Meredith Gentry 01 - A Kiss of Shadows Read online

  His eyes went wider still, until they were like two huge pools of darkness. “When they drank your blood, they shared your mortality.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they know that?”

  I smiled then. I couldn’t help it. “Not until Arzhul died with my dagger sticking out of him.”

  “You must have put up a hard battle for him to try and change your form. It’s a major spell for the sidhe. If he didn’t fear death, then you must have hurt him badly.”

  I shook my head. “He was showing off. It wasn’t enough that he meant to kill me. He wanted to humiliate me first. For one sidhe to force a shape-shift on another is proof that they are the more powerful magician.”

  “So he was showing off,” Roane said. It was the closest he would probably get to asking what happened next.

  “I stabbed him, just hoping to distract him, but my father always taught me never to waste a strike. Even if you know you face an immortal, strike as if they could die because deathblows hurt more, even if they won’t kill.”

  “Did you kill the one who scarred you here?” His hand came from behind to trace my ribs.

  I shuddered at his touch, and not because it hurt. “No, Rozenwyn is still alive.”

  “Then why didn’t she crush your heart?” His hands slid around my waist, holding me against his body, cradling me. I let myself rest in the curve of his arms, the solid warmth of his body.

  “Because her duel was after Arzhul, and when I stabbed her, she panicked, I think. She called the duel won without making the kill.”

  He rubbed his cheek along mine, and we both watched the colors mingle as our skins touched. “It was the last duel then,” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  He kissed my cheek, very softly. “No.”

  “No, there was one more.” I turned my face to him. His lips brushed mine, not quite a kiss.

  “What happened?” He spoke the words in a warm breath against my mouth.

  “Bleddyn had been one of the Seelie Court once, before he did something so awful that no one will speak of it, and he was cast out. But he was so powerful that the Unseelie Court took him in. His true name was lost, and he became Bleddyn. It means wolf or outlaw, or did once very long ago. It meant he was an outlaw even among the dark court.”

  Roane kissed the side of my neck where my pulse beat just under the skin. My pulse sped at that light touch. He raised his face enough to ask, “How was he an outlaw?” Then he began to kiss his way down my neck.

  “He was subject to horrible rages for no reason. If he hadn’t been surrounded by immortals, he’d have killed people, friends as well as enemies.”

  Roane’s kisses had worked down to my shoulder, then my arm. He stopped just long enough to say, “Just rages?” Then lowered his head and kissed until he found the bend in my arm. He lifted my arm so that he could lock his mouth around the fragile skin at the bend. He sucked sudden and sharp on the skin, teeth sinking into my arm enough to hurt, enough to make me gasp. Roane didn’t care for pain, but he was an attentive lover, and he knew what I liked, as I knew what he liked. But I suddenly couldn’t concentrate on what I was saying.

  He raised his face from my arm, leaving a round, nearly perfect imprint of his small sharp teeth. He hadn’t broken the skin. I’d never been able to persuade him to go that far, but the mark against my flesh pleased me, made me bend toward him.

  He stopped me, asking, “Was it just rages, or were there other things that marked Bleddyn as dangerous?”

  It took me a second to remember. I had to sit back from him. “If you want to hear the story, behave yourself.”

  He lay on his side, one arm flung underneath his head for a pillow. He stretched his body so that I had to notice the way the muscles moved under that gleaming skin. “I thought I was behaving myself.”

  I shook my head. “You’ll make me forget myself, Roane. You don’t want that.”

  “I want you tonight, Merry. I want all of you, no glamour, no hiding, no holding back.” He sat up suddenly, peering so close to my face that I started to move back, but he grabbed my arm. “I want to be what you need tonight, Merry.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t understand what you’re asking.”

  “No, I don’t, but if you’re ever going to have everything, tonight is the night.” He grabbed my other arm, pulling us both to our knees, his fingers digging in enough that I knew I’d be bruised tomorrow. That one forceful movement made my heart beat faster. “I’ve lived for centuries, Merry. If either of us is a child, it’s you, not me.” His words were fierce, and I’d never seen him like this, so forceful, so demanding.

  I could have said, “You’re hurting me, Roane,” but I was enjoying that part, so instead I said, “You don’t sound like yourself.”

  “I knew you held your glamour in place even when we lay together, but I never dreamed how much you were hiding.” He shook me twice, hard enough that I almost told him it did hurt. “Don’t hide, Merry.” He kissed me then, bruising his lips against mine, forcing his mouth against mine, until if I hadn’t opened my mouth he might have cut either his lips or mine on our teeth. He forced me back on the bed, and I wasn’t having a good time. I liked pain, not rape.

  I stopped him with a hand on his chest, pushing him away from me. He was still above me, eyes strangely fierce, but he was listening. “What are you trying to do, Roane?”

  “What happened in your last duel?”

  The change of subject was too fast for me. “What?”

  “Your last duel, what happened?” His voice, his face was all seriousness while his naked body pressed against mine.

  “I killed him.”

  “How?”

  Somehow I knew he wasn’t asking about the mechanics of the kill. “He underestimated me.”

  “I have never underestimated you, Merry. Don’t do less for me. Don’t treat me as less just because I’m not sidhe. I am a thing of faerie with not a drop of mortal blood in my veins. Do not fear for me.” His voice was normal again, but there was still an undercurrent of fierceness.

  I stared up into his face and saw the pride there, not a masculine pride, but the pride of the fey. I was treating him as less than fey, and he deserved better, but . . . “What if I hurt you without meaning to?”

  “I’ll heal,” he said.

  It made me smile because in that moment I loved him, not the kind of love that the bards sing of, but it was love all the same. “All right, but let’s pick a position that puts you dominant, not me.”

  A thought filled his eyes. “You don’t trust yourself.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then trust me. I won’t break.”

  “Promise?” I said.

  He smiled, and kissed my forehead, gently like you’d kiss a child. “Promise.”

  I took him at his word.

  I ended with my hands gripping the cool metal rods of the headboard. Roane’s body pinned mine to the bed, his groin cupped against my buttocks. It was a position that gave him a great deal of control and kept most of my body turned away from him. I couldn’t touch him with my hands. There were so many things I couldn’t do from this position, and it was why I’d chosen it. Short of being tied up, it was the safest thing I could think of, and Roane didn’t like bondage. Besides, the real dangers had nothing to do with hands or teeth or anything purely physical. Bonds wouldn’t really have helped, except to serve as a reminder for me to be careful. I was very afraid that somewhere in the welter of power and flesh I would forget everything but pleasure, and Roane would suffer for it, and I didn’t mean suffer in a good way.

  The moment he slid inside me, I knew I was in trouble. He was a fearsome thing, holding himself up on his hands so that he could force himself into me with all the strength of his back and hips. I’d once seen Roane punch his fist through a car door to impress a would-be mugger that we weren’t worth the trouble. It was like he was trying to push his way into my body and out the other side. I realized something I
hadn’t before. Roane had thought I was human with fey blood, but still human. He’d been as careful of me, as I had of him. The difference was that I feared my magic would harm him, and he’d feared his physical strength. Tonight there would be no holding back, no true safety net for either of us. For the first time I realized that I might be the one injured, not Roane. Sex with an edge of true danger, there’s nothing like it. Add magic that could melt your skin, and it was going to be a very good night.

  His body caught a harsh rhythm coming in and out of mine; there was the sound of flesh hitting flesh every time he thrust into me. This, this was what I’d wanted for so very long. He took my body, and I felt the first wave of pleasure. I suddenly worried that he’d bring me before the magic had time to build.

  I opened my metaphysical skin as I’d opened my legs, but instead of letting him enter me, I reached up to him. I opened his aura, his magic, like he’d unzipped my dress earlier. His body began to sink into mine, not physically, but the effect is surprisingly similar. He hesitated with his body sheathed inside mine, stopping. I could feel his pulse speeding, speeding, not from physical exertion but from fear. He drew himself out of me completely, and for one heartrending moment I thought he was going to stop, that it would all stop. Then he entered me again, and it was as if he gave himself completely to me, to us, to the night.

  The amber and moonlight glow of our skins expanded until we moved in a cocoon of light, of warmth, of power. Every thrust of his body raised the power. Every writhe of my body underneath him drew the magic like a choking shield around us, close and suffocating. I knew that I was trying to draw him inside me, not his organ, but him, like my magic was trying to drink him up. I dug my fingers into the metal rods of the bed until the metal bit into my skin and made me think again. Roane collapsed his body on top of mine, so that the line of his chest and stomach molded against my back, while his groin thrust between my legs. He couldn’t get as much power from this angle, but the magic flared between us at the touch of so much skin. Our bodies melded as our hands had earlier, and I could feel him sinking into my back until our hearts touched, fluttering together in a dance more intimate than anything we’d known before.

  Our hearts began to beat together, closer and closer until the rhythm was identical and it was one heart, one body, one being, and I no longer knew where I stopped and Roane began. It was in that moment of near perfect unison that I first heard the sea. A soft, murmuring rush of waves on the shore. I floated bodiless, formless in a shining place of light with nothing but the beating of our joined hearts to let me know I was still flesh and not pure magic. And in that shining, formless place, with no bodies to hold us, there was a hurrying, flowing, spilling sound of water. The sound of the ocean chased our heartbeats, filled that bright place. Our heartbeats sank into the waves. We sank deeper and deeper in a blinding circle of light, under the water, and there was no fear. We had come home. We were surrounded by water on every side, and I could feel the pressure of the depth pushing against our hearts as if it would crush us, but I knew it wouldn’t. Roane knew it wouldn’t. The thought, a separate thought, sent us rising up, and up toward the surface of the invisible ocean that held us. I was aware of how frighteningly cold it was, and I was afraid, and Roane wasn’t. He was joyous. We surfaced, and though I knew we were still pressed to the bed in his apartment, I felt the air hit my face. I drew a great breath of air, and I was suddenly aware that the sea was warm. The water was so warm, warmer than blood, warm enough to be almost hot.

  I was suddenly aware of my body again. I could feel Roane’s body inside mine. But the swirl and rush of warm ocean flowed over us. My eyes told me I was still on the bed, hands holding to the headboard, but I could feel the warm, warm water swirling over us. The invisible ocean filled the glowing light of our two mingled bodies like water inside a goldfish bowl, the ocean held by our power like metaphysical glass. Our bodies were like the wicks of some floating candle, caught in the water and the glass, fire, water, and flesh. Our bodies began to be more real, more solid. The feel of invisible ocean began to fade. The light of our skins began to shrink back inside the shields of our skins. Then the pleasure took us, and the warmth that had been in the water, in the light, crashed over us. We cried out. The warmth became heat, and it filled me up, spilled out my skin, my hands. Sounds tore from my mouth, too primitive to be screams. Roane’s body bucked against mine, and the magic held us both, drawing out the orgasm until I felt the metal of the bed begin to melt under my hands. Roane screamed, and it wasn’t a scream of pleasure. Finally, finally, we were free. He rolled off of me, and I heard him fall onto the floor. I turned, still lying on my stomach.

  He was lying on his side, one hand flung up, reaching for me. I had one quick glimpse of his face, eyes wide and terrified, before fur spilled over that face, and he collapsed in a roil of sleek fur.

  I sat up on the bed, reaching for him, knowing there was nothing I could do. Then there was a seal lying on the apartment floor. A large, reddish-furred seal, staring at me with Roane’s brown eyes. All I could do was stare. There were no words.

  The seal moved clumsily toward the bed, then a seam that hadn’t been there opened up the front of the animal, and Roane crawled out. He stood up, holding the new skin in his arms. He stared at me, a look of soft wonder on his face. He was crying, but I don’t think he knew it.

  I went to him, touching the skin, touching him, as if neither one was real. I hugged him, and my hands found his back was whole, untouched, the skin as smooth and perfect as the rest of him. The burn scars were gone.

  He slipped the skin back on before I could find words. The seal stared up at me, moving around the room in awkward almost snakelike movements, then Roane stepped out of the skin again. He turned to me and began to laugh.

  He picked me up around the thighs, lifting me up above his head, wrapping us both in the sealskin. He danced us around the room laughing while the tears hadn’t even dried on his face. I was crying, too, and laughing.

  Roane collapsed on the bed, spilling me across it, lying on top of his sealskin. I was suddenly so tired, horribly tired. I needed to shower and leave. I wasn’t glowing anymore. I was almost sure I could do glamour again. But I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I’d been drunk only once in my life, and I’d passed out. That was what was happening. I was about to pass out from Branwyn’s Tears or just too much magic.

  We fell asleep curled in each other’s arms, with the skin wrapped around us. The last thing I thought before we fell into a sleep deeper than anything natural wasn’t a thought for my safety. The skin was warm, as warm as Roane’s arms around me, and I knew that the skin was just as alive, just as much a part of him. I fell into darkness curled between pieces of Roane’s warmth, Roane’s magic, Roane’s love.

  Chapter 8

  A VOICE WAS SAYING, SOFTLY, “MERRY, MERRY.” A HAND STROKED THE side of my face, smoothing back my hair. I turned, cuddling against the hand, opening my eyes. But the overhead light was on, and I was blinded for a second. I flung a hand up to guard my eyes and turned on my side, burying my face in the pillow.

  I managed to say, “Turn off the light.”

  I felt the bed move, and a second later the rim of brightness under the pillow was gone. I raised my head from the pillow and found the room in near perfect darkness. It had been nearly dawn when Roane and I fell asleep. It should have been light outside. I sat up and looked around the darkened room. Somehow I wasn’t surprised that Jeremy was standing by the light switch. I didn’t bother looking for Roane. I knew where he was. He was in the ocean with his new skin. He hadn’t left me unprotected, but he had left me. Maybe it should have hurt my feelings, but it didn’t. I’d given Roane back his first love, the sea.

  There is an old saying: never come between a faerie and his magic. Roane was in the arms of his beloved, and it wasn’t me. We might never see each other again, and he hadn’t said good-bye. But I knew that if ever I needed something he could give me, I could go down to the sea and
call him, and he would come. But he couldn’t give me love. I loved Roane, but I wasn’t in love with him. Lucky me.

  I knelt naked in the wrinkled sheets, staring out at the black windows. “How long did we sleep?”

  “It’s eight o’clock Friday night.”

  I slid off the bed and stood. “Oh, my God.”

  “I take it that means that you still being in town after dark is a bad thing.”

  I looked at him.

  He stood near the door, and the light switch. It was hard to tell in the dark but he seemed dressed in one of his usual suits, impeccably tailored, compact and elegant. But there was an underlying tension to him, as if he wanted to say other things, more direct things, or maybe, he knew something already. Something bad.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing yet,” he said.

  I stared at him. “What do you think is going to happen?” I couldn’t quite keep the suspicion out of my voice.

  Jeremy laughed. “Don’t worry, I haven’t made any calls, but I’m sure the police have by now. I don’t know why you’ve been hiding all this time, but if you’re hiding from the sluagh, the Host, then you’re in deep trouble.”

  “Sluagh” was a rude name for the lesser Unseelie fey. The Host was the polite phrase. Rude first, polite was an afterthought. Oh, well. Only another Unseelie could say “sluagh” and not have it be a mortal insult.

  “I’m an Unseelie princess. Why should I be hiding from them?”

  He leaned back against the wall. “That is the question, isn’t it.”

  Even across the room in the dark I could feel the weight of his gaze, the intensity of it. It was impolite for a fey to ask another direct questions, but, oh, he wanted to ask. You could feel the unasked questions like something touchable in the air between us.

  “Jump in the shower like a good girl.” He lifted a bag from the floor near his feet. “I brought you clothes. The van is downstairs with Ringo and Uther in it. We’ll get you to the airport.”