by R. F. Long
“She’s magnificent,” his former lover murmured, licking her lips as if savouring the taste of a fine wine.
She uncurled her fingers and Rowan slumped to the ground, a bundle of faded rags. One hand thudded across the threshold and Daire pounced, seizing her and using his failing strength to pull her inside, to gather her to him and to safety. Inch by torturous inch, she jerked towards him, unable to help, unable to do anything. At least she was breathing. Daire gave thanks she was still breathing. He enfolded her in his arms, cradling her against him, stroking her still, pale face. Her skin felt so cold.
Outside the moon slid into the sky above the hills, but Aynia shone brighter.
She cast Daire a glimmering look and stretched out, catlike, revelling in the stolen energy. “If she survives the night, I’ll come back for more. Not that her survival seems likely after that. I find it quite hard to control myself sometimes. Such a pity. She is quite a find. Small wonder you tried to keep her to yourself, my beloved. Perhaps we are not as different as you think.”
Chapter Fourteen
It took most of Daire’s remaining strength to lift Rowan’s body and carry her to the bedroom. Ice formed on her skin, a light dusting of frost where her sweat and tears had frozen during Aynia’s onslaught. She lay so still, her lips blue, her breath as cold as the rest of her. In the middle of her white sheets, she looked very small, huddled like a child, curled in on herself as if hiding from a nightmare. He pulled her blankets over her. Warmth was key now. Warmth and comfort.
Daire started with her hands, rubbing them between his own, trying to restore circulation. He couldn’t lose her, not now, not this way. But his own energy was already drained. He could not give any more to her because he had nothing more to give.
Anger burned inside him. Why hadn’t she listened? Why couldn’t she do as she was told? So full of life, of promise, so full of that fundamental, creative energy that made her such a vibrant target for his enemies. She could be a force for unparalleled good in this world if she would only let that spirit flow free. If she would only keep herself out of danger.
Without it, robbed of it, she would die. Unconscious, there was no way it could awaken itself.
Not alone.
Daire gazed into her face, so still now. Every emotion could flicker across her face, her anger, her surprise, and her love. He knew he had seen love there, though he knew just as surely as he recognised it that he did not deserve it. And he knew he could never be what she needed, could never fulfil the role of husband. He could not stay with her. No matter how much he wanted to.
No. He clenched his teeth. His hand curled into fists at his side, his shoulders tight as wires. Rowan would not give up on him, would she? She would never have left him lying there and done nothing to help. She had found a way. That was a paramount characteristic in her obstinate, determined, forthright nature.
Daire knew what he had to do. He only hoped she would live to hate him for doing it.
He brushed her hair back from her face, tucked an errant strand behind her ear. Her lips moved, fumbled his name, and she struggled to open her eyes.
“Rowan,” he murmured in reply and traced a fingertip along the line of her lips. “Rowan, forgive me. For the pain I have caused you, the pain I will cause you. Forgive me.”
He kissed her, intending only the chaste kiss that would allow him to pass what little reserves he still retained on to her. Though he felt it as only a shallow pool, it might still be enough to save her, if fortune smiled on them. He gave it all willingly, sacrificing everything he had left for her, just as he had been willing to give his life to protect her.
His inner light flickered and dimmed. He felt his body slip forwards as his strength deserted him. Reality turned to a shifting mist, or perhaps that was him, sliding away from the world, from any world. He was fading, he could feel it. Fading from existence, drifting away, and leaving her forever. Nothing but a ghost now, cast to the winds, lost and forsaken.
Her lips parted beneath his, welcoming him and his energy, but the kiss did not stop. Electricity jolted through him, snapping him back into her world, to feel her touch, her love. As if their mouths had taken on a will of their own, they kissed and Daire knew he could no longer stop, not even if he had wanted to. His love consumed him. Nothing would induce him to stop, to let her be. Rowan was all he wanted, all he needed. He had no will, no earthly power to resist her anymore. There was only his connection to Rowan. She held him there and refused to let go.
Since Aynia left, Daire had turned away from other women, throwing himself into the war and shutting away any hint of desire and need. His emotions intertwined with the Unseelie part of himself, associating with those things forbidden and became part of it, inextricable. Rowan walked through the wards he had so carefully crafted as if they weren’t there, breaking through barriers he thought impenetrable to waken those feelings again.
Need. He had never imagined such a blind need for anyone. His chest ached with it, his body straining to seize her and take her, to make her his own forever, just as he had seen in Aynia’s visions. But more, more than that. The feelings were different this time, not the twisted desire to possess that Aynia had attempted to inspire.
He needed to hold her to himself, and to do that he could not afford to hurt her in return. Blood thundered through him and he forced his hand to be gentle, to stroke her satin-smooth skin, to restore the warmth she needed and somehow show her through his actions the love that he could not voice. Though it might see him damned, he no longer cared. She was all that mattered to him.
Rowan murmured his name and her eyes flickered open. What he saw reflected there…the kindred desire, the inferno of need…
Daire had never looked on anything so beautiful in his entire centuries-long life.
He slid his hand beneath her blouse and across the soft plane of her stomach. Rowan arched her body to meet him. Carefully, restraining the urge to rip the material open, he slid the buttons free and peeled back the material to expose her lace-clad breasts. She drew in a ragged breath and when he closed his lips and laid his tongue on the lace, gripping the nipple through it, she cried out his name.
Light pulsed from her body, slow at first, building with each pounding heartbeat. Her hands pressed to his chest, trying to find her way through the material keeping them apart, tugging at his shirt while her mouth struggled between articulating pleas and gasping with desire.
Daire cupped her left breast, nuzzling at the other, freeing it from its prison so his mouth could fully claim it. When he rolled his tongue around the nipple itself, he could feel her heart racing beneath.
Rowan pulled his leaf shirt free and her touch on the skin beneath drove him beyond rational thought, beyond caring what happened afterwards. She fumbled at his waist and freed his body to her gently questing hands.
Daire closed his eyes as the sensation cast him adrift in a sea of bliss. He held himself above her, aware of the trembling starting deep in the muscles of his arm. Rowan drew him nearer, caressed the hard length of him and began to stroke him, the skin gliding against the shaft in the most heavenly torture. His breath came in shorter gasps and he sensed her soul fire entering him, not just through their kiss, but bleeding into him through the sensation of skin moving against skin, of lips seeking out lips, of fingertips drawing forth gasps of pleasure.
“No,” he whispered, though his body conspired with need to stifle his words. “You’re too weak.”
She lifted her face to his, claimed his mouth with her kiss and poured the Creator’s gift into him as if she had a never-ending font available to her. Too weak? What a fool he was. Rowan was anything but weak. Unable to do anything but comply with her insistent demands, Daire released all he had and was to her and allowed her to fill him, and gave back that power in return.
They shed their remaining clothes like autumn leaves. Skin to skin, they pressed together, mouths and hands, tongues exploring. Each drank in the scents of the other like a he
ady elixir. He was no longer certain where he ended and she began.
Daire parted her pale thighs and pressed his mouth to her womanhood. He stroked her labia, his tongue probing and caressing, stirring her desire until she cried out his name again and light engulfed her. She shuddered in his arms, lifting her back from the bed. When she looked up at him, her eyes glowed.
“Tell me it’s real this time,” she asked.
“It is,” he replied, his voice emerging hoarse and desperate. “God help us, it is real, Rowan.”
“You aren’t fighting it any more.”
He shook his head, bewildered and unable to do anything else. “How can I?”
She pushed him back until he lay flat on his back, marooned in the middle of her bed. She crept towards him, cautious and slow, as if she feared he was some sort of flighty fae who would panic and run from her embrace. And though he had pushed her away, tried to stop this inevitable moment, she was stronger than he was. Rowan, a frail mortal, a pale comparison to a Sidhe woman. His very own mayfly. So much stronger than he was.
Slowly, so slowly, she straddled his hips and brought him inside her, the tight warmth sliding along his shaft, cradling him in its wet and hungry embrace. She paused, adjusting to the feelings, her face filled with wonder and the soul fire crackling through her fingers. She began the rhythm tentatively, judging its effect by watching his face and the reactions he could not hide from her. She knew what she was doing, no doubt about that, not through any great experience perhaps but through her own innate sensitivity. She lifted herself and then plunged down rapidly, sweeping onto him and forcing her name from his lips in a rush of air.
And she smiled. The world brightened when she smiled.
“Come for me,” she whispered and he realised how close she was again, already, how near to losing control. Even had her voice not rung with her need, her eyes betrayed her.
He closed his hands on her hips and held her to him, slowing her for a moment, holding her to him like the most precious thing in the world. Just for a moment, he needed to look at her and fully enjoy every sensation. It couldn’t last. He knew that. Not this, not anything they might have together.
But for now, for this moment, there was nothing but Rowan, the way she filled every sense he had, the way he needed her and the way she never stopped giving.
The rocking rhythm would bring them to climax in a little while but neither of them wanted the slow road. Not now. Daire held her close and thrust deep inside her. He paused there, adjusting his position with care and precision. With deliberation.
Rowan’s eyes widened and her mouth formed an o of surprise. Ripples of light fell around her and Daire held her tightly. He set up a new rhythm, one born of mutual need, the hunger of long-endured denial. She lifted her arms, her fingers splaying out to each side as she rode him. She came with an exultant cry, thrusting down onto him, her body closing around him as if she needed to make him come as well.
Concentrating solely on her pleasure, his own took him by surprise. Rowan threw back her head, her body caressing him, the ripples of light becoming a fireworks display. It pulsed through her and around him, gripping him and drawing his body to its height until he sank into her that last time and surrendered to the sweet oblivion of orgasm.
–—
Rowan woke in the night as Daire left a trail of kisses down her spine, each one a dazzling point of light on the tip of each vertebra, a line of cold fire that gradually warmed. They made love again, this time lingering over the moments of intimacy, the touch of lips on skin, of fingertips and the brush of flesh. They indulged themselves and within her she felt the light become laughter, become joy. Sinking back into sleep, she felt her head cradled against his chest, listened to his deep breath drawing in and out, and behind that, the soft thunder of his heart. It was heaven, this closeness, this warmth.
Rowan awoke before Daire and watched him sleep as she had the previous morning. Nothing could induce her to leave the warmth of his sleeping embrace. Not this time. She curled in against him, waiting for him to wake up, content.
The house phone started ringing downstairs, the noise shrill and unwelcome. Daire’s whole body jerked to alertness and before she knew what was happening, he stood over her, a naked god of autumn. She stared up at the golden length of his body and put out a hand to his rippled abdomen. His skin felt like silk stretched over moulded iron.
“It’s just the phone,” she told him. “It’s all right.”
Seeing her, warm and tranquil in the bed, safe, his stance relaxed. He smiled down on her. “My dreams were…” His words failed and he frowned.
“Bad?”
“No.” He slid back into the bed beside her, entwining his legs with hers. “I cannot explain it beyond the thought that perhaps I caught a glimpse of a place I thought forbidden to me. With you. I saw the glorious mountains drenched in golden light.”
She lifted his hand to her face and kissed his palm. Downstairs the phone rang on.
“What about your phone? Might it not be related to your business?”
She nuzzled into his neck, and placed his hand over her heart. “It can wait. It’s all the way downstairs.” The ringing stopped and she sighed in relief. “See? It’s gone now. If it’s important, they’ll ring back.”
The mobile jangled into violent life, throwing green light up to the ceiling as it rattled its way across the bedside table.
Rowan murmured a curse and grabbed it, turning her back on Daire. His hands began to explore her body again and she felt a purr well up inside her. She answered the phone reluctantly.
“Rowan?” Maggie stretched her name tight with worry.
The awful tone in the voice of the normally happy-go-lucky girl made Rowan pull back from Daire’s caress. She sat up and he drew back, watching her with concern in his moss green eyes.
“It’s the gallery, Ro,” said Maggie, sobs straining through her words. “Someone broke in, we think. The police think, I mean. Vandals.”
“I’ll be right there,” she promised and hung up.
“You’ve turned white,” said Daire, holding her hand to help her from the bed.
“Someone wrecked my gallery,” she whispered.
Daire frowned, his eyes darkening. “Aynia.”
“The police think vandals broke in, but… Yes,” she agreed. “I can’t think of anyone else.”
–—
Rowan hugged her arms around her chest, acutely aware of the silken material of her red blouse beneath her trembling fingertips. When she stepped through the gallery doorway no jangling bell greeted her. The frame looked ragged where the door had been forced. Daire’s hand on her shoulder comforted her a little, but the cold and wanton destruction around her felt like a physical blow. She stepped forwards and chill air surrounded her.
“Careful,” said Daire. “She’s fond of leaving traps.”
“The police have been in here already.”
“She could have left one specifically for you.” He stepped past Rowan, presumably to put himself between her and danger. She slipped her hand around his wrist to stop him, and was stunned when he halted.
“Or for you,” she warned.
Daire gave a brief nod, little more than an incline of his head. “Nonetheless, let me go first, milady.”
The formality surprised her even more, yet the word resonated with affection. With more than affection. Love?
She drew in a shaky breath. She couldn’t allow herself to think that. He would leave. He had to leave. If, for only a moment, she believed he loved her, and then he left… How could she survive that?
Daire slipped past her, his precise footsteps like a slow-motion dance. He stalked around the main exhibition room and then approached the office. Rowan waited until he had checked each room, though she had no idea how he would know if anything lay in wait. By triggering it, perhaps. She wouldn’t put it past him to set off a trap intended for her in order to protect her.
After a few moments, he re
turned and shook his head.
“Nothing. Some light might be advisable though.”
Rowan pulled up the blinds on the main windows and let the sunlight fall on the devastation.
Every work of art had been pulled from the walls, every carving and sculpture upended. The glass from the frames littered the floor, crunched beneath Rowan’s shoes as she edged her way through it.
“Oh Rowan!” Maggie exclaimed from the doorway.
No bell again, thought Rowan. Strange to miss that sound so much. It was such a small thing, but it had always heralded company. She looked around on the ground and after a moment found what remained of the little metal dome. Something had stamped it flat. They didn’t like bells, did they? And their own reflection, they hated that. Which accounted for the glass, she supposed.
Maggie crunched her way inside. “The police said it was bad but I had no idea! What are we going to do?”
Rowan shrugged off her coat. “The pictures look intact. And the sculptures. They didn’t damage the art itself.” She glanced at Daire for confirmation.
“Art is sacred. Even to them. They might steal it, often the artist as well, but to destroy a work of art—not even Aynia would do that.”
Rowan picked up Maggie’s sculpture and passed it to her friend. Maggie accepted it, her hands shaking, and hugged it to her chest like a child. Rowan just squeezed her shoulders and surveyed the room, her determination refuelling again.
“So we tidy up and assess the damage. Then we put it all back together again. Okay?”
Chapter Fifteen
They swept up the glass first. Finding the artwork intact came as a relief that somehow took the edge off the senseless attack. There was damage, but nothing that could not be undone. As the morning wore on other members of the art group arrived to help. Libby brought coffee and muffins from the café and the atmosphere lightened. Rowan could almost believe they were just a group of friends setting up an art school exhibit from scratch. Some of her happiest memories were of such events—the chatter, the simmering excitement, the focused work.