analysis they were not a negation of life but an affirmation of a life well
lived. Proof positive of laughter and tears, of joy and grief, of passion, of living. Every facet of being human was amazing to him, each and every change of season a triumph, a taste of unbearable sweetness. Never had a man lived who savored life more.
Life was rich and full.
She couldn’t have asked for more.
Well . . . actually . . . she amended with a little inner flinch, she could have.
Though most of the time she looked at Adam and just felt awed and humbled that this big, wonderful man had given up so much to love her, sometimes she hated that he didn’t have a soul, and sometimes she wanted to hate God.
And she had a dream, a silly dream perhaps, but a dream to which she clung.
They would live to be a hundred, until long after their children and grandchildren were grown, and one day they would go to bed and lie down facing each other, and die like that, at the same moment, in each other’s arms.
And this was her dream: that maybe, just maybe, if she loved him hard enough and true enough and deep enough, and if she held on to him tightly enough as they died, she could take him with her wherever it was that souls went. And there she would do what was in her blood, what she now knew she’d been born for; she would stand before God, a brehon, and she would argue the greatest, the most important case of her life.
And she would win.
“I don’t understand, Daddy,” Tessa said. “Why did the rabbit have to lose his fur to be real?”
Adam closed the book, The Velveteen Rabbit, and glanced down at his daughter.
She was tucked in bed, blankets to her chin, staring up at him. His precious Tessa, with her oodles of shiny black ringlets tumbling around her chubby angelic face, with her quick mind, and incessant curiosity, and her daddy’s heart wrapped oh-so-snugly around her chubby little finger.
“Because that’s part of becoming real.”
“Eew. I don’t want to be real. I want to be pretty like the fairy queen. Oops”—she clapped a tiny hand over her mouth—“wasn’t ’posed to say that.”
In the doorway, Gabby gasped softly, and Adam glanced up immediately, arching a brow at her, a silent question in his eyes.
I’ve never told her anything about fairies, Gabby mouthed. Have you?
He shook his head. They’d both assumed Tessa wasn’t a Sidhe-seer. Gabrielle hadn’t seen a single Tuatha Dé since that day Darroc had ambushed them in Scotland five years ago, and they’d assumed Aoibheal must have stripped the Fae-vision from the O’Callaghan line.
“What fairy queen, Tessa?” Adam said softly. “It’s okay, you can tell me.”
Tessa eyed him doubtfully. “She said you’d get mad if you knew she came.”
“I won’t get mad,” he assured her, smoothing her tousled ringlets.
“Promise, Daddy?”
“Promise. Cross my heart. What fairy queen, sweet?”
“Ah-veel.”
Adam inhaled sharply, glancing at Gabrielle again.
“Does Aoibheal come to see you, Tessa?” Gabby said softly, moving into the room, joining Adam on the edge of Tessa’s bed.
Tessa shook her head. “Not me. She comes to see Daddy. She thinks he’s pretty.”
Adam bit back a laugh at the look his wife shot him then, her eyes narrowed, dainty nostrils flared. She all but growled. He loved that she got a little jealous sometimes, adored her possessiveness. Suffered from his own fair share of it where his petite ka-lyrra was concerned.
“Pretty, huh?” Gabby said dryly.
“Mmm-hmm,” Tessa said, rubbing her eyes sleepily. “But I can’t see it no matter how hard I try.”
Okay, now, that miffed him a bit, Adam thought, disgruntled. Before Tessa had been born, he’d pored over piles of parenting books, determined to be a good father. He thought he’d been doing a fine job, but wasn’t his daughter supposed to have stars in her eyes whenever she looked at him? At least until she hit her teens? (And then God help the man who tried to date his daughter!) So, he had a few tiny lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there before, he was still a handsome man! “You don’t think I’m pretty, eh, Tessa?” He tickled his daughter’s neck, right behind her ear, where it never failed to make her limp with laughter.
“ ’Course I do, Daddy.” She giggled. Then she gave him a thoroughly four-year-old look of exasperation. “But I can’t see what she sees. She says only fairies can.”
Adam’s heart skipped a beat.
It couldn’t be.
Could it?
“Oh, God,” Gabby said weakly, her gaze flying to his. She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth. They stared at each other for a long moment.
Adam nodded, wordlessly encouraging her to ask the question they were both thinking. He’d ask himself, but he couldn’t seem to find his tongue.
He knew of only one thing he’d been able to see around humans when he’d been a fairy that humans couldn’t see. He could scarcely breathe with wanting it so badly. With aching to be able to follow his wife from this life, into countless others. Five years ago, when he’d wed Gabrielle in a romantic Highland ceremony, the MacKeltars had offered him the use of their Druid binding vows: those sacred vows that united lovers for all eternity. He’d refused to say them—not because he hadn’t longed to with every fiber of his being—but because it would have been to no avail, as he’d had no soul with which to bind himself.
Breathlessly Gabby said, “See what, Tessa? What can fairies see that you can’t see?”
Tessa yawned. Snuggled deeper into the covers. “That Daddy’s all glowy and golden.”
Adam’s mouth worked, but nothing came out.
“Adam glows golden?” Gabby said faintly.
Tessa nodded. “Mmm-hmm. Ah-veel says now he’s just like you and me, Mommy.”
Gabby made a soft choking sound.
For a long moment Adam couldn’t move. He just sat on the edge of Tessa’s bed and stared at his wife. She stared back at him, wonderingly, her eyes misting with tears of joy.
Then the enormity of it electrified him, galvanized him into action—there wasn’t a moment to waste! If, by some miracle, he’d been gifted with a soul, he wanted it bound to Gabrielle’s now.
Hastily dropping a kiss on Tessa’s brow, Adam turned out the light, scooped Gabrielle up into his arms, and carried her from the room, hastening down the hall to their bedroom.
“Ka-lyrra,” he said urgently, “there’s something I want you to do with me. Vows I want to exchange, but you must know that they will bind our souls together for all eternity. Are you willing? Would you have me forever?”
Laughing and crying at the same time, she nodded.
Exultantly Adam deposited her on her feet, placed the palm of his right hand above her heart, and rested his left above his own. “Place your hands on top of mine, Gabrielle,” he commanded.
When she did so, he spoke with quiet reverence and conviction:
“If aught must be lost, it will be my honor for yours. If one must be forsaken, it will be my soul for yours. Should death come anon, it will be my life for yours. I am Given.”
Smiling up at him, her eyes sparkling with joy, she repeated the vows, and, the moment she finished, emotion crashed over him so intensely that it nearly brought him to his knees. He felt the bond quickening inside him, heating his blood with fierce passion, as their souls were united for all time.
Backing her against the wall, he buried his hands in her hair, slanted his mouth over hers, and kissed her hungrily.
He had a soul. He knew love. He was pledged to his soul mate forever.
And Adam Black was finally truly immortal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karen Marie Moning graduated from Purdue University
with a bachelor’s degree in Society & Law. Her novels have been USA Today bestsellers and have appeared on the New York Times expanded bestseller list. They have won numerous awards, including the prestigious RITA Award.
She can be reached at www.karenmoning.com.
Vis
it our website at www.bantamdell.com.
DELL BOOKS BY KAREN MARIE MONING
Beyond the Highland Mist
To Tame a Highland Warrior
The Highlander’s Touch
Kiss of the Highlander
The Dark Highlander
THE IMMORTAL HIGHLANDER
A Delacorte Book / August 2004
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2004 by Karen Marie Moning
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the
colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Moning, Karen Marie.
The immortal highlander / Karen Marie Moning.
p. cm.
1. Americans—Scotland—Fiction. 2. Immortalism—Fiction.
3. Time travel—Fiction. 4. Fairies—Fiction.
5. Highlands (Scotland)—Fiction.
6. Fantasy fiction. 7. Love stories.
PS3613.O527 I53 2004
813/.6 22 2004040764
Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33460-6
v3.0
The Immortal Highlander Page 28