Cold Iron (11 page)

And he was repulsed by that part of himself.

More difficult to resist was the urge to touch her, to help her along toward completion. He wanted to fold back the silk of her gown and take her nipple into his mouth, suckle until she arched her back and offered herself, then slide a finger along her slick folds and rub until she found release.

He didn’t. Human ideas of right and wrong had never much interested him before, but here, now, with this woman, he knew it would be a mistake to touch her. So he gathered her into his arms and held her until she shuddered and sighed, and tumbled at last into a deep, dreamless sleep.

B
eth dreamed. She was on
Granny’s old sofa, the pink one in the parlor, the room no one ever used anymore except bookish Beth because it had no television in it. And she was naked, knees drawn up, legs open, touching herself.

But that wasn’t quite right. She turned and a man lay beside her. First, it was her high school beau, the mild, sweet-natured boy who had never done anything more than sneak a furtive hand up her shirt. It shocked her that his touch was so skilled and arousing. Granny must be in the other room. Beth could hear the television, but she felt no fear of discovery and no shame, only a simple, uninhibited pleasure.
Yes,
she thought, exultant,
this is how it is supposed to be.
How
she
had been, before Frank.

She looked again and the boy was gone, replaced by a man so handsome it hurt to look at him. He didn’t know she was watching him. His face was unguarded, tender, even. She should know him, but she couldn’t remember his name. “Don’t stop,” she said, feeling her climax building.

“I won’t. Ever.” He spoke, but his lips didn’t move. There was something wrong with that.
Ever.
That was bad. She should stop him. There was a reason she should stop him, but she couldn’t remember it. Then she didn’t care. She was too close.

Then she shattered into bliss.

The sleep that followed was deep and dreamless, the kind that came on the darkest, coldest nights. She didn’t wake up muzzy headed in a cold room, though, but clear-minded and snuggled into the warmth of another.

Conn.

They were tangled together on a deep, silk sofa, her head tucked into his shoulder. The upholstery smelled of dust and dry cotton batting, a memory of childhood, sweetly familiar. That’s where Granny’s parlor must have come from in the dream.

Conn’s eyes were open, studying her.

“I had a dream,” she began.

“I hope I was in it,” he answered, then dipped his head to kiss her.

“I haven’t brushed my teeth!”

His tongue slipped into her mouth, explored, then withdrew. “You taste like Miach’s best whiskey,” he said.

It felt so natural, this teasing expression of intimacy, considering he’d never kissed her before. So natural, she shifted to get closer to him—and felt the telltale slickness on her thighs.

Sick terror shot through her and she pulled away, but found herself trapped by the high back of the sofa. “What did you do?”

He made no move to pull her back into his arms, and that disappointed her. She’d never felt so confused about another person in all her life. With Frank, she had worshipped him, then loved him, then experienced the slow erosion of her love until there was nothing but disappointment and then bitterness left. With Conn, she didn’t know how she felt.

“I carried you in here and held you while you slept,” Conn said.

Beth knew that wasn’t the whole story. “In my dream—,” she started.

“You came,” he finished. “In your dream, you came. I hope it was for me, in the dream, but here, in the world, I only held you. I won’t do more until you’re ready.”

He said it with the certainty that she
would
be ready.

Miach. The
geis
. It all came flooding back to her. She looked at her shoulder. The quicksilver tattoo still looked angry and raised. She touched it gingerly. The slightest pressure stung. She didn’t think it should still be so raw and painful. She wondered if it could be infected.

But she had bigger worries than that. “What will happen to me now that I have your
geis
?” she asked. The choice had been simple last night: accept the
geis
or die. Nothing was simple this morning.

“You’ll want me, physically, whether or not you desire me in spirit. It may be frightening now, but you’ll come to accept it in time.”

“Slave to master.”

“Do you doubt that I would be a gentle master?” he asked. Careful not to touch her
geis
, he pushed the silk covering her breast down. It sprang free, the nipple swollen and taught. He rolled it beneath his finger, and she moaned and went boneless for him.

“You have needs, Beth. Long buried. The
geis
channels them. Fixes them on me. And I, in turn, am gratified when I bare you and find my mark. My property.”

“Not property,” she gasped. Her mind screamed to fight him, to push him away. Her body overruled it.

“My prize, then,” he said, before lowering his head and fixing his mouth over her nipple. She threaded her hands through his silken hair, whimpered when he peeled back the silk on her other breast, and rolled the nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

He lifted his head. “See? This isn’t so bad, is it?”

She shook her head. No. Not bad. Unbelievable. Like nothing else she’d ever experienced.

“Can you come like this?” he asked, before lowering his head back to her nipple. He suckled hard, then let her breast pop free from his mouth. “Can you? Or do you need more from me?”

“More,” she begged.

A rustle of silk, cool air tickling her knees, her thighs, then, “Oh!” His fingers found her. And it was more. Much more. More than the muted pleasure she’d experienced in her dream.

For a moment he stopped. She opened her eyes to find him crouched over her, freeing himself from the midnight jeans, lowering his heavy sex to rest on her slick folds. He captured her eyes and said, “The
geis
won’t be denied, Beth. Your need for me will become intolerable if you don’t allow me to satisfy it.” He rolled his hips forward, gliding through her arousal. “Put me inside you, Beth.”

She wanted to. So badly she thought she might die if she didn’t take him inside that second. But she’d been a man’s slave once before. “No.”

He didn’t move a muscle.

“I want you, I do, but I can’t accept this.”

“Then your mind will break,” Miach said, standing in the door.

Chapter 6

C
onn snarled and twisted his body to shield Beth from the Fae sorcerer’s eyes. She pulled her gown up to cover her breasts, wondering how long he had stood there watching her and Conn.

“No,” she said firmly to Miach. “I won’t do that to myself again, become some man’s willing slave. Once, with my ex-husband, was enough.”

“Resisting the
geis
will drive you mad,” Miach said, still standing in the door. “Take her now,” he advised Conn, “and get it done.”

“Get out,” said Conn, through gritted teeth.

“Only, do it quickly,” Miach said, ignoring him. “It’s almost dawn. You should travel while you are strongest. Word of your little Druid will have reached Finn and his family, the Fianna, by now.”

“The other peninsula,” Conn said, when it was clear Miach would not leave. He buttoned his jeans and stood up. Beth hated the fact that her traitorous body missed his warmth. She felt strangely chilled, even though she knew the room was sultry and warm.

“The Fianna tyrannize Charlestown,” Miach agreed. “They are stupid and dangerous, and too often they attract the attention of the law. We flourish here because we rule quietly. We take no lovers from the city proper, only willing ones from within the bounds of South Boston.”

“Is all your family content with such a tiny demesne?” Conn asked.

Miach glanced back in the bar. “My son has no doubt already run to the Fianna to tell them all about your Druid. Brian is nearly full-blood Fae. His mother was a half-breed. More Fae than mortal, he longs for our past glory and the return of the Court. There are those among the Fianna who think the same.”

“And the island in the harbor? Who does that belong to?” Beth asked.

Miach’s brow knitted. “The island is mine, but I haven’t used it in a hundred years. It was a convenient bolt hole during witch hunts. Now, however, only the Gaels know we are here, and they like our protection too well to argue with the liberties we take.”

“No,” Beth said, her stomach knotting. “It didn’t feel abandoned. There are Fae there.”

“Not by my authority, there aren’t,” Miach replied.

Conn helped Beth to her feet. “Come,” he said. “We must find your ex-husband and my sword before the Fianna find us.”

The car was gone when they emerged from the bar. Miach’s two younger sons stood outside.

“
Where
is the Porsche?” Conn asked them. Beth found his outrage amusing. For a man—no, a Fae—who was thousands of years old and didn’t need a car at all except when he was hauling her to and from dive bars, he’d become
very
attached to the Porsche.

Miach followed them out. “In Quincy. In pieces.” He tossed Conn a set of keys. “Don’t ever park a stolen Porsche outside my bar again,” he warned. “We do not court the notice of Boston’s finest.” This last he threw to the two young men.

“But you do steal cars,” Beth pointed out.
Or at least know how to break them down and fence them, speedily,
she thought.

Miach smiled. “We accept gifts.”

“I suppose parking a Porsche in this neighborhood is pretty much making a gift of it to someone.”

“What are
these
to?” Conn dangled the keys Miach had tossed him, reminding Beth of the keys hidden in her own pocket. Specifically, the iron key. She felt for it. It was still there, weighing down the silk on that side of her gown. The iron felt cool and reassuring, but it didn’t change her perception of Conn or Miach, and she realized she’d been seeing them as they were since Miach had dropped his glamour earlier that night.

And she wasn’t repulsed by their true forms, or afraid of them.

Conn looked at her. He knew what she was doing, touching the iron. He sent her a faint smile, tossed her the mysterious car keys. “Wait in the car, whatever it turns out to be,” he said. He turned to Miach. “A request.”

They conferred in low tones, and Beth couldn’t hear the rest. One of the “boys”—surely well past twenty, but she thought of them that way because Miach treated them so—held open the door of a sleek black Mercedes. It would be as much out of place in her Somerville neighborhood as the Porsche, but in a quieter, less obvious way.

She felt chilled in the night air, so she slid into the sleek leather interior.

She thought about the sofa in Miach’s office, the grandeur beneath the grime of the rundown bar, the other luxuries she’d seen lying fallow in that place. The desk had been Sheraton, the lamp Tiffany. She wondered if the Fae were magpies, or addicted to luxury.

She shivered again, thought about starting the car and turning the heat on but decided against it. She watched through the window as Miach and Conn argued. Then Miach made a short, sharp gesture, and the boy who had held the car door open for her—Liam, she remembered—ducked into the bar. He returned a few minutes later with a small box he passed to Miach and something soft draped over his arm.

He waited a moment, but when it was clear the sorcerer needed nothing more, he slunk furtively back to Beth’s side of the car. She lowered her window, and he passed her something soft as a kitten’s belly. “I saw you shivering,” he said, low and sheepish, like he was afraid someone would catch him being kind to the Druid.

“Thank you,” she said. It was a shawl, feather light and toasty warm. Even in the dim light she could tell it was cashmere. “Won’t someone miss this?”

“Someone did miss it. Actually, they missed about twenty gross of them.”

“Fell off the back of a truck?”

Liam grinned widely. “Nah. We jacked it before it got to the truck, straight off the docks.”

At least some of Miach’s brood were
honest
thieves.

Another curt nod from Miach and Liam shot her a cocky grin and disappeared back into the bar.

Conn slid into the driver’s seat. A few days ago, Beth would have insisted on driving—it was her town, after all—but after being skewered by a Fae sword, tattooed by a Fae sorcerer, and nearly ravished by her new Fae master, she felt cold and tired and couldn’t stop shivering. She wanted the heat on but didn’t want to remove an inch of her skin from the toasty shawl.

Conn turned it on before she could even ask, then pulled smoothly away from the curb. He seemed to know the way back, so she didn’t bother giving him directions. She supposed she’d been running on adrenaline up to this point, and it had finally run out. That explained the shakes.

“What did you get from Miach?” she asked.

Conn favored her with a smile. “You don’t miss a thing, my cow-eyed beauty.”

“Did you call me a cow?” It was the last thing she should care about at this point in the night, but Frank had never appreciated her curves, and Conn had—up to now—acted as though he enjoyed them. Then again, Frank had hid his dislike for her figure at first. It wasn’t until they were married that he began hinting, then telling her openly, that she was too voluptuous. She’d grown up on a steady diet of ancient art, and her body never came off badly next to a classical Venus. Sometimes she thought she was the last woman on earth with a healthy body image. Leave it to Frank to change that.

“Cow-
eyed
,” corrected Conn. “Luminous, brown, beautiful. I want to watch them widen while I enter you for the first time.”

His words made the
geis
on her shoulder pulse and tighten. “Are we back to that again?” she asked, trying to hide her reaction.

“That,” said Conn, handing her a hinged silver box, “is why I asked Miach to find these.”

It was the size of a jewel box, but chased with the same leafy silverwork as the buttons on Conn’s coat. She opened it. Sitting, rich black against gray velvet, were two iron rings, the workmanship impossibly fine for the material. The rings were exquisite, the curves faintly chased with a fine pattern of knot work. “Please tell me these go in my ears,” she said, remembering Conn’s pierced nipples.

He laughed out loud. There was nothing smug about it. This was a genuine sound of delight, the first she had heard from him. “If I were to pierce your nipples, I’d give you rings of silver with diamond drops, so I could suckle them.”

“Thank you for the offer, but I just got my first tattoo. I think nipple rings might be a bridge too far tonight.” She traced the tiny hoops. “These are cold iron. You can’t touch them, can you? That’s why they’re in a silver box.”

“I can’t touch them without a great deal of pain. They won’t dull the effect of the
geis
, but they can protect you from my glamour, allow you to see me clearly, give you back some measure of control.”

It was a thoughtful gift. He needn’t have made it. The
geis
gave him a hold over her. She felt its pull even now, but one question troubled her. “Why would the Fae make something like this?”

“They didn’t.”

Of course they didn’t. “Miach took them from a Druid,” she guessed.

“It was a long time ago, Beth, and he is not so bloodthirsty anymore.”

“I heard you talking. You said he stands now where you stood then. What did you mean?”

Conn hesitated, then spoke haltingly. “The Fae seldom have children with one another. We are an old race, and all but bred out. Even so, seeing the print of your face on another . . . it feeds our vanity.”

She wondered if it merely fed their vanity, or if the Fae were more human than they wanted to admit.

He went on. “We breed with humans. As Miach has, but even then we aren’t fecund. And most Fae view thin-bloods as pretty toys.”

He stopped again. She’d never seen him have difficulty doing anything before. “I had a half-breed daughter. There was another champion at Court who could not best me, so when I was away fighting, he placed a
geis
upon her and . . . degraded her. Shared her with others. Allowed the Court to torment her until her mind broke.”

They were the barest facts, but Beth felt a visceral horror. “I’m sorry.”

“I killed him, but there was no satisfaction in it, because the Court found that amusing, too. Drama. An avenger’s tragedy.

“My daughter’s fate, the Court’s reaction, it was intolerable. And my kin would make no redress. The Fae have no laws, only customs. Only the Druids were willing to bring us to heel. In my anger, I believed them when they told me they would force the Court to accept human laws, acknowledge some basic rights.”

“A sort of Fae Magna Carta,” Beth said.

“But they intended no agreement. As soon as the Court was driven beneath the ground, the Druids sealed the threshold with their magic and entombed the Fae most useful to them in the mounds, readily to hand and well-leashed. The Druids were no kinder masters than we had been. We none of us can change our natures, Beth.”

But Conn was trying. She fitted the little iron hoops in her ears.

And he was wrong, of course. Beth had changed her nature. She’d been confident, competent Beth when she’d met Frank. He hadn’t changed her. She’d changed herself, shriveled to the size of Frank’s regard for her. Hid from the memories of his worst betrayal, hid from pleasure because it carried the risk of pain.

She was done with all that, but she had to know something first.

“The
geis
,” she began. “It binds me to you. Does it bind you to me?”

“I will take no other women while I remain with you,” Conn said.

Beth sighed. “That’s a telling evasion. It’s a sort of one-sided marriage, then. I know all about those. Don’t the Fae have any true form of union?”

“With one another, yes, though it is rare, and never truly monogamous. We live too long for that, Beth.”

“So is there a mark somewhere on your body from a Fae woman?”

“You can examine me thoroughly in private.”

“I still haven’t decided to let you make love to me.”

“You decided five minutes ago, when you put the rings in your ears.”

He was right. And infuriating. And his sensual confidence was so damned appealing. She caught a glimpse of dawn in the rearview mirror. It reminded her. “What did Miach mean, about traveling when you are strongest?”

“He knows I’ve broken my
geis
, lost the Summoner. It weakens me, to be in violation of its edict. But the true Fae are strongest at dawn and dusk, and the
geis’s
burden weighs lightest then.”

“That’s when they always come in fairy stories. To steal away children. To claim their lovers. At dawn and dusk. The in-between times.” A curious fancy took her, that Conn was stealing her away to Elfland. She’d broken all the rules. She’d let him touch her. She’d accepted drink in one of their dwellings. She’d allowed his mark to be written upon her.

But it was only a fancy, because a few minutes later they pulled up in front of her apartment.

Despite the coming dawn, it was even colder out than when they had left the bar. She opened the radiator valve in the hall, then the living room, then her bedroom, desperate to get warm.

Conn remained in the living room. She watched him through the open door. He was examining the books in the shelf beside the fireplace, most of which, in one way or another, were about him. Celtic art, Celtic mythology, Celtic archaeology. Myth, legend, and material culture. She’d studied it all her life. Even as a young girl she’d poured over the few library books available to her on the subject, memorized the heroes and place names, always hoping to become like Schliemann, the archaeologist who went looking for Troy in the pages of the Iliad, and found it on the shores of the Aegean.