“You couldn’t sleep, could you, Harry?” she asked.
There was no electricity here, so she’d lit a candle. Her eyes were luminous in the glow. Her hair tumbled about her like honey, and her beautiful body was draped in that mesmerizing gray dress…blue…violet…that seemed to be whispering in movement even as she held still.
He couldn’t take his eyes from her. His heart accelerated. His body caught fire. Desire hit him hard. Impatience. Frustration. This house was the only place where he could find any rest. How dare she invade it?
“I couldn’t sleep, either,” she admitted, lighting the little lantern that sat on the table. Light flared, sending the shadows skittering into the corners to be caught by the branches that had entwined into walls. The floor, that odd, glittering mirror of a floor, reflected the light and movement as if it were a pool of water. Harry did his level best to keep his eyes on the familiar. He knew damn well that if he looked at her, he’d be lost.
“Go back,” he demanded, shoving his hands into his pockets, where they couldn’t harm her.
Snatches of dream flashed through his mind. Hot, dark images, terrifying sounds. No more than a whiff of rage and fear and power.
“You wouldn’t share the haven you have here?” she asked very quietly.
He could smell her now, and it terrified him.
“Go,” he begged. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
She didn’t go. She stepped right up to him. “Oh, Harry,” she whispered, lifting an impossibly delicate hand to his cheek. “How could you ever think you could hurt me?”
Fire shot to his toes. His cock went on ready alert, and his chest…his chest just closed off. He closed his eyes against the pain of that contact. “You don’t know….”
“But I do. And what you told Theo today was true. No matter what you dream, you could never hurt me. Never, Harry. It is impossible.”
He flinched away from her, eyes open and accusing. “You can’t possibly be that naive.”
Damn her, she smiled. “Not naive. I know you, Harry. More than that, I know that your fairy blood forbids it. A fairy may court, a fairy may seduce or compel. A fairy simply cannot physically force. It would be like a mortal taking wing. It is not possible.”
Harry crowded her, needing her to understand. “But I’m not a fairy, Sorcha. I’m a man, and I’m having a damnable time keeping my hands off you. And you have no idea what will happen if I don’t.”
“Of course I do,” she said, smiling even more broadly, so that he could see the shadow of a dimple. “Because you are a man, Harry Wyatt. But whatever else you want to believe, you have fairy blood. And that makes all the difference. It is the Dubhlainn Sidhe you see in your dreams, Harry. Not you. Never you.”
“I’m not—”
She stroked his cheek as if he were a fractious child. “You come here to find peace, Harry. Even you, who were born in that great stone behemoth beyond the trees, can’t stand to stay there long. You need the living grace of Mother Earth. You need to restore your soul here, in the sacred grove.”
“I need some bloody sleep!”
Her smile was heartbreaking. “Then sleep. And if you don’t mind, I’ll curl up here, too. I’m not doing any better than you in that great stone box up the hill.”
Harry sucked in a calming breath and shoved his hands through his hair. “You can’t sleep out here.”
God, just the thought of her curled up against him sent his randy prick dancing. His hands were clenched tight. He was sweating now, struggling to catch his breath. Fighting for control. He could almost feel her soft, round bottom nestled against his groin.
He wanted her. He wanted her.
“I know,” she whispered, so close that her breasts brushed against the cotton of his shirt. “I want you, too, Harry.”
He opened his eyes again to find her too close, too beautiful, too willing. Her eyes were huge and dark. Her skin was flushed and her nostrils were flared, as if she needed his scent as much as he needed hers.
Cinnamon, for God’s sake. He was hard over something you put in egg nog.
“You smell like the wind, Harry,” she said, not touching him. Not so much as leaning closer in invitation. Only smiling, as if she already saw the end of this discussion in her head. “You smell like freedom and strength and the earth. I can’t resist the smell of you, Harry Wyatt.”
He lost the fight. Digging his hands into her hair, he pulled her against him. He would show her what kind of game she was playing. He would take her, just like in his dreams. He would force her. He would…
Her mouth was so soft, so open, so welcoming. He wrapped an arm around her and held on, and he kissed her. He kissed her until they both ran out of air, until he could hardly stand anymore, a mating dance of a kiss. A conquest of them both, a surrender never admitted. Tongue and teeth and lips, a hungry, hurried dance of need and want.
She fit against him so perfectly; he couldn’t remember any woman fitting so neatly beneath his arm, as if she were meant to be there, where he could guard her, where he could lift her clean off the ground to meet her groin to groin, to measure himself against her and know that she was content.
He didn’t remember reaching the bed or laying her down. He didn’t remember pulling off her dress. He just knew that she was lying beneath him, her creamy skin glowing in the flickering lantern light, her perfect rose-colored nipples tightening, beckoning. She was small, but God, she was proportioned to cushion a man. Her breasts were so firm, her belly just a bit rounded, her hips lush and soft. He would swear on whatever was holy that he’d never wanted anything as badly as he wanted to be inside her.
He’d no sooner thought it than she smiled, and it was the oldest smile in the world. “You’re seriously overdressed, Harry,” she said, pulling at his shirt. “I don’t think that’s fair at all.”
God, he wanted to laugh. How could he want to laugh? How could he even be here?
He couldn’t. But he couldn’t stop. He had gotten a taste of her and needed more. He needed it all. He was ravenous: his hands, his mouth, his aching, straining cock. He wanted to be in her. He wanted to bury himself in her, pound into her, pump himself into her until he’d wrung himself dry.
He knew she was pulling his clothes off. He heard buttons pop. He lifted an arm away from her, then another. But he couldn’t stop touching her. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her petal-soft skin, her sumptuous curves and valleys, her unbearably beautiful breasts.
He shouldn’t be doing this. God, he was taking advantage of a confused young woman who thought she was a fairy. He was engaged. What was wrong with him?
She yanked his slacks off, and it didn’t matter anymore. He’d found that bright nest of hair at the base of her belly and dipped his fingers into it. He’d discovered the secret, satin-slick folds of her wet and ready and weeping. He heard the breathy little moans she couldn’t contain as he inserted a finger into her, as he stroked and fretted over her swelling clitoris, as he suckled on her rose-perfect nipple.
He felt her buck against his hand, and he knew he didn’t have to wait. He was dying waiting. But he waited anyway. He tortured her, nipping and suckling at her breast, feathering circles there inside that lovely sunburst nest until finally she shrieked, until she threw her head back, eyes wide, mouth open, her body convulsing around him. Then, just as she climaxed, he lifted her hips to him, and he drove into her, and she climaxed again.
Somewhere in the back of his head he wondered why he wasn’t following the script of the dream. Why he wasn’t hurting her, terrorizing her. Why she looked up at him with stunned delight instead of dread. Somewhere he knew he would have to look for that answer. But now he feasted on her, and she met him, thrust for thrust, her hands scrabbling over him, her body arching like a bow so he could easily bend again to her breasts. He suckled hard, pulling her nipple into his mouth as he plunged into her, deeper, deeper, faster, until he couldn’t remember where he left off and she began, until she pulled his head up to kiss her as thoroughly as he was taking her, until his body clenched and forced his own head back, until he was the one who cried out, his hoarse voice filling the little room, until he pumped himself into her as she laughed and he laughed and his body turned inside out with her, then finally failed him, and he fell senseless into her arms.
For a long while the only sound in the little room was panting. For a long while Harry couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t regret the most incredible experience of his life. For a long while he lay folded up with her, so that every inch of her skin could meet his, so he could nestle her against him and warm her on what should have been a cold, dreary night.
He knew he should get up. One of them should leave. Hell, both of them should probably leave. He’d never even thought to bring a woman here. But somehow the room was perfectly warm. If Harry had been fanciful, he would have sworn the damned floor glowed. But he wasn’t fanciful. He didn’t believe in sacred groves or fairies or fate. Even so, for some reason, he knew this was where he was supposed to be.
“And where else would you be?” she asked against his shoulder. “Even you can’t deny that this is a sacred place.”
“Which we’ve just sullied.”
She lifted her head and stared down at him with a mysterious smile, the kind of mysterious smile that conjured thoughts of goddesses and magic. “Sure, you mortals have a funny view of the most sacred act there is.” Shaking her head, she lay down again and sighed. “I’d hoped it would make you happy.”
Harry wasn’t sure what kept him from answering. He should have assured her that nothing in his frustrating life had ever made him happier. But that would have been admitting too much. It would have been denying everything he believed.
And he simply couldn’t do that. So he pulled the blanket up over them, closed his eyes, and realized that for the first time in weeks, he was about to sleep without dreaming.
Darragh, son of Bran, found himself lost in crisp linen and soft flesh. Gwyneth, his Gwyneth, was lying curled in the crook of his shoulder, running her fingers down his chest.
“So smooth,” she murmured, sounding amazed. “I’ve never met anybody like you.”
He chuckled. “Sure, I’m not surprised, am I? I’ve met no one on these streets like me, either.”
She lifted her head to reveal sleep-tousled hair and sex-sweetened skin. Darragh didn’t know how he could possibly get enough of her. She was laughing, and it seemed to surprise her.
“I thought that poor man at Marks & Spencer would have a coronary when we walked in. I don’t think he bought the caught-in-a-Halloween-costume story.”
Darragh’s gaze wandered over to where his brand-new clothes lay draped over several pieces of furniture, where they’d landed when stripped off in unholy haste. He liked this clothing. He liked the slip and slide of it against him, the way the fabric moved when he did, how the camel-hair coat kept him so warm. Almost as warm as Gwyneth.
“You’re sure you can get recompense for the jewels?” he said.
She chuckled. “Darragh, you gave me two rubies and three huge diamonds. Trust me when I tell you that I haven’t lost any money.”
He stroked the sleek line of her arm. “Good. That’s good. I have more to support me in this place till we know what I can do.”
She turned serious, of a sudden. “You’re sure you want to stay?”
He cupped her face. “You’re sure you want me to?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, leaning up to kiss him. It seemed they’d been kissing nonstop since she’d first discovered him in the backseat of her car. “I want you to stay.”
He smiled at her, amazed at the passion they’d stumbled over in the last forty-eight hours. “Well, that’s fine, then. I like your world, altogether. It’s loud and busy and full, but there’s an energy I’m attracted to.”
“Is there?”
He actually thought about it. “Oh, aye. My world flows like a quiet stream, never in a hurry to get from one place to another. After all, what would be the point? Would eternity become shorter with the hurry? Would we get farther than paradise?”
“This isn’t paradise,” she warned him.
“Paradise can wear after a while if you’re not meant for it, I think. Aren’t I finding the rush and noise and energy here compelling, then?” He dropped a long, leisurely kiss on her mouth and nuzzled her neck. “Almost as compelling as a certain beautiful woman who’s taken me on.”
Closing her eyes, she rolled over on her back. “A woman who really isn’t free until she sees her fiancé on Thursday.”
“Not Thursday,” he said instinctively. “Today.”
She looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
He shook his head. He’d been plagued by the most inconvenient feeling of anxiety all evening. It had hit right after the moment he’d roused from one of their bouts of lovemaking to realize that he’d woken up.
Odd to think of it so, but he did. It was as if for the first time in decades he suddenly felt clearheaded. As if Gwyneth had swept aside some spell cast on him by his own cupidity and avarice. By the dark magic of Orla, the leannan sidhe who had seduced him away from his own good sense.
He’d wanted the Dearann Stone. He’d exiled himself from his own world to obtain it, as if that alone could pay for his crimes. Instead, he’d stumbled over a treasure much more precious to him.
He should have been relieved. Exultant. Excited. All right, then, he was. But at the same time, he had the most gnawing feeling at the pit of his gut that there was something he’d left unfinished back at that great stone house where he’d thought to torment the queen’s daughter.
“I’m thinking it might be important for us to get back there in the morning,” he said, pulling her close to protect her. “To settle things among us.”
And to ease the tightness in his chest.
Something was wrong, and he simply couldn’t figure out what.
For a long time Sorcha didn’t move from where she was curled in Harry’s arms. She didn’t even arch her head back so she could watch his sleeping face, no matter how much she wanted to. He needed rest, and she knew he hadn’t been getting it. She knew, finally, what had incited part of his self-loathing.
The dreams. The Dubhlainn Sidhe-tainted dreams. Even if they’d only been as bad as hers, she could understand how they must have affected him. But she knew that Harry’s had been worse than hers. After all, Harry was mostly mortal, and mortals were more susceptible. Especially mortals who didn’t believe and so couldn’t mount any defense.
Poor Harry. Poor dear, sincere Harry, who only wanted to protect this sacred place and the people who inhabited it, whether he realized it or not. Poor serious Harry, who kept a cauldron of passion tamped down inside him, where he thought it couldn’t scorch him. Sorcha actually blushed at the memory of what they’d just shared, and fairies didn’t blush. Certainly not over such a natural celebration. But no celebration she’d participated in had been so…so…
She lifted her hand from where it had rested on his taut belly, and she traced the hair that arrowed down that belly, then swept her hand back up to his chest. She couldn’t imagine such a thing, such a delicious abrasion against a fairy breast. Just the thought of it caused her nipples to harden. Goddess, how she loved the textures of this mortal. Springy hair on his chest, gravelly beard on his jaw, hard, unrelenting muscle and sinew at elbow and knee and hip. Fairy men were so sleek, like seals. Oddly enough, for beings who did their best to divorce themselves from it, men were more made of the earth from which they came, the warp and weave of them, the contours of them, the scent of them.
Well, the scent of Harry, anyway. She gently ran her fingers over his shoulder—bone and muscle and tendon molding to create an architecture to rival the most beautiful mortal cathedrals. His arms, deceptively smooth in line for the strength that lurked within. Arms that could control the most fractious horse with ease, could lift the heaviest load, could nestle the fragile weight of lovely little Lilly so she felt safe in her world. Sorcha loved his arms.
She loved his legs, his chest, his brow with its constant furrow of worry. She wanted to ease his brow, ease the weight on those magnificent shoulders. She wanted to incite smiles and laughter where they so rarely lived.
She bent over, because she couldn’t help it, and she kissed that shoulder. She tasted the man sweat of him, saline and sharp, and felt her belly tighten with wanting. She inhaled him, memorizing his scent just as she did his texture. She knew she dropped tears onto his skin, because of what she’d brought to this man. What she would take away. What he would take away from her.
She would leave. It was inevitable. And he would stay. But Sorcha knew that for all her long fairy life, she would survive knowing that she’d lost her heart, that it would stay here in this cold, wild place in the hands of this honorable man.
“What’s this?” he asked, his voice a grainy whisper. Reaching up, he lifted her face to him and began feathering kisses over her eyes. “Was it that awful?”
She couldn’t help but chuckle. “Isn’t it just like a man, then, to be looking for compliments?”
“I don’t understand,” he murmured, curling her closer to him so her breasts met his wonderful chest.
“What?” She kissed his chin, testing the grain of his beard with her tongue. “Why it wasn’t awful?”
Harry pulled back a bit. “Actually,” he said, looking absolutely serious, “yes.”
Sorcha rose up on an elbow and stroked a finger across that tense brow. “I told you. This is a sacred place. You’re safe here.”
He shook his head, and Sorcha knew he was about to bolt. To retreat to denial and rationalization, where he could effectively submerge his faerie soul in mortal responsibilities.
“Of course,” she mused, drawing her fingers along the ridges of his face, “I could be wrong. I mean, we only have this one experience to judge it by.”
His pupils grew, and his nostrils flared. “Why would you chance something so terrible?”
“Because I know it won’t be, Harry.” She smiled and hoped he saw all her desires there. “Shouldn’t we find out for sure, though?”
His hands were moving now, unleashing a waterfall of pleasure in her. He drew her closer, and there could be no mistaking his arousal. Sorcha knew she was tormenting him. She knew how likely it was that he would chastise himself in the morning for what they were about to do. She couldn’t care. She needed him so badly. She needed to share at least the beauty of creation with the only man she would ever love before she was forced to walk away.
“Please, Harry,” she whispered, stretching up to meet his mouth, reaching her hand down to wrap around his arousal, “celebrate with me.”
He shuddered at her touch. Sorcha smiled. Another thing fairies lacked, she thought. At least the fairies she’d known. Mortal men were so much more…impressive in size. She couldn’t get enough of the silken steel of him, ached deep inside for the return of him to her. Deep, so deep he’d plunged into her, deep enough to touch her very womb. Deep enough to cement her memories of him. Deep enough that she could never question again what it would feel like to accept the weight of the man she loved inside her.
And oh, his touch. Fleeting, furious, so gentle, and yet so thorough she thought he might be memorizing her in return, lighting a swath of fire the length and breadth of her, setting loose a hot, sweet hunger that could only be assuaged by completion.
Oh, Mother Earth, she thought as he bent to take her breast in his mouth, this is creation. This is perfection.
This is love.
She filled her hands with the feel of him, the calluses and the creases, the sensitive, secret places that made him gasp and moan and chuckle against her mouth. She begged for his kisses and melted with the sweep of his tongue against hers, slick and rough at once, just like the rest of him. She let him nudge her legs apart and welcomed the torment of his fingers into the very core of her, where she waited wet and hot for him.
“Now, Harry,” she begged, her voice high and thin. “Please. Now…”
His chuckle rumbled against her throat, against the unbearably chafed skin of her breasts, against her sore and soaring heart. “My pleasure,” he murmured and flipped over on his back, lifting her to straddle him.
He was smiling, the lamplight gleaming off the white of his teeth, the deep wells of his eyes. For the first time since she’d met him, he looked happy, really happy, and it brought tears to the back of her throat. Oh, if she could only give him this. If she could ease his burden just for these few hours in the dark when he would let her. If only she could bring him a bit of peace here in this perfect place. If only…
Bending over, she opened her mouth to him, letting her tongue dance with his, tasting him and testing him and letting him know that she was his, all his, even as she rose up, even as she reached down to cup him and stroke him, even as she took him inside her, deep inside her. All the way inside her, she swore, to the core of her heart, where she could keep him forever, and she sang in the back of her throat, and she rocked, lifting and sinking, tormenting him, tormenting herself, stoking the fire from sweet to unbearable, with his hands on her breasts, with his mouth on hers, with his sweat-slicked body captive to hers, and she rocked, she rocked, she rode him as surely as she rode one of his magnificent horses, until the colors of the earth lit behind her closed eyes, until they spun, until they gathered, collected, sparked and swept through her, until, unable to hold the joy of him to herself, she threw her head back and keened out the bliss and the sweetness and the despair that exploded inside her.
Cian couldn’t move any closer to the little hall than that awful circular grove of sacred trees. Dearann’s trees, the lifegiver, the motherstone, the goddess-bedamned pain in the arse he was still trying to track down.
He knew where little Sorcha was. Considering the spectacular light display he’d seen burst out of the little windows of the hall and through the roof of twined branches, there could be no mistake. Little Sorcha was creating life in there. A gift to the earth mother, he guessed with a sneer. More likely a gift to the mortal, who didn’t deserve fairy bliss.
He would deal with that later. Right now she was vulnerable, no matter how many sacred branches and leaves she’d gathered to surround that house on the hill. Right now, in the depths of night, when the Dubhlainn Sidhe crept through the shadows, the world was more open to his kind of persuasion. And he was in the mood for it. He was in need of a bit of chaos.
Turning away from the disgusting swirl of fairy light that was only now dissipating over the roof of the hall, he set himself to a little disruption. Who said you couldn’t enjoy yourself while on the hunt for treasure?