Cruel Enchantment (12 page)

He blinked, released her arms, and rocked back on his heels. “Why would you care how I feel? I meant you harm.” He paused and then growled. “Hell, I still mean you harm.”

She let out a slow, careful breath, studying him.

Realization dawned. “Because your crush on me never ended?” It sounded beyond arrogant, even to him. “Even after all these years? Even now? I thought you said that ended centuries ago.”

She cleared her throat and looked downward. “I think
crush
is an unwise word to use.”

Her words socked him in the gut. He didn’t like where this was going at all. “So what else would you call it?”

“I’m really not sure. Back in Ireland I didn’t want you to be hurt, so I took great pains to ease your suffering as much as I could . . . where Aileen’s death was concerned. I concealed certain . . . facts.” She paused, licked her lips. “I don’t want to see you hurt now, either.”

“I kidnapped you. I tried to kill you.” He could hear the note of amazement in his voice. This was not how he’d seen this conversation going. “Why do you care?”

Her gaze met his, now more angry than nervous. “Yes, I’m aware that I need to see a psychiatrist. I lack good sense.”

“An understatement.”

“Okay, yes, I need to be medicated. Hospitalized, maybe. Rubber-roomed.” She rubbed her face as if she was tired.

“Emmaline—”

“Don’t make me tell you.”

“You
are
going to tell me, Emmaline. You’re going to do it right now and it’s going to be the truth.”

She sighed and leaned her head back against the wall.
“No.”
She sounded tired, but resolute.

He opened his palm, looking down at the model of the key. It was made of plaster, fragile and highly breakable. It was also something she professed to care a great deal about. He stood and held it out so she could see what he meant to do. “I said I wouldn’t hurt you and I keep my word. But I never said I wouldn’t hurt this.”

She leapt to her feet. “No! Aeric, you can’t!”

“All I have to do is drop this to the floor and stamp my boot on it once. Bye-bye, key.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“Wanna bet? I’m still not convinced you’re telling me the truth about this thing. What’s to lose?” He moved his hand as if to let it go.

“No! All right, all right! I’ll tell you!”

He stopped, closing his fingers around the key and pulling it close to his chest.

She made a sound of frustration and sat back down. “Get comfortable. It’s a long story.”

He listened, transported back in time to the horror of the fae wars. He listened to how the Summer Queen had commanded Emmaline to kill Driscoll Manus O’Shaughnessy before someone else could get to him, how she’d snuck into his home and into his bedroom. He listened as she told him about how she’d shot the person in the bed from behind, unwilling to make him suffer, thinking it was O’Shaughnessy—and then finding Aileen instead.

She told him about making the decision not to leave the body there and instead transport it to the woods near his home. Then she told him how devastated she’d been at the accidental death. How frightened she’d been of his wrath. How she’d fled that part of Ireland with only the clothes on her back, even leaving her crossbow behind.

By the time she’d finished, his chest and stomach roiled with emotion that couldn’t seem to make it up to his brain in any semblance of logical thought. It was just a big black-and-blue bloody mess. He shook his head. “No, she had a friend that was ill. She told me she was spending her nights with her.”

It sounded lame when he said it out loud. Had he really believed that?

Of course he had. It was
Aileen
.

Emmaline didn’t say anything. She only looked down at her hands, folded in her lap.

“It’s impossible,” he said softly. Then louder, “You’re lying.”

She raised her head and smiled. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me. The only thing you’d believe was if I told you a story in which I happened upon her in the woods and saw my chance to take out the competition. Or perhaps that I’d just killed her out of spite, planning to run away anyway.”

He rubbed his hand over his face. Driscoll Manus O’Shaughnessy and Aileen? No, it simply couldn’t be. That fae had been a monster. It had been written into his DNA. And he’d been Seelie to boot. Aileen had been Unseelie to the core and had never enjoyed the company of their flip side brethren.

But the animals in the forest when Aileen was a child . . .

His memory flashed to the horror of that—images he’d pushed out of his mind because he’d been unwilling to mate them with the woman he loved. The blood. The torture. The weapons she’d used. The joy she’d taken in their suffering. He hadn’t let his mind go that far down those paths of recollection in a long, long time.

Was it possible? Could her behavior have gone further than animals? Had Aileen been hiding some kind of dark and awful secret from him, leading a shadowy double life of some sort? Maybe O’Shaughnessy and Aileen had found a common dark tie that helped them to foster a relationship. He forced the unpleasant link out of his head.

There were other things, too. Times when Aileen had expressed a desire to seek relationships with other men. Aeric had taken her virginity—as she had taken his. Neither of them had ever been with anyone else. He’d been happy to make the commitment, but Aileen . . . at times he’d thought she wasn’t so content.

No. His mind couldn’t walk those paths. Not now. Not ever.

“I didn’t want you to know because I didn’t want to destroy the idea of Aileen that you’ve been keeping so pristine all these years,” said Emmaline in a quiet voice. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I would have to believe you for you to ruin her memory.”

Her expression settled to stone and her chin lifted. But her eyes flashed with pain for a moment, destroying the image she was trying to project. “Then I’m glad you don’t.”

He moved closer and her whole body stiffened. “So we’ve established that you killed Aileen and you’re lying about the circumstances to save your pretty ass. We’ve also established that I’m unable to kill you. The only question that remains is how I should make you pay.”

His gaze raked her up and down and his body reacted. His too big clothing hid her curves, but he’d had enough of a tantalizing glimpse of them during her shower to let his imagination run wild.

The very last thing he should be doing right now was remember the way her body looked behind that frosted glass. It was almost worse than having her naked. The image behind the shower door hinted at lush breasts—an overflowing handful—a narrow waist that flared into a generous, curvy bottom, and shapely legs.

He wanted to find out for sure, using his hands and maybe his tongue, too.

He’d brutally suppressed the urge before, tamping down the attraction he felt for her because it wasn’t right. Now, in the violent wake of what Emmaline had told him and his subsequent confusion over whether or not it was true—all that want came rushing back at him. It didn’t matter that it was horribly misplaced.

And damned if he could remember why he shouldn’t give in to it.

 

 

HE
was looking at her without anger in his eyes for once.

Okay, maybe there was a little anger in his eyes, but she had the feeling that the anger—for whatever mystical and unbelievable reason—wasn’t directed at her, but at himself. And anger wasn’t the only thing in his expression right now; there was hunger, too.

And
that
was all for her.

Her heart thudded so fast and so hard she thought it might break her ribs. What the hell? His behavior had changed so quickly she practically had whiplash.

“Aeric?” she whispered. She wasn’t even aware his name had slipped past her lips until it was out there. She didn’t know what to do with this sudden turn of events . . . although her body sure seemed to know. Her mind was awhirl with confusion, but the rest of her was quite aware that the man she’d wanted and fantasized about for so long was inches away from her . . . and seemed to actually want her back.

“Fuck,” he growled, bracing his hand on the wall right near her ear and moving closer to her. “This is not a good thing.”

“No.” She licked her lips—a nervous habit she’d had since she was a kid, no matter what guise she used. “This is not a good thing for either of us.”

His mouth almost brushed hers when he spoke. Her body flared to life, singing to almost painful arousal. Her nipples leapt to hard little points and she ached between her thighs. This man seemed to either terrify her, piss her off, or plunge her straight into animalistic heat.

His voice was a low growl, laced with anger. “I should chain you to my bed in charmed iron and take my revenge that way.”

She closed her eyes, her breath shuddering out of her. “I wouldn’t object.”

His eyes narrowed like a hunter’s sighting prey—and, boy, was she ever. Wounded, limping prey at that. She had no chance. “Don’t you have any shame?” he asked in a low, harsh voice.

“Not where you’re concerned. I never have.”

He eased her against him and dropped his mouth to her throat. Goose bumps erupted all over her skin. He nipped her flesh and then licked the small hurt. As though he wanted to punish her, but couldn’t make himself do it. “I fucking hate that I want you.”

She sucked in a breath. He wanted her? When the hell had that happened? “Ditto,” she replied in a shaky voice.

“You killed someone I loved.”

She shivered at the grief and torture in his voice and wished for the millionth time she could turn back the hands of time and change the events of that night. “Yes, I did. I wish I could go back and relive that night, not kill her.”

Aeric could never know what Aileen had said that night. She would never tell him. It would serve no purpose.

“You can’t.” He bit her again, this time hard enough to bring her to the edge of pain right before a sweet rush of pleasure. She yelped and then melted against him. “I should handcuff you and fuck you like I’ve been imagining. Satisfy this urge I have for you and then be done with it.”

“I wouldn’t stop you.” Her cheeks burned even as she uttered the words. She was not a weak woman, never had been, but Aeric Killian Riordan O’Malley was her Achilles’ heel. He always had been and, apparently, he always would be. Her fingers found purchase in his broad shoulders and she hung on for dear life. She wanted anything he cared to give her, any little stroke of his hand.
Pathetic
. She’d wanted him for so long and, it was true, she had no shame.

She just wanted him to touch her.

“Get up.”

SHE
rose on shaky legs.

If she’d been a smarter woman, she would be fighting him. If she were a stronger woman, she’d be screaming her head off right now. Instead, her knees went weak and her breathing went shallow and excited when he pressed her against the wall and molded his large, warm body to hers.

He didn’t ask, he just took. Lifting the hem of the jersey she wore, he freed her breasts, baring her to him from the waist up. His gaze swept over her and her nipples tightened as if he’d stroked them. His gaze caught and held for a moment on the scars that marked her stomach and thighs, then skated over them.

She’d forgotten the scars, forgotten she wasn’t hiding them with glamour. She tried to force the jersey down, but he wouldn’t let her.

He covered a breast with his big hand and her nipple tightened against his palm. “Why do you have to be so fucking gorgeous?” he asked, rasping his hand over her sensitive nipple until her breath caught.

Gorgeous? Surprise jolted through her. She wasn’t gorgeous. The Summer Queen had always called her gangly and plain. An ugly child who would never become a swan. She’d bought all that when she was a kid, though now she knew the queen had been manipulating her by tearing down her fragile adolescent self-esteem. Still, Emmaline knew her looks were average—not gorgeous.

Lifting her hands above her head, he pinned them to the wall behind her and stared hard at her. “I want to fuck you, Emmaline. Long and hard. I want to fuck you all night just to satisfy my craving for you. Doesn’t that scare you?”

“Scare me?” she echoed dumbly. She was having trouble breathing. The slow, sweet ache between her thighs had intensified with his words. She wanted his hand there, his cock. Every inch of her cried out to be touched by him.

Holding her wrists in one huge hand, he used his other hand to stroke down her extended arm, over one breast, all the way to the waistband of her sweatpants, which were so big on her that they hung on her hips, threatening to fall at the slightest brush of his hand. His fingers glided over the skin of her hip bone and she shivered.

“You love this, don’t you?” He sounded amazed.