by Dani Harper
The subdued light that found its way into the shop was soothing to his eyes. Everything about this world was overbright, and there was so much to look at that it wearied the mind. Yet there was much to think about, much that pressed on him. He’d wanted to return to his own time and place—and gods knew, it would be a more peaceful existence. But it would be a lonely one too. Annwyl was dead and gone, and nothing would change that. The Tylwyth Teg had power to call on the dead as temporary puppets, as Lurien had done to swell the numbers of the Wild Hunt. But even the fae’s formidable magic could not bring anyone back to true life. What Celynnen had done could not be undone. Ever.
He thought about Annwyl, half wondering if he’d just been unfaithful to her. And he was forced to confront another truth. It had been both a triumph and a blow to remember her after all the centuries that had passed. A triumph after the faery realm had eventually forced him to forget her. A blow when he recalled that she was dead.
They had not known each other long or well while she lived, but he had loved her as much as he possibly could have. And he had mourned her with everything he had for as long as he could recall anything about her. Now, however, Annwyl was like a faded painting from a long-ago past, her likeness restored to him, but a likeness only. Somewhere along the way, unbeknownst to him, she’d transformed from living being to cherished memory. He’d done his grieving long ago. All that was left was to give her justice…
Brooke stirred in his arms. He kissed her forehead again, and stroked her hip, gratified when she snuggled closer. Here was a woman worthy of love, vibrant and unique, and there was no denying the powerful attraction he had felt for her from the beginning—even after he realized she wasn’t Annwyl. She was bold and strong and independent—qualities he wasn’t accustomed to in a woman, but he found that he wouldn’t change them a bit. There was more to consider, though. Brooke had a business of her own, talents and abilities that she utilized to make a living. Did he have a damn thing in this world to offer her?
And was he going to be long for this world if he returned to the faery realm? Because he would not abandon his vow. Annwyl had not deserved an early death by Celynnen’s hand, and he would avenge his betrothed before he undertook to build a life for himself in this time. If I live. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that confronting the coldhearted tywysoges would be anything but perilous. He had much planning to do, many preparations to make…
He shifted slightly, noting that his body was as tired as his mind, perhaps more, and that was new. Although his muscles were strong as ever, still capable of all he asked of them, he had not used them in a very long time. He’d forgotten that they needed rest as much as they needed food.
As a grim, he hadn’t truly required sleep but had instead lapsed willingly into a torpor whenever he was not called to attend the mortal world. It was the only way of bearing the endless breadth of days in the faery realm. Many grims were encouraged to follow the Hunt for sport. Those ones lost their inner humanity quickly, delighting in the chase, craving the kill. Other grims tiptoed like great shadows along the outskirts of the colorful, chattering Court. These lost their humanity as well over time, some shedding it willingly for the chance to be near the unearthly beauty of the Tylwyth Teg. They came to adore the Fair Ones and wanted nothing more than to bask in their glittering presence, fawning like the most obedient of pets.
But Aidan had wanted nothing to do with the fae. He’d refused to forget that he was a prisoner, refused to join his captors.
You refused me, too. But not for long, dearest Aidan. Not for long.
Aidan sprang up, his body instinctively crouching over the sleeping Brooke to shield her. Faery laughter filled his head, a thousand tiny crystal bells that chilled rather than delighted. The sound mocked him until it finally faded away to complete silence and a sickening realization.
Celynnen had found him.
A blast of music from her cell phone had Brooke flailing awake and the cats scattering from their snug spots on top of the covers. The loud ringtone had been programmed into her phone by George, of course. It was his walk-out music, the pounding beat that accompanied his strutting entry through the auditorium and up into the octagon ring. He’d chosen the song to get him into the right alpha-male headspace before a fight, but the music was also designed to whip up the crowd’s enthusiasm. Brooke was not enthused. At present, it was just noise, and it was annoying the hell out of her and she wanted it to stop. Unfortunately, the damn cell phone was somewhere in her pile of clothes on the floor and definitely not within arm’s reach.
Oh, for pity’s sake! She dragged a pillow over her head to drown out the sound. Finally, the ringtone ceased, replaced by the double beep that signaled a message had been left. Brooke breathed out a sigh of relief, then sighed again as she realized there was no hope of staying where she was—and where she was provoked some pretty interesting thoughts. No, now that the cats were awake, Rory was loudly asking for his breakfast. Jade and Bouncer flanked him as if in total agreement. Any hope of sleep had officially left the building. She dressed quickly, ignoring the cell phone that was still uttering periodic beeps from her jeans pocket. Aidan’s clothes were gone, and she wondered where he was. But she would get no peace until her furry overlords were fed.
Brooke made her way up the stairs to her apartment and followed her cats to the kitchen, where early morning sun poured through the tall windows like honey. She squinted as she fumbled in the cupboard for the Little Whiskers box and spilled some on the floor as she filled the three stainless-steel dishes. She needed to fill herself with coffee—it was barely 6 a.m. She glanced at the coffee maker, and her tired brain managed to remember that she needed to open a new bag of beans. She opened the door to her pantry—
And the vision overtook her. Without any warning or preamble, or even opening credits, Brooke found herself on the roof. The bright morning sun was gone as if it had never existed. Here, night and day had achieved a compromise: full dark was punctuated by chains of streetlights and garish signs bright enough to hurt her eyes. Between the lights loomed the black holes of shadows. The moon and stars had refused to join such an uneasy alliance and had abandoned the sky to the low-hanging clouds and silver rain.
Suddenly naked, she reveled in the summer downpour. The fat silvery drops were warm and soft. They shimmered as they burst upon her skin, as though they not only reflected the city lights but also captured tiny orbs of it. She was painted in light as she walked among her garden plants.
He’d taken the teak futon from the greenhouse and set it up amidst the tall potted fruit trees. The normally green vinyl cushions shone slickly, every color and none at the same time. Like faery eyes…she knew that without knowing how she knew it.
But her own eyes were admiring Aidan.
He stood with one foot on the arm of the futon, resting an elbow on his knee as if he were a marble statue from ancient Rome. The rain had combed his dark blond hair into darker strings, and his close beard was studded with jewels of water. As she approached, she could see tiny bright riverlets streaming over those heavily muscled shoulders. Some ran down his powerful biceps. Some trickled over the breadth of his chest to be channeled downward into the narrow vee of hair that bisected his taut belly. A single drop of rainwater glinted in his navel; the rest traced a silvery path farther down the darkened line to surround the thick base of his erect cock. There the droplets ran along the underside of the long shaft until they fell like a string of silver beads from the glistening head.
A few droplets that were not rainwater tickled down Brooke’s inner thighs until they were slick. There was no hesitation in her, and no questions, as she approached Aidan. She was light headed, dizzy with a single thought, and oh-so-thirsty. Cupping him with her hand, she knelt, not in supplication but in triumph. With parted lips, she sipped the rain from his cock, lapping its length with careful tongue in order to catch every glittering drop. She watched Aidan’s face as she stroked the water into her mouth with circled fin
gers, and yet her need was far from quenched. At last she slid her hot mouth over the plumlike head and swallowed it deep. Satisfaction resonated at last: here was what she wanted, this was what she craved.
She exulted in Aidan’s groans of pleasure, thrilled at the control that was all hers. His reaction to every nuance of her movements was intoxicating, even as she became aware of something new: a tiny pulse of magic that quickly strengthened into a solid thrum of power. Their energies were in perfect sync, a rare harmony uncovered between them. His strong fingers threaded through the rain-wet ropes of her hair, as if completing a link, a circuit. Sex united them, but magic merged them. Synergy flowed freely—and grew.
Her control was now an illusion. She was spiraling upwards even as Aidan did, both driving him and being drawn to some nameless towering peak. When he bucked and roared to the skies, her own orgasm shuddered and pulsed through her like untamed electricity. In a single blinding moment, sensation and something more fused them together, body and soul. That’s when the magic erupted—
And the phone rang. The phone? What the hell?
Brooke stood alone in her pantry, surrounded by colorful cans and boxes, as the phone rang incessantly in her living room. It was broad daylight. There was no rain here, no nakedness, no sex, and definitely, no swoon-worthy blacksmith. Plus, not so much as a tingle of magic lingered anywhere. The sheen of sweat that made her clothes stick to her skin didn’t count.
I hate visions. She really did. Although having sex in a vision certainly made it far more interesting—that hadn’t happened before. And the orgasm had been real enough, almost as good as the one she’d shared last night with the real Aidan. She could still feel those little inner aftershocks. That made a nice bonus for her body, but her underwear was soaked, her heart was wrung, and her brain was very far from satisfied. What she really wanted was to know what it all meant. Olivia had warned her that visions were difficult to interpret; they were a type of foresight, but all too often their significance couldn’t be discerned until after the fact.
To Brooke’s way of thinking, that made visions pretty much useless.
If the Universe was trying to show her that she and Aidan would be good together, it needn’t have bothered. Every instinct Brooke had already told her that—not to mention last night’s mind-blowing and magical sex. She knew she had feelings for him, no matter how illogical it was to have those feelings so soon. Her heart had gone ahead and made up its mind to make the leap from attraction to something more, without consulting her.
What that something more was, she didn’t want to examine just yet. She was very aware that Aidan could bring her far-deeper emotions than she’d ever imagined, feelings that could root themselves in the bedrock of the earth itself…
At present, however, Aidan was AWOL. He wasn’t in the shop or in her apartment, and she wasn’t quite certain how to interpret that. Last night’s sex had likely registered on the Richter scale—but it had been a spontaneous thing, completely unplanned (like spontaneous combustion). Was he off pacing the city, regretting what they had done? After all, he still had a fiancée in his past, and who could say what stage of grief he’d arrived at? Maybe he wasn’t ready to move on.
The thought hurt, and it annoyed her because it hurt, and it annoyed her even more that she completely understood how he might be feeling. She sighed heavily. For now, her best bet was to keep herself busy, busy, busy. Thinking wasn’t her friend right now. Weren’t there any errands she could run—like picking up breakfast from across town? Anything to buy her some time to shake off the aftereffects of the daring daylight dream. She couldn’t picture looking into Aidan’s iron-gray eyes until she could get the word foresight out of her head (and stop associating it with foreplay, which might take a whole lot longer). And until she could bear the possibility that he didn’t share her feelings, at least not yet, and perhaps even never…
Wait a minute. It was his damn quest, wasn’t it? Aidan was bent on revenge, on making Celynnen pay for murdering Annwyl. And if he survived that, he might still be determined to return to the past. Meanwhile, she still had her responsibilities as a witch. To hold the Gift is to protect the balance in all things and to restore harmony. To hold the Gift is to comfort the mind and spirit, and to heal both heart and body.
Dear goddess, who was going to heal her heart if Aidan left?
She brushed that thought away fast, even as she scrubbed the corner of her eye with the heel of her hand and tried instead to remember what on earth she’d gone into the pantry to get. The need for coffee brought her the answer, but as she reached for a bag of beans, the landline rang in the living room, making her jump.
“George, what the hell?”
He laughed. “Is that any way to talk to your best friend?”
“It’s six o’clock.”
“It’s seven, chica.”
She gaped at the clock on the wall. So it was. That meant the vision had taken a slice of actual time. As if it hadn’t made things difficult enough…
Unaware of her issues, George was still talking. “Look, you got anything on your schedule for the weekend after next?”
Only trying to figure out why she and Aidan had the same powerful and ominous tarot readings. And what on earth the Universe was trying so hard to warn them about. And why she was experiencing visions of hot naked sex, in addition to having her world rocked by the real thing. And how she was falling (or probably had fallen) in love with someone who was likely going to leave her.
She said none of that, however. “Depends, G.” Brooke rubbed her eyes and each of her sinuses. “What is this, Wednesday? Thursday?
“Wednesday.”
“So the time period in question is a week and a half away. I can’t think that far ahead. Hell, I can’t think, period—I haven’t even had coffee yet.”
“You don’t have to think, hermanita. Look, we got those boxes of colored glass in the back of Carmelita, right? And I need some room for luggage because I’m heading to Seattle with Felicia that weekend. So I thought it would make a great road trip if you and Mr. Death Dog drove up to Morgan’s place with us. We’ll drop the glass off, say hello, and carry on our way. You can catch up with Morgan while your buddy visits Reese to his little Welsh heart’s content.”
“It’s Rhys,” she corrected. “The way you say it makes him sound like a peanut butter cup.”
“Rhys, Reese, whatever. There’s more, you know—turns out that Reese built a blacksmith’s shop on the farm a few months ago. He’s got a couple of guys trying to make swords and stuff. Isn’t that what Aidan did for a living?”
“Yeah. Yeah, he did.” Excitement woke her up despite the lack of caffeine. This could be perfect for Aidan. “You’re brilliant, G.”
“I know.”
Of course he then had to tell her every detail he’d learned about the operation. She’d never remember it all when she told Aidan, but that didn’t matter. She’d remember enough.
“I’d have to check with Morgan of course, make sure she’s up for company,” she said.
“Done and done. Called her last night after Felicia and I made our plans. I mean, we could just drop the glass off ourselves, but I thought you’d like to come along. You’d have to bring your little SUV, though, because I’m not sure when I’d be back to pick you guys up.”
She frowned. “Didn’t you just meet Felicia at the gym? Like recently?” Like yesterday?
“Yeah, well, she’s something special. Everything clicked, you know?”
Brooke had heard that one before but didn’t say so. Being a supportive friend, she expressed as much of the required enthusiasm as she could muster and wished him well. Of course, she also agreed to the weekend excursion—not only did it make as much sense as anything could before coffee; she also owed G big time for all the work he’d done to clean up the catastrophic mess in her spell room. If he wanted her to go to Disneyland in Tokyo with him this afternoon, she’d do her best to make it happen. And of course he wanted the g
lass out of his beloved truck—it was above and beyond for the tricked-out Carmelita to be used for such lowly pedestrian purposes as hauling debris, the fact that she was a heavy duty pickup notwithstanding.
Then there was the fact that George, as always, was keen to get his party started with his latest girl. It would be interesting to see if the two were even still together by the weekend in question…
Brooke hung up, spared a longing glance for her coffee maker, then dragged herself into the shower. When she emerged, she heard footsteps in the stairwell heading for the roof. There was no disguising the racket, as she knew from experience. In the empty echoing shaft with creaking metal stairs, even her small cats sounded like a rampaging herd of elephants. So rather than an invading army, it could only be Aidan—he liked her garden, maybe he had gone up to enjoy the morning there.
Without stopping to say hello to me first? That can’t be good.
She finally ground some beans, put on a pot of coffee, got dressed in fresh clothes, and wished like crazy there were at least a few more things she had to do before going upstairs. She could sneak out, run those make-believe errands first, couldn’t she? But she wasn’t a coward, and she believed in grabbing the bull by the horns when necessary. She absolutely refused to be uncomfortable in her own home, and her garden was an important part of that home. Still, she couldn’t help but feel that the Universe had a warped sense of humor after giving her that lusty vision. On the roof? Really, that’s where she had to confront Aidan first thing this morning?
She sighed, poured the coffee, and went upstairs to give Aidan the news about George’s road trip.
EIGHTEEN
