She's No Faerie Princess (23 page)

Her body arched and spasmed, shaking as if a bolt ofelectricity coursed through her. Stars exploded behindher eyes, blue and yellow and crimson with fire. She wentblind, dumb, deaf to everything but the sound of hisrumble of satisfaction, the harsh rasp of his breath. Numbto everything but his teeth against her skin, his mark onher body, and the hot, unbearable pulses of ecstasy thatturned her mind and her willpower to ashes.

How did he do this to her?

She had no breath to ask, even when she could think wellenough to form the question. Walker, though, didn't lookinterested in answering.

"More," he rasped. "
Again
."

"Can't."

"Can. Now."

A sound, half a moan, half a sob, tore from her. She hadceased to struggle, had neither the strength nor the will todo it. She lay draped over the ottoman like an offering toa pagan god, and Walker prepared her as such, rippingaway her clothing until her skin glowed pale and smoothand naked beneath his devouring gaze.

Face harsh and set, he kneed her legs apart and bracedhimself over her. His hand raced over her, claiming andheating. It dived between her legs, fingers parting andprobing and sinking deep, deep into her tight sheath.

"
Now
," he repeated, and he pressed his thumb rough and high against her clit, fingertips scraping over her sensitive inner tissues. His teeth sank again into her neck, and she had no choice but to obey.

She fragmented as violently as the stained glass, but herdestruction felt more like a blessing than a curse. Free-falling into exaltation, she thought her lungs might burst,knew her heart had. She had become nothing but herpleasure and the knowledge that she pleased him. Therewas nothing else.

She screamed. It might have been his name. It definitelywas a plea. Mercifully, he answered, tearing away hisown clothes, lifting and flipping her, arranging her on herbelly across the ottoman. She barely had time to registerthe feel of the rough brocade upholstery against her skinwhen he grasped her hips and lifted. He fit himselfagainst her, paused for a breathless, aching eternity, andthen slammed home.

Goddess. How had she ever lived with the emptiness?

Nothing existed except for her and Walker and the heady,frantic rhythm of his movement inside her. He stretchedand filled her, rode her with purpose and hunger andsomething akin to desperation. Her heart recognized it,and her body, even if her mind refused to work. Her bodyknew that his existed as another piece of her, too longheld apart. Her heart knew that whatever she wanted tobelieve, he had already laid claim, moved in, and taken

over.

Her heart knew Walker was right.

The choice had already been made.

When he tensed and roared and spilled himself into her,she knew. And when her body fractured and tumbledover after him, she almost began to believe.

Walker snuck them out of the back of the club, wrappingher in an afghan he found draped over the sofa becauseher clothes could no longer cover a gnat with anydecency. He carried her because her legs refused to holdher weight. Plenty of other muscles had gone on strike aswell, including the ones from the neck up. Her mindremained blank and fuzzy halfway across Manhattan andall the way up into Walker's bed.

Okay, maybe not blank. She did have one thought, aquestion, that repeated over and over without even a hintof an answer.

How?

Fiona knew magic. She had grown with it, breathed it in,lived with it sparking and glowing and dancing all aroundher. She
 
was
 
magic. The power flowed in the veins of all Fae as surely as their blood. No one could deny it, andshe had never wanted to try.

But this magic—this intense and dark and nearly violentmagic that tied her to a mate she hadn't wanted in a wayshe'd never expected—this magic was something shejust couldn't fathom.

The mattress gave beneath Walker's weight as he kneltto lay her down on sheets still rumpled from that morning,still scented with their loving. She kept her eyes closed. She knew he could tell she hadn't fallen asleep, but sheneeded some kind of barrier against him, and thedarkness behind her eyelids was the best she couldmanage. He had just taken her grasp on reality, flipped itupside down, and then returned it to her as if everythingwere perfectly normal, but for Fiona, normal now looked along way off.

What had happened to her glorious lack of a future? Shehad never understood the human penchant for planningand organizing and looking toward the path ahead ofthem. She was Fae. Sidhe. To her, only the path beneathher feet mattered. The feel of dirt and root and stone, thecrackle of leaves and twigs, the cool shade cast by treesalong the edges of the trail, and the little freckles ofsunlight that dripped through the leaves to tease her withthe hint of light and warmth. Fae didn't look ahead. Theydidn't make lifetime commitments or worry about whatwould happen in a hundred years.

But now all Fiona could think of was that in a hundredyears the man lying beside her, stroking those warm,magical hands over her skin, would be dead and herimmortality would stretch out before her. Blessing made

curse.

"You can pretend I'm not here all night, if you think it will help." He spoke so softly that she felt like a deaf woman, interpreting his speech by the vibration of the sound rather than the meaning of the words. "But it won't, and I'm not going away."

But he would, eventually. That was the problem, wasn'tit?

She turned her head away and kept her eyes squeezedshut.

"I apologize for being a jerk to you earlier, Princess, and

if I came on too strong just now, I'll apologize again. I admit I seem to have this small problem keeping my temper around you. But I'm not going to apologize for the fact that we're mated," he said, tracing a fingertip over the tendons at the side of her neck, playing with the pale

skin. "First, because there's no point, since it can't be undone. Second, because I don't want it undone. And third, because it wasn't my doing."

It didn't matter that she couldn't see him; she could hearthe rueful grin in his voice. "That mark you gave me feelsa hell of a lot like your doing, Tobias."

His hands shifted, now ringing the borders of the mark. "The mark is, but the reason it's there isn't." She keptsilent, and with a sigh, he continued. "I don't know howmuch you know about Lupine mating, and I don't knowhow well I can explain it to you. There aren't a whole lotof philosophers among our kind. Some things just comedown to instinct."

She bit back the urge to voice a caustic agreement onthat score.

"I can't tell you why it happens, or even how. But every Lupine knows when it does. It's like the first change, the first time I ever shifted. I just… knew. You smelled sweeter than anything I'd ever sniffed and you tasted better, too. And when I finally got inside you it was like

puzzle pieces locking together. We just fit, like we were meant to. That's how it happens. Lupines find the one perfect mate for them and they seize it. There was no way in hell I could have stopped it. Not even if I'd wanted to."

"What if I had wanted to?"

He barked a laugh. "It might have been fun to watch youtry, but it wouldn't have worked. Like I said, neither of usgot a choice. Lupines don't pick their mates. Fate picksthem for us."

She frowned and jerked her shoulder. "That's ridiculous. Aren't you mortals the ones who are always going onabout free will and self-determination? Goddess, it's allany of you ever talked about for a few centuries."

"Yeah. Those weren't Lupines," he snorted. "Or if they were, they were talking about self-determining where to go for dinner, not about mates. I don't know why it happens, Princess, but I know that when Lupines mate, it's because Fate decided they should."

"But I'm not Lupine, and I didn't decide on anything."

"I noticed." His hand stroked over her bare skin, as smooth and hairless as his was rough and dappled with fur. "That's where this came in." He pressed a kiss to the mark on her neck.

Her eyes opened enough to scowl at him. "What doesthat mean?"

"The mate mark. It's there to prove you belong to me."

"How Neanderthal." She rolled her eyes. "I didn't see one

on Missy's neck, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out

she belongs to Graham."

"She's belonged to him for five years now, and I think the fact that she's borne him two sons proves the same thing. The mark doesn't last forever, anyway. And some mates never get them, but I know for a fact she did."

"How do some of us get so lucky?"

"The ones who need proof get marked." He took her hand, toyed with her fingers. "When two Lupines mate, usually no one gets marked. There's no need. We all know what's happening, so proof becomes redundant. But if one of the mates is reluctant or unwilling, the other marks her."

"What? Like a cattle brand? What if the reluctant mate has a good reason to be reluctant? What if she doesn't like the jerk who marked her? Is she forced to stay with him?"

"Of course not. There's no need to force her."

Her scowl deepened. "So she just leaves with asemipermanent hickey on her neck? No harm, no foul?"

"No. No one leaves." He shook his head impatiently. "The mating is Fated. Fate knows the two mates belong together, that no one else will ever suit either of them."

"No one leaves? Ever? In all of Lupine history?"

"Well, sure, it's happened, but those are the stories we all hear about as cautionary tales when we're growing up. They all end up miserable. Why would anyone leave their perfect partner?"

"A lot of words come to my mind when I'm with you, Tobias Walker, but let me make it clear that 'perfect' is
 
not
 
one of them."

"Not to your mind maybe. But apparently Fate doesn't

agree."

She sighed and turned to face him. His skull was muchtoo thick to have this conversation any other way.

"Walker, I almost get what you're saying. Really. Fromwhat you're telling me, it's like magic. Fate casts a spell,and two people are bound by it, one of whom may or maynot get bitten for her trouble. Okay, fine. If that's the wayit works for your people, good for you. But I'm not one ofyour people."

Walker frowned. "Why should that matter? I'm not one ofyour people, but that doesn't seem to stop you fromcharging up like a car battery hooked to jumper cablesevery time I touch you."

"That's not about you. It's just the way things happen."

"Exactly."

She groaned in frustration and tried to sit up, but hedraped a heavy arm across her waist to pin her in place. "Walker, listen to me for half a second, would you? Thisis impossible. It isn't going to work. For the Goddess'ssake, we're not even the same species!"

He rolled his eyes. "Is that what has your panties in atwist? For God's sake, Fi, what couple have you metaround here so far that
 
is
 
of the same species? Rafe and Tess? He's Feline—a frickin' werejaguar—and I know it'shard to believe, but she's human, you know."

"She's a witch."

"Which is what we call human with magical abilities, to distinguish them from the ones without magical abilities. Graham is Lupine, but Missy's about as human as you can get. Before they mated, she taught kindergarten!"

Fiona frowned. "That's not the poi—"

"You want a few more? Fine." His temper had started to rise again, but his touch stayed gentle, if implacable.

"The
 
guth
 
of the Black Glen Clan from Ireland just paid us a visit a couple of months ago, and guess who he's

mated to? A Foxwoman. Fiona, it happens all the time."

"Not with Fae it doesn't." She pushed at his arm and gritted her teeth when he refused to budge. "Will you let me up, damn it? I can't yell at you when you have me pinned to a bed."

"Really? Now, I'm going to remember that handy little fact." He didn't let her go, but he did let her sit up. Then he yanked her right back down into his lap and wrapped his arms around her even tighter than before.

Her eyes narrowed. "That's not what I meant, fur face."

"Tough."

She gave his arms a few ineffectual tugs before giving upwith a sigh and letting her head fall back onto hisshoulder. She didn't want to argue, didn't have the energyfor it, but somehow she had to make him understand thatat least one of them had to maintain their sanity aboutthis. "I'm telling you, this just won't work. It's great if Lupines can mate and have successful relationships withother kinds of mortals, whether they're humans or shape-

shifting aardvarks. I'm happy for you."

"But?"

"But I'm not mortal. Fae don't mate with mortals, Walker. I mean, how could we? We're not even supposed to leave our own borders. I'm not supposed to be here."

"But you are." He squeezed her gently to cut off her protest. "Have you ever heard of a sidhe named Luc MacAnu?"

Fiona looked at him, confused. "Lucifer? Captain of the Queen's Guard?" Walker nodded. "Of course I've heardof him. He was the commander of my aunt's personalarmy from the time I was a little girl."