She smiled. “We’ll make our own place. Something smaller and less grand than a palace. Something that people don’t want to fight wars over, and isn’t filled with too many soldiers.”
“A home,” he whispered.
A warm glow filled her. “A home.”
His mouth came down on hers. The kiss started off soft, a celebration of their new trust in one another and their faith in their love. But as soon as his lips touched hers they set off a spark of desire that had her hungry for more.
She slid her hands under his leather coat, running her palms along the hard muscles of his back and a shiver went through her.
This amazing handsome man was hers. He was leaving everything he’d ever wanted to head out with her into the unknown. She broke off the kiss and leaned back, still hanging on to the warmth of his body. “Are you absolutely sure this is what you want?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
The truth in his voice had her crushing her mouth to his, pouring out all the love and desire and anticipation that one word stirred inside her.
Suddenly, the dress was too much. “Help me take this thing off.”
Laces, and zippers, and buttons later they were both naked. She ran her hands over the scars on his body. “Someday I want you to tell me all of these stories.”
Something dark passed over his face. “Someday I will.”
All her bad memories had died with the Crone, but Ardan had to live with his. She kissed him, wanting to take away the darkness.
He responded with an intense heat that had her heart racing and her core softening with desire. He backed up to one of the cots and sat down, pulling her to him and nuzzling her breasts, moving between first one breast and then the other. She arched back, supported by his hands at her waist.
“Not enough.” She caught his face and brought it to one nipple. “Suck.”
“My my, are you sure you don’t want to be a queen? Or at least a princess?”
“Only for you.”
“As you wish, my love.” He took a nipple in his mouth, sucking and licking. She moaned, her hip bumping against his erection. “Mmm, climb on top.”
Thorn gripped his shoulders and straddled him, teasing the tip of his cock with her wet center. He quivered and she smiled, loving her position and the power she had over him—the power of a woman over a man, not a queen over her servant. She took him in her hand and squeezed. He gasped and his arousal triggered another rush of her own arousal.
This was the only power she needed, the power to please her lover. That, and the ability to discover who she was without all the expectations, gossip, and fear of the courts of Underhill.
She spread herself around the tip of his cock, using the slickness of her folds to facilitate sliding onto his tip. “Do you want me?” Her voice was breathy with arousal.
“Danu, yes,” he ground out.
“Good.” She slid the rest of the way on loving the guttural sound he made. She started to move, slow movements up and down until the pleasure radiating through her made her thighs weak.
Ardan’s fingers dug into her ass lifting her up and down the length of his hardness, moving her faster and faster, driving her to the height of pleasure.
“Yes, oh yes,” were the only words she could get out. She’d lost the ability to think, to create cohesive language, but she didn’t care. Her focus was the man between her legs and the desire soaring through her body.
She shuddered, squeezing his cock tightly with her inner muscles. Her orgasm rocked through her, and she lost control.
“Ah!” Ardan clenched her hips hard and his cock emptied into her.
The feel of him coming inside her triggered another explosion and she hung onto his shoulders shuddering through the aftermath. They slowed, sweat slicked bodies pressed together. Ardan tipped them back into the narrow cradle of the single bed and wrapped his arms around her.
She sighed full of satisfaction—not just in her man and the way he made her feel in bed, but at the fact that they were a partnership. Anywhere she went, he would go. And vice-versa. “That was the best one yet.”
Ardan’s smile pressed into her cheek. “I bet we can do better.”
She smiled back, nestling deeper into his embrace. “We’ve got all the time in the world to try and a whole world to try it in.”
She didn’t know where they were going, but it didn’t matter. He loved her. And she trusted and loved him. They were stronger together than they were apart, and each of them knew it. Underhill was only one of the worlds out there with magic. There would be others where they could find their destiny.
Together.
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HE BRUSHED HIS MOUTH against hers.
She tasted of fall—sweet cider and fresh crisp air and the warmth of the late afternoon sun. She tasted of home and hearth—all the things he’d thought he’d given up—all the things he’d thought had come his way again in the form of this luscious woman.
He needed more, he wanted more. The whiskey burned inside him, blending with his pain and need.
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LONE ENFORCER
LUCA CLIMBED INTO THE cab of the truck and leaned his head on the steering wheel. This sexy woman—with that wild hair and the mouth he wanted to kiss into submission—in one afternoon she’d turned his life upside down.
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HIDDEN
Chapter One
Ella’s heart pounded as she peeked around the doorframe into her father’s room. The king lay in his bed, his plump new nurse rocking by his side, knitting bright strands of sunlight into the afghan on her lap with a quiet rush of magic and surprisingly agile moves of her broad hands. Suki, one of the other ash-maids and a half-goblin, knelt at the fireplace pushing hot coals to the back of the hearth. There was no sign of Queen Ronatta, the woman who had taken Ella’s dead mother’s place, turning her childhood upside down in an instant. The breath Ella hadn’t even known she held rushed out, stealing away her nerves and leaving nothing but a deep resentment burning inside her like the hot coals glimmering red with heat.
Without too much thought, she forced the feeling down deep. She’d learned early, emotions like anger and resentment got you nothing but pain and beatings.
“Ready?”
Ella glanced at the foggy shape of a woman standing next to her. A rush of gri
ef filled the empty hole in her heart and she had to close her eyes this time and breathe through it. It was much harder to push aside this feeling. Her anger for her stepmother was like a rock in her shoe, something she’d learned to live with. But the pain of losing Rapunzel’s ghost grew worse each day as the image of the long-gone Fir-Bolg princess, dressed in an old-fashioned gown, blond narrow braids streaming down around her pointed ears, disappeared. Once upon a time Ella had been able to see the bright shine of Rapunzel’s crystalline elvatian eyes, but now, she was lucky if she saw even the shape of the ghost. She’d known Rapunzel since she was a little girl and close enough to the transition of life to see her without trouble. Only the very young or the dying ever saw her without a great effort on Rapunzel’s part and Ella had been very lucky to be able to see her this long. Someday soon, she’d be too old to see Rapunzel, and then where would she be?
Without friends, a servant in her own castle, and for the first time, truly all alone in the world.
“Ella, are you sure you want me to do this?” Rapunzel’s voice was a thin whisper that echoed off the cold stones of the tower.
She wasn’t allowed to sweep her own father’s hearth, even though she had to do every single one in Drusilla’s and Ana’s wing of the palace, as well as the fireplaces in her stepmother’s wing. But clean out her father’s own fireplace? Ronatta would never allow her this close. Instead, Ella had to sneak around like a common thief to steal time with the dying king.
Even though she’d barely known him, the king was still her father. This might be her last chance to say anything to him.
She gave a short firm nod. “Do it.”
She’d been able to see Rapunzel since she was a little girl, but not everyone could see the spirit. Only the very young, and the dying, seemed to see her. The rest of the castle could only see the things Rapunzel could do, but that was enough.
“As you wish.” Rapunzel slipped past her and into the room. A cold breeze moved with her and Ella shivered.
The thin, poorly dressed maid shivered too. She glanced behind her, her shoulders tight with anxiety, her light blue skin going pale. “Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?” The nurse looked up from her knitting.
“There’s a chill in the air.” Suki sat back on her heels and rubbed her arms, the tips of her delicately pointed ears going white.
“Well then, finish doing your work and get that fire crackling. We don’t want the king catching his death now, do we?” She glanced at the face of the man in the bed. “Well, at least not on my watch. Let him die on the night nurse’s shift, less work for me.” A small smile bent her lips and she shook her head and went back to her knitting.
Suki nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” With a nervous glance over her shoulder she bent back to her brush and pan and swept out the last of the ash, before reaching for the tongs and spreading out the coals from the back.
Rapunzel walked over to the nurse and inserted herself between the woman and the bright sun. A shadow fell over the room.
The nurse looked up, her wide face folded into a frown. “There’s nary a cloud in the sky but I swear the sunlight just dimmed. How am I supposed to weave sunlight into this afghan if there’s no sun?” She gave herself a little shake and turned to the window. “Ah well, it will come out again soon.”
Rapunzel leaned over and pushed the woman’s knitting from her lap. Yarn, needles, and afghan tumbled to the ground.
“Humph.” The nurse leaned over her bulky lap and scooped up the mess, but Rapunzel wasn’t done with her yet. The ghost pushed the ball of yarn out of reach of the woman’s outstretched hand and rolled it across the room. “My word.” The nurse looked around. “Suki, shame on you, playing tricks on an old woman.”
“It wasn’t me.” Suki’s blue skin now had an underlay of green. Ella thought the girl might puke. “Maybe it was the ghost.”
“Piddle.” The nurse sniffed. “Queen Ronatta would have told me if there was a ghost.”
The ghost glided over to the wall and tilted one of the pictures to the side. She did the next one the other way, and the next one, until the entire row of paintings hung tipsy turvy on their wires.
“It’s the ghost! She’s here!” Suki dropped her brush and pan, spilling ashes all over the hearth and the rug beside it. She skittered backwards until she bumped into a chair and shrieking, bounced off it, glancing frantically from side to side.
The nurse’s mouth gaped. “Suki! I told you not to scare me.” She reached out and slapped the goblin girl on the arm.
“It’s not me.” Suki stuffed her knuckles into her mouth. Her next words were muffled. “It’s her. She’s come for her revenge.”
The nurse heaved her bulk up out of the chair. “If it isn’t you, and it sure as mushroom caps isn’t a ghost, then what is it?” Her mouth pinched together. “Who’s playing tricks on me? I’ll see you get yours.”
Rapunzel floated to the candles on the mantelpiece and, using a bit of magic from the tip of her finger, lit them, one by one.
Suki bared her narrow-pointed teeth. “Grr!” And bolted for the door, calling over her shoulder as she passed Ella. “Run! While you still can!”
A brass candlestick lifted off the fireplace, floating towards the nurse. She screeched and raced out of the room after Suki, her knitting unraveling, trailing yarn and sunbeams as she ran.
Ella covered her mouth and smothered a laugh. She felt bad for Suki. After all, the thin girl with skin the color of faded periwinkle blossoms, was Ella’s companion at the bottom of the servant’s ladder—sisters in the ash-heap of castle life. But she didn’t have one ounce of compassion for the nurse. The woman was Ronatta’s pawn through and through, only here to sit on her ass and watch the king die.
“Ella, you won’t have much time and I won’t be able to stay here much longer, I’m running out of power.” Rapunzel was now barely a wisp of fog in the air. “It takes a lot of magic for me to move things, let alone light a flame.”
“Thank you.” Ella wished she could hug the ghost, but she’d learned a long time ago that wasn’t possible. “I won’t be long.” She moved over to her father’s bedside and picked up his hand. She handled it gingerly, worried that even her touch would bruise the paper-thin skin. “Papa? Papa can you hear me?” She gave it a light squeeze. “Papa?” He didn’t even twitch.
Her chest constricted.
The tips of his pointed ears were so thin she could see through them to the frail wispy white curls of hair tucked behind the backs. His color was gray and his breathing so light, she had to lean close to hear. She’d never known him well. Even when she’d been tiny, and her mother had been alive, he’d brushed her aside, but to see him like this now brought it all home. He was her last living relative and soon he would be gone.
“He’s so much worse.” She felt Rapunzel’s comforting chilly presence move behind her. “He hasn’t recognized me for over a hundred years, but at least he was conscious. Now...” The tightness in Ella’s chest moved up into her throat, choking off her voice.
Gone was the strong muscular father she remembered from the days before he’d married Ronatta when she’d been a little girl and watched him in awe. This man was old—far, far older than his thousand years. For a fae, he should be in the prime of mid-life, strong and hearty, ready to lift his sword and ride to battle. Instead, here he was, bed-bound and death ridden.
She glanced up at Rapunzel. “He’s not even twitching. I thought, at least, he’d talk to me.” She blinked back tears.
She caught a glance of herself in the mirror and rubbed at the bit of soot on her cheek, smearing it and making it worse. Would he recognize his little girl, his princess, in this scarecrow of a maid, dressed in a faded uniform, her rowdy black curls constrained, covered by a kerchief? Maybe he’d see her in the green eyes Rapunzel told her were just like her dead mother’s. But then again, many Tuathan had green eyes.
No. She’d grown up—and not into a princess. Even if he knew she
was here, he wouldn’t have a clue who she’d become. She wasn’t even sure who she’d become.
“I’m sorry.” Rapunzel drifted toward the window. “Even though my Gift is healing, in this state, I’m useless.” Her voice had faded away, but Ella heard the bitterness. “It takes more power to heal than it does to light candles, or push knitting out of an old woman’s hand.”
“You can’t blame yourself. You’ve done so much for me.”
“I could have done more. I could have been there the day she bound your powers.”
A wash of familiar self-pity flowed through Ella. Like all fae, she had magic, but she should have been immensely powerful. Like her father had been. Like all royalty were. But before she’d grown into her magic, Ronatta had bound most of it. Her Gift was there, but the bulk of it was inaccessible. Sure, she could do small magics, even use her specialty, green earth magic, in a way. But she would never have the power of a true princess. Never have that special relationship with the land that all the royals had. Never hold a kingdom by right and power, as her ancestors had done. No, she was stuck watching her powerful father waste away, and her life serving the woman who had taken them both down.
She shook her head, shaking away the regrets. This was now, and now was all she had. “You can’t be everywhere, Rapunzel. You have limits. And I have some magic left.”
“Oh, yes.” Rapunzel made a face. “She left you just enough magic that no one would be suspicious, but she took so much that no one would believe you were a princess. Not you, Ella, the ash girl, with such a meager Gift that no one would think you could be anything other than a servant.”
Ella pressed her lips together. “My Gift may not be much, but it makes me happy.” She loved wandering in the garden, making the flowers bloom.
“I’m sorry.” Rapunzel hugged her, but all Ella felt was a chill.
Bespelled: A Fae Fantasy Romance (Fae Magic Book 5) Page 22
