Bedeviled (34 page)

His voice was a caress that sighed through her mind, her heart. Time came to a stop. There was no world beyond this room, beyond this man. Her warrior.

He slid one hand between them to the waistband of her worn jeans. Quickly he undid the button and pulled the zipper down. Maggie gasped as his fingertips smoothed over her skin in a touch that was both featherlight and full of fire.

Her legs slipped from his hips even as she locked her arms around his neck. His gaze held on hers, he watched her as his hand slid farther down her body. His long, clever fingers dipped beneath the wispy elastic band of her panties and reached for her heat.

Maggie swayed into him when he cupped her, her skin humming, her body rocking into his touch. God, she felt as though she’d been waiting all of her life for this moment. For this man. He stroked the hard, sensitive bud at the very heart of her and Maggie whimpered a little, her fingers clutching at his shoulders. Then he dipped his hand lower still, and pushed one finger and then another into her wet heat. “Oh, God, Culhane!”

She’d never known anything like this. A simple, intimate touch from him was so much more than she could have expected. His breath on her face was warm and sweet. His touch was like fire, searing her skin, burning her bones, driving heat deep inside her to pool in her belly and spill through her veins.

He stroked her, in and out, his touch driving her toward a climax that hovered tantalizingly just out of reach. She stared into his eyes and could hardly see him through the haze of need nearly blinding her. But he watched her with such wonder, such tenderness, she gave herself up to the moment and ordered her whirling mind to be silent.

This was about feeling, experiencing, knowing what it was to have his hands on her at last. Her blood was hot, too hot for her veins, and she felt as if it were boiling just underneath her skin. Every breath she managed to drag into her lungs was charged with lust and need.

Culhane dropped his head and took her mouth in another out-of-control kiss, devouring her, allowing himself to be devoured in turn. Her hips rocked into his hand. His fingers continued to stroke and delve, drawing her closer and closer to the edge of a precipice. Maggie couldn’t breathe and didn’t care. All she wanted was this. His hands on her body. His mouth on hers.

“Shatter for me,” he whispered against her lips. “Let me give that to you.”

She
was
shattering. She felt it as her body trembled on the brink of something amazing. It was too much, she thought. She couldn’t possibly survive if he kept this up. But how could she even think of asking him to stop? Then he rubbed that one spot that was the center of the storm raging within her, and her body erupted into a wild, frantic orgasm that spiraled on and on and on. Maggie shuddered and surrendered to what only Culhane could give her.

Chapter Seventeen

S
econds, minutes, hours, hell,
days
could have passed before Maggie’s body stopped pulsing like a broken neon light.

God, she thought, if a kiss and a stroking could create that kind of orgasm, what would a full-body one be like? It might actually kill her, she decided wistfully, and wondered idly if this was the planet-shifting thing Nora had talked about.

Maggie dropped her forehead to Culhane’s shoulder, struggling for air, thinking that oxygen was really overrated, anyway. A moment later, though, she lifted her head again and, smiling, looked up into his eyes. The instant their gazes locked, everything changed.

She gasped and tightened her grip on Culhane as images spilled from his mind to hers. Shattering, splintering slices of color and shape twisting into faces, places that sped by so quickly, Maggie couldn’t identify them all. He stared at her, clearly as amazed at what was happening as she felt.

“Ah, blast. Do you see?” he asked, his voice hardly more than a strained whisper.

“I do, Culhane. What’s—” She broke off when one crystal-clear image solidified in her mind: a blond woman who could only be Mab, jumping to her feet from a silver, jewel-encrusted throne, throwing her head back and screaming in raw fury. Then the image blinked off as if Maggie had hit the power button on a TV.

“Damn me to
Ifreann
.” Culhane reacted instantly. He took a step back and away from Maggie. “I shouldn’t have touched you so intimately. This is why I’ve held back from you, Maggie. To keep Mab from finding you before it was time.” He shoved one hand through his thick hair and stalked a wide circle around her, his movements jerky, his steps long and hurried.

Maggie had gone from warm and fuzzy to tense in a split second, and she was reeling from the shift. She zipped up her jeans and watched him as her lover dissolved into the fierce Fae warrior she knew so well.

“There’s a connection between us. Mab and me, I mean,” he told her, speaking quickly now, words tumbling over one another as he rushed to explain. To make her see.

Maggie watched his face as she spun in a tight circle, keeping her gaze locked on Culhane. His features were etched with worry, his eyes flashing with a knowledge as old as time.

“Because of that connection to Mab she can feel what I’m feeling. Sense, if she’s a mind to, what I’m doing. She rarely uses this gift, since nothing in this world or any other matters to Mab more than herself.” Disgusted, he stopped dead, stared at Maggie and said, “I knew that if you and I came together, the bond between us would be enough to alert Mab. Now she knows, senses what I feel for you, and knows I’m no longer her man.” He scraped one hand across his jaw, the back of his neck.

Maggie rubbed her hands up and down her arms, half expecting the Faery queen to burst into the living room with a flaming sword. “What does this mean, though?”

“She hasn’t known about you—you personally—until this. She’s been aware of the Fae power being stolen, going missing, but she had no idea that it was you who’d claimed it or that you’re training to use it.”

Maggie swallowed hard, nerves tangling in the pit of her stomach as she realized what Culhane was saying. Even the pale wash of sunlight sliding into the room seemed somehow dimmer, and the air felt so much colder. “Now she knows.”

“Yes.” He reached for her, then folded his fingers into fists to keep himself from touching her again. “She knows. And knowing will make her move. She won’t wait until we’re ready, Maggie. I’d hoped to delay this. To give you more time to feel your way into your new world, but the time is over. Ended. Mab will decide the time and place now, and it won’t be in our favor.” Jaw tight, eyes hard as flint, he said, “Maggie, you must—”

He jerked his head up and around, as if sensing something that Maggie couldn’t feel.

“Culhane, what is it?”

“No!” He shouted the word until it echoed off the walls and ceilings and speared into Maggie’s heart like a dagger. He fired one last, frantic glance at her.

Then, in a blink, he was gone.

Apparently they were out of time.

“I’ll watch out for the kid,” Bezel told her a half hour later. “And the damn witch.”

“Thanks.” She spared the ugly little man a quick smile that she didn’t feel. Since Culhane had disappeared, Maggie’d been able to think of only one thing: getting to Otherworld and settling this. If she just hung around, waiting for Mab to make her move, she’d be forced to meet the queen on her own turf. And no way would that turn out well. Maggie would be no better off than poor Joe had been what felt like a lifetime ago—Creature Chow.

So she’d come up with her own plan—one she hoped like hell had a chance of working. She’d taken a shower, washed her hair and changed her clothes, because frankly, if she was going to die, she wasn’t going to do it covered in dirt and dust.

So she wore a long-sleeved red T-shirt, faded blue jeans and a pair of boots she hadn’t worn since the last time Claire had conned her into hiking in the woods. They were sturdy and heavy, and hopefully would do more damage in a good kick than her tennis shoes would.

Standing in the backyard now, beneath the tree Bezel had claimed for his own, Maggie took a long look around. Chrysanthemums blooming in the flower bed, Sheba snoring on the patio, a fence that needed painting and a lawn that needed mowing. It was all so normal. So everyday. God, she wanted to come back to it.

She wanted to be here for Christmas so she could string around the house the damned lights that were always a tangled mess. She wanted to be here in the spring to see if the stupid bulbs Nora had insisted on planting upside down actually bloomed. She wanted to go to the art show in Laguna this summer and maybe sell some of her paintings.

Hell.
She just wanted to be here.

“Hey!” Bezel kicked her and jolted her out of the little pity party she was throwing for herself. “This is no time to go all weepy. If Mab pulled Culhane out of here like you said, then he’s locked up tight. The bitch queen of the universe isn’t gonna let him get near enough to you to help, so you’re gonna be on your own.”

“I know.” God, she hoped she wasn’t going to throw up.

“I’d help, but pixie magic ain’t gonna be enough against Mab, anyway.”

Surprised and a little touched by the offer, Maggie smiled. “Who are you, and what have you done with Bezel?” She paused and added, “Seriously, thanks for the thought.”

“Plus, I don’t want to get your nasty human blood all over this suit Fontana made me.” He flicked a long finger over his lapel. “She’d kill me.”

“And you’re back to normal.”
Good. Better.
A nice pixie would only make her as weepy as he’d already called her. Didn’t really need that right now. What she needed was a bazooka. A tank, maybe. Oh, and a happy little battalion of soldiers to stand between her and the queen.

But since she wasn’t going to get what she needed, she’d do what she had to instead. “Okay, I can do this.” Nodding to herself, she called up her concentration, fought for focus past the mind-numbing fear, then closed her eyes and sketched out a circle in the air.

Within that circle color swirled and a warm breeze rushed out to ruffle her hair. Maggie took a deep breath to steady herself, then looked at Bezel. “Did I get it right?”

He glanced inside the golden, shimmering circle, then back at her. “Yeah. You did. Too bad you’re gonna be meat right when you’re starting to get the hang of this.”

Maggie gave him a withering smile. “These little chats of ours always help so much.”

“Quit stalling,” he sniped, and stabbed one finger at the portal.

“Right. Okay, then. Wish me luck.” Maggie took one more glance around the yard—hoping it wasn’t her last—and stepped into the portal.

Just before the circle closed behind her, she thought she heard Bezel say, “Luck, kid. You’re gonna need it.”

Finn was there waiting when Maggie stepped out of the portal and into Sanctuary. He didn’t even look surprised to see her, which made her wonder if maybe he’d been keeping an eye on her, too. Didn’t matter really, either way.

“Culhane’s gone,” she said.

“I know. Mab’s on a tear, but she can’t get to you while you’re here. As I told you before, I am the only one with power in Sanctuary. See?” Finn pointed to a wide shelf that lay bare but for one small bubble of gold dust that swirled in a tiny tornado, trapped behind a barrier Maggie couldn’t see.

“That’s your power,” the wizard said. “Stripped from you the moment you stepped into Sanctuary. It won’t return to you until you leave.”

“Good.” She stared up at the power that had so changed her life and found she didn’t really hate it as much as she’d thought she would. “That’s part of the reason I’m here.”

“Really?” His eyebrows quirked as if he were intrigued, but Maggie spoke again before he could ask her for more information.

“Do you know where she took Culhane?”

“Yes. Word is already spreading.” Finn took her arm and steered her down a long corridor toward the main library, where she’d read so many of his books. “Mab has him in a cell in the palace.”

A twist of something cold and hard jolted through her system, but Maggie swallowed it back. In jail, but alive. With her mind full of thoughts of Culhane, she hardly noticed the beauty of the place that had so stunned her on her first visit. “At least she hasn’t killed him.” She grabbed Finn’s arm. “
Can
she kill him? Aren’t Fae immortal?”

“Yes, they are, and yes, she can kill him.” Finn frowned at her frown and admitted, “I know that sounds contradictory. But cutting off Culhane’s head would certainly kill him, and I wouldn’t for an instant put it past Mab to do it.”

“Oh, God.” Maggie rubbed the base of her own throat and let Culhane’s image rise up in her mind for a long moment. Only a half hour ago she’d been clinging to him tighter than Saran Wrap on a plate of Christmas cookies. Now he was in prison being held by a crazy queen, and Maggie was in Sanctuary preparing to put her possibly really bad plan into play.

They stepped into the cavernous library, and Maggie’s gaze naturally swept the floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with hundreds of thousands of books. The windows lining the walls were, as always in Sanctuary, open to the sky beyond and the warm breezes that swirled through the room. In that sky, white clouds swept majestically past Sanctuary and looked so damned peaceful, Maggie almost resented their very existence.

She’d give a lot at the moment for a little peace in her life. But she wouldn’t get that until she got past
this.

“The queen will be in no hurry to kill him, at least,” Finn said, and Maggie was sure he meant that to be reassuring. “She’ll want to make him suffer for a century or two first.”

“God, she’s a piece of work, isn’t she?” Maggie thought of Culhane, the fierce warrior, locked inside a cell, and everything inside her closed up. It would kill him to be shut into a cage. Kill him slowly, eating away at who he was, who he’d been, inches at a time. Her heart hurt for him, and hardened even further toward the queen who would do that to a warrior who had been not only her lover, but her loyal defender for centuries.