Hidden Jewel (Heartfire Series) (25 page)

"Sweet Brigit, Micah! It seems ye spewed like a newly stoked volcano!" exclaimed Ailill, taking a step back at his warning look, clutching her belly as she howled.

"Jesus, Abby, y'all sure know how to embarrass a guy." But he was laughing, too. A slow laugh, spreading a smile to his lips, his beautiful eyes. She allowed herself to be caught when he reached for her, held close to his heart for a few staccato beats.

"You shouldn't feel abashed, Micah," Ailill muttered softly, moving away. "It isn't natural for our kind, embarrassment, no matter how undignified the situation."

"Undignified? Y'all compared me with a volcano!"

With quick motions, she stripped the bed, the evidence of their encounter there upon the pale yellow sheet, a bloodstain in the shape of a dotted vee not quite in the center of the bed. "The mark o' Venus," she muttered absentmindedly, giving the corner a quick yank, wadding the sheet into a ball as she went on.

"Really? Have you looked in a mirror lately?" Her eyes took him in; all of him, from head to toe. "A mountain o' strength and beauty, feelin's as deeply bedded as yon lava chamber beneath Yellowstone, fit to burst with no notice. Aye, it's what I saw in you, and no mistake. Jacob is the same. The real question is, when you erupt, will the words flow free and hot as pahoehoe, or will they cut as deeply as obsidian shards."

Deeply affronted, only half-sure of what she was implying, Micah glowered behind her back, glanced around for a towel or blanket, something to wrap about his waist; his filthy clothes were still on the bathroom floor. His eye passed over the small stack of clothes set out on a chair, moved back as recognition hit home, and settled there. He could feel Ailill's eyes upon him and shot her a cool look.

"I don't have a short fuse, Abby. And neither does Jacob. If anyone's got a short fuse here, it's y'all," Micah accused, his irritation showing dark across his face. "You lack patience with your own parents, who only want the best for you. You insult them just for wanting y'all to come back from Scotland and I tell ya, if I ever spoke to Kiah the way you speak to James-"

"He'd beat you senseless, Micah, and what's more," she interrupted, her calm tone underlaid by a blazing fury. "Yon wicked fiend would get away with it yet again! How many times, Micah? How many countless times has he brutalized you, beaten ye near to death in your years with him? How many times has the blackheart touched you, left ye questioning your very existence? You've been raised by a beast; a foul, wicked... aye,
adhiobhuil
! He stole you, usurped all that you'd any right to for all these years and you don't know anything, except what you've only just learned."

His look was absolutely wretched, humiliated; it took her breath away to see it. But a door had been opened, her tongue suddenly finding a will of its own.

"Aye, I
know
... I've known since that first time when Kiah nearly killed you, left you broken, shattered. It was you who found me, nay t'other way around;
you
who cried out your pain with such force that ye crossed the barriers, flew on the shadows of night to find solace, and found me, a wee lassie of but ten years. You made the connection and I did the only thing that I could, Micah. I allowed you to see
me
, not a dream, not fully; but you'd already lost so much, you'd already built up a fortress about yourself. I couldn't find you, though I tried my hardest. You are the reason I am forced back here, the reason I am so embittered with my parents, my kin. You and Jacob. I am meant to lie with you, both. 'Tisna a choice."

"You... " He stared at her in disbelief. "You only did...
this
," he growled, gesturing at the bed with one clenched fist, "because you had to? Because you didn't have a choice! Christ, Ailill. Do they teach girls how to fuck with a man's pride back in Scotland? Is that where you learned to be such a pretentious bitch?" Swiftly, Micah turned on his heel, strode toward the door. "God, I am as gullible as a kid.
Fuck
!" Eyes dropping to the chair near the door, he grabbed up the stack of clothes he'd noticed earlier, his size just as he'd figured, and with startling suddenness, swung back, face clouded with bitter fury.

"Y'all planned this! Don't fuckin' deny it,
princess
. Well, y'all got what you wanted; a... what, a stolen son,a... a goddamn stud horse, to take your virginity. That was the first time, slow and gentle- my gift to you. Happy
impurity
, Abby! When y'all head back to Scotland, to that 'sickly lad' you seem to be so enamored with, just remember to tell him that the second fuck was all mine! Micah's. Mine! And remember, too, that it was
I
who brought you to that point of pleasure, of pain;
my body
that you writhed beneath and pleaded for like a wanton.
Not his
!"

Tossing the clothes to the floor at her feet, Micah turned to make as grand an exit as was possible buck naked, half-hard with his angrily uttered words, only half-insult even with the sudden turn of events. He'd thought to lie abed all day, Ailill's smooth, warm flesh at his mercy, there for the taking as many times as it might take for her to admit loving him; foolish thoughts; humiliatingly naive. The moment his fingers touched on the cool brass knob a soft click was heard above the din of incensed silence, halting him where he stood.

"Unlock it," he commanded without turning around.

"No."

"Unlock the door, Ailill, or I swear to holy hell, I'll break it down."

His words were met with a breathy chuckle. "Aye, I'd like to see you try it, Micah."

He did. Absolutely in vain did he try to break Ailill's bedroom door down; to yank the knob through the wood; to tear it from the hinges. Almost in despair, sweating heavily, breathless, Micah turned at last to face her. Grinning ingratiatingly, Ailill shook her head.

"Points for effort, lad, that I'll give you," she husked softly. "Your buttocks clench when you're angry."

"Yeah? Well, you bare your teeth when you're angry."

"You make an odd humming sound when you're frustrated."

"You make odd humming sounds when I suckle your breasts; you cuss in Gaelic when I suckle your clit; and you whisper thanks to
hmm
, when you come." His finger pointed up, brows raised in an overtly pious nature. "Now, I ain't been nearly as well-taught as y'all," he reasoned, intentionally reverting to his own heavily flavored southern drawl, "but I doubt that the pagan
hedonists
you like to call the Elders would be too pleased to know
that
."

"No, I don't suppose so but, you see, I don't care. I didn't have complete control at the time, and even if I had, well... I did not lie with you today for any reason other than my own, Micah. I wanted you, quite badly if you must know, and aye, I planned it. For tonight, not this morning."

Gazing up at the man with wide, guileless eyes, Ailill did something Micah had never thought to see; she blushed; a rosy red climbed slowly up her chest, her neck; her cheeks glowed with it, the slightly pointed tips of her tiny ears blazed furiously. "I planned to woo you throughout the day, to kiss you and flirt with you; to fool around in the shallows of Rosewater until you were full with wanting, and to draw you naked up to my room, under cover of darkness, so that we might make love beneath the pale moonglow and sleep in the arms o' one another, our limbs all a-tangle as we danced the path o' shared dreams. This I wanted, because I feel so strongly for you, Micah; because I am destined to love you, and because you were to be my first." Her head dropped, eyes on the floor, and her hair, long and luxuriant, spilled over her shoulders in a flaming wave, cloaking her nakedness in vivid, earthy hues.

"Curse me for wanting to make it memorable, for wanting this to stand out," she muttered. "It could not be helped."

"And I guess now it will," Micah said, abashed. "Nothin' like makin' love, then fighting right after."

"Aye. That will be my lot, I think."

Moving soundlessly across the plush emerald carpeting, Micah stopped before her, took her small hand in his. "I'm sorry. I just assumed your reasons were... mmm, selfish."

"Don't apologize." Her head came up slowly, blue eyes meeting darker blue. "They were, a wee bit. We've much to air, I believe. This has been proof enough o' that." When he pulled her toward the bed, she eyed Micah uneasily, readying a protest unnecessarily.

"There's time to... air things right now. So, lets get comfortable and we'll talk." Once she'd settled, lying on her side to face him, Micah allowed a small smile to lighten his features, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "If the talkin' gets to be too much, Abby, we'll just have to shut-up and do it again. I think I could get used to that dying feeling I got the first time."

"Aye, the little death... proof of all that you really are, Micah, son of Morna. Tell me of your childhood, your's and Jacob's."          

Yon Blackhearted Fiend

Glancing about the yard, calm and quiet in the early morning air, fresh and green with new grasses, a hodgepodge of clumps amidst the muddy earth, the puddles left by the storm, Jacob breathed a small sigh of relief. No smoke rose from the chimney, though it had been a hot night, but that was the first clue he sought. His ears perked up, zeroed in on the small window glittering beneath a slowly rising sun. No noise could be heard from within, no telltale sound that would signal that the man inside was awake and about; that was a good thing. He and Micah had been gone for three full days this time, had spent their nights with Ailill. In spite of the fact that the girl seemed untouchable, he did not regret three nights of celibate sleeping arrangements. She would prove worth the wait; it was a given.

As he stepped up to the edge of the small porch, far less wary than he'd been before coming to believe that Kiah was still in bed, sleeping off a drunken stupor if he knew the man at all, Jacob's mind wandered back to two months past, to that sweet, chaste kiss given him by Ailill. The innocuous nature of it was more stimulating to him than any of the bolder moves he'd experienced with others; the softness of those lips, the sweetness of her warm mouth... he felt a stirring beneath his filthy kilt that preceded a wolfish grin. His eyes, he knew, were that darker shade right now, almost black, the whites barely distinguishable; alien eyes, he'd always thought, all one color, as if the iris had grown exponentially, taking over the entire surface of the orb. Maybe that was what Ailill had been talking about, when she had cited the brother with black eyes and a mirrored face as the reason she could do no more than kiss; neither he nor Micah bothered to hide the desire burning in his eyes whenever she was near. It would have been impossible. And when he was turned on his eyes became the deepest shade of black, a fathomless abyss, as pointed out to him by the first woman he'd ever lain with; he would always remember
her
, though his many conquests since had become a blur. Yes, they had become nameless, faceless; hardly more than a warm, slick cleft in which to bury his cock, a pulsing void in which to give himself up to the always temporary desire to feel loved.

It never lasted, that feeling, not since the first; a black haired beauty with dazzling black eyes, her name, her features a marked mix of Scottish and Spanish roots, and she had loved him more than any other in his entire life, except Micah. None could love him as his brother did, not even she.
McKell Mariadelrosario
. She'd loved Micah, as well, and Jacob had happily welcomed his brother into the fold, occasionally participated when the woman wiled his twin into situations of erotic experiment. But only Jacob had truly
known
her, had planted his seed and watched it grow for a full seven months. In a town miles away from their well camouflaged desert home, a building secretly being used as a church had been destroyed on Christmas Eve, bombed into a rubble strewn crater. McKell, her unborn child, and two hundred souls seeking everlasting forgiveness for their sins were lost that night. Jacob had been mad with grief; despondent to the point that he'd very nearly died of dehydration; his will to live had died with his unborn child, his first and only true love. Micah had pulled him through, with help from his step-mother and, in a surprising twist of events, Kiah had even laid off the beatings... for awhile, at least.