All through making dinner, Alexander kept it light and easy, disguising the compulsion that drummed through his blood like a second heartbeat. Mine, mine, mine. He could dress as a modern man, even ape the mannerisms and speech of one, but beneath the urbane exterior, his true self lurked: a man born in a savage time who had survived by being the strongest and the most feral.
After dinner he daren’t linger. With his senses finely attuned to her, he craved her. It wasn’t a polite or a gentle thing, his craving. It demanded he lose himself in her, that he take her, and in so doing, surrender himself completely to her.
He’d seriously underestimated the pull of the prophecy. He had brought her to his manor to keep her away from Rhiannon’s prying eyes, knowing those same prying eyes would report back that he’d taken her home.
“Tell me what you thought of the statue.” He needed to understand how sensitive this dormant witch was.
She started. “Why would you ask that?”
“You spent some time staring at it this morning. It took all of my devastating charm to draw your attention away.” She was guarded around her abilities, which suggested someone had taught her to hide them. That same someone had probably saved her life.
It could be a coincidence that the sole remaining bloodline of water witches had an alarming tendency to die young. Like it was plausible that every one of them was so clumsy or careless of their own lives that they got into car accidents, fell off cliffs, drowned in calm seas—he’d been doing his homework on Bronwyn’s family. Or it could be that someone had been systematically targeting and eradicating them.
Her magic smelled of honey and sage, and it clung to her like a subtle perfume. It taunted him to press his skin to hers and absorb her scent.
She turned in her seat to look at him as he drove. “Do you know anything about Sir Roderick?”
“A little.” The crippling strength of Roderick’s sword arm, the bone crunching impact of Roderick’s punch, and Alexander most definitely knew enough to get the hell out of the way when Roderick swung that war hammer of his.
She tucked one leg under her and shifted closer. “Is that him in the statue?”
“It most certainly is.” The warm silk of her skin made his mouth water. He could kiss her, pull the car over and kiss her. She would let him too, but he was not so sure he would be able to stop. Strike that. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop with a few kisses. How thrilled Mummy dearest would be to know how well that prophecy worked.
“Hmm.” She wrinkled her nose like she wasn’t certain. “Hermione is not sure. She said it might be him.”
“I’d stake my life on it. It’s Sir Roderick all right.” The confines of his car made him painfully aware of how easy it would be to touch her.
“How do you know?”
That was a long story, and one that would end in her running screaming into the night, and away from him. Unfortunately for her, he was all that stood between her and Rhiannon. “Old family, goes way, way back. All the way back to good old Sir Roderick.” And then he added because he couldn’t resist how much it would piss Roderick off if he could hear it. “My ancestors say he was a bit of an arse.”
“Bitter feuding families?” A teasing lilt lit her voice and made him want to taste it from her lips.
“The bitterest.” He threaded his car through the quiet village. It was late enough for the streets to look abandoned, but Rhiannon’s spies would be out there, watching, reporting.
“Do you know who the woman in the statue is?”
Maeve. Sweet, beautiful, innocent Maeve. Grief prevented him from replying immediately. The first time he’d seen Maeve, she had been peering at him through a window while he seduced another woman into doing Rhiannon’s will. Even then, being so much Rhiannon’s creature as he had been, the purity of Maeve had struck him. So different from the grasping creature he’d been intent on bending to Rhiannon’s will, Maeve’s presence had washed over him like cool, fresh spring water. Diminutive and delicate, like a spun sugar confection, she’d pierced the solid exoskeleton of blood magic Rhiannon had woven around him. With her flaxen hair and giant azure eyes, Maeve had been so much stronger than she looked. She’d have to be for the task Goddess had chosen for her.
“Maeve.” He cleared his throat and repeated a name he had no right to speak. “Her name is Maeve.”
Bronwyn gasped and she stared at him. “You’re sure her name was Maeve.”
“I am.” Bronwyn chewed on her bottom lip and stared out her window. She was definitely hiding something from him about Maeve. “Why so interested in them?”
She made a dismissive motion with her hand and lied again. “It sounds like a romantic story.”
“Romantic.” Alexander laughed. He couldn’t help it. Roderick would have given his left ball, maybe even his right as well, for it to be have been romantic between him and Maeve. Unfortunately for Roderick, the old bastard’s legendary luck with women had failed him with sweet, innocent Maeve. “Sir Roderick certainly liked the ladies, but nobody would ever accuse him of being romantic.”
Bronwyn leaned closer to him in her eagerness. “So were they lovers?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” he said. And not for lack of wanting on Roderick’s part. “Roderick was her…guardian. He looked after her.”
“Did she need looking after?”
Bronwyn was so close that if he turned his head, their mouths would meet. He kept his attention on the road. “More than either of them could have believed.”
“Who sculpted the statue of them?” Bronwyn sensed a story, and she wanted to know it all.
“That is impossible to say.” He pulled up outside the Hag’s Head and parked. Before temptation got the best of him, he hopped out of the car and came around to her side. Opening her door, he held his hand out to her. “Here we are. Back safe and sound.”
He could sense them, eyes on him and Bronwyn, slithering in the dark shadows cloaking the sides of the pub.
Bronwyn put her hand in his, and he wanted to throw back his head and roar to the world that she was his. For the sake of those hungry eyes he kept hold of her hand. For the sake of the burning need in him, he kept hold of her hand.
She stopped in the light of the portico over the pub door, adorably shy and uncertain all of a sudden. “Thank you for dinner. It was lovely.”
Hundreds of years—hundreds of women—spent waiting for this woman. The one woman destined to be his, and the one woman he could never have.
“My pleasure.” Out there with watching eyes, he was safe to give in to the demand to touch her. He stroked the peachy smoothness of her cheek as he cupped it. “May I see you again?”
“Yes,” she whispered. The wanting reflected in her eyes appeased the gnawing ache in him.
“Tomorrow.” He brushed her full, beautiful lips with his. Meaning to pull back on that brief contact, his miscalculation thundered lava hot through his blood. With their lips perilously close he froze.
And then she sighed, and her eyelids fluttered shut.
Alexander lost the battle and slanted his mouth over hers. The need to taste her raged through him, and he took her mouth, his tongue claiming the hallowed space beyond her lips.
Her hands fluttered, and then she wound her arms around his neck.
He deepened the kiss, taking what was his. Desire thrummed his nerve endings and his cock hardened. Like a randy teenager, he pressed against her.
Bronwyn’s body cleaved to his, and she moaned in the back of her throat.
He cupped her round, delicious arse and pulled her tighter against him. He could take her upstairs right now. Take her.
And that was precisely the problem and why, hate it as he may, he needed to stop before it raged beyond his control.
Gentling his kiss, Alexander eased them both down before breaking away.
The sight of her, mouth kiss swollen, cheeks flushed, almost undid him, but he reminded himself of the stakes to the game they played. “Good night, little—Bronwyn.”
She hesitated at the door, the same desire still haunting him playing across her face. Then she turned, opened the door and let herself in. She tossed him a sweet, shy smile over her shoulder. “Good night.”
The door closed, and he was alone in the quiet night. Or not. He spoke to the shadows to the left of the door. “You can go home now; there’s nothing more to see.”
“Very good, my lord.” Clyde slithered out of the gloom. “I wasn’t being a voyeur.”
“I know that.” Despite himself, he pitied Clyde. Rhiannon kept her minions on a short leash.
Cool night air helped clear his head, so he left his car at the Hag’s Head and walked toward the green. He was playing a dangerous and complicated game. One misstep, and he could lose everything. But he wouldn’t be the only one who paid the price.
He should have known the prophecy would come with its own insurance policy. His and Bronwyn’s mutual fascination made sense in light of what the prophecy expected of them. In the few meager hours he’d known her, Bronwyn had already burrowed beneath his skin.
Failure had become even more terrifying.
All these sodding years, that bloody prophesy had been hanging around, mainly irritating him, and now it looked alarmingly like it might roll right along and drag him with it. Fucking hell! He’d always found the idea of being a cosmic stud service, an arcane sperm donor, distasteful and demeaning. Even now though, his cock was ready to remind him of what a splendid idea it was after all.
The night stayed fine, with a light onshore breeze dispelling any lingering heat.
As though Roderick called to him, he wandered over to the statue on the village green.
At the base of the statue, a pair of teenagers were trying to eat each other’s braces off. They paid him no mind as he stopped right in front of it.
The Lovers.
Alexander laughed aloud. If Roderick would give him ten seconds before he tried to remove his head with a broadsword, they might have had a good laugh over that one.
The teenagers were still at it, so Alexander nudged the boy’s foot with his toe. “Go home.”
The boy tore his mouth off his girlfriend. “Fuck you, old man.”
Ah, the youth. So charming. “I’m older than I look.” By approximately seven hundred years. “But why don’t you fuck off instead?”
The boy managed to hold his stare for an impressive two seconds before sloughing to his feet and tugging the girl up with him. “You don’t know me. You can’t tell me what to do.”
Alexander gave him the look. The one he’d learned at dear old Mum’s knee.
The teens scuttled away like hell was after them.
“Well.” He took a seat at the base of the statue. The stone pressed cool against his back. “It’s starting to look rather alarmingly like you and I are going to have another go at each other.” Alexander couldn’t remember when he’d started his nocturnal chats with Roderick. It amused him to know the other man had no choice. If Roderick had a choice, Alexander would be fighting, not chatting. “I would wish you luck, but as that will probably result in my demise, I’m sure you’ll understand why I resist.”
With the idea of fucking firmly off the table, fighting sounded like a grand idea. It had been a long time since Alexander had enjoyed a competent opponent. Roderick had been the last, and that had been nearly four hundred years ago. Alexander had won their last bout, which was the only reason he was still breathing, and Roderick was…well, he didn’t rightly know what or where Roderick was.
It was a pity they were sworn enemies because they were probably the only two men capable of understanding each other.
“She feels you.” He liked to think Roderick understood him. Sad sod that he was, talking to a stone person for company. “She feels you waking, and it’s driving her batty.” Not that Rhiannon and sanity had ever had more than a glancing acquaintance. “You’re the only thing stopping her from getting into that castle, and if she could, she would have done away with you already.”
Rhiannon’s power grew almost daily, and Alexander could sense it in her, pulsing like a huge gray malevolent slug beneath her skin. “She’s getting closer to breaking the ward spell.”
He sat there until the chill brought him to his feet. A wonderful cognac he’d been saving since 1815 was calling his name.
“I’ll be seeing you, old man.” He tapped the plinth. “Sooner rather than later, if you know how to do what you were created to do.”
Halfway down the lane toward his home, Alexander felt her. Dear old Mummy. The foul miasma surrounding her crept over his skin and made him want to dermabrade it off. He didn’t hurry his pace. She would sense him and know he was on his way.
He let himself in through his front door, not bothering to lock it. The only person he wanted to lock out was already sprawled across a Victorian velvet chaise drinking his cognac from a pint glass.
Tonight Rhiannon had dressed old school in a wine-red velvet evening gown that clung to her body. Gems gleamed about the neckline and down the long sleeves. She smiled and held one slim, white hand out to him. “My son.”
“My lady.” Suppressing his recoil, Alexander took her hand, kissed the back and bowed to her. And the royals thought they had familial formality in their homes. “You honor me with your presence.”
She watched him with those pitch-dark eyes. “Do I really, Alexander?”
“Of course.” Not at all, but he was careful to keep all such thoughts off his face. Fucking hell! She’d already quaffed half his bottle of cognac. He poured himself a measure and stood in front of the armchair opposite her.
She motioned him to sit, and he did.
“You had her here.” She breathed deep. “I can still smell her.”
“Yes.” Alexander didn’t dissemble, like he didn’t sit without her permission.
Her eyes glittered. “Are you drawn to her?”
“Yes.” More than even she knew.
“Do you want her?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She was a vicious bitch, and just because she needed him enough not to kill him, it didn’t mean she couldn’t make him hurt. “It won’t be long before I have her.”
“You haven’t yet?” Exposing the delicate column of her neck, she rested her head against the back of the sofa. It wouldn’t take much to slit her throat. A quick lean forward and the dagger he always kept tucked away.
“This is a different time, as you know.” It would do him no good to slit her throat, however. She would heal long before she could bleed to death. He still wasn’t sure how old she was, but she predated the original druids and went back to a time before time was measured. “It would go better for us if she wasn’t crying rape afterwards.”
“Ugh.” She grimaced. “It matters not to me.”
“Nor I, really.” He sickened himself with his lies and half-truths. “But I judged circumspection the best course. She’ll succumb to me, and I’ll get the job done without anyone being any the wiser.”
Her belief in him doing what she’d created him for was all that kept Rhiannon at bay. She took another long pull on her pint glass. Alcohol didn’t affect her like it did humans. She was long past that point. “Does she know what she is?”
“Not at all.” Alexander wished for his little witch’s sake she could stay ignorant, but her life depended on him destroying her bubble.
Rhiannon stood and put her pint glass on the table. “I had not planned on some of them getting away. There might be others.”
Not many and not nearly enough. The screams and sobs of that night still trod his nightmares. Being the son of Rhiannon, he’d always believed he understood and accepted evil. That heinous night, he’d found out how wrong he was. “Did you do it?” Her mood augured well for asking questions. “Did you kill her family?”
“Not me, darling,” And she smiled. It was all the more disturbing for its flawless beauty, her smile. It hid a being so impenetrably dark she defied description. “But I cannot allow cré-witches to run around all over the world. That bitch is still alive, and if they start using their magic again, it will awaken her.”
That bitch, better known as Goddess, the source of all life and truth in the world, and the only thing that could stop Rhiannon. Although Goddess had been asleep since her dying witches had cast a spell so powerful it had almost ripped the veil between good and evil. They had done the unthinkable and used blood magic. It was against everything Goddess was, her very essence, and it had driven her into a sleep so deep, only Rhiannon caught dim flashes of her from time to time.
The same spell had left Roderick and Maeve on the village green.
“She’s the one,” he said, because she would already know who Bronwyn was. “And I’ll take care of it.”
“Hmm?” She studied him, her lids lowering over her dark, glittering eyes. “Be careful, darling. You’re a clever one, but not that clever.”