by Lauren Dane
Cursing, he shimmered to New Orleans, right into her flat, and saw her sitting, looking out of the window. Her normally messy apartment was dirty. Dishes were piled in the sink and takeout cartons were all over the place. He watched her take a sip from a mug. It smelled like she was drinking herbal tea.
“What are you drinking, mo fiach?” he asked softly.
She turned so quickly she fell out of her chair. “You! How dare you!” She threw her mug at him. “You fucking Faerie bastard!” She battled her intense joy at seeing him and her fury that he’d been gone so long while she’d endured so much.
He deflected the mug and walked to her and smelled the despair seeping out of her pores. “Em, a ghra, I’m sorry it took me so long.”
“You’ve been gone for MONTHS! Do you think you can just walk in and out of my life like that? Where the hell have you been?”
“I told you time moves differently in Tir na nOg. I was only there for a day and a half, I had no idea that so much time had passed here.”
She tossed a plate at his head and he growled at her. “You asshole! Did you just growl at me?” She snorted in disbelief. She wanted to run into his arms and weep for joy but she was afraid to believe that he was really there.
“I waited for you for another week, and another. My family told me to come home, that you’d abandoned me. I told them that you loved me, that you wouldn’t do that. After a month Lee and Alex came to bring me back. When I wouldn’t leave my maman came and they did a binding spell and brought me back by force!” And oh how that had hurt. She’d begged them, pleaded to be allowed to stay and wait but they’d ganged up on her and spelled her against her will. The betrayal of that stung deep. Not as deep as it had when they’d essentially kept her prisoner with binding spells so she couldn’t leave the house, and even at that moment, couldn’t leave the city.
“I haven’t spoken to my family, not civilly, for months. I’ve been at Lee’s. I finally came back home two weeks ago. Even though they undid the spell to hold me bound in the house, until yesterday I was bound to stay in this fucking city!”
“Em, a ghra, you’re angry with me for that? I didn’t know!”
She stopped, just inches from him, her hands aching to touch him. She whispered, “I knew you’d come back. Everyone kept telling me that you’d dumped me. I told them you’d come back for me. They wouldn’t listen to me, they wouldn’t believe in me. They only let me come home when I lied. I said that I was healing, that I knew you weren’t coming back but that I accepted it.” Her voice broke. “I lied, Con. I looked into my mother’s face and said I was over you. But I wasn’t. I just had to be here, away from everyone. I knew that if I lied long enough that they’d believe it and I could find a way to get back to London. I think Simone knew I was lying but she didn’t say anything to them. I felt my mother remove the binding spell yesterday.”
He got to his knees before her and pulled her to him, his face resting against her stomach. “A thousand pardons. Please forgive me, Em.” Tears choked him, the last time he’d cried was three thousand years before when his father had died. “I would never leave you.”
Touching him, his scent washed over her and she allowed herself to believe that he was really there. Joy came to her then for the first time in months. “You came back,” she whispered, her voice raw with anguish. “I told them all that you loved me and that you’d be back but you never came. I was afraid I’d start to believe you never would.”
“I’m so sorry. I was telling my brother and sister-in-law about you, about us. I stayed the night with my mother. My mother and Magda, my brother’s wife, are busily planning for our Joining ceremony right now. I would never deliberately hurt you.” He looked up into her eyes, eyes that had dark circles beneath them. “I love you.”
She closed her eyes and put her hands on his head. He bowed, almost in benediction to her. He shimmered them out of the apartment and into the bedroom of his flat in Paris.
“This is better, isn’t it?” He stood and pulled her back to him. “Let me make it up to you.”
She looked around at the apartment overlooking the Seine, taking in the expensive furnishings. The man had really good taste. “Where are we?”
He pulled her close and bent to pull her hands to his mouth to kiss them. “Our apartment in Paris.” He looked down and his grin slid away as he noticed the ring was gone. “What happened to your ring?”
“Maman let me wear it for a month but then when they did the binding spell they removed it. Alex gave it back to me when I moved back to my apartment. They were really angry at him for doing it but he did it anyway.” She pulled a chain out from under her shirt and he saw it there. “I wore it next to my heart.”
“A ghrá mo chroí, my heart aches to think of your family believing I’d used you and abandoned you. Worse, that my absence gave them—and you—a reason to think so. Will you wear it on your finger again? Will you still join with me?”
“I never thought that. Don’t you see? I may have felt despair the longer you were gone but I never gave up hope. I missed hearing your Gaelic,” she said softly as she pulled the chain from her neck and handed him the ring that she unbound from it.
He took it and slid it back onto her finger. “I’m so sorry. Do you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive. I knew you’d be back and you are. If you didn’t know, how can I hold it against you? I took a leap of faith and you deserved it.”
He kissed the hand that wore his ring and pulled her to him tightly. “My gods, Em, you’re skin and bones.” Shocked, he stepped back and really looked at her. In addition to the dark circles ringing her eyes her clothes hung from her body. Her normally shiny ebony hair had lost its luster. “This is because of me,” he said. It wasn’t a question. Guilt knifed through him.
“It’s over,” she said, reaching out to caress the line of his jaw. If she’d ever doubted his love, she knew the truth now. It was clear in his face, the way he watched her greedily. “You’re here now. I look like crap, but you’re here.”
He took her hand. “Come. I’m going to take care of you. I’ll run your bath and you’ll eat.” He led her into his bathroom and turned on the taps for the huge bathtub. “Wait,” he said and clothes appeared in a neat pile on the padded seat near the vanity.
She smiled at him and felt the awful weight of her despair lift from her heart. He pulled her shirt off over her head and sucked in a breath when he saw her ribs. She’d been lean before, but more in an athletic sense. She was now much too thin. “We need to fix this,” he said determinedly. “How could your family have let you get this thin?” he said angrily as he helped her into the water and then joined her after he’d summoned off his own clothes.
“Don’t you attack them! They did the best they could. You forget that I’m an empath—I could feel what they all felt as this whole thing happened. You have no idea how hard it was for my mother to look me in the face and tell me that I’d been abandoned. It tore her up inside. When I wouldn’t leave the penthouse they had to spell me to bind and silence me because I was screaming for you over and over.
“When I got back here I kept insisting that you were coming back but they wouldn’t listen. Oh I was so angry. I haven’t spoken a single unnecessary word to any of them in months. But they all continued to try and take care of me even though I wouldn’t acknowledge them.
“Every day my grandmere would bring me some new treat to entice me to eat. They baked me all of my favorites. Once I moved back to my apartment, Lee brought me food every day. Aidan sent to Austria for the chocolates I love so much. I just gave up for a while. I was so lost without you and I didn’t know how to find my way back. Even though I’m angry at them for not believing in you, for not believing in me, they still did everything they knew how to do, Con.”
She was on her knees facing him, eyes sparking with her earnest defense of those she loved. He imagined that she did the same when she defended him to her family. For the first time s
ince he’d seen her that day, he saw a glimpse of his Em—the Em that he’d left yesterday. He reached up and brushed a fingertip over her nipples.
“My apologies. Your family obviously loves you and they don’t know me so how could they understand that I’d never leave you? We will have to change that. After you’ve eaten and I’ve made love to you a few times we’ll go back to New Orleans so that I can meet them and we can patch this up. I don’t like the idea of you not speaking to them.”
She moved closer and he slid a soapy hand up her neck and pulled her to him. His lips tasted her gently and she let out a sigh, a sound of such sweet yearning that it set him afire. Struggling, he stanched his own desire and slowly soaped her body, from the sweet-smelling shampoo that he massaged into her hair all the way down to the soap he used on her toes.
He looked at her as she lay back against the rim of the tub, floating in his arms, totally relaxed. She slowly opened her eyes and locked her gaze to his. The light from the candles that he’d placed around the bathroom flickered and winked off the walls, reflecting in the mirrors. Her skin was flushed, glowing.
Reaching out to touch him, she caressed the long line of his muscular neck. “Con, I know I’m a bit skinny right now and I look like hell, but I need you,” she whispered.
He sat up with an anguished cry and embraced her. He kissed the top of her head and down to her ears. “A ghra, you are a beauty, a stirring sight to my eyes. I want you every moment I’m awake and I dream of you each night. I need you too, I always need you.”
“Then take me. Fill me up until I can’t take another inch. I’ve been so empty inside.”
He ran more clean, hot water after getting rid of the soapy water. Sitting on the carved step inside the large bathtub, he pulled her onto his lap facing him. He brought her to his mouth, ravenous for a taste of her. She sucked his bottom lip between her teeth, worrying it gently. His hands slid down her spine and cupped the curve of her bottom, fingertips brushing over her pussy and the puckered star of her anus. She made a mewl of pleasure deep in her throat and he got even harder.
When he sucked her tongue into his mouth he tasted sorrow and love, hope and trust. Their tongues slid against each other and he groaned low when her hands found his ears and she gently traced over the tips.
He slid two fingers inside her and her back arched to take him deeper. His lips left her mouth and he latched onto a nipple. She cried out with joy as that pink point of pleasure hardening under his questing tongue—the nipple elongating as her pleasure built. A thumb flicked across the swollen surface of her clit and she shuddered.
She pressed her lips to his ear, biting the lobe and nibbling the outer edge, slowly, slowly until she sucked the tip of it into her mouth and grazed her teeth over it.
“Oh yesss,” he groaned.
“Do you like that? Hmmm?” she whispered breathily into his ear. “It’s almost as sensitive as your cock. Shall I lick it again, Con?” she asked and then swirled her tongue over the point, gently biting it.
His back arched, fingers digging into her hips.
“Fuck me, Con. Please. I don’t want the preliminaries, not now. Right now I need your big hard cock deep inside of my pussy.”
The thrill of the words that she had been so shy to say not too very long before rushed through his system. She was so wet and hot, so ready for him. He lifted her and plunged her down onto his cock. She screamed and bowed her back, knees tight at his hips.
“Oh god, yes, like that!” she exclaimed. The way he filled her made her feel complete for the first time in months.
“Ride me then, Em, my sweet,” he growled, his lips around a nipple.
She slowly rose up, pulling herself almost completely off his cock and then slid down ever so slowly, milking every bit of pleasure out of the moment that she could. “That’s so good, Con.”
“Mmmm,” was all he could manage to say as she took him back into her body again.
The water gently rolled against them as she moved, almost like caressing fingers. Given the depth of the water in the huge tub she felt partially weightless and it gave her a delicious buoyancy.
She wanted to pull him deep inside her. Not just his cock but all of him. After so much time without him, his physical presence was like a healing balm. Something about him called out to her, made her restlessness disappear, made her whole. Everything that had been wrong and felt out of place suddenly shifted and fit back together again.
Con reached for a bottle of oil, pulled out the stopper and poured it over her upper body. He began to massage it into her skin with his large hands, taking extra care with her nipples as he tugged and rolled them between his fingers.
The oil made the water slick and the friction suddenly turned slippery.
“It’s a special oil, edible, an excellent lubricant too. Your skin feels so incredibly soft,” he murmured as his hands smoothed the slick oil across her skin, massaging her aches and warming her.
She sped up on him, needing to feel him stronger, harder. She yanked on his hair to angle his head where she needed it to be for her kisses and her hands went to his ears.
His cock sliced through her wet heat over and over as the inferno in her core continued to simmer, sending scalding waves of pleasure down her spine, up from her toes.
He began to thrust then, holding her down on him while he pressed up into her. “So fucking tight and hot,” he grunted as he slammed into her over and over.
Her head lolled back and she stiffened and came with a long scream when he slid a finger into her rear passage and stroked.
Her pussy clamped down on him like a vise, milking him with her climax. “I want you to come inside of me,” she whispered into his ear. Her words drove him hard and he continued to piston into her as she kept her fingers on his ears. He was seeing pinpoints of light and his teeth began to tingle. He thrust up hard, lifting her body up as his own arched up to meet hers. His cum shot out of his body and bathed her womb over and over again until he had nothing left but the pounding of his heart.
After several minutes of laying there with her in his arms, he stood her up and rinsed her body of soap, sweat and seed and helped her out. He slowly buffed her dry with a big fluffy towel and held out a silky robe for her to slip into.
She looked up into his face, sliding a hand along his jaw and up and over his ear. “Thank you.” She felt so cherished then, cared for and loved. His hands were almost reverent.
He kissed her roughly in his eagerness to show her how much he loved her. “Don’t thank me, Em. You know that your pleasure is my job,” he growled at her. “Now, we’re getting lunch and you’re going to eat two helpings.”
He made her eat a sizeable luncheon, feeding her from his own plate when she finished with hers. Each bite she took made him feel better, as if she were taking a big step back toward him.
“I suppose we need to deal with your family. I can’t imagine that they’re very happy with me right now,” he said as he watched her chest rise and fall with her breathing, each intake of breath giving him the barest glimpse of her areola.
“Well, about that… Why don’t I talk with them first before you show up?”
“Because from now on we do this together. I don’t want to leave you alone to face them. I want them to see that I’ll stand up with you even when things are rough. Before we go, though, I spoke to the queen and she has agreed to bring you over, to grant you immortality. I’d take you over right now to do it but I don’t want so much time to move by here while we are there. I don’t want your family to worry about you any more than they already have.”
“What is the ratio of time passage from there to here anyway? Can’t we just factor that in?”
“No, it’s not that simple. Time moves differently there but not just in comparison to here. Sometimes I can sift between worlds and just a few minutes or hours have passed. Other instances, like this time, months can pass by. One never knows. When I’m here on assignment like I was with you, I wo
uld only sift there and back for a few minutes.” He shrugged. “Just to be sure that I’d come back quickly. Although, and I swear this to you, I had no idea that so much time would pass. I never would have stayed that long if I had known.”
“Stop beating yourself up over it. My family will have to accept all of this after I explain. Say, what’s the difference between sifting and shimmering? Or are they the same? Sometimes you call it sifting, sometimes you call it shimmering.”
“When one travels between worlds, like between here and Tir na nOg, it’s sifting—you’re sifting between dimensions. Traveling from one point to another on the same world or dimension is shimmering. As in, when you and I go to New Orleans to deal with your family, we’ll be shimmering,” he said, getting back to the subject.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to go in first? It’s liable to be pretty bad at first.”
“A ghra, we’re going to be together forever. They’ll have to get used to me sometime. Plus, well, I don’t mean to brag but I do seem to do pretty well with the ladies,” he said teasingly but saw the flash of hurt in her eyes. He touched her cheek. “Mo fiach, why do you do that to yourself? How can you doubt me? Even now?”
“I’m working on it, I really am. I’ve had a lot of time to think, to work through things over the last three months. But you haven’t met my sister or my mother. I just…well, I’ve never been as powerful as the other women in my family. Or as exciting, or as beautiful or sexy,” she added quietly, her eyes locked to his. That was an improvement. Months ago she would have looked down or away from him.
“Em, you are everything to me. Do you not understand this yet? Can you not see your own beauty and intelligence? Your own powers of intuition and empathy? The first time I saw you, you went straight to my heart and you’ve dug into my system every moment since. While I am sure the other women in your family are all beautiful and strong, they cannot hold a candle to you. Subject closed,” he said with such arrogance that she gave up and kissed his nose with a grin.
