“We are strangers—sexually compatible strangers.”
He crawled on top of her as she sank low beneath the covers. “It is not just sex,” he whispered in her ear. “There is more here binding us. Can you not feel it?”
She could and it scared her.
“Give me your fears. I’ll keep you safe.”
Mairi allowed her fingers to run through his hair. “Please. First I need to know how this has come to be.”
He avoided her gaze as he lowered his mouth to her lips. “How what has come to be?”
“How did you know where I live?”
He pulled back, his gaze narrowed, the gold and pewter darkening. Mairi sat up, pulling the sheets around her. He growled, heaving himself up off the mattress, but she reached out to him, tracing the twining vines of ink on his arm. His hair was brushed back from his forehead and she saw that the same marks adorned his left temple. As her finger slid over the tattoos, his skin quivered and the design seemed to move, to curl in and out as if the ink were absorbing her touch.
Shoving away from her, he moved from the bed and walked toward the arched window, which was draped with black velvet. He put his arm on the window casing, his hair shifting with his muscles. And there on his back she could now see a long silver tattoo in the shape of a sword running along the length of his spine.
Her breath caught and Mairi knew for certain who he was. He was the man from her dreams, her midnight lover. And he was . . .
“Why don’t you tell me how you think I found you?” he asked as he stared out the window.
Taking a deep breath, Mairi couldn’t quite bring herself to believe what she was going to say. “I think you knew where I lived because you were the raven I picked up from the road and brought home.”
His fingers curled into a fist. “And why would you think I was a bird?”
She paused, trying to understand how she could believe something so unbelievably impossible. It didn’t make sense, but neither did this consuming passion she had for Bran.
“Because I felt the same connection to the bird as I do to you. I don’t understand it, but it’s true. We had a night of . . . of pleasure and now I can’t stop thinking of you, or wanting to be with you. And the bird, every time I looked at it, I thought of you.”
She slipped from the bed. Her legs were unsteady and she reached for the post of the headboard for support. Before she knew it, Bran was beside her, his thick arm around her waist. He held her, steadied her, and that arousing hum from his body ebbed into her. “Are you going to faint?” he snarled. “Shouldn’t you be screaming and running the other way?”
She saw fear in his eyes. The first time the emotion had ever been there. He was right, of course. What he was defied physics, God . . . even the devil himself. She didn’t understand it, couldn’t grasp it, but somewhere deep inside her, waiting to be acknowledged, was the fact that from the very beginning he had attracted her
because
he was different from other men.
“I don’t know how I can think this. How I can bring myself to believe. I—I—” she stammered, licking her dry lips. “I know this is crazy, but I believe you’re not a man. You’re something else, part raven, part . . . I don’t know what.”
“Sidhe.” He forced her back on the bed and helped her to sit, then looked her in the eye. “I am king of the Night Sidhe.”
“A faerie?” she asked incredulously. When he nodded, Mairi felt her eyes widen in shock. “I didn’t think they were so huge and—where’re your pointed ears?”
He glared at her. “There are many species of faeries. The Night Sidhe resemble humans, only we’re bigger.”
Mairi looked her fill and had to agree, he was much bigger—in every place that counted. He was looking at her, too, studying her. The pieces suddenly seemed to fit. She remembered Rowan saying that the Celts had believed the raven was the ruler of the Otherworld. That the name Bran was Gaelic for raven.
“Are you from Annwyn?” she asked, needing to confirm her suspicions.
He nodded and smoothed her hair back over her shoulder. The hospital gown she wore slipped down, baring the crest of her breast. His touch slipped down through her hair; then his fingertips caressed her exposed flesh. So many thoughts were now swirling in her head. But they weren’t the right thoughts. Like how was it possible he could change his shape and create electricity? How could he be a faerie king and live in a magical world, yet be sitting here beside her? What did he want with her? What did he mean their futures were entwined? Those were the thoughts she needed to concentrate on, not the thought of falling back on the bed and having him cover her with his tall, strong body.
She tried to formulate a question in her mind and not allow herself to become distracted by Bran.
“Is any part of you human?” She closed her eyes, waiting to hear her worst fears confirmed.
“Not in the sense you mean,” he said, stroking her creased eyelid. “I look like a man, but I am a Sidhe, capable of great magic, and a raven.”
“Do you . . . feel like a . . . ?” She trailed off, unable to finish her question.
“Do I feel like a man?” he finished for her. “I don’t know. Why don’t you feel me, Mairi?” He pushed her down on the bed and brushed his long body against hers. He felt like no man she had ever known before. He was incredibly big and strong, and that vibration his body gave off—no man had ever felt like that.
“Well?” he asked silkily. “Do I feel like a man?”
She nodded, afraid to say more. Even now she could feel his erection pressing eagerly at the apex of her thighs.
“Do I have feelings like a man? Do I feel pleasure? Passion? Pain? Yes. Do I feel for you the way a man feels for a lover? Yes. Do I want to part your thighs, sink into you, and crawl up inside you? Yes.”
She couldn’t breathe. She struggled beneath him, but he caught both her wrists in one of his hands and held them above her head.
“Do I want to get inside you everywhere I can and come, hot and hard, inside you? Yes.”
“Stop,” she panted, but he used his strength to hold her, pin her to the bed.
“Why, Mairi? Do I not feel like a man to you? Do you not want me like you have wanted other men?” Their gazes collided. “Or can you not bear to be with such a creature?” Silence blanketed them. “Truth. You owe me that much.”
“No,” she said. “I have never wanted a man like I want you. I have never felt what I feel with you. That’s the truth.”
“Then allow me into your body, Mairi. It’s what I know, how to please, how to pleasure. I want to bring you satisfaction, happiness, but this is the only way I know how. Accept it, accept me.”
She wanted to. Oh, God, how she wanted that. “First, tell me what I need to know, Bran. Make me understand you, your world, and what is happening in mine.”
He groaned. “But I need you, Mairi. I need you so much. Your skin is so soft,” he murmured; then he leaned in and kissed her beneath her collarbone. “You taste so good, like honey and spice. I want to bury myself in you and forget what I am, forget what you are. Pretend that our worlds do not exist outside this door.”
“But they do.”
“No! There is only one world for us, the one we are creating now.”
Her entire body liquefied. He was utterly perfect. “We can’t run from the truth, Bran. You are . . .”
“Immortal.”
“And I am mortal. What world can there be for us?”
“One of undying pleasure.”
This was getting worse. She was ready to forget her questions and open to him. But she couldn’t—not yet.
“Tell me about Annwyn.”
He began suckling her skin, marking her. “You read the book. You know of my world already.”
She pulled in a deep breath as she felt her skin being gently tugged into his mouth. “You’re a . . . a . . .” She sighed, tilting her head to give him better access to her throat. The gown was down to her waist, his fingertips gliding down her throat to the crest of her breast. “You’re a magician?” She managed to get the words out before he traced the outline of her nipple.
“Yes. In Annwyn,” he said, “my power is unmatched. And here in Velvet Haven, the gateway between our worlds, I am strong. But outside, in the mortal realm, I am easily and quickly drained of my powers.”
“Really?” The word was a hiss as he cupped her breast. His thumb rubbed the tip of her nipple, in slow, teasing circles.
“I am king of the Sidhe and coruler of Annwyn,” he said proudly. “There is only one who is my match, and that is Cailleach.”
“Does Cailleach rule with you?”
His touch stilled. He looked up into her eyes; then he lowered his mouth to her breast. “Yes. It is the way of our world: The Sidhe and the goddess rule together.”
He licked her slowly, teasingly. Much too light to satisfy. Her legs shifted, sliding against the comforter. Her foot rubbed his calf up and down.
“I like this form of interrogation,” he said before he caught her nipple between his teeth. Carefully he bit down, just enough to arouse, not hurt.
“You haven’t asked me many questions.”
His palm skimmed down her belly, and she felt the heat of it burning her skin. “I don’t need to ask questions. I’m being given all the answers by your body.”
She shivered, turned on by his words and by the path his hand was taking. “No questions? Are you sure you don’t want to know something?”
He glanced up and smiled wickedly as his hand crept lower and lower. “Maybe one.”
“And that is?”
“Are you wet for me, Mairi?”
Persistent. She’d give him that. “Why don’t you see for yourself?”
His hand slid slowly down, the heel of his palm fitting over the mound of her sex, his fingers slowly parting her folds. “Slick. Hot. Wet.”
Her lashes fluttered closed as he delicately touched her, tracing her folds. She tried to concentrate, to learn what she could, to try to make sense of something incomprehensible. “So are you and Cailleach . . . you know . . . together?”
He smiled while his finger continued to play. “No. Not in that way. My turn.” Slowly he circled her clitoris with his thumb. “Do you want my mouth on you here, Mairi?”
Her hips arched up, meeting his stroking finger. She’d love nothing more, but if she allowed him that, she’d never have this conversation with him. “Tell me about Cailleach.”
“First tell me you want my tongue on your pussy.”
“Yes,” she said on a husky sigh. “God, yes.”
Leaning down, he spread her folds and covered her sex with one slow swipe of his tongue. “She is a goddess. Her element is air. She commands the winds and the Summerlands.”
“Is she beautiful?”
He rubbed his cheek against her inner thigh. “Not like you. No one compares to you.”
She melted. Truly turned into a puddle at those words. “And you’re her . . . what?”
“Consort.”
“Do you love her?”
He looked up at her, holding her gaze. “I do not.”
She nodded, relieved, and ran her hands over his shoulders. “The sword on your back? It’s an amazing tattoo.”
He lowered his head, then placed a kiss on her core. “That is not a tattoo.”
“What is it, then?”
“It is a brand.”
Mairi gasped. “Who branded you?”
“I offered Cailleach a sacrifice so that my uncle could abdicate his throne and be with the mortal woman he loved. The sword is the emblem of her curse upon me.”
“Oh, no! That’s terrible. What kind of curse?”
“Mmm,” he mumbled. “You taste so sweet, Mairi, you don’t know how sweet. I need more of you on my tongue.”
She pulled his hair as he tried to go down again. “Bran! Tell me.”
He groaned. “A mortal-needing curse.”
Suddenly Mairi’s stomach fell to her feet and she wanted to press her thighs together, but Bran’s massive shoulders prevented that. “As in you need mortals how?”
He closed his eyes as if not wanting to look at her. “I need the sex of mortal women so that I can exchange their pleasure with energy to make magic.”
Her thighs tried to clamp shut, but his palms stopped her. “Open.”
“Why? So I can be your personal lightning rod?”
He glared at her. “So I can pleasure you as you desire.”
“So that’s what it was all about, then? You needed me the other night to get off so you could strengthen your powers?”
“Mairi,” he whispered, “it wasn’t like that.”
“Really? You mean you saw me and it was love at first sight? Or was I looking desperate enough that you thought I’d just fall at your feet?”
“You don’t understand—”
“I do,” she said, shoving him away from her. “Your mortal-needing curse was calling and you saw me, so you decided I’d do. Then you got what you needed and you performed some damn magic spell on me that made me forget nearly everything and then you walked away.”
She expected to hear him deny her words. But he didn’t. His silence told her everything she needed to know.
“And that’s what’s happening now, isn’t it? That’s why those . . .
things
on your body move when I touch you. I’m right, aren’t I?”
“No.”
“So you’re not getting any energy from this . . . exchange?”
“I am not thinking about magic, Mairi. I’m thinking of you, and getting inside you.”
“You’re using me.”
“Perhaps in the beginning I sought to. But I didn’t—”
She snorted and shrugged into a pair of jeans and a sweat-shirt that had been left on top of the dresser.
“I’m not using you, Mairi, believe me. If I had any brains, I’d leave you be. But I can’t.”
“And what the hell does that mean?”
“You are more dangerous to me than I am to you.”
“Well, we’ll never have to find out if you’re right.”
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“Home,” she snapped.
“No!” She heard the mattress squeak as he got up. Felt the rumble of his heavy boots cross the glistening hardwood. Her back was to him, her hand on the glass doorknob. His arms shot out on either side of her, and his fists shoved the door closed with a fierce bang. His head dropped to her shoulder and she heard him inhale deeply. “You will not leave me.”