Blood In Fire (Celtic Elementals Book 2) (5 page)

He'd barely been getting started.

When they reached her hotel room, he closed the door behind them with a kick.

He threw his coat over the settee in the foyer and pulled off his leather gloves one finger at a time, stalking toward her with an intentness that was both terrifying and incredibly hot as she backed away into the bedroom.

“Strip or yer clothes will never be wearable again. And tha' would be a damn shame. I like the Murphy's.”

She lifted her chin and stopped retreating.

“Quit ordering me around.”

Aidan laughed, yanking her to him so suddenly she let out a strangled yelp.

He pinned her wrist behind her to the small of her back, forcing her up against him, face to face. Her toes were almost off the floor, as he bent his knees and circled his hips so she got the full impact of his cock through his jeans. He dragged himself deliberately between her legs, up and down, until her gasps filled the room.

“I will, yea. That’s Irish for
fuck no
, by the way. I am going to order ye to do whatever the hell I want, and ye are going to do it. Because tha' is what ye need and what ye fucking want. Donna fight the darkness,
nobody
, embrace it.”

And god help her, she had.

Heather slid back against the shower wall, her knees going weak as she remembered all the things they had done that night, and the next. She opened her legs as she gave into the memory, her fingers trailing over her hip and dipping lower as the warm water ran over her already soaked core.

She arched into the steaming hot spray until it made her hardened nipples ache. Closing her eyes, her own fingertips brought her back to the dark pleasure that cursed man had given her as the water ran down her naked body in streams. Her head fell back and her hips pumped as she bit back the cries she didn’t want him to hear.

Aidan leaned against the other side of the bathroom wall, his own eyes wide open as he stared blindly into the dim bedroom. Shite and hellfire, the woman was going to fucking kill him!

His gloves couldn’t protect him from the psychic lust blasting from the bathroom. He could have walked right through the goddamn wall, taken her down to the floor and fucked her silly in the water and rubble for what she was doing to him right now.

But she had told him no.

A serious, fat
no
. Despite the fact she was now seconds away from coming at the thought of him inside her. Goddamn contrary women! Aidan knew he could have convinced her otherwise in less than a minute, but that wouldn’t really be sporting—and she would hate him for it.

Normally, he wouldn’t have been fussed over
that,
but with this one…

Aidan didn’t know why, but he couldn’t do it. Besides, there was the matter of that little promise he'd made her. The chit
would
beg before he touched her again. He growled as his cock jerked at the thought and he tapped the back of his head into the wall in frustration.

Not loudly enough to alert her to his presence, of course. He didn’t want her to stop, no matter how much it was torturing him.

Helluva pisser, though. He was going to come in his pants if she didn’t finish soon and there was nothing he could do about it. Or almost nothing.

He did have a hand after all.

With a Gaelic curse and a rueful laugh, Aidan ripped open his fly.

Two could play at this game.

The man that had seen Aidan and Heather was well over an hour west of Rathkeale by the time she stepped into that shower. Deep inside the area of County Kerry known as
MacGillycuddy's Reeks.

High and wild saw-toothed mountains concealed a castle known as
Du'n Dreach-Fhoula.
Normally invisible on the mortal plane, a human wouldn't be able to find the castle even if they knew it was there.

Unless the inhabitants were hungry, of course. In that case the black doors would appear and open…to let one or two in.

Though never out again.

Declan Foster was different. He belonged here. Or rather he belonged to the owner of the castle.

His hands were fisted on the great stone table in his master’s dining hall. The surface was bitterly cold and rough under his skin, a sharp contrast to the opulent comfort of most of the castle. There was a reason for this as the demon fae didn’t dine in the manner humans did. Oh, they ate, to be sure, but less for sustenance than for the act itself. The taking of another life force to increase their own was a serious ritual. It mattered not if that life force consisted of the fruit of a tree or human flesh and blood. All consumption was sacrifice and this table had been an altar of sorts to many dark feasts.

The man dearly hoped that wasn’t to be his end.

His master was at the head of the table. Not sitting in the huge throne-like chair—carved from tortured trunk of a hawthorne tree—but standing behind it. His large, thin hands stroked the gnarled back contemplatively.

This particular tree had contorted back into itself so many times it lent a twisted air to the room—one of deformed, agonized existence. An existence that no matter the cost had been
endured
. It was a fitting seat for the man behind it, a man who was no man at all. Only a demon who reveled in pushing all creatures to the limits of their endurance
.

Abhartach was not looking at his slave but at the painting that graced the far wall. It was of a young man with the dying sun in his fair curls, his legs spread wide in a fighter’s stance and planted firmly on a rocky outcropping with the hills of Ulster in the distance. The young warrior’s hands were wrapped around the grip of an enormous great sword whose lethal tip touched the stone between his booted feet. The pommel appeared to glint in the firelight of the chamber, an amber-colored stone with a blush of fire set at its heart. The artist had captured both the sword and the warrior in exquisite detail, down to the gleam of sunset along the blade’s double edges like blood and the fierce, crystalline gaze of the man—who had been called
Áedán.

O'Neill had modernized the name centuries ago, but a face didn't change as easily as a name.

If the man Declan had seen this morning was not the same as in the painting, then they were doppelgangers. He wasn’t wrong, he couldn’t be wrong, but if he was…

“You better not be wrong,
daor
.” There was no hint of a threat in Abhartach’s flinty voice as it rang off the stone table, only the absolute promise of a long and drawn-out death.

Death is what he wanted, what he had always wanted, but not as an ending… as a
beginning
.

“I assure you, Master, it was him.”

Abhartach’s eyes stayed on the painting for a moment longer, lingering with a possessive caress, before turning on Declan.

It was an effort, but he managed not to flinch under the king's unholy gaze.

“If it is…if it truly is…. I will grant you all that you have ever desired and more.”

Declan smiled, a thin splitting of his lips that he fancied made him look more like the demon fae before him than the human he was.

“Thank you, my master. It will be my greatest pleasure to give you your vengeance. May I—” Declan hesitated, wondering if his request would be going too far, but Abhartach waved an impatient hand, the spidery shadows of his gesture skittering down the walls. “May I also have the pleasure of watching you end him?”

This time it was Abhartach who smiled. That smile killed Declan’s pretended imitation of his master’s heritage. No human on earth could smile like that—red-black lips parting, dark teeth gleaming—a bloody crack leading straight to the bowels of hell. Declan sucked in a breath of pure terror and admiration.

“Oh,
daor
, you silly boy. Who said anything about ending him? Aidan O’Neill has much to answer for, and answer he will. If he should fail again to bend to my will, then his screams will echo within these walls for the rest of eternity.”

Abhartach swept from the chamber, one large hand brushing Declan’s shoulder for the briefest instance as he passed. His master’s caress burned like cold fire long after Abhartach had gone, an ache that pierced down to the bone. But the tears that splashed and darkened the grey stone between Declan’s hands were not of pain, but of a trembling ecstasy that threatened to burst from his every pore. His heart’s desire was so close he could taste it.

Aine, goddess of the moon, stood next to the scrying pool of
Ti'rna No'g, her heart heavy. The graceful, ethereal city of the gods swirled and gleamed softly with starlight around her delicate form.

It wasn’t fair. Danu
damn
Bav anyway! This was no way to repay a debt.

Yet...a favor had been granted…a favor that may have saved Aine's very life. So a debt was owed.

Aine had a lot of spunk, but not enough to shortchange the goddess of death. Besides, this
was
a road they had started on together long ago. She just hadn't gotten the full picture of what Bav had been up to at the time. Now, however…

“But I
like
Aidan,” she whispered to no one in particular. Not to mention she pitied him. A pity the vampire would have undoubtedly mocked her for, but Aine didn’t care.

Even by her extreme meddling standards, Aidan had been fucked with more than any mortal deserved. Not that he was truly mortal any longer, but still this…this was
evil.

She sighed and hesitantly dipped her fingers into the moonlight filling the pool, her cobalt blue eyes dark with regret, as she touched the cheek of the woman reflected in the bowl, a young woman with honey blonde hair and clever, half-familiar silvery-green eyes. When Aine’s fingertip made contact, the image scattered into endless rings that lapped agitatedly against the sloped sides of the scrying pool.

The druidic runes carved into the lip of the ancient basin started to glow as Aine whispered the spell she had been given. A spell that only she and one other of all the Tuatha de Nanaan could have cast—

‘
Child lost to time, Child born anew,

Go in grace, go in haste…

And seek the dark man of yew—‘

Aine gasped as that last line escaped her lips and slapped a hand over her own mouth. She hadn’t meant to say that. Those weren’t the words Bav had demanded of her.

Immediately, the pool shimmered and a strong masculine face, one Aine knew well, flashed on the surface of the moonlight. His green eyes met hers and narrowed, first in recognition and then in fury…

Manannán mac Lir, god of the sea. Could he know what they had done?

Oh crap…Bav was going to
kill
her!

Gripping the basin with fingers gone white as bone, Aine glanced over her shoulder. Only her fairy half-sister was anywhere near her, but Fand was possibly the
worst
person to catch a glimpse of that face in the pool. Aine shook the bowl hastily so that the reflection vanished. Then she scooped the moonlight from the bowl and with a flick of her fingers sent it arcing back into the sky.

Fand’s insipid laugh echoed behind her. Aine gritted her teeth.

“Pretty! Do it again, Aine! Do it again!”

“Hush, sister!” Aine hissed, darting away from Fand and the scrying pool at top speed. She was trying to figure out what had just happened, and how to keep Bav from finding out she hadn’t
exactly
kept her promise. This was
so
not going to be good.

In her haste, she missed the tall, fair-haired form of her lover leaning against the archway to the throne room.

That wasn't surprising to Lugh, as he had deliberately dimmed his sun-bright essence until he blended into the shadows of Ti'rna No'g.

Lugh, king of the Tuatha de Naanan, watched Aine flee down the long hall and frowned. His own eyes of sunny blue narrowed. His paramour was a complex woman, even for a goddess. He knew that she found it difficult to ask for help or counsel from anyone, but that didn’t stop him from wishing she would come to him just once, instead of trying to handle everything on her own. Especially after that
last
mess.

In time, he told himself. In time.

She was just learning what love was, after all. It was a hard lesson. One that some never got the hang of, not even after centuries. He thought of Bav and sighed heavily.

His interference in this mess would not be welcome; not by Mac, his old mentor and foster father, and certainly not by Bav…though maybe by Aidan. It was hard to tell with that one.

Yet, it was important a king keep his eye on the plots swirling within his court, and while it was usually beneath him to worry overmuch about his courtiers’ dealings with humans—or former humans—Aidan was a special case.

Lugh was well aware that the vampire was in possession of a weapon of potentially infinite power, something that could remake the world as the Tuatha de Naanan knew it. One wrong breath placed along O’Neill’s path could tip the balance one way or another. Aidan had proved more than once that he was
incredibly
unpredictable.