Haunting Embrace (13 page)

The words were meant to cut, and they did. But like salve, she felt the wave of remorse that followed them. The man was a conundrum, but he was not as unfeeling as he would like her to believe.

“I think you’re lying,” she said. “You’ve made friends here. My grandmother obviously thinks a good deal of you. I could tell by the way she treated you.”

“Delude yourself if you must, but only a fool would try to paint a pretty picture of me. Are you a fool, Meaghan?”

He cocked a brow, looking down his fine straight nose at her. Maybe he was right and she was a fool. Or maybe it was the dull throb of uncertainty that she felt in him, but still she didn’t believe what he said.

He stepped closer, crowding her with his big body, reminding her that he had pinned her earlier without exerting any effort at all. “For a thousand years and more,” he breathed into her ear, his voice husky and deep, his breath hot and intimate against her skin. “My only contact with the outside came from the greedy dredges who wanted nothing but to take from me. To possess what little was left of me. They wanted my power. They wanted to control me. To
use
me. Yet
I
was cruel for giving them what they wanted.”

“What did you do to them?” she asked, her voice small.

“I gave them exactly what they asked for. This one wanted wealth. I made him rich beyond belief. That one wanted power. I made him king. Another wanted her deformed children to be whole and unflawed. I made them beautiful.”

“But in all the legends . . . they say each person who used the Book of Fennore suffered unbearable consequences. Most of them died for it. Is that a lie?”

“No.”

She turned her head, risking peril as she looked into his eyes. His face was very close, and she could see each facet, each shade, each alluring shift in color. His scent surrounded her, elusive and male, seducing her to breathe deeply and take him in. How could she think of him as
evil
? Dangerous, yes. Arrogant, absolutely. But evil?

“What would you crave more than anything if you’d spent eternity alone in a world without texture, without touch?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know. Company?”

“Emotion.
Feeling.
A reminder of what it is to be human. That is what I asked in return for each gift I gave.”

“You wanted to feel? That was your price? Not their souls? Not their lives? But . . . why . . . how did that kill them?”

“They killed themselves,” he said bluntly, and in his words, she felt satisfaction. Not pleasure, but a sense of justice.

She frowned, trying to merge the sparse pieces he’d scattered in front of her into a picture that made sense. In her pocket, the pendant flared with heat and that almost-hum that she felt even if she did not hear. She clenched it in the fabric of the coat, unable to do more than contain it.

Áedán went on, his voice mesmerizing, his words disturbing. “They could not bear what they became without the ability to
feel.
They could not bear a year of what I withstood for eons.”

“You took their ability to feel
anything
?”

“Anything good,” he said.

Meaghan’s eyes widened as she thought that through. Anything
good.
Joy, love, compassion? He’d taken their ability to experience the things that made life worth living.

“I left them their greed and anger. Their hatred.”

Oh God.

She swallowed hard, her heart aching for the poor fools who’d come to the Book of Fennore for help and in return had been stripped of life but not of living.

“And you enjoyed it?” she said. “Hurting them like that.”

“Yes.”

“You want me to think you’re a monster, don’t you?”

“I am a monster, beauty. What I want matters not.”

“But now you’re free.”

“Am I?”

“Well, you aren’t trapped in this curse anymore, are you?”

“And yet, from moment to moment, I might find myself invisible to anyone but you.”

Meaghan heard the barely suppressed violence in his words, saw the tightness in his features, felt the burst of hot breath as he exhaled.

“Do you still want to hurt people, Áedán?”

“I told you. It’s never been about what I wanted.”

“What about me?”

“You, I definitely want.”

Her face burned hot at the carnal wave of emotions that hit her, so tangible that they formed pictures in her head, yearning deep in her body.

“I meant, do you want to hurt me?”

He stared at her long and hard, his gaze steady and probing. “No.”

It seemed the word had come from someplace deep within, emerging with harsh unwillingness.

“Do you still think you’re some kind of a god?”

He broke his stare and looked off into the distance, his lips quirking in a grimace. “I think I am less than a man. Even my substance is lacking.”

Without meaning to, she reached out, settling her hand beneath his jacket again. His heart thudded strong against her palm, his gaze intent once more on her face. “You feel pretty substantial to me,” she said, her voice as soft as the silence that whispered around them.

He said nothing, but his hungry gaze devoured her, demanding that she keep talking. That she heal the open wound she felt aching within him.

“I know something about people, too,” she said. “And I don’t think you’re evil.”

“Then you are wrong.”

“I think that’s what you’d like me to believe.”

“You do not know me, beauty.”

At that, she met his gaze and spoke from her heart, surprising herself with the words that came without hesitation. “I feel like I do. I feel like I have history with you, Áedán. For the life of me, I can’t explain it. But ever since I woke up in the cavern . . .”

He waited for her to continue with a stillness that disconcerted her. She wanted to backpedal. To pretend her words had not been spoken.

But something fragile had formed in the touch of her hand over his heart. Something that drove her to say the things she’d not even admitted to herself. In truth, they seemed to blossom in her mind, forming and insisting on words before she’d even considered their veracity.

“I feel like there is unfinished business between us, Áedán.”

Something between them that begged for closure, though she couldn’t fathom what it might be. But the thought of not discovering what it was, of leaving it incomplete, made her feel inexplicably bereft.

“What business?” he asked, moving closer, bringing his big, scarred hands to her waist, sliding them beneath her coat so they settled against the curve of her hips. Hot. Possessive. Needing.

In her pocket, the pendant hushed, as if it, too, waited for her answer.

“You. Me. Us,” she murmured.

His eyes widened in surprise and then suddenly narrowed, as if an answer he’d been seeking had unexpectedly revealed itself.

“Yes,” he agreed, his voice deep and dark, making her think of clandestine meetings and unmentionable secrets.

He stood so close she could feel the heat of his body searing the length of hers, the warmth of his breath against her temple. And mixed in it all was the silken honey of his emotions. They weren’t conflicted now. They embraced her, coaxed her, beguiled her completely.

“Let me help you, beauty. Together we will find the Book, if that’s what you want.”

“Why?” she breathed.

“Because you are no match for Cathán.”

“So?” she said. “I thought you were Mr. Evil. What do you care about me?”

He leaned in, pressing his forehead against hers. His lashes made a silky screen, hiding his thoughts from her, but the bite and burn of desire and denial tore at her ragged nerve endings, unraveling her will to understand. Did it really matter why he helped her?

The thought stunned her and almost snapped her from the spell she seemed to have fallen under. She needed to breathe, and Áedán seemed to take more than his share of the oxygen, but she couldn’t force herself to push him away.

“What happened to the woman you loved?” she whispered without meaning to. “The one who cursed you?”

Trapped in the storm of his emotions, Meaghan stilled, waiting. For one unguarded instant, he lifted solemn and endless eyes to meet hers, eyes filled with the bitter regret she tasted in the air. The anguish she saw in them compelled her to look away, telling her she’d stumbled, stumbled onto something too painfully personal to witness. At the same time, his gaze drew her in. She found herself lost in the color of trees, of leaves dappled with sunshine, of dark forest shadows dancing in a misted breeze.

“She left me,” he said at last. “She left me to rot in my misery and never looked back.”

In his words, she felt love and hate bound into links of a chain that tightened around his heart and squeezed. Emotion blazed bright, blisteringly hot and anchored as deep as his soul. She swayed with the power of it, leaning forward, entranced.

“Why?” she asked.

She watched his throat muscles flex as he swallowed, knew that his feelings had clogged his passageways.

“Love is often a violent and doomed thing,” he murmured. “It acts without reason.”

And everything that made that simple statement more than just words hit her like a blow.

Violent. Doomed.

He released her and stepped back, letting the cold race in where his heat had kept her warm. As she watched, his expression smoothed into the placid mask he wore so well. He offered no explanation when he began to walk again, and Meaghan found that she could not bring herself to ask him more questions.

“We should hurry,” he said over his shoulder. “Colleen was right—Mickey will be enraged if you hold up his supper.”

His reminder snapped the last sticky tendrils of his spell. Alarmed at how she’d lost track of time, Meaghan nodded and hurried to catch up, then set a brisk pace, keeping her thoughts to herself. Effortlessly, Áedán matched her strides.

“The Book of Fennore is nothing but a trap waiting to be sprung,” he said.

“And my ticket home,” she answered.

“I do not think so, but you are the kind of woman who must see things with her own eyes before you believe them.”

She shrugged defensively. It was true and she didn’t waste her breath denying it. From beneath her lashes, she cast him an uneasy glance. In her whole life, Meaghan had never met a man so complex and mystifying.

But he wasn’t just a man, was he?

Feeling lost and unsure, Meaghan crested the top of a hill. Down below, the sea churned restlessly, the surging tide a match for the waves of confusion that threatened to pull Meaghan out to the middle of the vast waters and strand her.

Entrenched in the cliffs of Fennore was the lighthouse that had stood unchallenged for ages on end. Stark and towering, it warned the unwary ship to veer away. Keep away. A pale spire in the shale and shake, the lighthouse looked somehow otherworldly. A passageway into the realm of fairies and fantasy.

Steps had been cut into the cliffs leading down to the lighthouse, and a rusted rail gave her a handhold as she descended, aware with every cell in her body of the big man following her. She hated admitting that she was glad he’d come with her. Hated acknowledging that having him there made her feel safe.

Hated the voice in her head that said
safe
was the last thing she should feel around him.

The lighthouse door had been bright red at one time, but had faded to a shade that hovered somewhere between pink and maroon. The white paint that coated the pointed round tower had dulled to a stained gray, moldy and chipping at the base.

She slowed her steps as they approached, glad Colleen had told her to bring the jacket, because here the chill had a cruel bite. The wind whipped without restraint, burning her cheeks and making her nose numb. She wrapped the coat tight around her against the damp and cold as she stepped up to the stoop, at last allowing herself to glance at Áedán. He stood an arm’s length away, watching her with a considering look in those beautiful green eyes.

Neither of them spoke, and Meaghan felt the borders of the wary silence growing between them, creating a boundary that dared no crossing. She didn’t like it. Her fist clenched around the thick padding of the coat, feeling the pendant held in the middle of her pocket, once more hot and humming. She caught herself rubbing it.

What
was
this pendant that flared and ebbed with her emotions, as if it, too, were empathic? What purpose did it have? If all of her wild assumptions were right, her brother had sent a messenger from the
past
to deliver it to Meaghan because he thought it would help her. But she had no idea how to make it work. Áedán might know—chances were he
did
know. But what if the pendant was a gateway of some sort, as Saraid had hinted?

If this pendant had been responsible for transporting her brother through time, what else could it do? What if it opened the door to the Book of Fennore? Could she trust Áedán not to take it from her? Not to use it for . . . evil. There was that word again—the one she couldn’t bring herself to apply to Áedán. So why hadn’t she told him about the pendant? He’d been honest with her; she should be honest with him. For all she knew, he was aware of it already. He’d said he felt something different about her. He’d
sensed
it.

Of all people, Áedán would know what it was, and if she really believed even one of her mixed emotions that urged her to heed her instincts about him, then she should turn to him now and
trust
him.

“Áedán—” she began, just as he reached up and pulled the rope of an old sea bell that dangled outside the faded door. It clanged loudly, echoing with an ominous tone that felt daunting. From within she heard a voice shout, “Hang on.”

“What is it?” Áedán asked.

The door opened before she could answer, and they both turned to face the man on the other side. All thoughts of the pendant fled in her surprise.

She’d expected a gnarled and wizened old fisherman who’d been forced to give up the life on a boat in exchange for one of the solitary lighthouse keeper—someone like the old man who lived there in her time. Instead, she found herself face-to-face with someone she knew—or at least recognized. The man standing before her was no more than forty, tall and muscled, with the look of someone who’d spent years in the military and liked it. His skin was the color of aged bourbon and his eyes were so dark she could not tell where the pupil ended and the iris began. The whites looked very clear and bright. Meaghan didn’t even know his name, wasn’t sure what his relationship to the Book of Fennore was, but he’d been trapped in the netherworld of Fennore, too.