The Immortal Highlander

Page 19

Shake. Him. He’d never trembled in his life. Never suffered even the mildest involuntary shudder.
A shameless voyeur, he’d spied on lovers uncounted over the millennia, avidly watching them, studying their bedplay. He’d watched giants of men, hardened warriors with scarred bodies and iced hearts, men made brutal by war and famine and death, tremble like inexperienced boys from the mere touch of a woman.
He’d never understood it. He’d wanted to understand it. He did now.
The press of her hips against his heavy loins had flooded him with raw, primal aggression. Never had he felt such an overwhelming imperative to mate. Never had he had such a vicious, raging hard-on.
And even now, despite his residual pain, he hungered to touch her. Resented the very air that separated their bodies. Needed to feel her again. Shifting in the chair, he moved his knee between hers so it was brushing her inner thigh, not missing how her leg instantly tensed. Ah, much better. For a moment he couldn’t drag his gaze from the ripe press of her round breasts against the soft fabric of her shirt. Christ, he couldn’t wait to get his mouth on them.
But not by force. He might tempt, lure, and manipulate, but none could accuse the consummate seducer of resorting to something so banal as force. Not him. It was a point he prided himself on. Those who fell prey to his machinations fell of their own accord. When they chose to take what he offered—and they always did—any black marks on their souls were their own.
A Sidhe-seer. He’d never have even thought to go searching for one.
Gabrielle O’Callaghan was a wild card of the finest sort, a possibility Aoibheal hadn’t taken into account when she’d levied the féth fiada against him, believing them all long dead.
As had he.
The last Sidhe-seer he’d encountered had been over two thousand years ago, in the first century A.D., deep in a towering, lush forest in Ireland; a wizened and withered old crone. He’d not bothered to alert the Hunters; she’d been courting Death’s kiss anyway. He’d sat and told her tales for a time, answered her many questions. A few years later he’d returned, gathered her fragile, dried-up husk of a body in his arms, and taken her to a secluded beach on the Isle of Morar. She’d died looking out at an ocean so intensely, brilliantly aquamarine that it made humans weep. She’d died with the scent of jasmine and sandalwood in her nostrils, not the stench of her filthy one-room hut. She’d died with a smile on her lips.
But this one—could he have been more blessed by Fate? Young, strong, defiant, beautiful. And why not? Fate was a woman, and women always aided Adam Black. As would this one once he’d allayed her misgivings.
She’d been raised to fear and despise his kind and would require a thorough seduction. Once, the mere fact that he was Fae would have inspired unstinting obedience, but the world had changed much since such times, as had the nature of women. They were stronger, far more independent. No longer were they willing to spend their lives hidden in a forest, forswearing the bearing of progeny lest they pass on the vision and, one day, have to watch the grim, nightmarish Hunters slay their offspring.
Ah, yes, times had changed, as the Tuatha Dé had changed, too, been forced to change when Queen Aoibheal had accepted the terms and many limits of the sacred Compact on behalf of their race. No longer were they permitted to spill human blood, lest The Compact be voided, and any Tuatha Dé who violated it condemned to the grimmest fate for one of their kind: a soulless death. Although, should the queen or any of his race, for that matter, hear hint of the existence of a Sidhe-seer, the Hunters would still be instantly dispatched, they would no longer be permitted to slaughter their prey.
However, Gabrielle O’Callaghan didn’t know that, as the terms of The Compact were secret from all mortals but the MacKeltar, a Highland clan of ancient bloodline descended from the first Druids, and sole keepers of Man’s end of the treaty.
Hence, when he’d appeared at her door, she’d believed she was fighting for her life. Adam shook his head. Even on his worst days in his worst centuries, when he’d been the worst kind of immortal, ungoverned by any Compact, he’d not have killed this one. Played hard and rough with her? Certainly. Killed her? Never.
Ka-lyrra, he’d called her, not realizing just how accurate it was. The ka-lyrra was a creature native to his homeworld, Danu. Silky-pelted, exquisitely marked, with huge, phosphorescent eyes, velvety paws, and a striped, tufted tail, its delicate beauty tempted, but its bite was dangerous, even to a Tuatha Dé; not killing but causing madness of considerable duration. Few were they who could woo it; few were they who dared to try.