Blood In Fire (Celtic Elementals Book 2) (4 page)

She hadn’t been able to resist him.

They drew her so, these proud, strong men of Eire. And they burned the heart right out of her.

Again she had brought shadows and death in her wake. The more she had tried to save him from the darkness, the more she'd mired them both hopelessly. Now Aidan was lost to her, just as Cúchulainn had been.

For those thousand, thousand lifetimes and more.

Or mayhap not.

A small, knowing smile curved Bav’s full lips as she raised her emerald eyes to the sky…and the moon.

“Favors owed, little one. I am coming to collect. The time is at hand.”

The moon seemed to shiver in the sky, tattered grey clouds drawing over its face, as if it sought to hide itself from her gaze. Bav laughed softly, bowing her head and drawing up her robe.

The column of white silk covering the goddess’s lush curves trembled once as if in a gentle breeze, then swirled to the ground like sand slipping through an invisible hourglass. Bav vanished. In the space where she had stood hovered a large crow, wings glinting black on black, beating the air with a sound like bellows at a forge.

The crow blinked blood-red eyes and opened its sharp beak, loosing a screech that reverberated down the ancient hills of Ulster like a tormented scream. The bird soared upward into the light of the moon, a dark arrow seeking its target.

Heather let the hot water pound her head, neck and shoulders. She lifted her thick black hair as the steam rose in gauzy clouds and tried to let the water melt her tension away. Fat chance with
that
man in the other room. He made her question things she didn't know if she wanted the answer to.

She had a very keen sense of self—who she was, what she was—down to the bone. She was no longer just a person. She was an entity, a business. A face on a billboard, a body to drape with clothes. The best, most expensive, most exotic clothes handmade for her measurements alon
e
…

Heather Grace Kantos was a logo, an icon and the wet dream of a million boys and men… and not a few women, too.

And she was far from fucking sad about it. She had worked for this her entire life. Well, not just
this.
She wasn’t done ascending. Not by a long shot. She still had far to go. Modeling was only the beginning, and the least, of what she wanted. The only one who could keep her from getting there was herself.

Her and her goddamn demons.

Heather closed her eyes and inhaled the wet, mist-laden air, trying to drive out memories of cool, dry air perfumed with roses and linden trees.

Aidan had been an escape—that was all. An escape from one of the black moods.

Ever since she was a small child, growing up in her father’s Greek restaurant on the shores of Lake Superior, Heather had had what her papa liked to call ‘spells’.

Heather herself thought of them as drop-offs. When she was little, she liked to wade in the icy waters of the big lake. Her toes would be safe on stone and sand. She could twirl, play and splash in the gentle waves for ages. But she would invariably try to go out too far. The solid ground would disappear from under her feet with a suddenness that could take her breath away. The water would close over her head, dark, glassy and swirling indifferently while she struggled to get free and breathe.

The moods were like that.

Drop-offs. Dark places where solid ground sank away and pulled her into that cold, black pit. Anxiety, depression, panic disorder… Hell, the shrinks had diagnosed her with all of the above and more. They’d even tried to tell her she had PTSD.

‘From
what
exactly, you stupid sonofabitch?’
Heather had screamed at that particular quack.

She’d had a happy childhood; a good, solid upper Midwest upbringing, a father who doted on her, a mother who was sweet and a bit dim, maybe, but still a good mom.

Her best friend, Lacey, now…there was a girl who had
a reason
to have PTSD, too damn many of them. Losing her mom and dad in a plane crash, then her guardian and aunt to a heart attack just a few years later. If someone like Lacey had ‘spells’ they'd
deserve
comfort and sympathy. Heather, with her pretty much as-perfect-as-it-gets life, had no excuse.

Heather despised herself for that, but she couldn’t make it stop.

She'd found ways over the years, if not to float over the blackness, then to tread water whenever she felt the bottom start to slip away.

For a while, it had been school:  crazy-hard work, all-nighters, ace-every-test-Hermione Granger-type madness. Then, toward the end of her junior year, she had tried partying and sex. Both had their satisfying points, but since she was too driven and way too smart to lose herself to either of those pursuits, they hadn’t lasted long. Ditto regarding her foray into hard drugs at the beginning of her career.

College had been easier because she’d found Lacey. Lacey with her big, jewel eyes, fiery hair and sweet natur
e,
as well as that streak of quiet stubbornness, was the sister she’d never had. They'd roomed together at U of M all four years, not to mention worked together on the award-winning public TV show that they had created as partners. That friendship had solidified the ground beneath her a bit, but not completely. There were still times when it all crumbled away again.

When the black moods struck nowadays, she ran away from them. Pretty much literally.

It sounded like the coward’s way out, and maybe it was. Hopping a plane and jetting off to some city where she could have anonymity for a day or two was getting harder and harder, but it worked most of the time. She could dress down and slide into different skin for a handful of hours. Losing herself helped her
not lose herself
.

It was crazy, but then Heather had always known she was crazy.

She’d ran to Istanbul halfway through a nine-day shoot in the Mediterranean with a hot new photographer for Vogue. It would be her third shoot with them in less than five years. Everything had been going good when she got that coming out of her skin feeling again. Bad. The worst attack she'd had in years.

She’d forced a hiatus to get her shit together. It was easy, she just pretended to be a psychopathic bitch and everyone gave in. It was unbelievable what people let you get away with when they thought you were beautiful. Heather wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth—particularly that one.

She always wielded her beauty like a weapon and over the years, she'd become quite the master.

The blackness had been thick enough to drown in when she finally got away. She had checked into the nice, but very average hotel in the
Cukurcuma area of the city
with her hands shaking. The paparazzi could be fooled more easily than people thought. It was only the ego of most celebs that made them so damn easy to find. Five star hotels and world-class restaurants were all well and good, but when Heather needed to get away she could drop all that like the bad habit it probably was.

She had bolt holes in all her favorite cities. Neighborhoods and hotels where, if she were careful and didn't overuse them, Heather could be reasonably sure of keeping her anonymity. Istanbul had seemed the perfect choice.

By the time she got to her room, she’d had to force herself not to just curl up on the bed and let the drop-off take her under.

Instead, Heather had put on jeans and an old, ripped-up Dropkick Murphy’s t-shirt, braided her hair into two long plaits and dragged herself out to a bar…

She walked down narrow streets with peeling pavement showing old bricks. Streets hemmed in by pastel and rust-colored buildings piled story upon lop-sided story like towering stacks of books. Twilight was dusting the ancient city in purple and blue. It was lovely and cool after the heat of Greece. The sounds of a multitude of languages and the exotic, nutty-sweet smell of Turkish food followed her as she walked.

Heather missed the old shisha cafes with their tangles of hookah pipes and the scent of tobacco perfuming the city. The smoking ban had ended all that a few years back.

She settled for a tiny bar where she wasn’t sure at first that the stern-looking host would serve her, a foreign woman unescorted. Thankfully, the one thing she'd always been able to do was charm men.

Before long Heather was curled in a corner of the open air bar, her back to the street, a glass of sweet yellow wine in front of her. She would've rather had whiskey, but it
was
Istanbul. They frowned on the harder liquors on this side of town. She drained it in three great swallows before wondering what the hell to do next. Usually in these moods she had three choices of distraction; fight, fuck or flip the hell out.

Heather became aware of him just as the anxiety was getting damn near unbearable. The back of her neck tingled. She turned to see him watching her. A man in a black leather trench coat and a smile that screamed badass.

He had an angular, not-quite handsome face and devastating crystalline eyes; long legs clad in black denim seemed to stretch for miles out from under one of those tiny wooden tables. She knew immediately he recognized her, but not what he intended to do about it.

There was a dark aura about him, a hint of caged power in that deceptively casual, sprawled poise. Danger personified.

If this had been a film she would have expected to hear the warning wail of an electric guitar creep over the soft background bustle of the city.

They'd locked eyes for several long moments. Heather found herself holding her breath, unsure if she wanted him to approach her or not. Something about the man both frightened and intrigued her. Then he folded those long legs under himself and got to his feet, uncurling from the table with obvious purpose.

Heather broke eye contact and looked down at her brimming wineglass, not remembering when the host had refilled it. She'd been too intent on the man in black. Her heart was racing and she was a little pissed about that. He was only a man about to hit on her—something she had been through hundreds of times before.

Why then was it so fucking hard to
breathe?

His steps thudded on the brick and stone floor, coming closer and then stopping. She didn’t lift her head, even though she could feel his gaze on the back of her neck like the incessant tap of fingers.

“So who are ye, I wonder?” The Irish colored his voice like the whiskey she was craving; smoky and dark, with a kick that sent a shiver down her spine.

“Nobody.” She tilted her head, finally looking up at him, daring him to challenge her.  

His eyes glinted in amusement. “Tha' so, love?”

“That’s my story and I'm sticking to it.” Up close, he was even more magnetic. There was something about the roguish dark blonde curls and the contrast with the hard planes of his face, the full, chiseled mouth. Not to mention the way he carried himself, with an indefinable energy—as if he could explode in wild fury, or raucous laughter at any second.

He shrugged. “Well, then, ‘nobody’ it is. Nobody, I am Aidan. Aidan O’Neill. And I am thinking we have business tonight.”

“Is that so?” Her tone edged toward derisive at the casual confidence in his tone.

“I know what ye want, and I can give it to ye.”

She laughed carelessly, cruelly. Heather appreciated cocky, but this man was too sure of himself by half. “
Please.
How many goddamn times do you think I have heard that before? You have no idea what I want.”

He bent down, his hands on the bar, that tall, sculpted body invading her space. He smelled like leather, smoke and something faintly metallic, reminiscent of blood or brimstone. A dangerous, sexy smell that made her nostrils flair.

Heather refused to retreat an inch, lifting her chin and giving him an icy, dismissive glare to hide the need slipping into her belly. Then he spoke in a low growl, raising the hairs on the back of her neck as he breathed in her ear.

“How about
absolute
fucking distraction, at any cost? Tha' sound like yer ticket to ride, love?” The Irish lilt in his voice both taunting and seductive.

Heather swallowed, turning her head as he pulled back a fraction, their mouths only inches apart.

“Good guess,” she whispered.

He smiled and the heat she had been fighting flared into flame. “I have my moments.” He gestured at her wine glass. “Drink tha'. Ye’re going to need it.”

Heather sighed at the memories and lifted her arms in the shower, turning in a circle to let the water sluice over every inch of her skin.

She didn’t have hang-ups about one night stands or quickie sex, but she damn sure wasn’t a slut either. Especially in her profession where more than a few people numbered their sex partners in triple digits.

What happened with Aidan was easily the fastest she had ever gone from eye contact to intimacy in her life.

The attraction between them went beyond mere chemistry, it was unlike anything she had ever experienced. Aidan was a force of nature, an act of God that she had no power or will to turn away. He had his hands on her before they made it halfway back to the hotel.

She let her own hands slide down the soapy curves of her body as the hot water pounded her, remembering the heat of his mouth that first time…

Night had veiled the city in black by the time she left with him. Pale stars glittered above the lights of the city as they walked, the distinctive lemony-jasmine tang of linden trees and the perfume of roses overwhelming. She was slightly dizzy with the wine and unsure of just what the hell she was doing.

Heather reached for his arm to slow him down at one point, but she missed her target. Her fingers skidded down the leather of his coat sleeve instead, wrapping around his bare wrist just above his glove. Aidan hissed in surprise and in an instant Heather was up against an alley wall with no idea how she got there. 

His face was almost savage with desire, his hands on her hips, those leather-covered fingers sliding over the skin her low-rise jeans left bare under her shirt.

His tongue slid into her mouth as she gasped. His hard, lean body covered hers, giving her no quarter as he took what he wanted. He yanked open the button of her jeans and plunged his hand down between her legs as he ravaged her mouth, his long leather-covered fingers stroking her through her panties, nearly forcing her to come right then and there in seconds. It left her dazed and more than a little scared.