The Demon Lover (22 page)

“You are
mareitt,
lass, ridden nightly by the demon mare. I can see it in your eyes and …” He reached under my tunic and roughly clasped the tender engorged flesh between my legs. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to pretend I was elsewhere. “Aye, your sex is swollen with him. Your maidenhood I’ve been saving for your intended. If he’s broken it …”

Swearing in his own language he slipped his finger into me and my knees went weak. I bit my lip to keep from moaning and giving him the idea that what he did pleasured me. It was just that I was tender there from the visitations of this thing he called a night-mare
.

“Ah, you’re still a maiden, lass, thank Odin. I’ll still have my ransom price off ye
—
but we’ve got a wee problem.”

He had removed his hand from inside me but now he was stroking my buttocks, squeezing the flesh with his big calloused hands. He pushed himself against me until my back was pressed up against the hard stone ledge of my cell’s only window and I could feel the equally stone hard ridge of his manhood straining against my belly. He lifted my hips up onto the ledge, pressing me against the iron bars and spreading my thighs. Now I felt the tip of his manhood prodding against my sex, which throbbed in answer to his thrusts. I whimpered with the effort not to moan and clenched my thighs to keep from arching up to enclose him inside me. Traitor flesh! Even when the nightmare rode me I hadn’t longed to be filled as I did now
.

I opened my eyes and saw he was studying my face
.

“Aye, lass, I want it, too. I want to come inside you and fill you to the brim. I want you to ride my cock as the night-mare rides you.” He caressed my face and it was that tenderness that broke me. I wrapped my arms around him and slid my hands down to his iron-hard haunches, which were straining with the effort not to impale me. I pulled him toward me, arching my hips to meet his thrusts. I felt his hot flesh touch mine, the head of his engorged rod grazing my swollen sex
 
… 
and then I felt the cold slap of air as he stepped back. A mocking smile spread on his lips
.

“Not this time, lass. I must protect my investment. But let’s see what we can do for ye so you no longer need the night-mare’s attentions.”

He knelt down on his knees and buried that cruel mocking smile between my legs. His lips met my nether lips in a deep kiss. His tongue probed where his manhood wanted to go and could not. He sucked on my flesh as a boy sucks a ripe peach down to the pit
 
… 
He reached into the very pit of my dark yearning. His tongue rammed hard against the weir that dammed my deepest, darkest longings and broke it, releasing the sweet wild flood. When I’d spilled myself into his mouth he stood and wiped his face with the back of his hand
.

“I think the night-mare will leave you alone now, lass.” And then he left me, drained and empty as a rind when the fruit has been sucked dry
.

I put down Dahlia’s notebook and turned out the light. Moonlight spilled into the room as if it had been held back by a dam and was now released, but it was barren cold moonlight and the shadows stood rigid and still, as cold and unmoving as iron bars. I shivered and burrowed deeper under the covers, feeling as discarded as Dahlia’s Irish lass.

TWENTY-ONE

T
he next morning I heard Brock outside shoveling my driveway. I grabbed Ralph and ran downstairs to show him to him, only remembering halfway down the stairs the salacious passage I had read last night. I hesitated, feeling embarrassed. Did Brock have any idea that Dahlia had used him as a model for one of her most passionate heroes? Would he know I’d been reading those scenes? But when I opened the door the look he gave me was so open and innocent I dismissed those thoughts. He was a kind, straightforward man. No wonder Dahlia had liked him. When I showed him Ralph he was amazed and delighted that his creation had come to life.

“When I forged the doormice I added a spark from Muspelheim, the primeval fire from whence came the stars and the planets, so that they would be powerful enough to protect you, but I never dreamed one would actually come to life. You must have sparked his life force somehow …” He looked at me with the same admiration with which I’d seen him regard Drew Brees after completing eight passes in a row. “He’s devoted to protecting you now.”

I was glad to have a loyal companion, but I didn’t see how a mouse was going to be able to do much against most threats.

When I got back inside I sat Ralph in the teacup on my desk and checked my email. I was relieved to see one from Liz Book telling me she’d found a replacement for Phoenix. An Irish poet, Liam Doyle, whose name was vaguely familiar to me. I Googled him and saw that he’d done his undergraduate work at Trinity College in Dublin (where he’d won several poetry awards) and his DLitt at Oxford (where he’d been awarded a fellowship and honors for his thesis on the Romantic poets). He’d published two books of poetry with a small publisher called Snow Shoe Press. The picture on Snow Shoe’s website showed an earnest, bookish-looking man with shaggy dark hair hanging over thick square glasses.

I clicked on a link for the Mistletoe Poetry House in Klamath, Oregon, and found this profile for him:

Liam Doyle, the prominent poet, was the Spring 2001 Zalman Bronsky Writer-in-Residence at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. Liam has held visiting appointments at Macalaster College in Minnesota and Bates College in Maine. His interests are nineteenth-century Romantic poetry, the poetry of exiles and expatriates, and nature poetry. He spent the last eighteen months teaching poetry in an inner-city high school in Baltimore. I emailed Liz back that I was happy she’d found a poet for the job because that would be great for Nicky Ballard. Did she still need me to take over today’s class?

By the time I’d showered and dressed she’d emailed me back to say that Professor Doyle planned to be up by the beginning of this afternoon’s class (“He was in New York City for a Wordsworth conference, wasn’t that lucky?”) but would I mind meeting him after class to give him the students’ papers.

I emailed back that I’d be happy to, but wouldn’t he rather I meet him
before
class to give him the papers and tell him a little about the students?

No
, Liz wrote back immediately,
he says that he likes to meet his new students without any preconceptions
.

Pretty idealistic
, I typed back to Liz, and then, afraid that I might have come off as cynical, added,
He sounds great
. Still unsure if I sounded snarky, I added a smiley emoticon.

“No preconceptions, huh?” I muttered to Ralph, who was still curled up in his basket. “Who
is
this guy?”

Ralph yawned and stretched, performing a miniature downward facing dog that was just about the cutest thing I’d ever seen. Since Ralph didn’t have anything to add, I decided to answer my own question. I still had Liam Doyle’s Google results up on the screen and I saw that he had a Facebook page. I clicked it, expecting it would be blocked, but it wasn’t. Good. I wouldn’t have to friend him to look at his profile. The picture on his wall didn’t give me a much better idea of what he looked like than his author photo did. It showed a dark-haired man in profile, the corduroy collar of his Barbour raincoat turned up covering the lower part of his face, rain-misted hair covering up most of the other half. He was gazing into the distance at a breathtaking view of mountains and lakes. The Lake Country, I deduced, from the fact that he listed “Hiking in the Lake Country” as one of his interests, along with playing the lute and studying languages.

I scrolled through his profile and discovered that his favorite music ranged from U2, Kate Nash and the Vivian Girls to Billie Holiday to Celtic fusion bands like the Pogues, Thin Lizzy, and Ceredwen. His favorite movies were
Beauty and the Beast
(the Cocteau version),
Bringing Up Baby, It Happened One Night
, and, rather surprisingly,
You’ve Got Mail
.

His relationship status was posted as “It’s Complicated.”

I was just starting to read the messages on his wall when Ralph leapt onto the keyboard and skittered across the keys. I grabbed him before he hit a key that might inadvertently friend Liam Doyle and reveal that I’d been cyber-stalking him.

“Hey,” I said, putting Ralph down on my desk. “Stay off, you’re going to get hair all over my keyboard.” Ralph shook himself, puffing up his fur until he looked like a miniature tribble, and then began to lick his fur down as if offended that I’d maligned his handsome coat.

“Sorry,” I told him, closing my laptop so he wouldn’t get into it while I was gone. “Just because you’re a magical doormouse doesn’t mean you don’t shed.” Then I glanced at my watch and saw that I was about to be late for class. I’d spent an embarrassing amount of time cruising Liam Doyle’s Facebook page. He really ought to block it or else all his students would be doing the same thing.

We were watching
Wuthering Heights
—the classic version with Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier—in class that day so I used the time to organize the writing workshop folders and attach a Post-it Note to each one with a few words about each student. Too bad if I gave Liam Doyle a few preconceptions. After class one of my students—the boy with all the leather and piercings—asked to talk to me about his final paper, so I didn’t get a peek at the new writer-in-residence before the workshop started. When I walked by the classroom the door was closed. I heard a deep murmuring voice coming from behind the door and then a ripple of laughter from the class.

Good, I thought, heading across the quad to the library, that class deserved a teacher who would give them all some attention. I just hoped he wouldn’t be waylaid by Mara the way Phoenix had been. Maybe I should give him a little warning about the situation when his class was done … which was in an hour and twenty minutes. I’d have to cool my heels in the library till then. Of course there was plenty of work for me to do there, but still, it might have occurred to Mr. Doyle that meeting with me after his class wasn’t the most convenient plan for
me
. He could have at least asked what worked best for me. Had he even asked Dean Book what my schedule was?

Instead of sitting at my usual table, I sat at a computer desk and logged into my email account. I saw that Liz had responded to my last email—the one I’d signed with a smiley face—after I left the house.

Oh, BTW, Mr. Doyle did ask which time was more convenient for you, but I said that since you often worked in the library either would be fine. I hope that was okay. We are quite lucky to get such a prominent poet (and one with such a good reputation for caring about his students) on such short notice. I was trying to accommodate him, but I do hope I haven’t inconvenienced you
:)

I sighed. Dean Book was obviously trying to soothe everyone’s feathers (a smiley face, for heaven’s sake! And what was up with that “BTW”?). I didn’t envy her her job. And she was right: writers-in-residence were notorious for bad behavior and shirking their students. An Oxford fellow who taught in inner city high schools was a pretty remarkable catch.

I emailed back that I was in the library and had plenty to keep me busy until it was time to go meet Professor Doyle. And I did—I had papers to grade and an article in the latest edition of
Folklore
I wanted to put on my reserve list, and the names on the casualty list from the Ulster & Clare train crash to start looking up. But instead of doing any of these things I Googled Liam Doyle again and read his poetry credits. A couple of the magazines he was in were web journals. I clicked on one called
Per Contra
and found a poem called “Winter, Liar.”

     
What came once here will never come again
,     
no matter monument nor memory;
     
all sunwarmed green succumbs to winter’s wind
.     
And you, my love, were also my best friend
,     
and had your life to live. The tragedy
     
was not just my youth’s recklessness, although
     
I trusted much to impulse, whim, freedom
,     
a destiny excluding doom. Frankly
,     
youth can be our insanity. But now I’m cured
     
of that fever, although the price was high;
     
and chilly April wind can only sigh
     
at my regrets, yet sun will brighten wind so
,     
one knows that soon green stirs, and wild bees hum
.     
And summer once more will make winter liar
,     
but I won’t warm. You’re all I’ll ever desire
. Wow, I thought when I had finished reading the poem, Oxford Fellow, inner city teacher, and he could write, too. But maybe that poem was a fluke. I went back to his Google page and found another poem … and then another and another. I read half a dozen. They were all beautiful and all about lost love. Some girl had really done a number on him. I went back to his Facebook page and started to comb through the messages on his wall for any mention of this spectacular girlfriend, but all the messages seemed to be from colleagues or former students. The messages from the students were particularly touching.
Thank you for inspiring me to write poetry, Prof, you really helped me believe in myself!
Ali from Macalester College had written,
I love the book you recommended, Mr. D, you’re right, the Romantics rock!
KickinItKT from Baltimore had written.

No wife or girlfriend mentioned anywhere.

His relationship status was still posted as “It’s Complicated.” Like he would have changed it during class, I began to chide myself, but then I noticed the digital time readout on top of the screen and saw that his class had been over for ten minutes.

Yikes! I grabbed my bookbag and hurried out of the library, sprinted across the quad, and arrived at Fraser Hall panting. I paused to catch my breath in the hall outside Phoenix’s old classroom and heard voices coming from inside. Peeking in I saw the broad, tweed-covered back of a large dark-haired man standing in front and a little to the right of Flonia Rugova. Usually shy—I hadn’t ever heard her string more than five words together at a time—Flonia was chattering away, her cheeks glowing pink and her hands waving in the air like songbirds recently freed from a cage. I tried to listen to what she was saying, but quickly realized she wasn’t speaking in English. Neither was Professor Doyle. He said something in what I could only assume was Albanian and Flonia giggled. Then she saw me lurking in the doorway and covered her mouth. Professor Doyle must have realized someone was behind him but before turning around he leaned toward Flonia, touched his hand to her shoulder, and murmured a few soft words. She nodded, serious now, and pressed both her hands together and inclined her head. I didn’t know any Albanian, but I could tell she was thanking him for something. Doyle said something else and she laughed again. She gathered up her books and left quickly, walking past me as if I wasn’t there.

Wow! One class and shy, sober Flonia Rugova was smitten. What must this guy look like?

I didn’t have to wait long to find out. As soon as Flonia was gone he turned around. My first reaction was
Oh. I don’t see what the big deal is
. Yeah, he had nice broad shoulders and a generous wide mouth, but his thick black hair was too long for my taste and he was wearing those square-rimmed glasses that guys wore to make themselves look intellectual and that made him look a bit like Clark Kent. And a floppy, collarless shirt that looked like something Errol Flynn had worn in
Captain Blood
. Sure, I could see why a young inexperienced girl like Flonia would find him attractive, but I personally thought he was a bit affected.

Then he smiled. A dimple appeared on the left side of his mouth and his brown eyes behind the thick-lensed glasses flashed and turned a mellow tawny gold.

“Ah, you must be Professor McFay,” he said in a lilting Irish accent. “My students talked about how generous you’ve been with your time.”

My
students? He’d certainly taken possession of them quickly. Okay, he was good-looking, but I was betting he knew it.

“Well, they’re a good group,” I said. “Nicky Ballard especially …”

“… is a remarkable poet. Yes, I saw that right away. It’s odd that Ms. Middlefield was trying to make her write a memoir.”

I agreed entirely, but I didn’t like him kicking Phoenix when she was down—and right now poor Phoenix was probably strapped to a cot in a medicated stupor, which was about as down as a person could get. “Phoenix was under a lot of stress. I’m sure she was only doing what she believed was best for her students. She thought that confronting one’s demons was necessary for a writer.”