by Dani Harper
Caris looked up at him then. Her eyes were wide, yet dark with answering passion. She nodded solemnly, saying nothing.
But it was everything.
His arms encompassed her, and her warm body fit neatly against his as if she was made for him. Things long forgotten stirred within him, mingling with some things he’d never known. Desire was there, certainly. That first sight of Caris naked had already proved to him that he was very far from dead. It surprised him that there was so much more, things beyond even feelings or sensations. The notes of his heart were being strummed as surely as if she’d slipped her fingers inside his chest. Something about this woman, and only this woman, seemed to draw a quivering bow across the very moorings of his soul . . .
His lips didn’t want to be parted from hers for a second, yet the need to memorize her shape had suddenly become essential. Liam’s breath shuddered as his palms slid over the delicate angle of her shoulders and circled lazily down her spine. His strong fingers were feather-light as they outlined the curvature of her elegant hips, and—finally—his hands gently cupped the enticing roundness of her firm bottom.
Pull up! Pull up! his inner voice hollered at him, as though he were a pilot in a tailspin. Perhaps he was. Liam drew back from the kiss and used one hand to tuck her head beneath his chin. The other might as well have been glued to her glorious ass, but while his body was well aware of it, his brain wasn’t paying full attention. He was too busy trying to pull oxygen out of air that had become too thick to breathe while attempting to gauge Caris’s reaction. He might have gone too far already, for all he knew. So now, even if it killed him (and of course, his idiot lower brain was certain it would), he wasn’t going to make another move without her explicit direction. Sighing, he rested his cheek on her hair and waited.
She was aware of her own heart, pounding like a small fist against the drum of his chest. Somehow it had picked up the rhythm of Liam’s heart, and together they created a primal harmony. Caris’s fingers tingled, automatically anxious to pick up her fiddle and pluck out a tune to that perfect drumbeat. The rest of her wanted other things—wonderfully physical things, elemental things, sensuous things.
And she wanted them all from Liam Cole.
His breath was ragged, as if he’d run all the way to the barn and back, but she knew it had nothing to do with his concussion. Thanks to Ranyon and his healing charm—not to mention a magical boost from the faery ale—Liam was right as rain. And if she doubted that, she had only to pay attention to the arousal bulging in the front of his jeans. She was pressed against it tightly enough that she could feel it throb against her belly in time to his heartbeat, a heartbeat she shared. It was intoxicating to think that she had somehow caused it, exhilarating to know that this strong man wanted her. More than that, he loved her.
His powerful arms held her firmly, yet she sensed how they sheltered rather than imprisoned her: she wasn’t caged in the least. Caris knew that she only had to speak a word, and he would release her. That wasn’t surprising. Despite the disappointments life had dealt him, despite his lingering anger and hurt, her instinct—or her gut as Liam so colorfully called it—told her that he was a good man. Not a perfect man, but one she could depend on, a man she could trust.
A man she could love with everything she had.
What was surprising to her was just how powerful, how overwhelming, her own desires were. They were not the barely formed feelings of the young woman she’d once been, nor were they the careless and lascivious appetites of the Fair Ones. And her desires were not sinful, she decided. There had been a time when she had worried deeply about her list of transgressions—but surely she’d been punished enough to pay for more than she could ever think to commit.
No, her desires were simply hers. And she could choose what she would do with them.
Far below him, too damned far away, Gwenhidw’s pearl-colored hair and moon-white robes billowed around her like wings. A wounded swan falling from the sky . . . and by all the stars, Lurien had to catch up to her. His powers, usually so formidable, had been almost completely drained from him. Even at his best, he didn’t have the capability of flight, but he tucked in his arms and legs and made himself a streamlined bolt, willing himself to go faster, faster.
If I can just touch her . . . He had so little energy left. Normally he could spell them both to safety but that wasn’t an option now. Desperate, he ripped the light whip from his belt and snapped it downward against the uprush of resisting air with all of his physical strength and the last of the natural powers at his command. The end of the whip grazed her precious ankle, then, incredibly, half wrapped around it. It was enough, and although his magical energy was gone, his knowledge wasn’t. Lurien didn’t hesitate. He shouted the word, pouring his own life essence into the spell to give it power, and the queen vanished from his sight.
A half second later the impact of the blue-green water drove the breath from his body. The waves were strong this close to the sheer rock face of the mountain. Ruthlessly, they dragged him under, buffeting him, and yanking him back and forth between them like warths fighting over prey. Lurien drifted in and out of consciousness as he spiraled downward to where the full moon’s light was only a faint glitter high overhead.
There was no pleasant sandy bottom below him, that much he knew. No shell-strewn seafloor. Only dark, jagged rocks waiting to receive him. Lurien searched within, seeking an overlooked spark of energy, a modicum of power, anything at all. He’d even be grateful to conjure a common kitchen spell—but he was well and truly drained. At least if he was dying, he’d done so for just cause. He had saved his queen . . .
A shadow blotted out the last of the light above him, and he supposed he must be dying—until the ferocious face of a monstrous, horselike kelpie appeared before his eyes. Its blue hide glowed slightly, enough to reveal its powerful shape. The water around it churned with the powerful downstroke of its broad hooves as it swam. No horse ever had such a mane—thick and green, it floated upward like an impenetrable wall of seaweed.
You’re too late to drown me, he thought as the water creature seized his leather tunic in its sharp teeth. Like something out of a dream, a pale gold figure parted the seaweed mane as if it were a curtain. She grasped Lurien by the arm, pulling him through to the kelpie’s broad back.
Aurddolen? It was his last thought before blackness engulfed him.
TWENTY-THREE
Just as Liam figured that Caris must have had enough, and that maybe he ought to back off for a while, she surprised him. With painstaking deliberateness, she lowered her arms and slipped her hands beneath his shirt. For a moment he simply stared, disbelieving, as she slid the material upward—then he hastened to shrug free of it.
She began planting slow, small kisses across his chest, even as she explored it with her hands. He hissed in a breath as she fondled his nipples—and he nearly imploded when she took his hands and placed them squarely on her breasts. Soft and rounded, they were heavy in his palms. Ever so gently, he squeezed them and thumbed her own nipples erect through the thin material that covered them.
Her low, throaty moan was electrifying.
Too bad he was in nine kinds of pain. Blue-jeans zippers were all too good at restraining expanding cocks—and his was nearly bent in half at the moment. “Honey,” he managed. “I need to know how far you feel you’d like to go. Because I need to either stop now or get naked.” Before there’s permanent damage.
Her eyes were huge and dark with passion as she regarded him. “I think my gut is saying I’d like to lie with you.”
“Now?” It was all he could do to get the word out.
She nodded—and laughed out loud as he scooped her up and whirled her around.
They were heading for the house, hand in hand, pausing to kiss every few steps, when the night sky was suddenly split asunder by a strange white light that blazed upward from the northeastern horizon like a l
arge shooting star. Cometlike, the object grew brighter by the second and trailed a long, frost-colored tail as it hurtled in a high arc and then began a downward trajectory. Alarm bells went off in Liam’s head: It’s headed for the goddamn farm! He grabbed Caris’s hand and ran.
The storm hadn’t left much standing by way of shelter, except the house itself. Quickly, he flung open the cellar doors—and for the first time ever, it was a good thing the entrance was on the outside. He yanked Caris down the concrete steps into the darkness and around the corner, sheltering her against the cement wall with his body when . . .
There was no explosion, no sound at all. A brilliant flare of white light abruptly illuminated everything in the cellar as bright as day—it must have lit up the entire farm like a baseball stadium. He could see Caris’s anxious face looking up at him. And then all was dark again, seemingly darker than before. He knew that was simply an illusion, but it wasn’t comforting.
“What was it?” she asked, her voice revealing how shaken she was.
He wasn’t feeling too steady himself. “I don’t know. Probably just a meteorite.” Liam had seen online videos of such occurrences—funny how you always wish you could witness cool stuff like this until it happens to you—but he found it far more disturbing that the area had become some sort of epicenter for strange events. First a tornado, then faeries, and then a meteor . . . That’s gotta be some kind of frickin’ record, but I don’t think Guinness has a category for this kind of shit.
Outside in his corral, Dodge could be heard kicking up a fuss—and making a strange sort of sound between a neigh and a bellow. A cautious glance outside revealed a fiery glow behind the barn—and then Liam was running full out with Caris close at his heels. Morgan, Jay, and Ranyon were in there!
His fears that what was left of his barn was burning down were put to rest almost immediately. As he got closer, Liam realized the glow was about a hundred yards beyond the building, out on a rise in the alfalfa field. Even as he looked, the glow seemed to be fading—but it still gave enough light to see that all three of his friends were out there. Forced to slow down to a jog purely by the distance, Liam was thankful that his head was still in good shape. Ranyon had worked wonders, practically erasing the concussion, and that alone was enough to make him believe in magic. Otherwise he was certain he not only would have face-planted at the bottom of the cellar steps but would have probably still been there, trying hard not to upchuck.
“Dodge is really upset,” said Caris, as they neared his corral. “Though I’m not thinking he’s taken a fright.”
The big Appaloosa stallion didn’t looked frightened to Liam, either. The horse was pacing, switching his tail and shaking out his mane, and even occasionally planting his front hooves on the rails. Liam frowned. If he had to guess, he’d say there was a mare nearby that Dodge wanted to impress . . . Probably Chevy. Mares sometimes came into heat early after foaling. “Cool your jets, bro,” he called out to the horse. “She’s too damn busy being a mom right now.” He’d be certain to check on the big goof later—then stopped dead as he saw the horse canter to the middle of the corral and drive hard for the fence. Liam waved his arms. “No! Don’t you dare, dammit!”
Too late. Dodge cleared the top rail easily and charged past Liam and Caris. Instead of heading to the barn where Chevy was, however, the stallion galloped hell-bent-for-leather toward Finger Ridge and was quickly lost from sight.
“What’s up with that?” shouted Liam. He had just gotten his damn horses back. “I swear, ever since the storm, nothing’s been normal around here.”
“No doubt he’ll be coming back on his own, just as he did yesterday.” Caris caught Liam’s arm and tugged him along, until they finally caught up to their friends.
No one greeted them. Liam had been prepared to see a smoking crater in the ground, a glowing fireball—hell, even an engine off a jetliner wouldn’t have raised his eyebrows at this point in time.
He was not prepared to see Morgan kneeling next to an impossibly beautiful woman. In fact, beautiful was far too ordinary a word. This being—instinct told him she was not human—was more than exotic in appearance, she was sublime beyond description. It put him in mind of the delicate heirloom angel that Aunt Ruby brought out every Christmas. A candle inside gave a warm glow to the white porcelain—and this woman’s fine features somehow glowed as well.
Her thick, lustrous hair had fanned out in a silken cape around her. It was as long as she was tall—and luminous white. Who has hair like that? Her long white robes were as iridescent as the inside of a seashell, finely embroidered with animals Liam recognized and many he did not, and the wide hem of her garb, as well as the ends of her sleeves, were couched with pearls. A silver harness looped behind one shoulder—and the gleaming hilt of a sword was clearly visible.
Morgan was holding the woman’s hand and speaking to her—and she smiled back weakly. At least she’s alive. How badly hurt she might be, Liam couldn’t begin to imagine. He looked around, a little desperately, for some sort of craft, some method of flight, anything. How could this woman possibly have gotten here? And why was he the only one who seemed to be wondering? All too aware that something was going on that he didn’t understand, Liam broke the silence with what he hoped was a nice, safe topic: “Does anyone need me to call 911?”
Only Ranyon seemed able to shake himself free of the thrall cast by this woman’s presence. The little ellyll looked up at Liam, with his beloved Blue Jays hat clutched in his long, thin fingers. “’Tis the queen herself,” he said. “’Tis Gwenhidw, and mortal medicine is of no help to her.”
Lurien did not expect to awaken in his chambers in the palace. He did not expect to wake at all, in fact. And just to add to his surprise, his hazy vision picked up a pale-gold goddess who looked an awful lot like Aurddolen.
“You’re an idiot, oh mighty Lord of the Hunt,” she said.
It was definitely her. “Are you here for your revenge?” he managed, and discovered he was parched.
She moved in close, lifting his head and putting a goblet to his lips, and the contents made his eyes widen. There was no refusing it, not at the rate she was pouring it down his throat. “I just finished rescuing you and staying up all night to make sure you lived. If it was vengeance I wanted, I had only to leave you at the bottom of the ocean.”
“You may already have wrought your revenge with that cup,” he gasped. “What in the name of the Seven Sisters was that? It tasted like warth piss.”
“Nothing poisonous, if that’s what you mean. My mother was accomplished in herbs, and she passed her knowledge to me. You’ve taken in a great deal of seawater and spent all of your magic, but worse, you’ve been as close to a ghost as I’ve ever seen. You used your own life to send Gwenhidw somewhere, didn’t you?”
“I had to. I had nothing else with which to save her. Is she all right?”
“I wish I knew. She’s still missing.”
He tried to sit up then but his body wasn’t the slightest bit interested in obeying him. “I have to go after her, I have to find her. More, I have to find whoever attacked her.”
“You really think someone was behind that? Lurien, we poured a lot of power into the Great Way—surely it was simply a backlash, some sort of surge from the Way itself.”
“No.” He was certain of it. Every hunter’s instinct he possessed told him that there had been intelligence behind the energy blast that struck Gwenhidw. And as for where she was—he tried to recall what he’d said, what spell he’d cast, in those final desperate moments . . .
Somewhere safe. He’d tried to send her somewhere she couldn’t be found by her enemies yet would also be among friends. For a long moment his brain would produce no plausible answer. Then a new idea illuminated his mind: I must have sent her to Morgan Edwards. Morgan’s family had guarded the powerful pendant Gwenhidw wore—the Sigil, emblem of the royal house—for twenty generati
ons. Had the frantic spell chosen the mortal woman to guard something far more valuable?
Dozens of thoughts vied for his attention: Was Gwenhidw all right? Had Morgan indeed found her? Could he fight his way through the Great Way to get to his queen? He tried again to move but realized that he would be fortunate indeed to fight his way out of bed.
“You aren’t going very far, at least not for a while,” said Aurddolen, as if reading his mind. “Even if you were hale and hearty, we’ve got plenty of trouble right here. The envoys are in a state of panic. I’ve tried to allay their fears, calm them and get them back on task, but they seem to lack confidence in me. Apparently, my credibility is in question after being arrested by your hunters.”
She paused, as though waiting for him to apologize. It would be a cold day in Hades before that happened. “You would have done the same,” he said curtly. “The palace was under attack, and I had no choice but to act quickly to secure the queen’s safety. I will never take chances when it comes to Gwenhidw.”
Aurddolen’s voice was soft. “So I’ve noticed.”
“I am her llaw dde. How else would I behave?”
“I think you misapprehend your own motives, dear Lurien.” She walked around the bed as if to change the subject and looked out the window. “So, as soon as you’re up to it, I’d say your first task should be to talk to the envoys before they leave—and mind you, several delegates are already packing as we speak.”
She turned to look at him then. “Do you understand? We may never be able to get them together in one place again. That alone was something that no one but Gwenhidw could have accomplished, and it would be a shame to see it fall apart. You are, as you say, the queen’s llaw dde. More than that, you are the Lord of the Wild Hunt. They will trust you, as they will trust no one else at this time.”