Beguiled (5 page)

“Damn woman will not listen,” he muttered, sweeping one hand through his hair impatiently. “Will not do as I say. Can she not see that without my help she’s no hope of surviving what comes next?”

Could she not see that his hunger for her was making him half crazed with want? Since the moment when she’d awakened to her new power—no,
Ifreann
take him—since long before that, Maggie Donovan had been nothing but a temptation to him. His mind tormented him daily with thoughts of what he wanted to do to her. With her. He wanted his hands on her breasts. He wanted to explore each curve and valley her body possessed. He wanted to taste her, delve deep with his tongue until she screamed his name and begged for the release only he could give her.

And damn if he could manage any of it.

But then, mayhap she
did
know what she was doing to him and was enjoying it as well. She was no shy virgin. He could sense that there had been other men in her life before him. Men who hadn’t deserved her. Men unworthy of her, he told himself with a shake of his head. But since she was no innocent, why then did she keep him at arm’s length?

Why had they shared no more than a few kisses? He’d had only the one lingering touch of her heat—the night Mab had slapped him into prison before she’d gone on to be defeated by Maggie.

Why was she being so bloody
coy
? She felt the rush of passion between them. He saw it in her eyes when they were together. Her destiny—
with him
—was there before her and she clung to her past. To the mortal world when she had no reason to. Was her life so perfect that she could not bring herself to turn her back on it? Was what he offered her worth so little in her mind that she refused to reach out and take it?

She felt the fire between them. The hunger. Yet she fought her own nature and held instead to the idiotic notion of celibacy, when raw, wild sex would have freed them both.

What kind of woman was she?

In his long life, thousands of mortal years, Culhane had never known any woman to resist him. Fae females were as free with their bodies as the males, and sex was something to be shared and gloried in. There was no wasted time or effort. If they wanted, they took.

Mortal women were different, of course. Entranced by the power surrounding a Fae male, they were attracted almost instantly and just as easily seduced. Culhane had seen other Fae males indulge with mortal females, though he’d never bothered himself. For Culhane, they seemed to be far more trouble than they were worth. As powerful and ancient as he was, human women—Maggie in particular—could reduce him to wanting to tear his own hair out in frustration.

Most mortal women wanted to talk about their
feelings
. They wanted to be courted, romanced, and at the same time, they wanted to be treated as equals when any fool knew that could never be so.

It was a male’s duty to care for and protect his woman, whether she wanted him to or not.

Human males, though, to ease the pain in their groins, had been reduced to placating their women, to giving in to their silly demands and notions. The males pretended to feel equality when what they were thinking was,
Lie back and let me have you
. They played word games, hiding their true natures in order to provide their women with the illusions they craved.

By the gods, he would be damned if he would play according to their rules. He was Culhane. Immortal Fae. A Fenian warrior of such repute, the mere mention of his name was enough to send chills down the cowardly spines of his enemies. And he’d curse his own name before he’d surrender his pride for the sake of any woman.

Even Maggie.

“Blasted woman wants me, too. Does she think I don’t feel the strength of her desire pushing at me?” He saw it in the way she walked, how her breath quickened when he was near. He watched her lick her full lower lip and it took all of his legendary strength to keep from licking it for her.

But he had his pride. And when Maggie came to his bed, it would be because she
asked
for it.

“Though she’d damn well better ask soon.” His patience was wearing thin.

Only that morning, while he watched her as she perched on her silly ladder and reached out to paint her ridiculous pictures on glass, her shirt had pulled up from the waist of her jeans and he’d been mesmerized by the exposed inch or two of her taut, firm belly. He’d noted the way her soft T-shirt had molded to her breasts, how her jeans molded lovingly in all the right places to her long, shapely legs. And his mouth had watered.

The woman was killing him inch by slow inch.

He stalked across the room, stared out the window at the training grounds far below him and idly watched as his warriors staged mock battles with swords and knives. The clang of steel on silver rang out. A sharp wind slid through the open window and lifted his long hair from his shoulders, cooling his skin but doing nothing to cool the fires burning within.

Maggie’s face rose up in his mind and everything in Culhane tightened even further. How was it, he wondered, that a mortal woman could make the mighty Culhane nothing more than a slavering beast?

And now, thanks to Quinn getting her sister with child, Maggie was bent even further on distancing herself from him! By the gods, his cock would rot and fall off if he didn’t use it soon.

“Damn woman will be the end of me.”

“Our Queen remains unmoved by the great Culhane, then?”

He spun into a crouch, his hand slapping at the handle of the silver blade he kept at his waist. But an instant later, Culhane cursed, straightened, and said, “You’ve no call to be here, McCulloch.”

The warrior only smirked at him. He’d noticed to his own irritation that since Maggie had taken the throne, even his own men were want to chuckle at his frustrations. Only the bravest—or the most foolhardy—dared
show
him their amusement, though.

Keiran McCulloch shook his head and smoothed one hand across the neatly trimmed, dark red goatee he was inordinately proud of. “It’s rumored that our Queen has no need for you, Culhane.”

“She has need,” he muttered darkly, remembering the flash of hunger in her eyes only that morning. A cheering thought, he told himself, wondering if she lay in her empty bed aching for his touch. Perhaps it was time to pay a night visit to induce her into dreams of him.

Then, shaking his head at his own desperation, he walked across the wide room to the crystal bottle of nectar he kept on a shelf. To ease the ache in his body, he poured himself a glass of the Fae liquor, richer and sweeter than any mortal wine. He relished the taste for a moment, then studied the honey-colored liquid in the crystal he held. Without looking behind him, he said, “She’s stubborn, is all.”

“Aye, and getting no less so as time goes on.”

Culhane whipped his head around then to stare at the warrior across from him. “Mind your tongue. Maggie Donovan is your Queen.”

The other warrior inclined his head but didn’t bother to hide his smile.

“And your witch?” Culhane asked slyly, knowing the warrior had been spending far more time at Maggie’s home than necessary. All because of Maggie’s friend Claire, a seer and a witch.

McCulloch snapped him a hard look, then reluctantly smiled. “We both must deal with stubborn mortal females, I suppose.”

“True enough, gods help us both.” Culhane blew out a breath. “Was there a reason you’ve come? Or are you here merely to annoy me like a common pixie?”

McCulloch lifted one dark red eyebrow into a high arch. “Would a common pixie know that the Dullahan are riding again?”

Everything in Culhane went cold and still. His gaze fixed on McCulloch, he watched the other warrior stride toward him, his features hard, implacable. “How do you know this?”

“There’s more. The palace guards are planning an assault on Casia to stop them.”

Casia, the frozen continent where the worst of the rogue Fae were imprisoned. The Dullahan were a vicious, bloodthirsty race, sentenced to Casia eons ago for their crimes against the mortal world. Even Mab had known that there were lines not meant to be crossed.

“You know this for a fact?” If the palace guards went after the Fae on Casia themselves, they would be killed and gods knew how many of the rogues would be set loose. For centuries those jailed on that miserable block of ice had been trying to escape. To once more ride free on the human world, bringing destruction and fury to a race of people who didn’t even know they existed. If the Dullahan somehow managed to find a way into Maggie’s world, the humans there would be helpless against them.

“Aye.” McCulloch plucked a glass off a shelf and filled it with nectar. Downing it in one long gulp, he continued. “One of their number told O’Donnel.”

Culhane’s eyes narrowed. “Why would she do that?”

McCulloch shrugged. “O’Donnel was bedding her at the time.”

Disgusted, Culhane thought briefly that everyone but
he
was enjoying sex.

Studying the empty glass in his hand, McCulloch said, “After speaking to O’Donnel, I went to Audra, the guard commander. Told her that the Warriors would deal with this threat. She insists that her guard be given the chance to fight. Since Mab’s defeat, the guards have grown restless. The damn females believe themselves to be warriors.”

“They’re not,” Culhane muttered darkly, his mind drawing up an image of the Fae who had been, for centuries, the only security force Mab had allowed at the palace.

The palace guard, all female, had been Mab’s personal protection. After a millennia or two of power, the former queen had become distrustful of all males, even her warriors, so she’d trained females to safeguard both her and the palace. A slap in the face to the Warrior clan, but to Mab’s way of thinking, a way to keep the males in line while stripping them of any ideas of gaining future power.

But with Mab gone, her guards were restive. They wanted more duties than Maggie had given them. Blast the gods, they wanted to fight.

True, they had stood sentinel over the palace and the Queen for centuries. But they weren’t warriors and had no business in a real battle. They’d never fought an enemy like the Dullahan. For too long, they’d thought themselves impregnable. Undefeatable. This false sense of importance had clearly gone to their heads, since everyone knew that only males were true fighters.

Yet, as that thought raced through his mind, he remembered Maggie defeating a Fae queen, and he knew that she’d been as brave as any Fenian warrior. She’d gone into a battle untested, untried, and had managed to snatch victory from the hands of a queen far more experienced than she. Nodding, he admitted that Maggie, at least, was a formidable female.

But the palace harpies were the least of his troubles at the moment. If the Dullahan were truly readying a strike against the walls of Otherworld in an attempt to breach them, then there was much to do.

“Have you seen evidence yourself?” he asked, his gaze narrowing on the tall warrior opposite him.

“No,” McCulloch admitted with a nod. “I thought first to warn you of Mab’s guards and their plans.”

Culhane set his now-empty glass on the sideboard, folded his arms across his chest and said, “As you should. I’ll deal with them. You take Riley and go to Casia. Find out if the Dullahan are actually planning something or not. We have to know the truth before we act.”

“It’s done.” McCulloch inclined his head again, in acknowledgment of the order, and an instant later, shifted out of Culhane’s apartments.

“Maggie Donovan, the palace guard and the Dullahan,” Culhane muttered. It seemed as though the gods were bent on testing his new Queen. But he wouldn’t face Maggie with this news just yet. First he would gather information to make a plan; then, and only then, would he go to Maggie. And he would make her see that giving him leave to act in her stead was the wisest course to take.

Maggie was late.

She hated being late.

Especially when she was picking up Eileen. Somehow, knowing that five
million
other kids had all been taken home at the appropriate time and only Eileen was left behind made the guilt worse.

But the stupid window at the stupid art boutique had taken her twice as long as she’d planned. With only one small window fronting the main street, it should have been a half-hour job, tops. But naturally, the new owner had wanted a whole damn Currier and Ives scene painted in, complete with carolers and horse and carriage and, of course, that upped her fee, but had taken twice as long as it otherwise would have. Maggie blew out a frustrated breath, deliberately rolled her shoulders to ease the tension and then turned off the engine of her PT Cruiser.

Opening the door, she stepped out onto the worn blacktop of the school driveway and let her gaze slide over the familiar territory. Castle Bay wasn’t very big, especially considering that the community’s one elementary school, one middle school and one high school were easily able to accommodate Castle Bay’s students as well as those from the surrounding area. And if you’d lived in town all your life, as Maggie had, you knew each school like the back of your hand.