by Carolan Ivey
“I’ve got a better greeting.” He levered himself up off the ground and brought her with him, pulling her several more yards from the edge of the headland.
“I’m not going to fall, you know. I’m stronger now.”
“Humor me.”
She rolled her eyes, but let him lead her, her lower belly tightening at the sight of his jeans hugging his butt. She hadn’t realized how much she missed that until just now.
He turned to her and took up both her hands in his. But instead of speaking, he looked at her with such concentration it brought a smile to her face.
“About this alleged greeting?”
“Hold on now, I’m thinkin’.”
“Don’t hurt yourself.”
He stuck out his chin. “I’ve been working on this every blessed second since I got your note. So will you be quiet, woman?”
She wasn’t sure if the tears forming in her eyes were from emotion, or from mirth. She ruthlessly squashed them, pressing her lips together to keep a laugh—or was it a sob?—from erupting.
Less than one minute in Kel’s presence, and she’d already smiled more than she had in the last four months. Tenderness welled up in her chest.
He let one of her hands drop and pressed the other one between both of his.
“I’d like to introduce myself, miss. My name is Kellan O’Neill. You can be callin’ me Kel, if you like.”
Her voice strained with suppressed emotion, she managed, “Pleased to meet you Kel. I’m Beith Mol—”
“Wouldyouliketogoouttodinnerwithme?”
She let her hand swing his back and forth playfully, pretending to think hard.
“No.”
At the look on his face, she finally let go of the giggle she’d been holding down. “I’ve got a better idea.”
She marched up the slope, towing him behind her. When they reached the cottage, she led him around back to an outbuilding, opened the door and led him inside. Then she stood back and watched his expression.
He stood still for a minute, then pointed at the machine in the middle of the storage room.
“This is my ultralight.”
“’Tis.” Her heart pounded at what she was about to ask him to do.
“What’s it doing…did Fionna do this?”
“The one and only. But Declan loaned her the lorry to get it here.”
“Um…”
“I’ll go out to dinner with you, Kel. After you take me for a ride.”
“In this?”
“It carries two, last time I checked.”
“But it’s cold. It’s dangerous. And—”
She approached him and slid her hands up his leather-covered arms. “Illegal? You’re damned right it is.”
His set his hands on her waist and pulled her close. He was hard under his jeans, pressing against her belly. The heat of his body made her shiver with anticipation.
His gaze burned down onto her face. “I know we just met, Miss Molloy, but I have to say I think I could love you.”
She leaned back and grinned up at him, her heart skipping a beat.
“Could you, now?”
He began to sway back and forth, grinding his erection against her. She moaned at the contact.
“Do you think…” he lowered his head and grazed her lips with his, “…we could…fly later?”
She opened her mouth and took him deep, nearly weeping at the taste of him in her mouth. She ran her hands into his hair and released it from its tie. It flowed over her fingers, remembered silk. She broke the kiss only to grab a much-needed breath.
“It’s really good to see you, Kel.”
He lifted his head and stared down at her, his eyes dark with regret. “I’m sorry for what happened before.”
She framed his face with her hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t stick around long enough to get the whole story. I let fear get the best of me. What we had was magic. Is magic. I should have fought for it.”
His expression relaxed, and the dimple reappeared.
“There you go shouldin’ on yourself again.” He grasped her rear and lifted her. With a gasp, she wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her out of the storage building and made a beeline for the cottage’s red-painted front door.
It had one room. The bed wouldn’t be hard to find.
His strides were quick and long, one hot hand caressing her scarred left thigh as if in wonder at the new strength he felt there. She wiggled in delight, adjusting herself to cradle his erection between her thighs.
He groaned and staggered to one side, bumping both of them lightly against the cottage’s outer wall. She squeaked then snorted in a very unladylike laugh.
“Be careful, woman. You’re treadin’ dangerous ground.”
She dipped her head close to his ear, smiling at the way his whole body shivered at the touch of her lips, her breath.
“Oh, I’m counting on that.”
About the Author
To learn more about Carolan Ivey, please visit www.carolanivey.com. Send an email to Carolan at [email protected]. Join her Yahoo! group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wild-ivey. Visit her blog at http://www.carolanivey.blogspot.com.
Look for these titles by Carolan Ivey
Now Available:
Abhainn’s Kiss
Coming Soon:
In The Gloaming Print Anthology
Beaudry’s Ghost
Journey to the heart of Celtic legend.
Love and Lore
© 2007 Carolan Ivey, Gia Dawn and Sela Carsen
Samhain is pleased to celebrate its second anniversary with three novellas that will lure you into the labyrinth of Celtic myth and legend.
In Wildish Things, Carolan Ivey brings together an artist who is wounded in both body and spirit, and a sexy Irish bad boy on a Harley. Their whirlwind fling across Ireland takes a dangerous turn when their sexual chemistry awakens the deadly lust of an ancient goddess.
Gia Dawn's offering of A Fairy Special Gift has it all: A woman who can see fairies and wishes she couldn't, and a man who promises to help her with her "problem"—for the price of a kiss. Stir in the Celtic god Lugh who wants the woman for himself, rowdy flock of untamed pixies, and a pining Banshee in need of a makeover, and let's just say there aren't enough fairy traps in the world to control the chaos.
The Heart of the Sea beckons in Sela Carsen's take on the Selkie legend. When a woman accidentally falls into the sea and turns into a seal, the man she loves believes her drowned. Seven years later, she rescues him from a shipwreck and for one blissful night, she returns to her human form. But only for a night. Can true love overcome the Selchie curse?
Avalon reborn…
Hidden away on a misty island off the Irish coast all her life, Abhainn has no idea she is the last of her Faery race—until a troll tries to kill her.
The Gloaming: Abhainn’s Kiss
© 2007 Carolan Ivey
Her peaceful world shattered, she has only days to fulfill her destiny. She must defy a curse that dooms her to hide from the sun, and take her rightful place in the Great Circle on the Isle of Avalon. Only Abhainn can restore the balance of Dark and Light, and heal the rift between humans and Fae. That’s a tall order for a one fragile Faery.
Michael Craig is on a quest of his own, one grounded in cold, hard reality. Fairy tales? They’re for children and dreamers. But when he rescues Abhainn from certain death with an accidental kiss, he finds himself thrown into a very different reality. One he’s reluctant to accept, even as it unfolds before his eyes. Only one thing holds him there—Abhainn will die without him.
Abhainn’s life depends on Michael’s kiss, his sword arm…and his ability to believe.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Aibhann’s Kiss:
He grabbed his shirt and pulled it on without buttoning it. He was halfway to the caravan door before he realized the taste on his tongue wasn’t just part of the dream. She must have kissed him in his sleep before slipping out. Still, she ha
d no business being out there alone, no matter how many friendly Fae surrounded them.
The familiar tinkle of her laughter drifted in through the caravan’s half open door. He stepped quietly outside and settled on the driver’s seat to watch the scene before him. The horse, unhitched, grazed nearby; Eoth lay draped across its back, sound asleep. Michael’s gaze swept the stone-littered meadow, and at last he found her.
She sat on a boulder, legs folded beneath her, arms thrown wide. Unabashedly naked as the day she’d been born. His groin tightened as, unobserved, he let his gaze pass over her body. Tiny as she was, there was no doubt that Abby was a full-grown woman, all slender curves and high, firm breasts. The morning light glowed on her pale skin, so fair as to be translucent, traced with river-maps of blue veins, flawless from the tips of her toes to the delicate points of her ears.
All around her flitted a cloud of tiny, winged Fae, who tended to her as if she were a queen in waiting. Which, he realized suddenly, she was. As the last of her kind, she by default was the Queen of the Asrai.
Humming like a swarm of honeybees, the Faeries combed and braided her white-gold hair, washed a smudge of dirt from her nose, handed her damp handfuls of moss with which she cleaned herself, rubbing it over her skin—all her skin—in slow, sensual delight.
More Faeries brought her sips of water and a sticky substance that looked like nectar, cupped in spring flowers. She tipped her head back and accepted their offerings on her tongue, smiling and licking her lips after each taste, catching stray droplets on her fingers and licking them, too.
The ache in his groin hardened into a painful knot. Blood pounded in his ears so hard that for a second he couldn’t trust himself to move. Despite the lust that roared through his veins, he remained conscious of the delicacy of her small, fragile body. She’s like porcelain. Like one wrong touch could break her.
Yet for that second, he understood what had driven Blaen of CraighMhor to risk everything for one night with a Fae.
And he lost it all, Michael reminded himself.
As if she sensed his eyes upon her, she turned her head and looked at him. She blinked once, slowly, and the smile on her face grew brighter. She held out her hand.
Abruptly, the attending Faeries screeched and scattered. Only one stayed, hovering above and just behind her golden head. Its buzzing grew into a snarl, and before Michael’s eyes it changed from a thimble-sized thing to a fox. It bared its fangs and bunched its muscles to spring at Abby’s unprotected back.
With a sickening lurch that took him back to his combat days in the Marines, time slowed to a crawl. Every detail of the scene sprang into sharp relief. Before Michael could do more than shout a warning, Abby’s face went blank.
Then, as the fox sprang, she changed into a statue of clear, hard ice.
The fox yowled in frustration as it clawed and bit at the back of her neck, but managing no more than a few superficial scratches.
Michael took advantage of the time she had given him by lunging into the caravan to retrieve the rusted sword. He lay hands on his rucksack and threw himself out of the caravan, pulling the sword out and dropping the bag on the ground as he ran, spilling the contents.
He sprinted the few yards that separated him from Abby, a hoarse cry in his throat and the sword raised to strike. The fox saw him coming, issued a series of short, harsh barks, then shapeshifted again.
Michael found himself looking up into the face of what could only be described as a vampire-like woman, complete with glistening fangs and black wings sprouting from her shoulders. With a hiss she flew at him, driving him back. He let her come, knowing it would draw the creature away from Abby.
“Come on, come on, bitch! What ya got? Come on!” he growled, goading her with the sword.
The vampiress closed in, and with moves too quick to see, she knocked the sword away then hit him square in the center of the chest with the leading edge of a black, leathery wing. Michael caught his heels on the rucksack and landed on his back, flinging his arms wide to break the fall.
His hand fell on his grandmother’s precious stone, which must have rolled out of the rucksack when he’d dropped it.
Wrapping his fingers around it, he waited, heart speeding to dangerous levels as the vampiress closed within striking distance. Waited, sweating, until her hot breath blistered his face, until he could count the veins in her bulging eyes. Then he swung at her head.
Instead of spurting blood, the broken skin on the side of the creature’s face erupted with huge horseflies the size of golf balls. In moments, the thing had completely dissolved into a cloud of the droning black bugs. Abby’s attending Faeries chased them all away, leaving the morning eerily quiet, as if nothing amiss had happened at all.
Panting, Michael hauled himself to his feet.
“Well done.”
He spun and found a tall, Tolkienesque elf lounging against the side of the caravan, idly examining his fingernails, longbow thrown casually over one shoulder.
Michael relaxed and straightened. “Thanks for the help,” he said dryly.
The elf raised an eyebrow, as if he were actually offended. “You did well enough on your own. Had you needed it, I would have intervened. The Lady chose well.” With that, the elf sauntered away into the trees.
“I will never get used to these people,” he muttered, turning toward Abby as thunder rolled overhead.
Abhainn still hadn’t changed back from the block of ice. It was a perfect replica, captured just as she had been sitting on the rock.
He crouched by the rock, afraid to touch her. “Abhainn. Abby, can you hear me?”
Huge, fat raindrops began to splat the ground.
Maybe she can’t change back.
His mind kicked into gear, looking for a way to keep her from melting and running in rivulets down the side of the rock. But as the first drops of rain struck her head, she shifted back into normal form and fell, shivering and blue with cold, into his arms.
“Jesus, you scared me, woman,” he said, gathering her closer, rubbing her arms. The bare skin under his hands felt like the ice from which she’d just shifted. He quickly lifted her hair to examine the back of her neck. Relief flooded through him. Her skin remained unbroken.
“I…I…knew not…I c-c-could do that,” she managed through clattering teeth. “I-I-I sensed the Mei was behind me and-d-d it j-just happened!” Then, incredibly, she began to laugh. “I wonder…w-w-what else I can do?”
Before he could stop it, anger flared white hot in his chest. How could she laugh? She had come within a hair’s breadth of death, and yet she laughed!
Shaking, not trusting himself to speak, he scooped her up in his arms and strode toward the caravan.
“Mícheál?” she gasped between giggles and shudders of cold. “W-what is it?”
“The fate of your people depends on you,” he gritted out. “And you sit there laughing when your quest almost came to nothing.”
She leaned back in his arms, her laughter fading to a gentle smile. “But it did not,” she said simply. “I have you to protect me. All is well. And I have found that I have powers I knew not I had. Why not enjoy the moment?”
He stopped dead in his tacks, light rain tapping on his head. He had no answer for her.
“Mícheál,” she said gently.
He shook his head, surprised at his inability to speak, jaw clenched tight. She could have died. She could have…
“Mícheál.” This time her lips touched his ear.
At the touch of her breath on his skin, he drew her to him tighter still, buried his face in her hair, inhaling the fresh-rain scent of her. He could find no words to say other than her name.
The skies let loose with a torrent of rain.
Wildish Things
Carolan Ivey
eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, place
s, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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Macon GA 31201
Wildish Things
Copyright © 2007 by Carolan Ivey
Cover by Anne Cain
ISBN: 1-59998-678-7
www.samhainpublishing.com
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: November 2007
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