by Arianna Hart
Declan swore and kicked out at the hand holding the knife. The thug released her purse and dove for the knife a second ahead of Declan.
Call 911, call 911! Her brain shrieked as she watched the two men wrestle for the weapon, but she couldn’t seem to get her hands to work. All her attention was focused on the violence unfolding in front of her. Ciara let out a scream as the thug got the upper hand momentarily and stabbed Declan in the side.
Declan managed to knock the guy off him but the damage was already done. A steadily growing pool of blood spread over his shirt. The sight of all that blood must have freaked the guy out because he looked at Ciara, who by now had her phone in her hand, and took off running down the street.
She scrambled over to where Declan lay on the sidewalk. Everything had happened in seconds, and she was only now recovering her wits.
“Stay still, I’m calling an ambulance.” She’d only dialed the 9 so far.
“No. It’s nothing. I don’t want an ambulance.”
Nothing? Blood drenched his white dress shirt and soaked the ground under him. She couldn’t believe he was still talking after losing that much blood.
“This is not nothing. You need a doctor.”
He closed his hand over hers, shutting her flip phone at the same time. “I’ll be fine. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“That’s hard to believe, because it looks pretty damn bad!”
“Honestly, I’m okay. See?” He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.
Ciara had little medical training, but she’d worked in an emergency room long enough to know that much blood loss was bad. He should be going into shock, not standing up, however weakly.
She stood next to him and pulled his shirt aside. The wound had closed up as if it had never been there. Shock had her doubting what she knew she’d seen. Ciara shook her head as if that would help her reconcile what she was seeing now to what she knew had happened.
Damn it, she knew the knife had gone into his side. His shirt had a hole in it and was still wet with blood.
But there was no wound to be seen.
“Perhaps we should go to your place so we can talk. I don’t think I’m dressed appropriately for dinner and we should clean up a bit. You’ve got some nasty scrapes on your knees.” He guided her toward her car.
A bubble of hysterical laughter burst from her. He was worried about her skinned knees? He’d had a knife in him. She was not going insane, she knew what she’d seen.
“Hand me your keys, love.”
She handed them over without hesitation. There was no way she could drive at this point. As they walked down the street, he seemed to regain his strength while hers drained out of her like water through a sieve. He helped her into the car as if she was the one with a life-threatening injury, not just a few cuts and scrapes.
A shiver wracked her frame even though the night was mild.
“I’ll explain it all when we’re at your place, okay?” He turned the heater on high before smoothly backing out of the parking spot.
“Sure.” He’d explain how he’d healed right before her eyes? Good luck with that.
Chapter Five
Ciara’s face was pale and her blue eyes were huge. She hadn’t said anything yet and Declan fought the urge to fill the silence with inane chatter. He hadn’t planned on telling her the entire truth about what he was and how she might be involved in Morrigan’s convoluted curse until he absolutely had to.
That plan was shot to hell.
“You can park here. I’m on the second floor.”
She was starting to recover from the shock of the attack. The bastard had only scared her, not hurt her badly.
He could feel waves of curiosity rolling off her as she walked up the stairs, but she didn’t ask any questions—yet. No doubt they were coming.
As she unlocked the door to her apartment, her scent surrounded him. Slightly floral, slightly citrus and completely female. A spike of lust speared him, his balls tightened and his cock hardened uncomfortably.
Fuck. His dress pants didn’t exactly hide a hard-on. She was going to think he was more of a freak than she already suspected.
She opened the door and led him through a tiny hall to a cozy living space. Brightly colored throw rugs cushioned the hardwood floor. There was a couch that looked like it would swallow him if he sat in it, a rocking chair and several bookshelves stuffed with paperbacks and curious little figurines of fairies and such. Plants filled the space by a sliding door that presumably led to a balcony of some sort.
There wasn’t a lot of room, but it felt homey. For someone who lived mostly in hotels, it was as comforting as the smell of fresh-baked cookies. His stomach growled at the thought of food and he jumped on the perfect distraction.
“Do you think we could order a pizza or something? I’m starved.”
She stared at him incredulously before shaking her head. “Sure. Why not.” She crossed to the small kitchen area and pulled a menu out of a drawer. “I’m going to wash up, order whatever you want.”
As she brushed by him, he grabbed her arm. “I’ll explain everything. I promise.”
“You can try. Nothing about you has made sense from the first.” She shrugged off his grasp and strode down the hall.
What did she mean by that? Except for the knife incident, everything else was fairly normal. Okay, maybe the triskel appearing on her wrist might have been odd, but that could be explained by drunkenness.
His stomach growled again, even louder. The healing always left him hungry enough to eat a cow, but pizza was a fine substitute. He ordered a large pie with everything and a small one with only cheese in case she was picky. The guy said they would be there in thirty minutes which was a godsend. Now, if she had a beer in the fridge, life would be good.
“I haven’t had a chance to go to the store since I’ve been home, so there isn’t much in there,” Ciara said.
She’d changed into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and put her hair up in a knot on top of her head. Curls sprung loose and framed her delicate face even as he watched. Her color was better and she had a steely glint in her eyes that didn’t bode well for any prevarication on his part.
“I was hoping to find a beer. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“I don’t have any beer, but I have a nice bottle of merlot I’ve been saving. Right now looks like the perfect time to break it out.” She bent down to open a cabinet by the refrigerator and her shorts pulled tight across her lush bottom.
He couldn’t hold back the tide of desire that crashed over him at the sight of her ass up in the air. It reminded him too much of their night together when he’d taken her from behind and she’d damn near bitten a hole in the sheets.
She spun around at his soft moan and her eyes widened as she spotted the bulge in his pants.
“Are you kidding me? You got stabbed not an hour ago and now you’re ready to fuck? What are you, some kind of mutant?”
“Not exactly. How much do you know of your ancient Celtic history?”
Ciara couldn’t believe Declan was standing in the kitchen with an erection the size of Texas calmly asking her about her knowledge of ancient Ireland after he’d been stabbed in the side. In the bright light, his shirt looked even worse. There was no denying he’d lost a lot of blood.
Yet he was the one who’d had the strength and wit to drive them home. Was this really happening to her or had she fallen into some warped parallel universe?
Nothing had been sane since she’d first laid eyes on him. The instant attraction she’d felt for him in the bar, letting him take her back to his room and the things they’d done there were absolutely not normal for her. She’d never had a one-night stand in her life and she was thirty-five. Michael hadn’t been her first lover but no one had ever made her feel like Declan had that night. He’d drawn reactions from her body she didn’t know she possessed.
Could that have anything to do with his crazy ability to heal from a stab wound?
Okay, that was
just weird. Insane.
But so was the fact that he was standing here like nothing had happened when she’d seen him bleeding on the ground.
Before she could answer him, the intercom buzzed loudly, breaking the tense silence.
“That’s the pizza. I better get it, you’re not exactly presentable.” She nodded at his ruined shirt and ripped pants. “Open this and be ready to talk when I get back.” Handing him the bottle of wine, she stalked to the door and tried to bite back the questions buzzing in her head.
She was struggling to think logically. It didn’t help that his nearness made her nerves sing. She knew exactly what he could do with that erection tenting his pants and her body wanted it right now. This was not how she’d expected their dinner to go.
When she got back in the apartment with the two pizza boxes, he’d laid out plates and napkins on her tiny dining table and had the merlot in her good wine glasses.
He’d also taken off his shirt.
The wits she’d worked so hard to bring to order scattered in a million directions at the sight of his tanned chest and rippling muscles. She wanted to trail her tongue down the thin line of hair arrowing to his cock. Again. The Celtic knot over his heart matched the one on her wrist perfectly. Just looking at it made her clit swell and tingle for some reason.
“That smells fantastic. Come, sit.” He held out a chair as if they were at a fancy restaurant, not in her small apartment with her in her pajamas and he only half-dressed.
“Thanks.” Her thighs quivered as he brushed against her. She needed to think straight but all she wanted to do was lap him up.
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to go about telling you what’s going on in a way you’ll believe, but I’ve not been altogether successful.”
“Just tell me the truth.” She took a sip of the wine he’d poured.
“I will, but it’s a long story and most of it you won’t believe anyway.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean? “Try me.”
His eyes flamed and he glanced at her chest where her nipples stood out plainly through the thin T-shirt.
This time, she gulped the wine.
“I’m going to start at the beginning. If you could suspend your disbelief for a while, it’ll help.”
“After watching your skin heal practically before my eyes, I’m pretty open-minded right now.”
“Right.” He took a deep breath. “Long, long ago, Ireland was a land of constant battle. Vikings attacked from the seas, clans fought each other as much as they fought foreigners and a man’s life could be cut short from a simple accident as easily as from an enemy’s sword.”
Some of this sounded familiar either from her Nana or from books she’d read. She took a bite of pizza and waited for him to continue.
“The gods were closer then. The veil separating the mystical world was far thinner than it is in this day of science and technology. Druid priests and priestesses didn’t just sacrifice and pray to the gods, they actually communicated with them.”
Okay, this was getting a little weird now. She bit her tongue and let him continue though, sensing he was getting into a rhythm.
“I had given my loyalty to my chief and was honor-bound to serve him for a year and a day. During that time I fought many battles under his banner and received great glory and honor. With that glory came women.”
Okay, when did this go from a history lesson to a memoir? Was he saying he lived back then? That was impossible. And yet, his wound healed itself before her eyes. This was just too strange.
Instead of calling the local psych ward, she just went with it. What was one more crazy thing in a day of insanity? “I see times haven’t changed much.”
A smile crossed his face, making his cobalt eyes sparkle. “I’m afraid women are my biggest weakness. Which leads me to my current situation.”
“Are you saying a woman is responsible for you healing from a near fatal injury?”
“Not just any woman, a goddess. Morrigan.” He said it with such bitter anger a shiver chased down her spine. “I won’t give you all the gory details, but you get the idea. I seduced a priestess of Anann, goddess of fertility. When she came to me on the eve of a battle telling me she carried my babe and begging me to marry her, I pushed her off. I couldn’t think about marriage when I was going into war.”
“Would you have married her if there was no battle?” she asked, suspecting the truth.
“Probably not. I wanted nothing to do with staying by the hearth when there was glory to be had. And Fiona, the priestess, wasn’t right in the head. I think today she would have been labeled schizophrenic, but at the time she was just gods touched.”
“So you kicked her to the curb and went on to battle and glory?”
“Not quite. She may have been crazy, but she was able to commune with the gods. Annan was only one aspect of the three goddesses. One of the other aspects was Morrigan, goddess of battle and death.”
Oh boy, she could see where this was going. Foreboding made her stomach sink.
“What happened to the woman who carried your child?”
“After I left, she took her own life, killing herself and the child she’d sacrificed so much to conceive.”
Ciara let out a gasp of dismay. She couldn’t imagine ever destroying a child, no matter what she thought of its father.
“I didn’t find that out until after Morrigan visited her curse upon me. There was a battle and my whole clan was wiped out. Everyone was dead. Except me.”
“Because of Morrigan?”
“Yes. Her curse is that I may not find the solace of death until I not only fall in love, but the woman has to return that love and we must conceive a child.”
“To replace the child who was lost.” Her head spun. This made no sense. None whatsoever. Goddesses did not come down to earth and visit curses on men so they lived for hundreds of years.
Yet here he sat, the Celtic eternity knot stood out clearly on his pec. The three goddesses in one.
Holy shit.
“How old are you?”
“A thousand years old, give or take a decade. We didn’t really have calendars in those days, nor anyone who could read them. And the years tend to blur together after a while.”
“I’ll bet.” Ciara pushed her plate away. There was no way she could eat anything else with her stomach tied in knots. “So what does this have to do with me? Are you telling me you’re madly in love with me?” She’d meant to sound flippant, but her heart stumbled in her chest at the thought.
“I haven’t changed so much in a thousand years that I’m ready to go jumping into a declaration of love. But there’s no denying you are a key player in this mad drama.”
“How do you figure?”
“We never went to a tattoo parlor. You didn’t have that mark when you were in my bed. So unless you got it done on your way from my hotel to yours, Morrigan has marked you too.”
Ciara stared at the tattoo with dawning horror. She’d woken up with this mark and had assumed she’d gotten it on the way to his hotel room. With shaking fingers, she ran her hand over it and jumped when Declan let out a groan.
“What?”
“Every time you touch that mark, I get hard enough to pound nails.” His eyes were pools of blue flame, scorching her from across the table.
Ciara thought back to all the times she’d traced the lines and realized it had gotten to be a habit every time she thought of him to touch it. And she’d thought of him a lot.
“Really? So all I have to do is brush my fingers across it and you get an erection?” She put her words into action.
His eyes closed and a muscle in his cheek twitched. “Yes,” he growled.
Feminine power surged through her. When they’d been at the hotel together, he’d been the seducer and she had been the well-satisfied seduced. My, how the tables had turned.
“I bet you could use a little relief right about now.”
“This isn’t a game.” The
muscles of his chest rippled as he clenched his fists. “I’m trying to be a gentleman and not put you in a difficult position.”
“I seem to recall several positions you put me in the other night. I liked every one.” Her breasts swelled and grew heavy. The soft cotton of her shirt abraded her engorged nipples so she took it off as she pushed her chair away from the table.
Without a shred of self-consciousness, she rounded the table to where Declan sat, staring at her naked chest, his jaw hanging open. Desire and power roared through her veins. She felt wanton and womanly and powerful. It was a heady combination.
“If I remember correctly, during our one night together we had sex against the wall, in the bed with me on top, with you on top, and you coming from behind. Did I miss any positions?”
“No, I think that’s everything if you’re not including oral in the mix.” Sweat had broken out on his forehead and his voice was thick with passion.
“Umm, yes, I’d forgotten about the sixty-nine. Regardless, we didn’t have sex in a chair.”
“A grave oversight.”
“I agree. I think we need to take care of that right now.” She whipped off her pajama shorts and straddled his lap.
A tiny portion of her brain screamed at her to run away from the crazy man. That irritating, logical part was completely overwhelmed by the need boiling in her system. Desire for him swamped her and she couldn’t resist touching him for another second.
Shoving her fingers through his hair, she pulled his face up for a kiss. The touch of her lips on his seemed to break the last of his restraints and he practically devoured her. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, demanding a response.
She gave one happily. The taste of him filled her, causing her blood to rush through her veins double time. Her heart beat like a jackhammer as she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer.
His hands gripped the cheeks of her ass and kneaded them none too gently as she rocked against him. Ciara groaned as his cock brushed against her over-sensitive pussy. She was sopping wet and so ready for him, but his shaft was still covered by his pants.
“You’re wearing too many clothes,” she gasped.
