by Carol Oates
“I’m not hungry,” Triona announced without looking up from wiping Caleb’s forehead.
Eila arranged the plates on the small table between the couches. “Nevertheless, you should try to eat. We need to be at our strongest now. Starving yourself won’t help Caleb. If anything, it will only give him reason to complain when he comes round.”
Whatever was under the domes smelled divine, garlic and sweet tomatoes with a hint of basil. My stomach grumbled loudly.
“Sorry.” My face heated, and I was sure I went as red as whatever was on the plates.
Annice scooped loose tendrils of hair behind her ear and smiled. “You should go eat something too, Ben.”
Annice lifted one on the domes to reveal steaming, glossy ribbons of pasta tossed in red sauce. My stomach grumbled again. I needed a shower too. My skin gave off the musty scent of dried rain and itched uncomfortably, but I was hesitant to leave. I didn’t want Triona to feel abandoned.
“Annice is right, Ben. I appreciate your support, but your fidgeting is going to drive me out of my mind.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded without looking my way. “If you eat, I will too.”
I walked over to her, the back of my neck aching from pressure. I avoided Caleb’s almost lifeless form and pulled Triona to her feet, meeting her shimmering emerald eyes. Fine lines formed between her eyebrows, and her chin quivered. I wanted to say so much, but the words caught in my throat, trampled by emotions I struggled to comprehend. I had wanted this life so badly. I had wanted to be special, for us both to embrace our supernatural heritage. Not like this. I never wanted any of this mess.
“I know,” she said softly, tears spilling over.
I crushed her to my chest and held her there. “I will make this better. I promise you. I’m going to expose that son of a bitch for what he is, and then I’m going to make sure he never hurts our family again.”
Triona pulled back and sniffled. We both understood I wanted Zeal dead. One way or another, he wouldn’t walk away from this. I flattened my palms to her temples and kissed the top of her head.
“We’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything from Merlin,” Eila said as she and Guinevere followed me from the room.
Chapter 25
The Better Part of Me
WE MET AMANDA outside the door. “I was just coming to get you, Ben. Samuel has spoken to Merlin. He’s almost ready to administer the antidote to Caleb but said it will be morning before he comes around.”
Eila and Guinevere excused themselves, and Amanda wound her arms around my waist, resting her head on my chest just as my stomach rumbled again.
Amanda chuckled. “Some things never change, eh, caveman? I brought dinner up to our room before I came to get you.”
I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and dropped my chin to the top of her head, drawing in a lungful of vanilla. The musty fragrance of rain and mud clung to her too and left her hair rough against my skin.
Water pipes groaned nearby and floors creaked, the noises of the old house settling and embracing or resenting the new residents. Perhaps it recognized one of its own was absent. I’d read that old buildings like this one absorbed the energies of the people who lived within their walls, that ghosts were really just released memories. I never believed it until the supernatural crashed into my world. Maybe it was true, but it might have been my guilt was playing tricks on me.
“I should probably go see Emma. How’s she doing?”
Amanda’s heartbeat fluttered against my stomach, and I ran my fingers down her spine to the base of her back. I knew her body’s reaction well enough to recognize she didn’t want to tell me the truth. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. She wants some time to herself.”
“She blames me, doesn’t she?” Sadness crept over me as I thought of Emma being angry with me for not stopping John. We were becoming friends before this.
“She’s a sixteen-year-old girl who just watched as her only living family was taken hostage by a madman. We all stood by and let this happen.”
“John did it to give those idiots with Zeal a chance as much as he did it for all of us.” My tone held more resentment than I meant to convey.
Amanda squeezed. “She knows that. She just needs some time.”
I sighed, and she shifted back to meet my eyes. Amanda’s fierce conviction was one of the things I loved about her. “We can’t go back, Ben. We must think about tomorrow. Tomorrow we start reclaiming our lives.”
I took Amanda’s hand and began leading her down the long hallway to our room. “If we have a life to go back to. I hate to think what a mess we left behind. I just walked out and dumped my work on Lewis. What about your business?”
Amanda shrugged. “Lewis understands, and I’ve been keeping on top of things via e-mail. It’s not ideal, but I have to make it work. This is our life now.”
A surge of self-pity struck my chest as I closed the bedroom door behind us. Amanda proceeded to the dressing table where she’d set out our food, apparently unaware of my turbulent emotions.
“Sit,” she instructed. I did as she said and took a seat at the end of the bed. Amanda handed me a plate and a fork. I twirled a ribbon of pasta around the tines and shoved it in my mouth before it had a chance to slide off again. The food tasted as delicious as it looked. Amanda sat at the dressing table and tore a piece of roll with exaggerated force.
We ate in relative silence only punctuated by the sounds of chewing and Amanda popping two cans of soda open. She remained utterly quiet even when offering me a roll, merely holding out the plate and raising an eyebrow. It was so out of character for Amanda not to talk during a meal that I knew something weighed on her mind, but had no idea how to make it right. I was down to sopping up the last dregs of sauce with pieces of bread when she finally piped up.
“So, a dragon, that was unexpected.”
“Really? Haven’t we come to expect the unexpected at this point?”
Her fork clattered to the plate and her chair scraped over the wooden floor when she pushed back. “Are we going to do this every time?” she demanded with a frustrated scowl.
My eyebrows rose, and my jaw tensed, caught off guard by the tenor of her challenge. She tossed her napkin onto her almost empty plate and leapt up without elaborating. It didn’t make sense to me. She’d easily dismissed her business and the future she was so excited about days ago and now seemed angry with me.
I stacked my plate on top of hers unsure what to say. Whatever I did say would make things worse. I backed up to the wall when she stormed past me, attempting to make myself as small as possible and out of her way. A deep flush spread over her cheeks, and she puffed out several hard breaths. Amanda yanked a long T-shirt out of the crumpled heap of clothes in her suitcase and stormed over to the bathroom, throwing it on the counter by the sink.
I knew I should say something, anything, before this escalated. Since London we’d promised never to go to bed angry. That was one promise I didn’t want to break. Amanda picked up her toothbrush and squeezed too much paste onto the bristles. She cursed and pinched some off, flicking it into the sink. The electric brush buzzed against her teeth as she stared at herself in the mirror, mumbling words I couldn’t understand through a mouthful of foam. One hand rested on the edge of the counter, and the skin over her knuckles was bleached white.
“You have got to get past this,” she fired at me, the toothbrush still moving.
With much trepidation, I edged around the bed nearer to the door of the bathroom. “I’m not even sure what we’re taking about here.” If I suggested this outburst was just a little unreasonable, it was bound to aggravate her further.
Amanda’s jaw slackened dubiously. She withdrew the brush and turned her head to spit in the sink, placing her toothbrush back in the holder and shaking her head. Her shirt caught on her head when she lifted it, tempting me to laugh at her predicament. Hoping it was enough to break the tension, I tugged the fabric upward, releasing
her.
“Thanks,” she muttered ungratefully, tossing it with the pile of wet and muddy clothes in a hamper by the door.
This left my beautiful girl in nothing but a pink lace bra and jeans so tight she looked like she needed to grease up just to slide them over her toned thighs. The faded indigo fabric cupped the swell of her perfect ass and ended below the soft curve of her abdomen. Amanda wasn’t one of those girls who never ate or spent every free minute at the gym. She was naturally petite with a body that dipped and swelled in all the right places.
Despite—and a little encouraged by—the fire in her expression, my blood heated, and my fingers twitched to reach for her.
“Why did you marry me?” Amanda asked, distracting me from my thoughts of biting her hipbone.
She didn’t look directly at me, staring instead at my reflection in the mirror. I wasn’t sure when I had moved to stand behind her or when my fingers had sought out the silky skin at her clavicle.
“I know we have this connection and this innate need to be together, and it’s something neither of us chose, but we chose to get married. We chose to take that extra step. Why?”
I froze, my eyes transfixed by her fluttering eyelashes in the mirror. One of my hands circled her arm below her elbow, and the other traced the dip at the base of her throat. My thumb stroked small circles on her skin, and it reacted with goose bumps. “What are you talking about?”
Amanda swallowed, and I felt the movement against my fingertips. Her heart seemed to beat through every inch of her and mine raced to synchronize.
“You told me you were sure. You told me you knew exactly what you were getting into—that we weren’t too young. When I accepted you, I accepted all of you. I understood my career might have to take some detours. I understood we would have to move away and start all over before people figured out we don’t age like everyone else. I understood my family, my sisters and my parents, would die long before me. I accepted you and Triona are a unique bloodline. Even the assurance of a long natural life from Tír na nÓg. I don’t think you ever accepted any of it.”
“What?” My features crumpled into a tight grimace with a furrowed brow.
Blood rushed in my ears, and Amanda’s anger and frustration with me caused her to tremble. She didn’t cry or even tear up. The amazing inner strength she possessed shone through like a beacon in darkness. When we were kids I used it think it was just plain stubbornness. Of course Amanda was always stubborn too, but it was strength that never allowed her to give up on anything without a fight.
“You doubt me at every turn. I can see it in your eyes even when you don’t say it.” She reached up for me over her shoulder with one hand, her fingers tracing lines of fire along my neck before she lowered it again. “You make me feel as though I’m not really a part of your whole life, only the human part. It makes me furious. I want all of you, Ben. What about that don’t you understand? None of this is fair, but I can see past it even when you refuse. It’s part of the bigger deal I made when I committed my life to us.”
I bowed my head, resting my forehead in her hair, wanting to agree but holding back. I could lose her, but not because of the physical danger of our situation. I had refused to let her into this new world. I had been keeping her on the outer edge and maybe even treating her a little like she didn’t have as much to lose as I did.
“I need to say something,” I started, keeping my head down and breathing in her scent. My fingers skimmed her arm from her elbow to her wrist and entwined with hers. I brought our conjoined hands to her stomach, feeling her inhale and exhale slowly. “I can’t deny I’ve been struggling over the last few days. I’ve been planning our life together since you were six and I was five. I spent a lot more time with that version of our future than with the one we’re living. I guess I haven’t adjusted as well as I thought. Then Merlin did this thing—”
“What thing?” she cut in. Her heart jumped, her pulse beating against my palm at her throat.
Behind my closed eyes the dream played out again, as a shadow just within my grasp, but untouchable. “I saw our life. I lived it. I had two decades of a life we could have had if I was a human man. We had this great home and work and two amazing kids.” I smiled against her scalp. “Then they were gone. It all came crumbling down, and I woke up to this mess.”
“Ben, look at me,” Amanda ordered. I flinched at the horror in her voice. “Look at me.”
I lifted my head and met her round brown eyes in the mirror.
“I don’t want that life. I want this one. Even with the mess, I want what we have now.”
“What is that?”
She smiled at last, and my heart melted at the sight.
“Possibility,” she said softly. “If we allow Zeal to come between us, he’s won even if he’s defeated. We won’t have the life you imagined, but what if we can have something better? Isn’t that worth fighting for, together?”
Her eyes pleaded with me to understand, to accept her as my equal. What Amanda never understood was I couldn’t see her as equal. She had always been and remained the better part of me.
“I love you, Amanda. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Then don’t. Fight with me, not against me.”
I pulled in a lungful of air and leaned down to kiss her cheek. A gentle sigh parted her lips and her fingers at her stomach tightened around mine. My name was hardly a whisper, but I knew our argument was over. Amanda had said what she needed to say, and I had heard her.
My lips skimmed over her warmed skin, and my blood pounded. I touched my mouth to the base of her throat, and she shifted in my arms, closing her eyes and tilting her head, allowing my exploration to proceed.
My tongue slipped out, and the soft, wet, grainy flesh met the silk of her skin, swirling in a small circle. It elicited a quiet moan from Amanda that caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand. She melted back into my body, closing any spaces between us. She shivered, and the nerves beneath my flesh came alive, vibrating in tune with hers. It was as though my soul reached out to her, too long in desperate isolation, and wanting to become one again with Amanda’s.
A deep groan vibrated in my chest, and my palm slid from the base of her throat to under her chin, turning Amanda’s face so I could reach her lips. She yielded her mouth to mine with a fast rush of sweet minty breath. My other hand smoothed upward, skimming the underwire of her bra as she twisted in my arms and wound her fingers into the hair at the nape of my neck. The world disappeared in a cloud of smoldering heat as Amanda’s tongue swept across my bottom lip and pushed into my mouth. Even when she shifted up, scraping her nails over the skin at my lower back in an effort to drag me closer, we were still too far away. Desire rose up in me like a torrent of fire that could consume us both.
My hands slipped into the space between the counter and Amanda’s ass. Squeezing the firm mounds, I heaved her up to sit on the edge and bring her nearer to my height. We broke contact, her knees pushing me away. Amanda’s chest rose and fell with each panting, ragged breath, and she smiled teasingly. She peered at me from under her fluttering eyelashes, her hands behind her propping her up. Another growl rumbled in my chest at sight of this gorgeous woman with her mussed hair and rose blush cheeks. She had no idea what she did to me or how much I loved her. Despite everything, how did I get so damn lucky?
“What are you waiting for, caveman?” she asked, her voice low and inviting.
Oh hell, two can play this game.
Her eyes flickered down, and she held her breath when I lightly put my hands on her knees. My heart raced so fast I was sure she could probably hear it, but I didn’t let it show on my face. Instead, I gave her my best seductive grin and made small circles on the insides of her knees with my thumbs. My smile grew when she gasped and tried miserably to hide it. I forced myself to go slow, moving my hands higher on her denim covered thighs, kneading the flesh as I went. It took all my willpower to stay in control when she bit her bottom lip to keep from gasping
again. Excitement coiled in my stomach. I ran my hands back down to her knees, gently guiding them apart and stepping forward in one fluid movement. Amanda grazed her nails along my biceps and threw her head back, calling my name in a breathy moan when our bodies made contact. I smiled as our lips met. Game over.
Chapter 26
Stranger
I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING to hazy sunlight filling the room and the sound of Amanda humming from the bathroom. It was one of those times when reality didn’t set in immediately. It took a moment for me to remember anything prior to our activities after dinner. I stretched my arms over my head, and the movement released fresh waves of Amanda’s scent combined with mine from our tangled sheets. There was something almost animalistic in the sensations and urges it provoked throughout my body. It might have been nature’s way of guaranteeing mates protected each other. I checked my phone on the bedside table for the time. Seven o’clock.
To my disappointment, Amanda emerged fully dressed in black fitted exercise pants and a zipped hoodie.
“You’re up.”
“You’re observant,” she quipped brightly. “Good news. Caleb is awake, and he’s still a bit out of it, but Merlin doesn’t think there will be any permanent damage.”
“That’s great. I should go see him and Triona.”
She nodded. “Yeah. All we have to do now is fix the rest of this mess. Easy peasy.”
“You’ve been up a while.” It wasn’t a question. “What are you doing?” My voice was still gruff from sleep.
“Putting on sneakers I borrowed from Emma,” she pointed out the obvious with a playful smile, jerking the laces. “I had to wear two pairs of socks. The girl has freakishly large feet for such a little thing.”
I swung my legs off the side of the bed and sat up, scrubbing my hands over my face. “Who are you, and what have you done with Amanda? I know for a fact she is never this happy in the morning.”
