Earth's Hope

by Ann Gimpel

  She clasped him to her, barely believing he was back, and buried her face in the crook between his neck and shoulder, breathing him in. Her heart pounded against her ribcage, and her eyes sheened with unshed tears.

  He smoothed a hand down her hair and spoke into her mind. “Och, mo croi, ye’re a sight for sore eyes. I was so worried the dark gods or Lemurians would attack.” He pushed her toward the house, still tangled in her arms.

  “Hold up there.” Gwydion grabbed Fionn’s arm. “Afore ye disappear into your bedchamber with the lass, we want to hear what happened.”

  Fionn sputtered, but Aislinn let go of him, stepped away, and murmured, “We all want to know, so you may as well tell it once, rather than twenty times.”

  Fionn shut his eyes for a moment and took in a breath, blowing it out slowly. Dark smudges rode beneath his eyes, and lines that hadn’t been there before carved into the sides of his mouth. When he opened his eyes, he scanned the group with his astute, blue gaze that didn’t miss much, and frowned when he noticed Aislinn’s rucksack.

  “Ye were coming with them to find me?” he asked, his voice carefully devoid of inflection.

  Aislinn knew what was coming. She squared her shoulders and studied him through narrowed eyes. “Of course. Is that a problem?”

  Instead of answering her, Fionn stomped to Dewi and Nidhogg and demanded, “What were you thinking? You too.” He raked Gwydion, Bran, and Arawn with a scathing glance.

  “Why wouldn’t they take me?” Heartily sick of being protected, Aislinn didn’t move from where she stood.

  “Mayhap because the Harpies kill humans who set foot on their island? Or worse, steal their souls, enslaving them.” Fionn’s harsh tones could have etched metal.

  Gwydion scrubbed a hand down his face. “Och, and I’d forgotten that last part.”

  Fionn crossed his arms over his chest. “And did all of you forget about how predatory the Harpies are?”

  “Not sure I ever knew.” Nidhogg blew steam.

  “Get over yourself,” Dewi huffed at Fionn. “No harm was done. Even if you hadn’t shown up, the five of us are more than a match for three Harpies.”

  “I do a fair job protecting myself,” Aislinn cut in. Pain slashed and she looked down to find Rune’s jaws around her calf.

  Oops. Holy crap! Everyone’s a prima donna today.

  She dropped a hand onto the wolf’s head. “Rune’s damned good at protecting me too.”

  He let go of her then, and glanced up with his amber eyes. “Thank you, mistress, for remembering I exist.”

  “For Christ’s sake!” She slammed a fist into her open palm, spun, and bolted across the greenway toward the moat. Life had been a whole lot simpler before Rune, Dewi, and Fionn. No one had any expectations of her then—

  Except the Lemurians, once they suckered me into working for them.

  Her pace quickened until she was running across the heath as fast as she could. The gates to Fionn’s manor house flashed past. Something red flew above her and she realized Dewi was tracking her. “I’m not yours, either,” she shouted.

  “Ah, but you are,” the dragon replied.

  Footsteps pounded behind her. She didn’t have to turn around to know it was Fionn. His energy was unmistakable. “Don’t touch me,” she screeched as he pulled alongside her.

  “And why ever not?” he demanded, not sounding the least bit out of breath.

  Aislinn ground to a halt. She’d nearly made it to the rocky beach fronting the sea. When she spun to face Fionn, it was all she could do not to gnash her teeth in exasperation. “We’ve had this conversation maybe twenty times. You have to stop trying to protect me.” She gathered a measured breath. “It hurts my feelings that you don’t trust I’m capable of taking care of myself. How the hell do you think I got through the three years after the Lemurians took over before I met you? It wasn’t by being incompetent.”

  He extended a placating hand. “Now, lassie.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t lassie me. How about American English?”

  “All right,” he said, with perfect diction, and dropped his hand to his side. His face twisted into something bitter. “I thought you’d be glad to see me, obviously I was wrong.”

  She ignored his barb. “What happened between you and that Harpy? You know, the Aello one you fucked before.”

  “Is that it?” He knit his brows together. “You’re jealous?”

  “Why the hell wouldn’t I be?” She closed her teeth over her lower lip, chewing in consternation. “I know you didn’t go there of your own free will, but you were gone for a long time. Why didn’t you come right back?”

  “I couldn’t. Something separated me from my magic.”

  Aislinn blew out a breath and realized Dewi hovered above them, listening. She cast her gaze skyward. “Go away.”

  “What’s the Maclochlainn’s business is my business,” Dewi informed her archly.

  “Bullshit!” Fionn said. “You just want grist for the gossip mill. Go back to the house, Dewi. Please.”

  “Humph. No gratitude.”

  “I’m grateful to you for lots of things,” Aislinn said, “but you wouldn’t want Fionn and me listening in on one of your private conversations with Nidhogg.”

  Steam plumed from the dragon’s mouth, but she turned and flapped her way back toward Fionn’s home. Aislinn clasped her hands behind her back. “All this makes me tired. Cut to the chase, Fionn. How’d your magic suddenly reappear so you could find your way back here?”

  “You noticed how weak it was—” he began.

  She tilted her chin. “Not what I asked.”

  “All right. Aello left me by myself, and I tried and tried to reach my power, but couldn’t. Since I needed help, I petitioned Cronus, one of the Greek gods—”

  “I know who he is,” she interrupted. “Just tell me what happened.”

  Fionn blew out an exasperated sounding breath. “I’m trying to, but you’re not making this easy.”

  She unclasped her hands, drew them to the front, and made a beckoning gesture. When he took a step toward her, she shook her head. “Talk first.”

  “Fine.” He nodded sharply, clearly hanging onto his own temper by a thread. “Cronus showed up in a cyclone that created such a psychic disturbance it severed whatever chokehold the Harpies had placed on my magic.”

  “Before that, did anything happen between you and that Harpy?” Aislinn held her breath. She didn’t really want to know, but had to ask the question.

  “No.”

  She tilted her head to one side, trying to mine for inflection beneath that one word. “Did you want to?” she persisted.

  “For Christ’s sake, Aislinn.” Breath whistled from between his teeth. “Do you want to fuck the dark gods when they spray you with their libido fountain and flash their hard-ons?” She opened her mouth, but he waved her to silence. “Of course you do, but you don’t act on it. That’s the dividing line, whether we act on it, not whether someone gets our juices flowing.”

  Aislinn winced; he had a point. And a damned good one. She’d come within an angstrom of giving in to the dark gods, even knowing sex with them would freeze her from the inside out. Never mind the times she’d come when they flicked their knowing gazes her way, or masturbated in front of her. As if Fionn had been inside her mind—and he probably had—he walked to her side and gathered her into his arms. After a moment when she stiffened, she allowed herself to relax into his embrace. He ran his hands down her back, kneading tense muscles, before resting them on her ass and snugging her against his body where his cock stiffened between them.

  Rune and Bella emerged from behind a nearby clump of gorse bushes. “Since they’re going to make up,” the raven quorked, “we may as well go hunting.”

  Aislinn turned her head to stare at her wolf and asked, “You were there all along, eavesdropping?” Rune batted his eyes at her and she snorted. “You’re as bad as Dewi.”

  Fur flew as he shook himself. “
I’m much stealthier and not nearly as likely to gossip.”

  She grinned. “Truer words were never spoken. Stay closer to the manor house than this while you’re hunting.”

  “We will,” Bella cawed, and the pair turned to leave.

  “Does this mean ye’ve forgiven me, leannán?” Fionn’s Gaelic inflection was back. Worried blue eyes sought hers.

  “Since you didn’t do anything wrong, I’m not sure forgiveness is part of the equation,” she murmured.

  “Och, I may not have sinned with the Harpy, but I admit I was flummoxed—and furious—when I understood the others were going to bring you to the Harpies’ island.”

  “You can’t keep me in a box.”

  “I know that, lassie.” He tightened his hold on her butt. “Can we make up?”

  He wriggled against her, and heat began in her belly, desire that spread until breath clotted in her throat.

  She recognized a spell laced into his touch and giggled. “Wow! You must really want me if you’re using a love charm.”

  “More than life itself,” he murmured and tilted his head until his mouth rested over hers.

  Aislinn squirmed from under him. “Before we get lost in each other, I have a piece of good news.”

  “And what might that be?” Heat from his blue eyes impaled her until she almost forgot how to talk.

  “Dragons,” she finally managed. “There are four more of them.”

  He rubbed his thumb over her lips. “Aye, I already know about them.”

  “How?”

  “Bran and Gwydion spilled the beans.” Fionn smiled. “Aye, likely there is much to catch up on, but it can wait, mo croi.” Grasping the side of her face, he slashed his mouth over hers and kissed her hungrily.

  Aislinn kissed him with a desperation that started in her toes. As she clutched him to her and opened her mouth beneath his, she wondered if they’d make it back to the house before lust got the better of them.

  Chapter Ten

  Fionn sank his tongue into Aislinn’s mouth, reveling in how sweet she tasted. They’d gone rounds before over his almost insane need to keep her out of harm’s way, but he’d never be able to live with himself if something happened to her—something he could have prevented by… By what? Locking her in a Rapunzel tower deep in the woods, shrouded by spells?

  She sparred with his tongue, sucking on it, and his stray thoughts shattered. He wanted the woman in his arms, pure and simple. Wanted her with an intensity and ferocity that shocked him. Fionn tore his mouth from hers. “I’m going to teleport us into my bedchamber,” he said, his voice rough with need.

  Her eyes shone with lust, and the points of her nipples pressed into his chest. “Is your magic recovered enough? I can help.” She licked her lips lazily, her gaze never leaving his. Aislinn’s eyes were golden, just like her mother’s had been.

  When Fionn thought about it, he felt like the worst kind of dolt for not recognizing the connection straightaway. Instead it had taken Aislinn running into a ward and nearly dying—and a trip inside her body to Heal her—for him to identify her MacLochlainn blood. Before that, he’d suspected, but the connection had seemed so unlikely, he hadn’t believed it.

  “Earth to Fionn?” She smiled softly, fetchingly.

  “I can get us from here to the house,” he said gruffly, drew a spell, and counted through seconds while the greenery dissolved around them, exchanged for the whitewashed walls of his suite of rooms on the third floor of the manor house. He started pulling at her clothes as soon as he could and she responded in kind, unlacing the fastenings of his top and working on the buttons holding his faded jeans on his hips. He tossed her rucksack, jacket and top in a pile, and pushed her bra out of the way to suckle her breasts. She had the most amazing nipples, rose colored and the size of silver dollars. They puckered willingly under his ministrations, and she arched into his touch.

  “Do you suppose we’ll actually manage to get through this without being interrupted?” she asked, her breath coming in panting gasps as she wove her fingers into his hair.

  He lifted his mouth from her breasts and grinned rakishly. “Good point.” He shoved a bolt of magic at the door. “That should do it. If anyone knocks, we willna answer.”

  Aislinn pushed him backward until his legs hit the bed and he tumbled onto it. She unlaced his boots and tugged at them, jockeying them off.

  “What about yours,” he asked.

  “Getting there.” She pulled his jeans and shorts out of the way and captured his erection between both hands. Leaning forward, she licked around the glans, and he grunted at the sheer pleasure of her touch. Encouraged by his response, she took him most of the way into her mouth, working him with tongue, teeth, lips, and her hands. His cock jerked and shuddered under the attention and his breath came in harsh bursts as he rode a ragged edge of control. Every nerve in his body was on fire with wanting the woman bent over his body.

  “Lass.” He placed a hand on either side of her head and dragged himself from her mouth.

  “Mmm?” Her golden gaze settled on his face, and the skin around the corners of her eyes crinkled with mischief.

  “Lie next to me.”

  “But I was enjoying myself.”

  “Och aye, and I was enjoying you too, but I want all of you.”

  She wriggled onto the bed and arched her back, pressing her body against him. “Same problem I have. I always want to do everything with you at the same time. Lick, suck, fuck, kiss. And I never, never get enough.”

  “Goddess willing, ye’ll always feel that way, leannán.” He pushed to a sit and went to work unlacing her boots. Fionn made a clucking sound. “Ye’re needing boots.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. Better yet”—she toed off the boot he’d unlaced—“don’t tell me anything at all right now.”

  Fionn finished undoing her pants and jerked them down her hips, following them with her panties. The sweet musk of her arousal tantalized him and made his aching erection even harder. He traced a finger over the damp red curls surrounding her pussy, and she made a little mewling sound. He reached deeper and slid two fingers inside her, feeling her muscles clamp down on him immediately.

  Aislinn shifted and gripped his upper arm, dragging him down with insistent pressure. Her nipples were tight buds of wanting him and her pussy rippled around his fingers. He pulled his hand out and knelt over her, stabilizing his cock so it pressed against the entrance to her body. She scooted forward and lifted her long legs until they draped over his shoulders, opening herself for him.

  Just for him, only for him.

  Fionn almost couldn’t breathe. He’d never had this reaction to a woman before, where she held the power of life and death over him—or it felt that way. His life would be worthless without Aislinn by his side. With a groan of delight, he let himself sink inside her body. Surrounded by the liquid heat of her, he battled to stay the course. Coming immediately wouldn’t be the end of the world, but he wanted to fly with this woman.

  She settled her hands on his hips and tugged demandingly. Inchoate sounds burst from her, Gaelic mixed with goddess-only-knew what, but it didn’t matter. He understood completely. Once they got going, their lovemaking was always cataclysmic as their bodies crashed together. He meant to go slow, but soon he plumbed her hard, over and over as she writhed beneath him. The contractions of her first orgasm were hard to resist, and he drew a bit of magic to make himself last. Watching Aislinn was like watching a goddess with flame-colored hair spread around her in a canopy of living flame. Her face and chest were splotched rosy with desire, and she drove her hips upward, meeting him stroke for stroke.

  Somewhere between her third and fourth climax, his body rebelled and let him know that no amount of magic could hold back the tide. Semen boiled hot at the base of his cock. She lowered her legs until they were wrapped around his hips and pounded herself against him. Her eyes were closed and her head thrown back on a neck corded with passion.

  “Yes,” she
shrieked. “Now.”

  He didn’t know if she’d mixed magic in with the command, but his cock juddered inside her as he came. His vision wavered at the edges, and the only thing in the world was her slick sheath encasing him, urging him on. When he collapsed on top of her, there wasn’t enough air in the room to serve his thundering heart. Aislinn closed her arms around him and stroked his back and hair, crooning low in her melodic voice.

  Time passed before he came back into himself, still clasped in Aislinn’s arms. “Gods but I love you,” he said.

  She laughed, and the sound warmed him. “Not nearly so much as I love you, and that’s where we get into problems. I was blind with jealousy once I realized where you were—and that Perrikus had sent you there.”

  “Och, and I was blind with rage once I understood Gwydion and Dewi were hell-bent on dragging you into danger.”

  She twisted from beneath him until she lay on her side, so he turned onto his and faced her. Tracing the line of his cheek and chin, she said, “We’re like that O. Henry Christmas story.”

  It took a minute for him to make the connection, and then he smiled. “Ye mean the one where he sells his watch for combs for her hair—”

  “Exactly,” she broke in. “And she sells her hair to buy him a fob for his watch.”

  Fionn blew out a breath. “There are worse things to be than crazy in love, mo croi. On a more serious note, we have to come up with something to immobilize the dark gods. That they can rally the Harpies to abduct me is worrisome.”

  She snorted. “You think? I didn’t like it much when Perrikus showed up here gloating, either.”

  “I’m grateful that’s all he did.” Fionn shook his head. “Ye’ll have to catch me up on what happened.”

  “I will. Lemurians attacked, but it turns out they were just Perrikus’s puppets. They would have inflicted more damage, but we fought back. The humans helped—a lot.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Rub it in. We made an enormous mistake by not recognizing—and leveraging—their power earlier. Would ye like a bath?”

  “That would be nice.”