: Chapter 12

The late afternoon sunlight slanting through the windows gave Ann a better view of Finn’s body than she’d had the night before. The scars and tattoos were familiar now and they gave her less pause. The details were easier to see in the sunlight, though, and the musculature of his chest, the startling definition of it, surprised her.

“On the bed, now,” he said. It was an order. She found that it both thrilled her and made her bristle.

“No.” She liked saying it, liked defying him, liked feeling free to engage in conflict without fear of it spiraling out of control. No, that wasn’t quite right. She wanted things to spiral out of control with him. She wanted to start something she couldn’t stop, something that felt as free and unbound as her berserk state, something she could share with this man.

He grinned at her. “Oh, Ann,” he said with obvious relish. “You want everything at once, don’t you? I would be a pig if I gave you everything,” he mused, unbuckling his belt, “but I’ll give you just enough to keep you coming back for more.”

He folded the belt and took a step toward her.

“You’re kidding, right?” she asked, standing her ground.

He laughed and reached for her, grabbing a fistful of her hair and leading her by it to the bed. She went along, knowing she could break free but not really wanting to.

Finn bent her over the foot of the bed, using her hair to control her, to angle her, until her bottom was sticking up in the air. He shoved her sweatpants down her legs, freed one ankle, and kicked her feet apart.

She felt him run the cool leather of his belt up the inside of her thigh, then rap her center with it lightly. She whimpered, and he ran the leather down her other thigh, then back up. Then he slid it between her legs right where she needed it. Back and forth, wetting his belt with her slickness. She started to pant, and she yelped when he yanked the leather away and brought it down on her backside.

It hurt. Sharply at first. Then it burned. Pleasurably. And the belt was back between her legs adding to that pleasure, and she was climbing, spiraling up and up until the belt cracked against her other cheek and she tumbled back down to a place where satisfaction was just out of reach.

He ministered to her with the belt again, back and forth, until she was close again. Then he let go of her hair. She tried to rise, but he pushed her back down. “Stay like that, if you like what I’m doing,” he said.

She did. She liked the pattern he was rubbing against her clit with the belt, back and forth, then left to right, then long, irregular ovals. She liked it when he tapped the belt against her swollen center so smartly it hurt and made her fly apart at the same time. She was so sensitive from the belt that by the time he entered her, she was screaming. She reached a second climax as he pounded her rhythmically, and she felt the heaviness of his balls smacking into her.

She was dazed when he withdrew. She knew he hadn’t come yet, but all she could do when he flipped her over was stare up at him in a haze of half-satisfied lust.

“Your turn to be on top,” he said as he shoved his jeans farther down, then lay back on the bed and held up his cock.

So far he had given her the roughness she craved, so she didn’t have to ask for it, instigate it, or risk embarrassment. Taking what she wanted meant owning up to her desires, to the part of her that wasn’t sweet or ladylike or tame, to the part of her that other men had mocked to their friends. The part of her they had walked out on in disgust.

She batted his hand away from his cock and wrapped her own around it. He groaned, arched his back, and put his hands above his head, his perfect body in perfect submission. She climbed on top of him, shoving his hips down into the mattress, impaling herself on his thick cock.

It felt so good. Cold and wet as she slid down it, warm and slick once he was seated inside her. He flexed his hips, and she liked that, but she wanted total control, so she shoved him down again and leaned back. The position changed the angle of his cock inside her and she liked that, too. It also exposed their joining to his greedy eyes, and he clearly liked that.

“I want to touch you,” he said.

She shook her head.

“I want to make you come again. I like feeling you clench around me. I want to see what your face looks like when it happens.”

She shook her head. She was going to be in control of everything for a little while.

He smiled, and she wondered if any man had ever understood her so perfectly before.

“Touch yourself then,” he said. “Make yourself come.”

The only time she’d tried it, her boyfriend had removed her hand from between them, twice, and then when she’d tried to explain what she wanted, stormed out of the apartment never to be seen again.

Finn didn’t seem likely to storm out. She ran a tentative hand over her own breasts, grazing her nipples, then sliding down her stomach to the neatly trimmed patch of hair just above her center.

She’d never exposed so much of herself to anyone. Never shared anything so private. Her fingers traced her lips first, the way she always started when she was alone; then she parted herself and circled, spreading the moisture there. The difference was that instead of her aching emptiness, there was Finn’s cock, sliding and in out of her. She ran her fingertips over it and he babbled, “Yes, yes, yes, yes.” That made her feel powerful. Her fingers retreated back to their familiar path and found her swollen clit again, too tender now to touch directly. All the while Finn watched her, his hands obediently held above his head, making her feel wanted. She’d given up trying to keep his hips still.

“I can feel you tightening around me,” he said. “It’s glorious. Push yourself over,” he urged her. “I want to see you fall.”

“When I’m ready,” she said.

“Push yourself over now,” he insisted, “and I promise I’ll reward you for it.”

She hesitated. “What kind of reward?”

“Did you like what I did to you with the belt?”

She was still exquisitely sensitive from it. “Yes.”

“Then take the plunge into the unknown. Make yourself come now, and I’ll have you screaming again in the short time we have left.”

She couldn’t resist what he was offering. She began to finger her nipples with her left hand and to use two fingers between her legs, dipping down to the taut flesh that engulfed his cock.

“That’s it,” he coaxed. “Keep your eyes open. I want to see this.”

She tried to keep her eyes open, but as the waves racked her, she squeezed them shut. She collapsed on top of him shuddering, his cock still hard inside her, his hips still thrusting.

“So good,” he was muttering into her ear. His hands were no longer above his head but stroking her hair, her face, her shoulders. “So lovely,” he praised. “My Ann,” he said, winding one hand into her hair and pulling her head down to his shoulder, holding her there.

She didn’t mind. He was rocking up into her, using the angle of his body to hit that sweet spot inside her every time. “That’s good,” she moaned. “Just like that, so good. I can come like that.”

He chuckled. “I’m sure you can, but that’s not all I’ve got in mind.”

His words barely registered. Everything in her was concentrated on the way his cock was moving inside her. Her knees were drawn as high and wide as she could make them, to bring him as deep inside as she could. His free hand moved over the contours of her back, slick with sweat, all the way down to the globes of her spread ass. His hand traveled over her bottom and his fingers danced in the slippery moisture between them, then traveled up . . .

“What are you doing?”

She knew where his fingers were going, even as she denied wanting them to get there.

“Here,” he said, pressing a slick fingertip to her puckered entrance.

He was in to the first knuckle before she could protest, and she liked it too much to make anything but inarticulate noises.

His own vocalizations were triumphant. “Yes,” he said. “That’s it.” His finger slid the rest of the way in, and she was shrieking and moaning and coming so hard that she started to see stars.

She registered his climax as a burst of warmth inside her, but her head was spinning and all she could hear was the blood rushing in her ears. She was dimly aware of him rolling her onto her side, pulling a blanket up around her, and kissing her sweaty brow. Then he got up, and she could hear water running in the en suite bath. The bed dipped, and she knew he was back, pulling her exhausted body into his arms.

“Did you like that, my little berserker?” he asked, stroking her tangled hair.

“Do you really need to ask?” she croaked, her voice hoarse from screaming.

“And that is only a taste of what we can have, Ann.”

She liked the way he said her name, the way he said “we” as though they had a future together. For a moment she forgot what she was planning, forgot that there was very little chance she would live out the night, and she enjoyed just being close to him.

She turned to face him, and he kissed her. It was gentler than anything that had gone before, and somehow more intimate than the sex, amazing as that had been.

“I liked what we did,” she said, tentatively.

“I could tell. If the windows weren’t double glazed, the tourists climbing the monument would know, too.”

“You weren’t exactly silent yourself,” she teased.

“That’s because you are thrilling to be with, Ann Phillips, even to a jaded old man like me.”

“How jaded are you?” she asked, coming nearer to the subject she wanted to broach.

“What are you asking, Ann? Whether I can push you further than we went today, or whether that’s the only kind of sex I enjoy?”

“Both,” she said, afraid of his answer.

He kissed her again. “That,” he said, “is the joy of taking a compatible lover.” His hands slid down her body and lifted one knee to rest on his hip, opening her to his fingers. He slid one inside her, where she was still wet and pliant—and shocked her by rousing her again, finding the spot that made her crazy and applying calculated pressure. “Today,” he continued, “I can show you the pleasures to be had from rough handling and the kiss of my belt.” The pressure turned into a firm massage. Her suspended leg began to tremble, and she started to pant. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we can lie in bed all morning and go slow and gentle. Unless you’d like to learn what it would feel like to have your nipples clamped.” He pinched one sharply. “Or to be truly filled here.” His thumb slid from her center to her other opening, slick with moisture, and stimulated the nerves there once more. “There’s no end to what we can try together, Ann, and we don’t have to do anything you don’t like.”

If she’d been capable of articulate speech, she would have said there was nothing she wouldn’t like with him, but his finger and his thumb were working together to push her over the edge and the only sounds that came from her mouth were choked sobs.

For a few minutes afterward she basked in the pleasant fantasy he had spun for her, but the clock beside the bed told her that time was passing and soon their interlude together would be over.

“Do you think there’s any real chance the Prince will bring Davin back?” Ann asked.

“I don’t know,” said Finn. “It’s possible that he is sincere. The Prince is Sean’s brother, and Sean was part of the Prince’s circle before the fall, one of the artists he cultivated. But that was two thousand years ago.”

“But he answered Sean’s call for help.”

“For his own reasons. Have no doubt of that. The Prince has invested decades in resurrecting the Druids. He wants to use them to rediscover their arts and bring down the wall between worlds. He may rescue the boy, but more likely, if we don’t follow close on his heels, he’ll kill or capture the Druid and abandon the child where we’ll never find him. Or he may want the boy for the same reasons the Druid did. Whatever that might be. He might kill the Druid and take the boy, and if he makes enough jumps, far enough ahead of us, we’ll never find either of them.”

Ann couldn’t let that happen.

Nancy McTeer had been wrong about Finn MacUmhaill. He wasn’t emotionally unavailable. He was a man under siege who wouldn’t reveal himself to a woman who couldn’t accept what he was. They were so much alike in that way. She wished they had more time now, but they didn’t.

Then there was a knock at the door and a voice on the other side.

“Miach’s ready,” called Garrett through the door. “And Nieve called. They’re almost here with the knives.”

“We’ll be down,” said Finn, not bothering to hide that she was with him.

“Damn,” she said, shaking out her discarded pants and putting her plan in motion. “I can’t find my cell phone. It’s got to be in here somewhere. Can I call it from yours?”

“Of course.” He tapped out the password and tossed her his sleek little phone on his way into the bathroom. While he was in there, she found and downloaded the app she needed, called her own phone so she would have Finn’s number, and wrote the text she would send him when the time came.

He emerged from the bathroom ten minutes later, showered and smelling like pine soap. Ann was struck once again by his striking combination of otherworldly beauty and human practicality. It was impossible not be attracted to his looks: the sun-shot chestnut hair that fell in soft waves around his face, the wide cheekbones and sharp chin, the broad shoulders and muscular arms. He would have been unapproachable if he dressed like the Prince or wore his hair long like Iobáth, but the faded tees and flannel shirts he favored humanized him, made it possible for Ann to think of him as a man first and a Fae war leader second.

She was glad that she had packed practical clothes herself. Her discarded sweater, turtleneck, and velour pants didn’t look the worse for having spent the last hour on the floor—although she was fairly certain that even with the double glazing, everyone in the house would be able to guess what she and Finn had been doing for the last hour. She did the best she could with her hair, combing it with her fingers and pinning it on top of her head, and she tucked her cell phone into the pocket of her down vest where she could reach it easily.

That didn’t stop her from being terrified of what she had resolved to do. Finn didn’t make it any easier for her, the way he slung a casual arm around her on the way down the stairs, the easy manner in which he conveyed to everyone present that Ann was important to him. There was promise in his affection, of the kind of happiness and companionship she had long since stopped expecting to find, and she was about to give it all up.

She didn’t have any choice. The instinct she’d known all her life, the one that compelled her to protect the weak from the strong—the one that she now knew to be the voice of the berserker inside her—was impossible to deny.

Finn didn’t want to let Ann out of his sight, but he knew he would have been wiser to tie her to the bed upstairs and lock the door than admit her to their meeting with the Prince. She was courageous and strong and determined to save Davin, and there was no way in hell he was bringing her with them into the lair of a Druid. Maybe if she had mastered a weapon, learned how to call upon her berserk spirit . . . but no. Even then, he wouldn’t want her along on such an occasion. He’d found something with Ann that he was terrified would be taken from him, the way Brigid had been taken from him.

As soon as this was over, as soon as Davin was safe and the bloody Prince Consort was gone, he was going to help her find her true weapon and train her properly. Finn wanted Ann to walk safely in his world, and that meant being able to defend herself. Not just against petty villains like the Fianna who had harassed her outside the convenience store the other night—but against true foes like the Prince Consort, too.

He saw Nieve walk in the front door, a diaper bag slung over her shoulder that no doubt contained that most Fae of baby accessories, a brace of iron knives. Iobáth was with her, a book tucked under his arm.

“Any difficulty?” asked Finn.

“Nothing Miach couldn’t have warned us about,” said Iobáth, pushing past him with obvious irritation.

Finn turned to Ann. “Would you find Mrs. Friary and make sure she’s made up all the guest rooms and has enough food in the house to serve dinner if Miach stays?”

“Am I allowed to add my own requests?” she asked, smiling slyly.

“Of course. What is it you’re craving?”

“We left the crème brûlée at my house, and I’ve been thinking about it since last night.”

“Really? I thought I had sufficiently distracted you.”

“You did. But now that I have my clothes on again, I want crème brûlée.”

“Then tell Mrs. Friary. I’ll meet you in the dining room.”

Ann headed for the kitchen, and Finn turned to Nieve, who was tucking her coat into the hall closet.

“A word, daughter-in-law,” he intoned, in the voice he used at the Commandant’s House when he expected the Fianna to hear and obey.

She rolled her eyes. He wondered how his son put up with her. She was the bossiest woman he had ever met. Somehow, she even ordered Miach around.

“Anything you say to me will be repeated to your son,” she said.

“It’s not my son I want this conversation held private from. It’s Ann.”

Nieve smiled. “I thought you’d screwed that up for good, Finn MacUmhaill, but apparently you possess some appeal that utterly escapes me.”

“Why did you send her to my house that day? The day your grandfather attacked me with his stone singer?”

“Granddad wouldn’t have attacked you if you hadn’t abducted his best friend and threatened to torture Elada’s wife.”

“Fair enough,” said Finn. “But I’ve apologized for that, and I’ve said I won’t do it again.”

“I think you’ll find that apologizing for kidnapping doesn’t quite cut it.”

“No,” he agreed, “it doesn’t. But I’m trying to make amends. Tell me why you sent her to my house.”

“To distract you, obviously, so we could get Elada and Sorcha out. And for the record, singing your house down was Sorcha’s idea. Granddad and I didn’t plan that.”

“But you knew what Ann was.”

“I suspected,” admitted Nieve. “But I wasn’t sure.”

“What made you suspect?”

Nieve looked up and down the hall. When she was certain they were alone, she stepped close to Finn and spoke in a low voice. “You have to promise that you won’t tell her about this.”

“No.”

“What?”

“No. I won’t keep any secrets from her.”

“It’s to protect her. For her own good.”

“Secrets never protect anyone, Nieve. Don’t keep any from Garrett. You’ll regret it.”

Her black brows knit. “I thought you didn’t want me married to Garrett at all. Why do you care so much whether or not we keep secrets from each other?”

“Because he’s my son, and I want what’s best for him. But I learned the hard way that keeping things from the people you love doesn’t protect them. It only exposes them to greater danger. I wanted to protect Brigid, too, but I doomed her.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Brigid and I hated court life. We kept our children, kept our lives, as separate from the Queen and her corrupt lackeys as we could. When your grandfather came to me and told me what had happened with Conn’s daughter, I kept it from Brigid at first, because I didn’t want her to worry. When I finally told her what had happened, I kept from her our fear that the Druids were plotting something. She had always been suspicious of them, and I reasoned that if I told her we were worried, I would rob her of peace of mind. If I had trusted her with my fears, she might have been on her guard. She might not have been taken, along with our children.”

“You don’t know that,” said Nieve.

“Don’t I? Brigid was the real strategist in the Fianna. Never me. If she had known what was brewing, she would have made plans.”

“None of you foresaw what the Druids would do.”

“Brigid always said they would turn on us. That was what hurt the most. I answered Miach’s call and left her at home. I never saw her again. But I learned of it when they captured her. My particular jailer in the mound delighted in telling me what was being done to her. Her worst fears—Druid treachery—had come true. Give me some credit for having lived long and seen much, even if wisdom has been slow in coming to me. There are no secrets that are truly for your beloved’s own good. Tell me what it is you know about Ann.”

Nieve sighed. “She doesn’t know herself. It happened when Garrett was in her second-grade class. It was after the winter concert, in the parking lot at school. Shamus Kenny’s father turned up to the concert drunk and sang along with the choir. His wife, Rita, was so embarrassed. Out in the parking lot, she told him all about how humiliated she’d been, and he punched her. Ann saw, and she jumped him from behind. Smashed his head into the hood of his car. He never saw what hit him. And Ann . . . Ann was in some kind of fugue state. She came out of it after the Kennys drove off to the emergency room. Rita Kenny told the police they were mugged but she didn’t see their attackers. I’d never seen a berserker, but I’d heard about them from Grandfather, and Ann fit the bill. She didn’t remember a thing afterward. I told her she’d slipped on the ice and hit her head.”

“Why didn’t you tell your grandfather? Why not give her to Miach?”

Nieve laughed out loud. “Send one more beautiful young prodigy Grandfather’s way? His wife would have gutted me. And Granddad’s no warrior. He wouldn’t have known what to do with her, whereas you used to lead berserkers. And you seemed so lonely.”

“Lonely? With the Fianna?”

“Lonely,” repeated Nieve. “In that big bustling house with followers but no family.”

She surprised him by standing up on her tiptoes and kissing him on the cheek. “I don’t think I’ll ever manage to call you dad, but maybe with Ann, you’ve got a good chance that Garrett will start thinking of you as his father and not as his enemy.”

She headed into the house, leaving him staring after her.

He found Ann in the kitchen, standing at the counter, eating a crème brûlée and watching Mrs. Friary whisk eggs.

“It’s all in the motion,” his cook was saying.

“I’m pretty sure the electric mixer has the same motion,” said Ann.

“Nope,” said his silver-haired and decidedly human chef. “It doesn’t. Ask him”— she nodded at Finn—“who’s been eating his mousse hand whisked for two thousand years. He knew the first time I used the damned machine, and that was the last, too. He took one bite and threw the rest out, thought I wouldn’t notice two pounds of chocolate mousse down the disposal.”

“Didn’t it clog the drain?”

“Yup,” said Mrs. Friary. “That, and he ate a quart of ice cream out of the freezer to make up for it. Loves his dessert, does the lord of the Fianna.”

“It’s your cooking that tempts me, Mrs. Friary,” he said, diverting the spoon Ann was raising to her mouth into his own. Then he kissed her, so she could taste the burnt sugar on his lips.

“Now you’ve spoiled your appetite for crème brûlée tonight,” he chided her.

“Yes,” admitted Ann. “But I’m totally ready for chocolate mousse.”

Dana willing, in a few short hours, they would have little Davin back. Finn didn’t much like the idea of handing him over to the father who had invited his Druid abductor into their community, but that would be a good dilemma to face. And he and Ann could start doing normal things, like eating chocolate mousse in front of the television. He wanted time alone with her like that. It occurred to him that he didn’t have to move back into the big house across the square when the foundation was repaired. He could use that house as an office, a gathering place for the Fianna, and he could live here, with Ann. The idea filled him with a sense of hope and purpose.

He led her into the dining room where their allies had gathered. The table was spread with a map held down at four corners by silver blades. Miach and Garrett stood on either side of the table in wary silence. Nieve stood beside her grandfather, three iron knives fanned out on the table before her. Iobáth lurked in the door to the hall. Sean slouched in a corner with Nancy’s head buried against his chest.

“Where is the Prince?” asked Finn.

“On his way,” said Iobáth. “He followed us to the library and back.” The Penitent cast a black look at Miach. There was more to their library expedition than Iobáth was telling, but that was Miach’s business, and Finn wasn’t going to interfere in it.

“Why didn’t he just pass?” asked Finn.

“Because I finished warding the house,” said Garrett. “Now, if the Prince attempts to double-cross us, we at least have some safe harbor to fly to with the child.”

“He isn’t going to double-cross us,” said Sean. “Davin is his flesh and blood.”

The doorbell rang.

“I hope you’re right, Sean,” Finn replied. But he very much doubted it.

Iobáth disappeared down the hall and returned with the Prince, who was armed to the teeth with small silver knives strapped to his arms and thighs and a broadsword across his back.

Finn had encountered the Prince only a handful of times over the last several centuries. Even before the fall, Finn had never cared for court life and had always kept the Fianna as far away as possible from its corrupting influence. When the Queen used to make her progress through the home territories, feasting, fighting, and fucking, a scourge on the land they ruled, Finn would take his band into the field or even to foreign shores to avoid the Wild Hunt.

Today he was struck by just how little the Prince had changed. Like Iobáth, he wore his hair long, in the Fae manner, and bore the weapons he had earned—ensorcelled by his own hands—openly on his person. But Iobáth carried their lost world on his shoulders like his burden. The Prince flaunted it, from the silver leaves woven in his hair to the wire roses embroidered on his coat to the finery of a dozen centuries he wore as carelessly as rags.

Finn suddenly felt aware, now as never before, of how much he had changed. How much more like Miach, with his ties to the human world, he had become since Garrett had been born—never mind that his son was entirely Fae. And now Finn was in love with Ann, who was—in part, at least—human.

The Prince eyed the gathering with unconcealed amusement.

“How it must gall you, Finn,” said the Prince, “to be forced to welcome me into your house.”

“You aren’t welcome,” said Finn. “You’re tolerated. For the child’s sake.”

“We want a blood oath,” said Miach.

The Prince shrugged. “I am happy to take it, but the Queen’s enchantment makes it difficult to draw my blood without iron.”

Nieve tossed one of the newly forged iron knives into the air, showily intending to catch it to show her mastery of the blade, but to Finn’s horror, it was Ann who caught it and took a step toward the Prince.