by A. S. Green
She continued. “Do you know how hard I worked for them growing up, and then they go and say that shit? I wasn’t going to stick around for more of it. It might have been impulsive to take off without a plan, but I don’t regret it.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’m glad you don’t regret it, and I’m glad you’re out of there. But, Meghan. What does this have to do with helping me find my target?”
She blinked and a sad smile spread across her face. “Don’t you see? I have nowhere to go, but you… You do. I’m agreeing to be your canary to help you get back home.”
Cormac bowed his head, hating to hear her say it so bluntly. He didn’t know what made him crazier, that she had no home, or that he had none to give her.
“I don’t know if I can ever do that, but if you help me find the Black Castle, I promise I’ll take care of you,” he said, brushing the hair back from her face and kissing her again. “You can trust me, mo cuisle.”
He lowered his head slowly and gently touched his lips to hers, and he felt her body slowly softening beneath him. She blinked up at him, hopefully feeling how momentous that one simple kiss was because, to him, it was everything.
“You’ve called me that before,” she whispered.
He kissed her again and this time he heard her heart leap. “It’s an endearment. Literally, my pulse.”
“My pulse.” Her hands swept up his sides, then slid over his chest, before combing into his hair. “I like that.”
She kissed him back, and her legs separated. His hips fell through, and he groaned at the wet heat he found seeping through her panties. She pulled up her knees, and one hand drifted down, cupping his bare ass.
When Cormac felt the first trembles of his control slipping, he tensed and pulled away. Meghan put her hand behind his head and pulled him back to her.
His hand plowed into the hair at the side of her head, and he continued his kiss with hard, demanding need that she reciprocated with every move.
God, had she been wanting this as much as he had? If so, she would understand his intensity. And when the tip of his tongue touched hers, all bets were off.
Meghan moaned, opening for him, and he nabbed the opportunity, pushing his tongue into her mouth, tasting, sucking, exploring. He growled down her throat. He traced her teeth with his tongue, sucked her bottom lip between his, and pulled even more sounds out of her—each one spurring him on to take just a little bit more.
He slipped his left hand inside the elastic at the back of her panties and pulled her against his nakedness, grinding in. Then the kiss moved to her jaw, her neck, her collarbone…
“You’re beautiful. So beautiful,” he murmured as his lips moved over her T-shirt and found her nipple hardening under the soft cotton.
Her arms moved between them, and she grabbed the edge of her T-shirt, ripping it up over her head and tossing it away.
His head came down, and he lapped at her nipple once before sucking it into his mouth, loving how her hips jerked and rose in response.
“Christ, I can smell your arousal again,” he said, his fingers curling into her ass. The beast inside of him prowled and rippled at his edges. “That scent…. Devastating.”
His hand moved between them and he slid one finger inside her, curling it against her upper wall, and dragging it forward. Then he raised his hand between them. His finger glistened with her juices, and he slowly pushed it inside his mouth.
She watched, unblinking, then groaned deep and lusty.
The look, and taste, and sound of her was nearly Cormac’s undoing. His cock surged upward and grazed impatiently against her opening.
“Cormac,” she said, her eyes flashing with surprise. He knew why. His gums burned from the pressure of his teeth slowly elongating. He was starting to slip, and she saw it. Her hands came up and put pressure at his shoulders. “Cormac, you need to stop. You’re changing.”
“Aye,” he agreed on an exhale. And at that, Cormac closed his eyes and inhaled a long slow breath, pushing the hound back to center. His grip relaxed, though his bare chest continued to heave with exertion.
“You can trust me,” he said again, hopefully driving his point home with this showing of control. Despite the fact he wanted her, he would not take this any farther.
And rightly so. As the fog of lust slowly lifted, he saw the scene from outside himself. How had he let it get that far? He never lost control like that, but with Meghan nothing went according to plan. While he could imagine how perfect it would be to join his body with hers, how right, he’d sworn an oath. He promised himself, and indirectly the memory of his family, that he would have no distractions; he would seek no pleasure for himself until they were all avenged.
He looked down at Meghan’s wide-eyed face, and he rolled off of her. He did not deserve this kind of happiness. Not when he had yet to fully atone.
The only way to ever return home would be through sacrifice, self-denial, and with heads on a spike—one for each of the lives the Black Castle had taken from him.
Meghan whispered, “Maybe we should go to sleep.”
Cormac didn’t answer right away and, after a second, he felt her roll onto her side, giving him her back as if his silence had hurt her feelings.
He turned his head to apologize and to tell her good night, but before he could, his throat filled with bile.
There, tattooed on the back of her bare shoulder were those two symbols he’d never wanted to see again in his whole miserable life: a bright green shamrock crossed by a sword.
Chapter Fifteen
MEGHAN
Meghan’s dreams had always been more vivid than her waking hours. Until recently, real life had been like wandering dazed and confused from one gray room to another, always searching for something beautiful, but only finding pain. Then one day she opened a door and found Cormac MacConall standing there. It was as if she’d endured a long power outage, only for the house lights to come on all at once.
Now real life was more impossible, and less explainable than anything she could have ever dreamt up. That was why she wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or awake when she saw the woman from her dreams again, this time standing at the foot of the bed. Her back was still turned, but then, for the first time, the woman turned over her shoulder and looked Meghan dead in the eye.
“Mom?” Meghan could hardly believe it. No wait. This couldn’t be real. Her mother was dead. Her aunt told her she was dead. “What are you doing here?”
A wolf howled mournfully in the distance. Her mother turned toward the sound, then returned her vacant gaze to Meghan. “I’m looking for you.”
“What?” Meghan asked.
“I’m looking for you,” her mother said.
Meghan woke on a gasp and sat straight up in bed, her eyes open but unfocused. Her mother wasn’t there. Of course she wasn’t.
Meghan’s neck and shoulders were covered in a fine sheen of sweat. She reached out for Cormac, but the space where he’d lain was empty.
“Cormac?”
She listened for sounds of him in the cottage, but there was no water running, no clatter from the kitchenette. No stoking of a fire in the hearth room. Then she remembered what he’d said about needing to get up early to make a report to some kind of council.
She relaxed into the pillows and tried to recapture the new details from her dream. The woman was her mother. Had she always been, or had her subconscious added that just now? Probably the latter. She wanted to see her mother’s face, just like she wanted her to be out there, somewhere, looking for her.
She rolled over and realized she was in nothing but her panties, and the memories of last night pushed the dream clear out of her head.
The feel of Cormac’s hands on her… it was something she’d had in only small doses before, and it was a good thing it came on slowly because the heat of him nearly blew her mind. His hot, demanding kiss… The way his hands moved over her breasts… The feel of him hard and insistent between her legs…
&
nbsp; Almost involuntarily, her hand slid down her belly and cupped her mound, giving it a squeeze to quell the growing ache. She closed her eyes, and her legs fell open. She imagined him coming home, walking in to find her like this. What would happen then?
Mo cuisle, your pussy is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
She groaned in response to the fantasy and swirled her finger over her swelling clit. With her other hand, she cupped her breast and rolled her nipple in a tight pinch.
I want to taste you. I want to feel your juices running over my chin.
Meghan's hand went into overdrive, tightening her secret muscles, curling her up like a spring, drawing her tighter, tighter, until… With a moan her orgasm burst like a cataract over a dam, throbbing and pulsing in such intense and beautiful waves that it seemed like forever before she came down.
Even then, she couldn’t open her eyes. And before she knew it, she fell asleep.
* * *
Meghan blinked her eyes open, confused by the amount of sunlight in the room. She reached for her phone and was shocked to see it was after noon. The cottage was still quiet, and there were no texts from Cormac.
“Cormac?”
No answer.
She pulled on her clothes and wandered into the other room. What the hell could be taking him so long?
Then she saw the note on the table, and her lips curled up into a smile. It was sweet of him to leave her note—more old fashioned and definitely more romantic than a text. She picked it up and read the words, her smile fading as her eyes moved across the page.
Nice try, but I’m not going to fall for your trick.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out and, oh yeah, watch your back.
I did. - C
Meghan read the note again, this time slowly, but it didn’t change anything. Nice try? What trick? “You have got to be shitting me!”
She read the note again, then she crumpled it into a ball and chucked it across the room.
Okay. Deep breath. She knew this moment would come. It always did. You could only couch surf for so long before someone told you to take a hike, but… What the hell, Cormac?
Why beg her to stay? Why convince her to help with his insane mission to avenge his family? And for that matter, why dump all this crazy-ass information on her if he was just going to change his mind?
Fickle much? What the hell was last night all about?
Good lord. She would have gladly gone her entire life not knowing half of the shit he laid on her last night. Well, maybe she dodged a bullet. Maybe the male sídhe were as fucked up as the male pádraigs. It would be just like her to fall for it.
Meghan marched into the bedroom and packed her suitcase. She would not cry. There was no way in hell she was going to cry.
She pulled on her fleece and her socks and shoes. The world might be more dangerous than she ever knew, but she’d take that over this bullshit any day. She was a tough girl, she’d been on her own. She’d traveled. Now that she knew who and what to avoid, she shouldn’t have any more trouble, and she’d take Cormac’s advice. She would watch her back.
The first tear came, but she wiped it away. No fucking way. There was no way she was going to let Cormac MacConall make her cry.
She slammed the front door behind her, and stomped to the rental office to—hopefully—buy some snacks for the road. The tiny bell over the door tinkled as she entered, but there was no one in the reception lobby.
A tongue of smoke licked up from an incense burner on the counter, and a thick cloying smell filled the room, nearly choking her. Behind the counter, a red curtain closed off an interior office.
“Hello?” she called out, setting her suitcase on the floor. “Is anyone here?”
There was a soft shuffling sound from somewhere deep behind the curtain. While she waited, she looked around to see if there was a vending machine with granola bars or maybe bags of pretzels. All she found was a basket of complimentary hard candy. She loaded her pockets, but one piece bounced off the counter and landed on the desk behind it.
Meghan leaned over the counter to grab it, but her hand froze in mid-air when she spotted something familiar. On the desk, tucked out of normal view, stood a small block print of a shamrock crossed by a sword.
It was the same image that had hung inside her aunt and uncle’s front door. It was the same image she got tattooed on her shoulder blade the day she left their home for good—a reminder of where she’d been but also an award for having put them far behind her.
Meghan raised her hand to her neck and scratched at her irritated skin when the thick curtain parted and a young man emerged. He looked surprised to see her, and then wary. She spotted the name tag pinned to his shirt: Riley. The guy who’d called about the so-called dead animal on their doorstep. She felt the need to say something about that, but before she could, he spoke.
“You’re leaving?”
Her body lurched, infinitesimally with recognition. Riley was also the good-looking guy she’d seen eating at the diner days earlier. The one with the lush eyelashes whom she’d sketched while he ate with his large family. He didn’t seem to recognize her at all.
“I am,” she said as the prickly, itchy feeling grew stronger on her neck, spreading down over her chest. The sweet smoky air was giving her a headache. “I’m headed to Canada. I was wondering if you sold any snacks?”
He stared at her for a long second, and she got the sinking feeling that Cormac had bailed without paying the tab. Figures.
“Listen,” she said, “if you’re owed money or something, I don’t have it, and I never signed any contract so you’re not going to get it from me.”
She rubbed the heel of her hand against the itchy skin on her chest, then she shuffled her feet nervously. Her shoe made a gritty, grinding sound against the floor. She looked down, expecting sand from the lakeshore.
Salt?
There was a lot of it—at least a cupful—and it was in an elongated pattern as if it had been thrown, rather than spilled. Did that mean someone had tried to defend themselves against a sídhe? Here?
Meghan was now conscious of the rash slowly spreading across her torso. It was just like the two times before. The killer had been here, too. Was that just a coincidence, or did it mean the killer had been confronted by a sídhe? Or…was it possible the killer and the sídhe were one and the same?
If that was possible, she had an overwhelming desire to find Cormac and let him know he was on the wrong path—even if he was an ass for leaving her.
Slowly she raised her gaze from the floor. Riley was no longer behind the desk, and his expression had gone from surprise to fury. He grabbed her wrist and spun her around, so her back was to his front.
“Hey!”
“Quiet,” he ordered. Then he held both of her arms behind her as he pushed her around the desk and through the curtain. Her neck arched with pain when he yanked her arms tighter. An overhead light buzzed and flickered as he pushed her down a dim hallway. She resisted, leaning back and trying to brace herself with her feet, but he was too strong.
They’d gone about fifteen feet when he pushed her through a doorway into another room. In it, a large man sat, chained to a chair, his body slumped forward. When he lifted his head, Meghan sucked in a breath. Cormac.
He leveled his eyes at her and in his agonized expression Meghan saw the crushing pain of a lover betrayed.
Chapter Sixteen
CORMAC
Twelve Hours Earlier
As soon as Meghan’s breathing had fallen into a deep and solid rhythm, Cormac rolled out of the bed, turning away from the vile images tattooed on her back. He had hoped to never see that cross and shamrock again, and certainly never on a body. Meghan’s body. Did fate really have it in for him so much?
He considered what to do. Should he kill her right where she slept? He couldn’t imagine she was the pádraig he’d been hunting, but obviously she had some connection. Perhaps she was a spy, or just sent to distrac
t him.
There was no way around it now. He would have to leave. Once she woke, he wouldn’t be able to control his rage. He wouldn’t even be able to question her without tearing her head off, and then—by Danu, he was weak when it came to her—he’d never be able to forgive himself. And she was one of them! How much more sick and twisted could his life possibly get?
Cormac stepped outside the cottage and glanced to the rental office. He still needed to pay last night’s bill, but the lights were all off. He didn’t want to have to come back here to do it, but now it looked like he’d have no choice.
He sighed and moved outside the small yellow arc of the outdoor light then, with an arch of his neck, transformed into the hound. A moment later, his heavy paws hit the gravel road, and he kicked up dust behind him as he barreled toward the woods, breaking through the first line of trees, tearing through the fern and ground cover, dodging low-hanging branches, climbing up and up until he reached the crest of the hill and a familiar thicket.
That’s where, unable to hold it together anymore, he lifted his nose to the moon and let out a howl of unrestrained agony.
He had never gone to Branna before. She had always been the one to initiate contact. But he somehow knew she’d hear him, and that she’d come out.
It wasn’t as instantaneous as he’d hoped. He had to put his nose to the ground to search for her, but he was right. She wasn’t far. He wondered if she was always near.
The black rabbit was standing on her hind legs, front legs pulled up, ears shooting straight up like two parallel stalks of grass. Everything about her was still, so still she could have been a statue—the only exception being her nose, which twitched frantically on high alert.
Cormac’s head jerked up, then he let out a sigh and lowered his haunches to the ground. He stretched out his front legs and rested his head along their length.
