The low rumble of a coming spring storm jerked Law awake. His arm went tight around Kenna when she trembled. He buried his face in her hair to take in a deep lungful of her sweet scent and whispered to her that it would be all right. A faery could easily spook, and a spooked faery could easily get herself into a dangerous situation. It was just a little thunder. No one was invading the house to get to her, yet.
He tilted his head to look at the clock. The sun would just be rising above the horizon if the dark clouds weren’t blocking it. They’d slept together all night. Kenna’s warm body snuggled into him as she moaned a soft contented sound. His arms went tighter around her. She’d stayed with him. It was awesome!
The enormity of the decision he’d made the night before struck him. This petite, wonderful person’s life rested in his hands. His curse could affect her life. Whatever hell awaited him hadn’t yet begun. He could feel it in his gut. It would come because it always did. This was the exact thing he’d avoided, and it was happening to him because he’d not been able to sacrifice her to continue his sorry existence. He brushed the side of his face against the top of her head and then gently pressed a kiss to her temple.
She stretched, and her wonderful body pressed more fully against his. Her voice was husky and sweet from sleep. “Morning.”
He grinned as his troubles faded back. The savory moment wouldn’t last nearly long enough, but he could work to extend it for as long as possible. The sky rumbled again, and she jerked before looking up at him with wide eyes. She hid her face against his chest. Part of him wondered if Thor was giving him a one-day reprieve before all hell broke loose or if it was a portent of a coming doom. Either way he needed to tread carefully. The storm could have frightened his faery. He let his mouth drag down the side of her throat, needing her more now than he had the night before.
“Looks like a rainy day,” he whispered. “What do you say to spending the day in front of a warm fire?”
“Sounds lovely, but…” She moaned softly and stretched up to lightly kiss him before she let out a soft little sigh. Then she leaned back just enough to prop her head up on a hand and look at him while they talked. “Don’t we need to, I don’t know, start dealing with this in a more healthy way?”
“Don’t you mean start learning how to get along?” he asked softly and reached over to play with a strand of her hair. Her hair was so soft and so vibrant. He knew nothing about her, but he could already feel himself getting in too deep. Hell, he was already in too deep. He’d mated to her and was hoping to get an instant replay as soon as possible.
“We’re attracted to each other,” she said and then tugged at her bottom lip with her white teeth. “We’re, um…” She caught her full bottom lip between her teeth. “Good in bed.” Her gaze lifted to meet his. “And the entire divorced population of this country has the same story.”
He smiled at her, being careful not to let her see his disappointment at having to wait to have her again, and then leaned forward to kiss the tip of her nose. The people of this time complicated everything. Mutual attraction and good manners should be more than enough to start down the path of a loving relationship. “Stop worrying about why it won’t work and think about how to make it work.”
Vivid green eyes studied his face for a long moment before she looked away from him. “I don’t trust magic to run my life.”
It stung a bit because magic was finally giving him something he wanted, but he couldn’t blame the line of thinking. He didn’t know what power created a mate in faeries or why some of them had predestined mates and others didn’t. He just knew it was part of the supernatural order. For once, he was getting something good out of the whole ordeal. He used a hooked finger to lift her chin up. “I meant what I said. Magic or not, if I didn’t want this happening to me, you would not be here.”
She wiggled out of his arms and gave a strained smile. “That’s sweet. We do need to talk about this and deal with it all, but, um, can I use your bathroom?”
He closed his eyes before nodding. Her effort at handling an unavoidable mating was valiant, but her lack of enthusiasm hurt. When he opened his eyes, he dragged himself out of bed. He’d waited two thousand years. Waiting a little longer wasn’t going to hurt him, too much. He pointed to a door on the other side of the room. “Bathroom is through there. I’ll go get your stuff out of the truck.” He turned to leave her some privacy.
“Bran.”
He turned to look at her. “Yes?”
“I feel safe with you,” she said in a near whisper as she got off the bed. “I might be flaking out a little bit.” Her smile was strained again. “I just don’t know what to do with this. Yesterday I was alone in this world, and now I have a mate who will accept the consequence of insanity if he leaves.” Her mouth snapped shut.
In two strides, he was across the room, standing in front of her. “What is it you fear?”
Her body did a tiny shudder. She turned away from him and then turned back. Her mouth opened and then closed. Her shoulders rounded as she shook her head. She backed toward the bathroom door. “We can talk later.” Then she turned and hurried into the bathroom.
Left standing there like an idiot staring after her, he shook his head and headed toward the stairs. He smirked when he saw their clothes scattered down the steps and into the entry. A wise man never regretted getting a willing woman into his bed, and he’d never regret the feeling of waking up next to Kenna. In all his time, he’d never risked staying the night. Kenna would provide him with everyday life experiences he’d never thought he’d dare to have. Waking up with a woman in his arms was the first of many things he wished to do before his end.
He picked up their clothes and dropped them off in the laundry room just off the kitchen before heading out into the faint drizzle to get her bags out of the truck. He couldn’t be stupid about this. The truth had been fudged when he’d told her he would go insane if he walked. Not because he wouldn’t go insane, but because it wasn’t the usual way of things. There was something about Kenna touching him at his core in a way no one else had ever done before. It wasn’t only mating magic drawing him in. He knew every spell there was to ward off the effects of faery magic. He knew the feel of it, and this didn’t have the same feeling. It was different enough that he’d almost agree the Celtic pantheon wasn’t just a glorified group of people with magnified fae power, almost.
He’d been alive too long and seen too much to believe in gods. Knowing their power and the kind of hell they could bring to his life was another matter entirely.
He picked his shirt up off the ground by the passenger door, slung Kenna’s bags over his shoulder, and headed back into the house, making sure to lock the door. Lightning flashed in the distance, and the sky rumbled.
There were probably about a million different things in the world that could tear them apart, and he couldn’t let any of them change how he felt about her. His curse was to live forever and bear Cóir until the breaking of the world. The language used to curse him had been old when he was young. The faery lord who’d uttered those life-altering words could be as old as time itself, but it didn’t stop Law from remembering what had been said and nowhere, in any of the utterances, had Kier forbidden him from finding a moment of happiness.
He tossed his shirt into the laundry basket with everything else and then headed back up the stairs. Being away from her this long grated across fraying nerves.
Kenna was standing in the hall in only his shirt. Holy hell, he was hard again just seeing her. It took all his willpower to walk by her and drop off her bags in the bedroom without devouring her on the spot. “You can get a shower if you want while I make breakfast.” He tried for casual but wasn’t sure he’d achieved it.
She moved up behind him. “You’re trying too hard.”
He turned around to face her. “What else am I supposed to do?”
One of her eyebrows winged up as she folded her arms under her breasts. “Freak out. Yell, scream, rant, rave about the injustice of it all. Put your fist through the wall and curse the gods. I won’t be offended if you’re not completely copacetic with this just yet.”
“Yes you will,” he said and sighed as he cupped his hands over her shoulders. “Trust me, I am more than capable of throwing an epic tantrum, but you do not need to witness it.”
Her bottom lip quivered. “That bad?”
“That good,” he said and turned her around and lightly nudged her to head down the stairs. “You’re stuck with me forever. I don’t have to be alone anymore, and I know beyond anything someone, somewhere, is going to try to take my fantasy away from me.”
“I could be a closet shrew,” she said as she started down the stairs. “Or a harpy.”
“Harpies are a different mythology,” he said, trying to inject humor into his tone. “And you in no way resemble a rodent, nor are you a bitch.”
She snorted and stopped when she was a few feet from the last step. “My point is being stuck with each other doesn’t automatically make everything all rainbows and happy days.” The thunder rumbled, and she jumped.
“Kenna?”
She inched closer to him while shaking her head. “Storms make me nervous. I’m fine. I just wasn’t expecting this one.”
He came down the last two steps and draped his arm over her shoulder. “I could put in a word for you with Thor, if it makes you feel better.”
She turned her face into his side and giggled. “Rune’s father is a god.”
“In a manner of speaking and the one who owes me a favor,” he said. He steered her toward the kitchen.
“That kind of thing is not supposed to happen,” she said. “And it freaks me out. Who has gods owing them favors?”
When they got into the kitchen, Law lifted her up and set her down on the bar-style stool at the center island. He kissed her, slow and sweet. “I do, and he’s technically not a god.”
“Then what is he?”
“One of us,” Law said while going over to the coffee pot. “Fae, magic people, people who have special abilities, whatever you want to call it, but there is no such thing as gods.”
“I see, and how do the gods feel about your assessment?”
He looked over his shoulder at her. “The honest ones agree with me.”
“Now I have god powers?”
His jaw clenched at the stress in her voice. “No, you have supernatural power. I have no idea if your ability level is equivalent to the gods’ or not.” He stopped setting up the coffee machine and went to her. He crouched down so he wasn’t looming over her. “Kenna, baby, there is a whole world out there you know nothing about. It’s not all bad. You just have to learn it and get used to it.”
She dropped her head on his shoulder. “Will we ever love each other for real?”
He pressed his cheek to the top of her head. “Love is the only real thing. Everything else can be fabricated.”
She pulled back and searched his eyes. “This is happening at Mach speed, and I feel like I am being swallowed up by it.” Her expression went adorably fierce. “Do you have any idea how tempting it is for me to just let you hide me away here forever and never face the world again? To hope you’ll pull some macho-man card on me and let you deal with Craig?”
Hope swelled in his chest. “You’ll let me?”
“No,” she snapped at him. Craig had been a wonderful father right up until he found out she wasn’t his and, worse, a faery. Then he’d vowed to kill her for not being human and her mother for the betrayal. “Craig is my problem, and it’s not fair to make you do it by yourself.”
He wondered if now would be a good time to bring up the sword and decided against it. She could have a bad reaction to it, knowing he made a living of bringing the death sentence to those who deserved it. “You are my mate. You probably won’t understand this, but my reason to exist at this point is to make your world right.”
She scrunched up her face. “You’re sure you’re two thousand years old?”
“Absolutely,” he said as he righted himself. “A man is no man if he can’t keep those in his care safe.”
“But…”
He touched a finger to her soft lips. “I am an old-world, old-school traditionalist.” He gave her a look when she started to object. “You need to know where I am coming from with this before you get all indignant on me.” He took a moment to figure out how to say this to her in a way he hoped she could understand. “I don’t come from a polarized version of life from the nineteen fifties. In my time, to live one day was a battle against the gods and nature and death itself. You have that kind of strength.” He managed a weak smile for her. “I see it in you, Kenna. Never think I don’t.” He captured her face between his hands. “Three years you’ve been hunted. Three years you’ve survived. When your strength ends, mine begins.”
Unshed tears shined in her eyes. “You don’t understand. He’s been killing innocent people because he thinks they are faeries. I’ve been hiding. I haven’t done anything heroic.”
“No,” he said, agreeing with her. “You’ve only kept yourself alive while not knowing what you are or the unseen dangers out there waiting for you.”
She pulled back and glared at him. “Stop. Okay. I don’t need a pep talk telling me how great I am.” She slipped off the stool and put the island between them. “You shouldn’t have mated us. I am not what you think I am, and one day you are going to have every right to walk away, and you won’t be able to do it.”
Stunned, motionless, he watched her flee the room. It wasn’t until he heard the front door slam that he was able to get himself moving. He didn’t bother running after her. He closed his eyes and willed himself to move from the kitchen to right in front of where she’d be. As he came out of the blink, he opened his arms and caught her.
She let out a terrified scream and struggled to get away from him. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed at the exact same second. Kenna screamed as she covered her ears with her hands. Law scooped her up into his arms. Rain hammered down on them, and in the next blink, they were dripping water all over the kitchen floor.
Her trembling body wound tightly around him. Horrible, soul-wrenching sobs tore out of her.
Law sat down on the floor with her still in his arms. Tears weren’t something he handled well, at all. But he didn’t know what else to do for her. With Clover all he’d had to do was keep her supplied with enough yarn she’d have been able to knit a sweater for a Mac truck. Kenna’s sobs were going to kill him. Not even god-killing mistletoe had any effect on him, but Kenna’s torment was going to be his undoing. He rocked her back and forth and murmured soft affirmations.
If only he knew how to get her past the freaked-out stage. In his time, she wouldn’t have questioned it. Arranged marriages would have been part of daily life. The good thing about being a Celt was he didn’t have the baggage about the value of women that both men and women of this time had. He knew how very precious a woman could be. He wasn’t sure at what moment in time it had occurred, but at some point in recent history, men and women both lost their perception of how each person serviced society and had created a war between the sexes that shouldn’t exist.
He didn’t want or need a war with Kenna. Life was hard enough without it. But she’d come of age in a misguided human world, a world where accolades and preference were given to those men with bad characteristics. Selfishness was glorified. It was playing hell with her mind, and he didn’t know how to make it stop.
She was part faery. Some part of her wanted to blindly follow what her instincts told her to do. Another part of her wanted to conform to society’s notion that only independent isolation brought strength. Far too many fools believed a person weak if they gave into the need to share their burdens with another.
He slowly petted a hand down the length of her hair. “I do not think you weak, my Kenna.” He murmured close to her ear. “It takes more strength to be your true self when it goes against the grain of society than it does to conform to it.”
She sniffled and shifted in his arms. Tears stained her face. She searched his face. “This feels all so right, and yet it should be wrong.”
“No,” he said softly as he brushed away a tear. “It’s only wrong because of what your society teaches you.”
She made a face at him before settling back into his arms. “You’re a man. You wouldn’t understand.”
He let out a huff of frustration. “What is here today won’t be here tomorrow. The only thing you can take into the future with you is who you are. Don’t be what the world wants of you today because it will change tomorrow. Just be you.”
She turned her face against his chest. “Now I am confused.”
He rubbed his hand over her back. “You’re part faery and a gentler soul. Please don’t change because of what you think I might want. I don’t plan on changing who I am because of how you might think I should be.”