Tormented by Darkness (15 page)

After several long minutes, she dumped the entire mess in the sink and sifted through the slime to withdraw the crystal. Instead of the clear brilliance it had possessed before, it now held a bold yellow-green color.

Having used up the last of her personal strength, she dropped into the closest chair and passed the crystal to Dáire. “String it, please.”

His hand closed over hers, his fingers full of compassion and support. Quietly, he left the room to fulfill her request.

Rhiannon dropped her head onto her folded arms and let her eyelids droop, resting until she heard her brother’s footsteps once again. Looking up, she smiled at the sight of the crystal dangling from his fingers, suspended on a thin chain of silver.

“Thank you.”

Dáire smirked. “Just don’t tell him I helped.”

Before she could even ask, Dáire helped her to her feet and to the SUV outside.

The miles across town passed quickly. Each streetlight amped up her anxiety, making what she must do more difficult to accomplish. Mick hated her. She’d be lucky if he didn’t slap cuffs on her and drag her downtown. Assaulting a cop wasn’t the brightest thing she’d ever done. And the thought of spending her mortal years locked away was dismal, to say the least. She’d rather offer herself to Drandar.

Headlights flashed across Mick’s garage door as Dáire pulled into the drive and cut the engine. “Want me to wait?”

She glanced at the door, uncertain. If Mick turned on her, Dáire would rip him to pieces. Yet Mick was already furious enough to resume the fight her brother started. She let out a sigh and shook her head. “I think I’ll walk.”

Her brother’s gave her a scolding frown. “I’ll wait.”

With a faint nod, Rhiannon opened the door. Crystal clutched in her hand, she trudged up Mick’s front porch and let herself inside.

The house was silent, save for the distant hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. At the top of the stairs a faint light burned, the only sign anyone occupied the residence. She set a shaking hand on the railing and began the short climb. This would be unpleasant, but she couldn’t leave him at the mercy of Drandar’s sick will. Couldn’t expose him to any more danger than she already had.

He’d given her the gift of mortality. She owed it to Mick to keep him safe, even if he cut out her heart.

Radiating from behind his partly open bedroom door, the light beckoned her inside. She pushed the heavy wood open, scanned the room, and found him sitting in an armchair, facing the door.

His gaze narrowed as she shut the door behind her.

Sucking down great gulps of courage, Rhiannon crossed the room. “I’m sorry, Mick. For not telling you, for making you go through that…” Her voice cracked and she took a deep breath. “For everything.”

His watchful gaze followed the movements of her hands as she unfurled the crystal’s chain, opened the clasp, and bent toward his neck. Her knuckles brushed across his warm skin, sending vision after vision of the way he had loved her slamming through her mind. She bit down on the inside of her cheek to stop tears from rushing over. “No matter what you think of me,” she whispered with effort. “Don’t take this off. It will keep you safe.”

Her fingers trembled, making fastening the clasp difficult. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, willing her hands to cooperate. On the third try, the clasp grabbed, and Rhiannon stepped away. With one last lingering look at his harsh expression, she memorized his face and murmured, “
Èasca.
”

Mick’s posture gave, and he crumpled forward with a gasp. He gave her one second of intolerable silence, before he exploded, “
What the fuck?
”

Rhiannon cringed. She backed up a step. “I know you’re angry.”

“You’re damn right I am!” He shot to his feet, his expression murderous. “You asked me to go camping, not to be your goddamn guinea pig!”

****

Pissed off didn’t begin to describe the level of anger boiling in Mick’s veins. Not so much at Rhiannon—no, that part of him was grateful to see her standing in his bedroom. He was more enraged about his will being taken from him and the last two and a half hours he’d sat in this chair, left to wonder what had happened to her. Still, she wasn’t completely faultless. She’d started this mess. Now he wanted answers. Why him? Had she planned this all along? What the hell had he seen out there in the mountains?

“I’m sorry, Mick.” As a tear trickled down her porcelain cheek, she took another step away from him. “I’ll go. Just promise me you won’t take that off.”

He clamped a hand around her wrist, halting her retreat. “You’re not going anywhere, Rhiannon.”

With a short nod, she bowed her head and brought her other hand even with the one he held. Offering her wrists, as if she thought he intended to cuff her. He scowled at the gesture. Like that would do any good—what was he going to charge her with? Spell casting against the innocent? While he was quite certain he could find a carry over from history like that in the books, the DA would laugh him out of a job.

“Sit down,” he instructed. “I want fucking answers.”

Surprise widened her eyes, but she dropped to the edge of his chair like boulders had fallen upon her shoulders.

“Why me?”

“Why…you…?”

Mick pursed his lips to temper another angry oath. When the urge to pound his hand into the wall passed, he bit out, “Yes. Why did you choose me?”

“I didn’t
choose
you.” Her troubled gaze searched his face. “I fell in love with you, Mick. I told you about the curse.”

“So that wasn’t a lie? Not something you made up to make me more receptive to what you had planned?”

Her face washed with so much white that for a second he thought she might pass out. The gut-deep urge to go to her and offer comfort rose to choke him. He fought it down, determined to have answers before he even considered the other half of his feelings for this bewitching woman.

“No, Mick,” she answered, her voice nearly inaudible. “I meant every word of it.”

The sheer emotion that clung to her clogged words knocked him sideways. He’d prepared to hear stuttered excuses, a rehearsed speech that justified why she had lured him into the hills. Like all the other suspects he interrogated, he expected defensive lies.

Not truth that rang so clearly it doubled him over inside.

He sucked in a deep breath, some of his anger deflating. He pushed a hand through his hair. “The curse, your father…that’s all true too?”

Rhiannon nodded.

Jesus, Joseph and Mary—if anyone else heard this he’d never get over the ridicule. But he had witnessed the impossible several times over tonight. Experienced it firsthand. Though every fiber of his logical being argued it was all some fantastical bad dream, he couldn’t deny the truth.

Sinking onto the edge of his mattress, he dropped his head into his hands. Truth. Magic, demons, curses, and immortality—all truth. How was that even possible?

“How old are you?” The question popped out of its own accord, his throat already tightening at the answer he knew he’d hear.

“I was born in 189.” She hesitated, then added, “B.C. Or thereabouts.”

Behind the fingers that veiled his face, his eyes widened to twice their normal size. Over two thousand years old? This was insane.

He chewed on what he knew, what he understood to be factual, despite the illogical nature of everything. Silence hung in a thick, oppressive curtain, the only slight noise, the scratch of her unsteady breathing. That rhythmic sound filtered through layers of anger, hurt, and disbelief, drawing him into all the other emotions he tried to repress. Namely, how very much he wanted to touch Rhiannon. But uncertainty of where this left them kept him from rushing across the room and gathering her into his arms.

“What next?” he whispered.

The chair cushion rustled as she shifted. “That depends on you, Mick.”

Unable to believe he’d heard her correctly, he parted his fingers enough to peek at her expression. “Me?” he echoed.

“It’s your choice where we go from here.”

Where they went from here. That meant he held control of his future, that it wasn’t wrapped up in some magical outcome. Accept her and all she was, and take the chance that when she realized the truth behind his honest protests earlier tonight, she wouldn’t walk away.

Or end it now, while they were both still hurting, but before that pain became an infectious cancer.

She stood on unsteady legs. “I know it’s a lot to absorb. Take your time, Mick. You know where to find me.” She lingered only a moment before she turned for the door.

Chapter Seventeen

“Rhiannon.”

Mick’s hoarse voice stilled her hand against the doorknob. She turned, not wanting to confront his final rejection, unable to stop herself from discovering the answer. “Yes?”

“Come here.”

Rhiannon blinked. “What?”

He raised his head on a heavy sigh, parted his knees, and indicated the space between them. “Come here.”

Elation bubbled. She stamped it down, quickly. He hadn’t said everything was okay. Only asked her to come closer.

Hesitantly, she obeyed.

Mick’s gaze lifted to hers, and he pulled the crystal away from his body. “This is to keep Drandar away from me?”

She nodded. “From hurting you, yes. He might make an appearance, but as long as you’re wearing it, he can’t harm you.”

“But he could, because I’m mortal.”

Again, she nodded.

“Like you are.”

“Yes.” She let out a tight laugh. “I’m mortal now. And I’m sure he’ll pay me a visit very soon.”

Letting the crystal fall against the base of his throat, Mick settled his hands at her waist. His gaze held hers, conveying silent messages she couldn’t fully comprehend. “What’s going to keep you safe?”

A nervous shiver raced down her spine. “I’ll make myself one when I get home.”

Mick cocked a dark eyebrow. “Your brother doesn’t have the ability to protect you?”

“No.” The heat from his hands crept beneath her sweatshirt, reminding her of the more enjoyable ways he’d touched her. She shifted against the familiar restlessness, the uncomfortable tightening of her womb. “Cian’s mortal. Our mother shielded him. My other siblings either can’t, or won’t, do anything. Well, Isolde might. But I’m not sure where she is right now.”

“So there’s
no one
you can think of who can protect you?”

Rhiannon shook her head.

To her consternation, Mick’s mouth quirked with unspent laughter. She frowned at the upturned corners. Nothing she’d said was remotely amusing. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re hell on a man’s ego.”

Baffled, she squinted, silently demanding an answer.

He rewarded her with a genuine chuckle. His hands drifted beneath her sweatshirt and gently slid up to her ribs. Pressure there beckoned her to bend forward.

“I want the job, Rhiannon.”

She didn’t have the time to connect his words with the unstated meaning before he guided her onto his thigh and his mouth found hers. The tip of his tongue nudged her lips apart, and he invited himself inside.

A whimper escaped her as she wrapped her arms around his neck and indulged in the kiss. All the clenched together knots that had formed through the night slowly unwound. Pleasant heat sifted through her veins, pooling steadily in the depths of her womb. Mick wanted her. After everything she’d done, her brothers had done, he wanted
her.

Why?

The need to know interrupted her bliss, and she pushed away from his intoxicating kiss. “Why?”

Mick rested his forehead against hers. His gaze filled with emotion, and though he didn’t smile, light danced in those dark fathoms. “You get me. You’ve been there. You know what its like to feel like your soul’s divided.” One hand inched further up her body and his warm palm covered her breast. “You make me laugh when I need to. You make me feel things I didn’t know I could.” Expert fingers kneaded the soft flesh in his hand. His voice assumed the roughness of gravel. “And I have never wanted a woman to wake up beside me, the way I want you to.” His thumb swirled over her nipple, instantaneously turning her insides into molten wax. “Every day. For the rest of my life.”

“Mick,” she exhaled.

“I told you I won’t let you go, Rhiannon. Not for Drandar, not for your brother.” As he pulled in a shaky breath, his mouth fluttered across hers. “Not until death rips us apart.”

His lips clasped hers tenderly, sending tears coursing down her cheeks.

“I love you, Mick.”

“Ah, sweetheart,” he murmured against her mouth. “Not half as much as I love you.”

She drew back against the challenge with a playful grin. “No? Should I prove it to you?”

Chuckling, Mick fell backward onto the bed and pulled her astride his lap. Desire glinted in his eyes, a need that ebbed through his masterful fingertips and sank into her soul. He lifted his hips, stroking her feminine center against the steely ridge of his erection. “You can try. I’ll win though.”

Rhiannon ground down against him and reveled in the sharpness of his breath, the way he closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. “Only if I let you.”

“Rhiannon?” Dáire’s voice echoed from the stairwell.

Mick dropped his hands, rolled his eyes to the top of his head, and let out a groan. “Can I kill him please?”

She let out a laugh. “No. He’s immortal.”

“I can’t even try?”

Wriggling her hips against Mick’s, she giggled as she bent forward to press a kiss on the tip of his nose. “Maybe later. Right now, I have better things in mind.”

As his hips arched into hers, he glanced at the door. “What about your brother?”

Rhiannon slipped her hands beneath Mick’s shirt to explore the warm planes of muscle there. She grazed her teeth against the side of his neck. “I thought you didn’t give a damn who interrupts?”

Mick’s hands fastened on her hips again, pressing her down against his hardened cock. “I don’t.”

Shuddering under the shock of pleasure, she choked out, “Call it…sweet revenge?”