Silver Skin (A Cold Iron Novel) (15 page)

He wanted to linger and watch her, wanted to see more—all—of her tanned skin. But he was going to wait.

“I’ll be downstairs,” he said.

She was quicker than he expected. He’d caught Liam in the hall and thought he might as well use the time to find out how the search was going. If there was a strange Fae in town, between the Fianna and Miach’s family, they should be able to get wind of it. The Fae could pass unseen among humans fairly easily, but they were always noted by half-bloods, who could sense the power in them.

“No sign,” Liam said. “And no word of Brian either.”

Helene came down the stairs in a short black cotton sundress and sandals, her hair pinned on top of her head and a light wrap thrown over her shoulders. The sight of her long legs in the short dress meant that, for a moment, all he could think of was finding a secluded place on the beach and having her, up against a wall or a dock pillar.

“I’m off,” said Liam, who knew he was to make himself scarce when Helene was around. Reconciling her to his sons, who had kidnapped her and Beth Carter against Miach’s wishes, would take some time. And today was not the day.

• • •

S
he had expected him to
make love to her. She had been thinking about it all morning. Her body had flushed and grown wet when he walked in the door. She’d checked to see that the cold iron torc was still clasped around her ankle, that this was not the effect of his glamour, and felt a heady rush when she realized that the bracelet was there, and everything she felt was real.

Now, walking along the beach, she was filled with a tremendous sense of anticipation. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt that way about embarking on a physical relationship. She realized she had come to see sex as a road bump in the progress of dating, as an awkward make-or-break experience, not an exploration.

Miach kicked off his shoes and rolled his trousers, and Helene abandoned her sandals. He took her hand as they crossed the thick line of beachgoers with their blankets and umbrellas and chairs.

They walked hand in hand along the water. “You told me once,” he said, “that you weren’t like Beth Carter. You weren’t searching for something. So how did you end up working at the museum?”

“I love paintings. I wanted to study them. But I discovered that I didn’t like basements or spending long hours in closets cataloging art that no one ever got to see, and I got sucked into the fundraising end of things.”

It was a normal question and a normal answer and she could, if she wished, stick to normal. Pretend he was human. Rich and criminal, but human. Like the donors she met at the museum. Only not married. But she was coming to realize that normal was overrated and that abnormal could be extraordinary, so she asked the question she was most curious about.

“Why Boston? Why did you and Finn and Deirdre come here?”

“We came with the Irish,” he said. “We came looking for excitement. At least Finn and I did. And Deirdre . . . she came looking for new places and people to paint, and a city where she could live quietly. She is somewhat fragile. When we rescued her from the Druids she was too weak to know what was happening. She never saw them brought low, never saw them defeated. And because of that she has never really believed, in her bones, that they are gone. She thinks they’re out there, somewhere, plotting their revenge.”

“That’s why you have to ward her house every year,” Helene guessed.

He nodded. “She has no enemies amongst the Fae. Most of us revere her talents too much. The Druids were not interested in our art, for the most part, and so they did not keep many of our painters or musicians aboveground. They hoped that Deirdre’s art—which has a deep magic in it—might have some value as a weapon, perhaps to create terrifying illusions. They tried to force her to produce images of immense horror, but all they succeeded in doing was driving her more than a little mad.”

They walked the entire crescent of the beach, all the way to the fort and back, talking as they went. Helene told him about her tomboy childhood in Connecticut, her career trajectory at the museum. “Sometimes,” she admitted, “I think I’m not putting my talents to their best use. That I should be raising money for people who really need it. Starving people can’t eat art.”

“No, they can’t,” said Miach, “but beauty feeds us in other ways. And there’s little point to living in cities as we do, to organizing ourselves in such complex societies, human, Druid or Fae, if we cannot create something more—something finer—than mere sustenance.”

When they reached the house it was quiet. Not the hush of emptiness, but the soft hum of family trying to stay tastefully out of sight.

“Shall we go upstairs?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Miach’s suite delighted her. There was a large bay window looking out over the water, offering a different perspective from the view in the library. The ceilings were high, and the ornate Victorian cornices and door moldings had been painted in shades of beige and cream. The furniture was simpler and more modern than anything else in the house, mostly midcentury Scandinavian designs in walnut. The drapes were cream velvet, the carpet underfoot was wool with a velvet nap, and the bed covers were quilted cream silk.

“Do you like it?” Miach asked.

“You knew I would.”

“I suspected you might. I haven’t seen your apartment, but your office was revealing. You like texture.”

He took her hand and placed it against his chest. “Although I would understand if this is not a texture you care for. I can keep my shirt on if you’d prefer.”

She felt the scars there through the soft cotton of his T-shirt. “I don’t mind scars.”

“There are others,” he warned.

“I want to see them all.”

She had to stand on tiptoe to kiss him, which she enjoyed. Men her own height or only a few inches taller than her made Helene feel ungainly, but with Miach she felt slender and fine-boned, even if she was not.

He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, his tongue slipping inside her mouth, warm and wet and hungry. They grew breathless quickly, and Miach found the zipper at the back of her sundress and disrobed her. She stepped out of her sandals to stand barefoot on his velvety soft carpet in her bra and panties.

Miach stepped back and unbuttoned his cuffs, pulled his shirt off, revealing the full extent of his scars.

Helene didn’t shrink back. She ran her hands over the jagged network of pink lines, from his naval to his collar bone. There were other marks as well, some carved into his flesh and others drawn with ink. Whorls covering his shoulders and bands ringing his biceps.

“What are these?” she asked, tracing one of the bands around his muscular upper arms.

“Spells. Protective wards. Some are
geasa
. Others mark rites of passage for a sorcerer. Now let me see your scars.”

“Mine aren’t magical.”

“All marks have power,” he said, drawing her onto the bed beside him. “Even if they are only the power of memory, of knowing your past, what you survived.”

He unclasped her bra, cupped her small breasts in his large hands. Kissed her mouth, her throat, her nipples, as she lay back on the bed in only her panties. He left those on but slipped one hand beneath them, making her writhe and gasp. Making her hungry for him. She reached for the buttons on his trousers, felt the hardness of his erection through the cloth, fumbled to free it. Gave up for a moment when he slid a finger inside her.

But she wanted him, and she was persistent. She pushed his hands away and turned to focus on his pants. He laughed as she tugged impatiently at his trousers, then helped her to get them off. Finally he was free, and she grasped his impressive length, couldn’t resist the urge to wrap her hand around the middle of his shaft and stroke up—

Her curled fingers met smooth metal. He was pierced.

She froze. “What is that?”

“It is a Fae jewel,” he replied, taking hold of her wrist and sweeping her hand over the head of his shaft, her fingers over the cool silver. He sighed with the pleasure of it. “Another example of our old arts. And it will feel very, very good inside you.”

She had no idea what to say. She had never dated a man with a tattoo, let alone a pierced . . . but the idea was somehow intriguing. Tentatively she ran her fingers over the silver ring. The little ball moved. Back and forth. As it would do inside her. . . .

Miach sensed her train of thought. He swept her panties down off her hips. Then he lifted her to straddle him.

“Try it,” he said. “If you don’t like it, I’ll take it off.”

She had been afraid of losing herself, her autonomy, to a Fae lover, but she had never been more in control of a first encounter than this. She was poised over him, and he held his shaft up to the lips of her body, kissing her entrance. He brushed the silver ring over her clit, and it was cool and smooth and different from anything else she had ever felt.

She flexed her hips and took the head of him inside her, the piercing stretching and stimulating her entrance. She opened her eyes to find him watching her intently. She sank down on him, exquisitely aware, every inch of the way, of the silver ornament within her.

When he was buried to the hilt she flexed her hips and arched her back and decided that she did like how the ring felt inside her. He took hold of her hips and lifted her high until only the head of him remained sheathed, then brought her back down firmly on him, as though to demonstrate, again, just how good it could be.

After that he let her set the pace, and his hands roamed her body while she rode him. For a moment, memories—images—of Deirdre in her studio, riding Kevin, turned in her head. She wondered if the Fae beauty sported a jewel of her own. But even such voluptuous fancies were distractions, and fleeting.

And then there was room in her mind and universe for no one,
nothing
, but Miach and herself. Alone in this bed. Alone, but joined. They moved together, flexing, straining, thrusting until Helene felt her body tighten and the first waves of orgasm lap at her.

Miach flipped them quickly, changed the angle of his penetration, and she lost her place for a moment, slid back down the slope of pleasure until her body registered what he was doing. The silver ring was hitting her there, in that place that drove her crazy, and there was no stopping her climax.

She did not come alone. Miach cried out and stiffened just as her heels dug into his back. Afterwards they rolled onto their sides still locked together.

“Did you like that?” he asked, nuzzling her and pulling her head onto his chest.

“Mmm.”

“I’ll take that as yes.”

She giggled. She felt sleepy and replete with pleasure. She was still being stalked by an unseen, unknown adversary, but being confined to Miach’s house had some advantages.

One of which was already coming back to life inside her.

“I suppose the Fae don’t have a refractory period,” she remarked dryly.

“Of course we do,” replied Miach, pulling her close and showing her exactly how he wanted her next. “We just measure it in seconds, not hours.”

• • •

M
iach drowsed with Helene curled
around him. It had been years since he’d taken a human lover, made a mortal woman a regular member of his household, but he was excited about the prospect of having her here, in his home, and in his life.

“Are you hungry?” he asked her.

She stirred, then pushed the tangled blond hair out of her face and said, “Ravenous.”

They dressed and went downstairs, passing Nial and a girlfriend sprawled on the sofas in the TV room. The girl whispered in his ear as they passed, but Nial shushed her.

“It’s like I’m dating a man with teenagers,” Helene said to Miach.

“Does it bother you?” he asked. “Liam and Nial are genuinely contrite. It was Brian who led them into folly, and
he
will never be welcomed back into this house.”

“No. It doesn’t bother me. I grew up in a blended family. My brothers were half brothers, but I thought of them as my own. And I miss it, the noisy house and all the comings and goings, and sense of belonging.”

Miach surveyed the contents of the refrigerator. “Will it add to your sense of belonging if I admit that Nieve was the only one who can really cook, and that there’s nothing within my limited skill level in here?” he asked.

Helene looked over his shoulder at the contents of the icebox.

“Will you be horribly disillusioned to learn that
I’m
not the cooking type?” she asked in return.

“Nial,” Miach called.

The boy appeared in the door to the kitchen, looking hesitant.

“Go and get the car,” said Miach. “We’re going out for dinner.”

• • •

B
y the time Nial brought
the car around—a Mercedes sedan that Helene hadn’t seen before—she really was ravenous.

Miach had said that he wanted to build something normal and human between them, and few things could be more human than driving to dinner with your boyfriend’s rebellious son from a previous relationship and that son’s nervous girlfriend.

The girl, Rosalyn, seemed terrified of Miach, who called her “Rosie” and peppered her with questions about what she was studying at art school and what she planned to do with her degree.

Helene had expected Miach to take her to one of South Boston’s pubs for a meal, but instead he drove them to a chic bistro in the Fort Point Channel arts district. It was a satellite restaurant owned by one of Boston’s most famous chefs, and impossible, even on a weeknight, to get a reservation with less than a week’s notice.

Miach drove up to the front door, left the car with the valet, led their little party inside, and was seated immediately.

The lighting was subdued and the decor was elegant. Miach ordered wine for the table. With surprise Helene realized that this was the first time she had observed the Fae sorcerer in such a context. Somehow he was equally at home in this sophisticated setting as he had been in a dive bar in Charlestown, or at her museum, or on the beach.