Kiss of the Goblin Prince (37 page)

Dai had told her the truth and she’d run. She threw away a chance she’d never dreamed of with a man who shouldn’t exist.

“How did Fane die?” But Amanda already knew. He died the same way Flynn did. They were the same person. Her skin prickled into gooseflesh. Flynn was still fighting the curse; his love of gold was because he’d lived as a goblin.

“He cut his own throat,” Roan said without meeting her gaze.

In ending his life, Fane had locked himself into a pattern he couldn’t break. She should’ve tried harder, done more to save him instead of letting him hoard gold and slide into becoming goblin.

“Hello, Mommy.” Brigit waved out of the tree house window.

Amanda waved back. Dai said Brigit looked like his sister Mave, but that hadn’t been the whole truth. Brigit was Mave, reborn but still with the same problem. She couldn’t breathe after her throat had been cut. If Dai hadn’t healed her, how many lives would she have lived dying too young from a disease that reflected a past she couldn’t remember?

Amanda shivered and turned back to Roan. “Dai went to help one of the men on the plaque, didn’t he?” He was so much like Matt, thinking of others and not the danger to himself. He’d been trying to say good-bye at the museum in case he didn’t make it back. He’d been thinking of her, trying to protect her heart.

Roan nodded. “Meryn is alive. Dai rescued him.”

If Meryn was alive and safe, that meant…“Dai’s back? He’s alive?”

Eliza appeared in the doorway with a silly grin on her face. She hooked her arm through Roan’s. “Dai’s alive.”

Amanda rummaged in her bag for her cell phone. Her hand shook as she searched for his number.

Roan put his hand over hers, stilling the movements. “Be sure.”

How could she be sure of anything, when everything Roan and Dai had told her was more like a fairy tale than reality?

“I’m not sure of anything anymore, but I need to see him.” And then it would be up to Dai. Would he be able to trust her again?

She dialed with her heart on her tongue. Time was counted in rings and beats. Behind her a cell phone rang. She turned away from the garden and lowered her cell phone. Her heart stopped for a moment before remembering what to do. Dai stood in the doorway, unsmiling, a twenty-year-old warrior from another age. The magic in his blood laid claim to her heart and she had no words.

He held out his hand to her.

“Brigit?” Amanda couldn’t just leave.

“Will be fine for a few hours,” said Eliza as she took Brigit’s handbag full of unneeded medicine from Amanda. And Amanda no longer had an excuse to say no.

“Where are we going?”

“Not far.” Dai’s gaze hadn’t left her, but his stance was rigid, as if he was contained in invisible armor. Protection from what she might say.

It was a test. Pass or fail. Either she trusted him or she didn’t. If she didn’t trust him, it made liars out of Roan and Eliza. It made every sensation that Dai had awakened false and every smile he had cautiously thrown her way worthless. She wanted to believe in the fairy tale—that magic and handsome princes existed.

Amanda took his hand not sure what to expect from a man who’d healed her daughter and rescued a friend from a land of nightmares. His warm fingers closed around hers. Then his eyes glimmered like water in sunlight and her body was pressed through a sieve. She gasped and held tight to the hand gripping hers. She took a step, but she wasn’t at Eliza’s house anymore. She was at Dai’s.

“Oh my God.” Her free hand flew to her chest. That was what it must feel like to skydive—and forget the parachute.

“The first time is the worst.” He let go of her hand as if the contact burned.

It wasn’t the sensation that bothered her. “You moved us with magic.”

Beneath her feet the floor felt solid. This was real, not some kind of dream. “You used real magic on Brigit.” She rounded on him as the protective mother surfaced fast. “You should have asked first. We talked about possible cures and you never said anything.”

“I didn’t know I could. I didn’t want to risk it. But she was the one who pulled me back from the Shadowlands. When I saw her in the hospital I knew she was dying and I had to take the chance. Would you’ve said no?”

After the fight in the museum, probably. “Who were you saving? Mave or Brigit?”

“Both. Myself. You.” As he gazed at her his dark blue eyes were clear like an ocean with no bottom. She could drown forever and never need air.

“Brigit is Mave, isn’t she?”

He nodded. “I wanted to tell you.”

“That didn’t work out so well.” She glanced away. She’d almost thrown away everything, but he was giving her another chance. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

He sighed. “I wouldn’t have either.”

For a moment they were silent. He saw the world differently. Saw people differently. “What do you see when you look at me?” Amanda asked.

Dai’s lips moved in one of his rare unguarded smiles. “Golden light, like the sun shining on a dewy spider web. Everything you touch is made beautiful. I wanted to feel that.”

“You are beautiful.” Inside and out. From the way he moved, to the calmness that surrounded him. She couldn’t remember ever having that peace. Her life was a series of rapids to be overcome, when all she wanted to do was glide and enjoy the view.

“You might want to reserve that opinion.” He unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt, and then the buttons down the front.

Her eyebrows rose in expectation, but this was no seduction. The movements were too sharp.

“I have a collection of scars.” He held the edges of the shirt closed. “And tattoos.” Then he shrugged out of the shirt.

Beneath his clothes was the lean body of a fighter, not an academic. The black ink of mystical markings was bold against his pale skin, but under the tattoos, his skin was lined with fine white scars. Together they formed a tapestry of his life. The spider on his chest looked like it was ready to scuttle away on the fine web that stretched over his skin. Other symbols seemed to shimmer or pulse like they had life of their own. They belonged in a world she didn’t know or understand.

She couldn’t read the text that scored his ribs, or the cluster of wedge shapes that started above his hip and disappeared into the waistband of jeans. He seemed to be wearing many of the dead languages he spoke. She knew he’d understand each tattoo and be able to tell her when and how and why each mark was made.

Dai stood still as she walked around him looking. His back was crisscrossed with old scars. She swallowed, not wanting to think about how he’d received them, but willing to bet on who’d marked him. On his lower back an intricate pattern of rings seemed to spin with each breath. It had to be an illusion.

Amanda reached out her hand, but stopped before her fingers connected with his skin. Now that she knew the details of his past she was more cautious. “Can I touch you?”

She waited two breaths for his carefully considered response.

“Yes.”

What had it cost him to grant her permission, or was he testing his own boundaries? She traced the circles with her fingers; they were warm to touch, hotter than the unmarked skin. She brushed aside his hair and let her hand wander over his muscles to trace one of the scars that marred the skin on his back.

“These are whip marks?”

“Some are from a knife.” He said it as if they were discussing the color of leaves.

“If you healed Brigit, you could get rid of them.”

He turned to face her. “Would you erase your past?”

She glanced down. “No.” Not even the bits she thought would kill her. “Will you tell me the stories behind the tattoos one day?”

“Some of them I can’t. You’re not initiated.” He took her hands. “This is all new to me.”

“Slow is good.” She didn’t want to squeeze a lifetime of love into a few short years. She wanted it to last.

He cupped her cheek and leaned in to kiss her. His lips were soft against hers. Tentative at first. Her tongue flicked against his lips. He responded, learning the taste of her mouth as his hand slid around her waist. His fingers brushed skin that hadn’t been touched in years. She slipped her arms around his neck, her hands in his hair, not wanting to push but not wanting him to stop.

She held her breath as his fingers skimmed the side of her breasts. His touch was soft and sure, but the clothing between their skin was too much. She arched her back pressing into his hand. Her hips were hard against his. The length of his shaft teasing.

He paused so they were nose to nose. “Is this where I invite you into my bedroom?”

“That might be a good idea.” Her words were made breathy with desire. The heat in her belly spun and spread through her blood. They would finish what they’d started as if everything hadn’t changed in the days between.

Dai picked her up, his hand on her bottom. Her legs wrapped around his hips automatically. She gasped at the close contact as he carried her into his room, the bed making itself with magic before he sat her down on the edge.

She smiled and unbuttoned her shirt while he watched, drinking her in. Excitement simmered in her blood. His fingers traced the curve of her breast, pushed the shirt off her shoulders as his lips claimed hers again. She drowned in the kiss. They fell back on the bed, side by side. He ran his hand over her stomach to the button of her jeans. He flicked it open, then slowly drew down the zipper. His fingers skimmed over her underwear. She helped him shuck her jeans, wriggling like she couldn’t get out of them fast enough.

Today of all days she was in un-matching plain underwear, but from the look in his eyes he didn’t care. His fingers traced tracks on her skin leaving shivers in their wake. Her nipples peaked, pushing against the soft pink cotton of her bra. His fingers circled, slowly as if learning her reactions.

Her hand glided over his skin to the cuneiform text that started above his hip and disappeared into his jeans. “Can I see the rest?”

His lips curved in the smile she was used to seeing. “I’m not wearing any underwear.”

“Lucky me.” She touched the first button. Then lifted her gaze to meet his eyes. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’ve wanted you since the day I saw you in the church.”

“There was magic in the air.”

He nodded. “But not mine.”

She flicked open the button on his fly. Her fingers brushed against his shaft and her stomach tightened. It was so long since she’d done this. While she was sure she hadn’t forgotten how, the nerves of being with someone new mixed with the heat and need pooling in her belly.

He lifted his hips as she pulled off the jeans. Then she let her gaze track up his body. Tattoos were wrapped around both calves. Text ran down his thigh in several lines. His left thigh was unmarked except for what looked like a recently healed wound. She touched the smooth line of pink skin, but didn’t want to know how it had been made.

Her fingers trailed slowly up his thigh, not sure if she was testing herself or Dai. “You’ve really never been with a woman?”

“I never got the chance. She was stolen from me and sold.”

“How old were you really at your party?” Her fingers caressed his hard flesh.

He drew in a breath. “One thousand nine hundred and seventy.”

She let out a sigh. “And you never…”

“I didn’t want to. I didn’t trust myself. You reminded me what a gentle touch was like, and that I could be gentle.” He brushed a strand of hair off her face and tasted her lips then her throat, kissing down her neck. He flicked open her bra and took her nipple in his mouth. Her fingers pushed into his hair as a moan slipped from her lips. He glanced up.

“That was good.” Her hand closed lightly over his shaft, stroking, an idea forming in her mind.

He sucked in a breath as her thumb smoothed over the slit. But she knew how to take his breath away. She pushed him onto his back and he watched as she moved down his body. His eyes widened but he didn’t stop her. Amanda lowered her mouth to his hot, hard flesh to give him a kiss she knew he’d never had as a slave. Her tongue glided over his skin and made his hips move.

His groan spiked through her. She needed more. She was beyond ready; she was aching.

As if knowing he pulled her up. “I want you.”

Amanda cursed silently. “I’ve got no birth control.” No sex for her. “You can enjoy.”

Why couldn’t she be like other single women and keep condoms in her bag…not that that would have helped. Her bag wasn’t there; it was still at Eliza’s. His shaft rubbed temptingly against her panties. He rocked her hips enjoying the tease as much as she hated it. She wanted him. Could she tempt fate? She did a rapid calculation and decided that fate wasn’t on her side and the risk was too great.

His eyes shone with the inner light that meant magic, and a box materialized on the bed.

“Ohhh.” She was still getting used to the magic thing. “That’s a neat trick.”

“Impressed?”

“You have no idea how much.” She ripped open the packaging.

His hands pushed her panties down and she rolled onto her back so he could remove them. His hands brushed her inner thigh and eased her legs apart, using teasing touches as his finger slid against her sex. She couldn’t wait. She thought she’d be okay going slowly, but all she wanted was to feel him inside her.