Cutie and the Beast

by E. J. Russell

  David clutched Alun’s arse with one hand, his other tweaking Alun’s nipple until—

  Alun tore his mouth away, gasping as he came in ropes between their chests, until he thought his heart would follow, to be laid at David’s feet. David whimpered, nuzzling Alun’s chest as he stiffened and shot.

  Still shuddering, Alun rested his head on David’s shoulder, his forehead damp against salty skin. He planted an openmouthed kiss there, at the base of David’s neck. It would leave a mark.

  Good. Because he’s mine.

  Afterward—with David held close in the circle of his arm—was the most at peace Alun been since before Owain had chosen the achubydd path. The brook sang to them, a soothing burble, and the breeze feathered David’s hair against Alun’s chin until he chuckled from simple contentment. Then David sighed and kissed the spot in the center of his chest, running a teasing finger from nipple to nipple, and Alun decided contentment was overrated.

  “No scar,” David murmured against his skin.

  “No. It’s part of the curse, so the druid’s potion dealt with that too.”

  David shifted, rolling until his pointed chin dug into Alun’s pectoral. Alun felt his gaze as if it were a shaft of Faerie fire. “What did it feel like?”

  “The potion, you mean? As if someone had cracked me open like an egg and put me back together with the shell inside.”

  David scrambled to a sitting position. “Does it still hurt?” He ran his hands over Alun’s torso, from neck to groin. “Where? What can I do?”

  Alun captured those wandering hands and moved them lower, over his cock and bollocks. “One or two things come to mind.”

  “Don’t change the subject.” David’s voice took on the tart tone he used when he thought Alun was being obtuse, although he didn’t move his hands, and began a slow stroke that woke Alun’s nerves like lightning under his skin. “I mean do you still feel any residual pain from the change?”

  “I’m feeling much better.”

  David sat back and lifted his hands in the air, fingers spread. “No more cock therapy until you tell me the truth.”

  Alun sighed. “Very well. But I need incentive. Come here.” He pulled David down against his chest again, capturing one of his hands, and pressed it flat against his belly, just below his rib cage. “Right here, this is where the curse waits, like a demon moth in a cocoon.” One whose legs were made of knives, its wings of sharded glass, but David didn’t need to know about that. Alun had had two centuries of dealing with pain. He could hide this one for long enough to prolong this precious time with David.

  “So it’ll hatch out again, like the freaking alien out of John Hurt’s chest?”

  “Who is John and why is he hurt?”

  “We really need to work on your cultural reference points.”

  David snuggled against him, and Alun forgot about his straining erection in the wave of contentment that washed over him.

  “Alun.”

  “Hmmm?” Alun stroked David’s hair, the tender skin behind his ear, his spine like smooth stones under his skin.

  “How did it happen? The curse? Will you tell me?”

  “It’s not a pretty story, bach. Why do you want to know?”

  “Because it’s a huge part of your life.”

  “Two hundred years out of two thousand. Your idea of huge—”

  “I’m talking about its effects on your life, doofus, not percentage.”

  “Doofus?” Alun lifted his head and stared at David, eyebrows lifted. “You couldn’t do better than that?”

  David glared back. “I said doofus and I meant doofus. From what you’ve said about the Court and Faerie, it doesn’t change much. It can’t because the magic that created it is so old and no one remembers it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you left, Alun. You changed. You became something other than an overdressed dilettante with good bone structure and perfect hair. That’s huge. So won’t you please tell me what it was that turned you into you?”

  “Well . . .” Alun stroked David’s arm. “It was a dark and stormy night . . .”

  David smacked him in the ribs. “Shut up. I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  David’s sigh ghosted across Alun’s chest, and he could imagine the accompanying eye roll. “Fine. Dark. Stormy. Continue.”

  “I was a different man then, you’re right. Arrogant.”

  “I don’t think that part’s changed,” David said dryly.

  Alun chuckled. “Entitled, then. Overcompensating. It was not long after Unification, and my brothers and I were committed to proving the Welsh fae were the equals of the Irish and the Scots.”

  Goddess, those days had been both heady and terrifying, when the dwindling number of fae in all six of the Celtic realms had reached a tipping point. Without joining forces, crossing the unspoken class and race lines that had kept the realms separate and borderline hostile, they might all have vanished for good. By the time the Queen had forged the Unification pact with the Daoine Sidhe, the Cornish fae were decimated, the Manx all but extinct, and the Bretons so reclusive that no one, supe or human, had seen one for decades.

  Only the Welsh had a large enough host, with strong enough warriors, to demand equal status. Alun and his brothers had literally fought for their place at Court. Their victories—on the battlefield and in the bedchamber—made them overconfident and far too self-important.

  “There was a man. His name was Owain. Owain Glenross.”

  “Was he a Sidhe warrior, like you?”

  “No. He was another kind of man entirely. Another race. We called them achubyddion. Rescuers.” Saviors. “They were nomadic, quite secretive, and for good reason. In fact, in the first years after we met and became—” He glanced down where David’s head was pillowed on his chest. Would this story change his opinion of Alun? Change his feelings? Would it upset him that he wasn’t the first that—

  “Lovers?” David’s gaze was steady, no accusation in his tone. Yet.

  “Yes. He would never tell me when or where we would meet next.”

  It had driven Alun crazy, not knowing the next time—if ever—he’d taste Owain’s mouth, feel the velvet skin of Owain’s cock against his tongue, watch Owain’s eyes glaze with pleasure as Alun moved over him.

  Perhaps Owain himself had never known. He hadn’t been the leader of his clan, so perhaps their movements had been as secret from him as from Alun.

  But Alun had never considered that at the time. He’d only known that the one man he wanted above all others, regardless of the lures cast out to him by dozens at Court, both men and women, hadn’t loved him enough to live openly with him, or at the very least, tell him where to find him each night so they’d never have to sleep apart.

  In Alun’s hubris, in his mistaken estimation of his worth at Court, he’d been certain he could protect Owain from the others who might covet him to further their own plans. Because everyone knew that as heady as draining an achubydd to the brink of death could be, it was the moment after death, when the soul flew outward, that was the true prize. Capture an achubydd’s soul on its flight, and you could do nearly anything, including create life where none had been.

  David nudged him. “So what happened?”

  “I’d seen Owain only the night before—he’d sent a message to meet him in a spot in the Outer World, at a cottage in the hills near Llithfaen. Somehow—I don’t remember how—I discovered his clan’s location afterward. They were camped in the mountains not far from the Stone Circle at the heart of Faerie, so I—I decided to deliver an ultimatum.”

  He only knew that he had an opportunity to be with Owain again after a single day, and that this time, he’d convince Owain to come away with him, to leave the clan and become Alun’s consort.

  He could swear he’d been as stealthy as any wraith when he stole out of Court that night. He’d left Cadfael in the stables and gone on foot, because the camp wasn’t far from the Queen’s pavilion, but
it was high in the hills, across a rocky escarpment that even the most sure-footed of steeds could not have passed.

  Owain objected to what he called Alun’s barbarian trappings, so he’d left his sword, longbow, and hunting knife behind, and carried only a belt knife.

  Foolish, foolish mistake.

  The thunder had rumbled in the distance, the wind whipping his hair across his face as he climbed.

  The camp was a dozen tents, no more, all the mottled gray-green of moss-covered boulders. Sturdy mountain ponies grazed in the sparse grass, and several heavy wagons ringed the fire in the center of the clearing.

  They were so pitifully few—a race on the verge of extinction—but Alun hadn’t thought of that, blinded to everything but his own desires. When he strode into camp, so certain of his welcome, Owain stared at him in horror, gaze darting to the other men, women, and children who milled about the circle of tents.

  Goddess, what did he think Alun would do? Murder them all? He didn’t even have a weapon.

  He held up his hands, palms out. An older man with Owain’s eyes, his hair completely white, stepped forward.

  “How came you here, Alun Cynwrig?” he said in a voice like steel-edged wind.

  “I came alone. On foot.”

  The old man canted his head. “That is not my meaning.”

  “I don’t know.” He glanced at Owain’s face, at the stark terror there. “I heard it, that you were camped here, from somewhere. A rumor.”

  “Yet rumors rarely have a truth so crystal clear that one can follow them like a hawk to his aerie.” He turned to Owain, his face implacable. “Perhaps you heard more than a rumor.”

  “Grandfather, I swear to you—”

  The old man held up one hand, and Owain dropped his gaze, staring at the ground at his feet, his fingers twisted together. “I need no oath, my son. But look to your own resolve. I fear you may have lost your path.” He turned to the onlookers. “Come. Let us leave Owain and Lord Cynwrig to their farewell.”

  Alun clenched his teeth, hands gripping his belt, a heavy molten weight in his belly. Farewell? Not bloody likely. Surely Owain loved him enough that he wouldn’t sever all contact.

  “Alun.” His voice was low and urgent, and he glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were alone. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  “What did he mean by our ‘farewell’? I know I shouldn’t have come with no warning, but I had to see you again.”

  Owain shook his head, blond hair brushing the shoulders of his leather jerkin. “You knew when we began this that our time was brief.” He sighed. “I fear you’ve only made it briefer. My grandfather doesn’t countenance outsider knowledge of our clan.”

  Alun strode forward and captured Owain’s face between his palms. “Then come away with me. I can protect you. Once I’ve claimed you as consort, no fae can touch you.”

  “You assume too much, Alun. You assume I want to leave my family. That I want to have no one but you at my back.”

  Alun’s fingers went cold. “But you love me. I know you do. Why wouldn’t you want me to claim you as consort?”

  “Think of the history of my people. What would that be but another form of enslavement. For what is enslavement but the total absence of choice?”

  “It’s not the same. I love you. I wouldn’t treat you like a slave.”

  “What of when you grow tired of me? Your race is notoriously fickle.”

  “I’m not like that.”

  “You’re fae. You can’t help but be like that.” Owain turned his head and pressed one kiss into Alun’s palm. “No, Alun. I can’t go with you.”

  Alun felt as if he’d been ripped open from throat to groin, his soul laid bare to the elements. “You’d choose them over me? What has this been, then? A mere fancy of yours? Revenge against the race that’s wronged yours?”

  “Not a fancy, cariad. Never that.” Owain’s voice was sad, resigned. “But I was selfish. I thought only of you and of myself—not of my people, my clan, or my family. I had hoped . . .” His gaze drifted to the surrounding trees and rocks, and he sighed. “No matter. We should have known that any love born of the blood of an innocent would never prosper.” He stepped back, out of Alun’s reach. “Good-bye, Alun.”

  “That’s it? Your grandfather decrees it, and you fall in line, surrender without a fight?”

  “I surrender because he is right.”

  Fury burned in Alun’s gut, swirled in his chest, clouded his vision. “Then damn you. Damn you and all your kind.”

  Turning on his heel, he strode blindly out of the camp and into the maze of rocks and trees, tears prickling the corners of his eyes. He paused before the final descent onto the meadow in back of the royal pavilion, eyes stinging worse than ever. Goddess, he couldn’t walk back into Court looking as if his heart had been cut out, even if it was the truth.

  Although he swiped at his eyes with a shaking hand, they watered still. The inside of his nose burned with the acrid smell of smoke. But the achubyddion’s fire had been unobtrusive, low and banked.

  He whirled and stared at the smoke roiling over the crest of the hill, exactly at the point where the camp had been.

  “Goddess, no.” He took off at a run, heedless of the stones sharp under his hands as he clawed his way up the rocky hillside, ignoring the frigid water seeping into his boots when he splashed across a stream without benefit of the stepping stones.

  The storm that had threatened all day overtook him, wind lashing the rain across his face. By the time he crashed through the trees surrounding the clearing, the smoke was choking him, burning his lungs, his eyes, and flakes of ash seared his skin.

  The camp was nothing but sullen embers, the tents and the wagons reduced to ash. And the people. Goddess, the people. Alun dropped to his knees next to the body of a child, a little girl no more than six or seven. He closed her sightless eyes with gentle fingers, commending her to the Goddess.

  The rain poured down in sheets, quenching the fires. Alun stumbled from one body to the next, each with the same rictus expression. Owain’s grandfather’s body lay beneath a rowan tree at the head of a path that led farther up the mountain, his arm flung out as if to point the way his murderers had gone.

  Goddess, had his parting curse brought this down on the heads of every man, woman, and child in the camp? “I didn’t mean it so. Goddess forgive me, I didn’t.”

  Owain was nowhere in the ruins of the camp. “Owain!” he bellowed, but heard nothing but the howl of the wind. He followed the path pointed out by Owain’s dead grandfather, staggering through a tunnel of ivy-choked juniper, until he emerged onto the Stone Circle plateau.

  The altar at the power point of the circle wasn’t empty. Owain lay there, his hands and feet bound. He turned his head.

  “Alun.” His voice was a thread, and Alun saw the livid bruises on his throat.

  Alun rushed across the grass as thunder boomed overhead. He fumbled with the ropes binding Owain’s wrists, but the rain had soaked the knots, rendered them slippery. “Goddess. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “You . . . did not . . .” he struggled to swallow “. . . but fae . . . curse . . . can’t . . . escape.”

  “I swear I didn’t mean this. If I could take it back, I would.” Shite. He pulled out his belt knife and sawed at the ropes, careful not to cut Owain’s abraded wrists. “I’ll make it up to you. Somehow. Anything you want.”

  Owain’s dull gaze shifted beyond Alun’s shoulder, and his eyes widened. “No,” he croaked.

  Then pain exploded at the back of Alun’s head.

  “When I woke up, Owain was . . .” Alun shuddered, clenching his eyes shut, the image still as fresh and raw as it had been that day. This time, though, David held him, stroking his face, his arms, his neck. Comfort, not seduction. “I never saw who did it. The instant I saw he was dead, the curse struck.”

  “I see where this is going,” David murmured, rising on his elbows to look down into Alun’s face. “You blame
yourself, don’t you?”

  “The worst part was that as soon as I’d become the beast, turned as hideous outside as I was inside, I was effectively banished from Faerie. Not only did I bring it on him, but I couldn’t avenge him.”

  “Is that what breaks the curse? From what you’ve said about Owain, vengeance doesn’t sound like his kind of gig.”

  “Not him, perhaps. But his grandfather was the Elder of the entire achubydd race. It wasn’t just a massacre of one roving band of achubyddion that night. It was a genocide. The last enclave. All their lore was oral, so everything about their race, their history, their traditions, their existence, was wiped out in a single night. All because of my carelessness in allowing myself to be observed, and my stupidity for allowing my hurt pride to leave them unprotected.”

  David shook his head. “You realize that—” A horn sounded in the glen, loud and bright, reverberating as if the player were only yards away. David startled and glanced around wildly. “What—”

  “It’s time for the ceremony.” Perhaps it’s just as well, before David thinks of more questions to ask—questions that I don’t wish to answer. Alun pushed his guilt aside for a little while longer, long enough to enjoy the rest of the night as a man whose hideous appearance wouldn’t drive his lover away. “We must return to the ceilidh glade.”

  “All right.” David sat up, but held Alun in place with one hand pressed to his sternum. “But don’t let this downer conversation ruin what came before.” He stroked Alun’s face with his other hand. “Holy cats. You are so freaking gorgeous. Do you think we’ll have a chance to sneak down here again before we go home?”

  A shiver of alarm chased across Alun’s skin in the wake of David’s touch. Now that he’d experienced true fae beauty, how would he react when the curse distorted Alun’s features again, when his scar once again bisected his chest?

  “Perhaps, if you’re still willing after what’s bound to be an interminable ceremony. Although you have as much reason to be ashamed of me here, with my history, as you do at home with my appearance.”