The Immortal Highlander Read online

  A smile curved his lips.

  He closed the drawer and walked over to her closet, opened it, and glanced down at her laundry basket. As he’d thought, she’d not washed what she’d been wearing today. A pair of panties disappeared into his pocket. “Quid pro quo, ka-lyrra,” he murmured softly. “You get a piece of me; I get a piece of you.”

  He shut the closet door and stared down at her again. His body was strung tight with lust so intense that the mere wanting of her was a thing to savor. All his senses were inflamed, and he was suddenly feeling things that, if ever he’d once felt, he’d long ago forgotten.

  By Danu, he thought, inhaling sharply, he felt alive. Vibrantly, acutely, perhaps one might say . . . passionately alive. The simplest of experiences were suddenly so savory, so rich in nuance and complexity. Merely choosing his clothing each morning at Saks held new fascination for him, as he selected them with an eye toward her reaction, learning what she liked to see on him. What made her eyes widen, her pupils dilate, her lips part just a bit.

  Leather. She definitely liked leather.

  He knew what he would see on her, once he’d smoothed that bristly spine of hers.

  Nothing.

  Her nipples hard and wet, glistening from his tongue. Her bare ass cupped in his hands as he raised her to his mouth. That same ass flipped over and raised for—

  A low growl built in his throat. Clenching his teeth, he forced himself to step away from her bed. Not yet.

  She would soon come to understand that he was not what she thought of him. That there was much more to Adam Black than the bloody, blasphemous, idiotic Book of the Sin Siriche Du downstairs alleged. He’d spent several hours today rewriting it, crossing out entire sections, simply ripping out other pages and inserting new ones.

  It occurred to him as he slipped from her room that, supposing Circenn never came back, seducing Gabrielle O’Callaghan might not be a half-bad way to pass a mortal life.

  At least until Aoibheal returned for him and made him immortal again.

  Before he left, he turned off her alarm clock. He had no intention of letting her go to work tomorrow.

  9

  “Stay away! Don’t touch me!”

  Gabby woke hard, in a full panic, scrambling up and back, plastering herself against the headboard of her bed, eyes wild.

  Adam stood a few feet away, one dark brow arched, a tray balanced on one hand. “Easy, ka-lyrra, I but brought you breakfast. I was about to put it on the edge of your bed and shake you awake.”

  Gabby pressed a hand to her chest, trying to slow the pounding of her heart. “You scared me! Don’t sneak up on me like that. What are you doing in my bedroom? Get out of my bedroom.”

  “I didn’t ‘sneak.’ I said ‘good morning’ three times. Louder each time. I practically bellowed it at the last. You sleep like the dead, Irish. Be easy. How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not going to hurt you? If I’d wanted to, I would have done my worst by now.” He placed the tray on the edge of the bed and picked up a cup, offering it to her. “Double-shot espresso. I’ve noticed you like to kick yourself awake in the morning.” He smiled lazily. Sexily.

  Gabby blinked slowly. Life was so not fair. Her heart had begun to slow but was now speeding back up all over again, for entirely different reasons.

  There Adam Black stood, nearly six and a half feet of sleek hard body, wearing nothing but a pair of faded jeans slung low on his hips, gold armbands, and a torque. The jeans lent him the air of a modern man, but the arm cuffs and neckpiece, coupled with his strange dual-colored eyes, reminded her that he was a being whose origins predated Christ. Probably by thousands of years. He probably even predated Newgrange. For that matter, maybe he’d built it.

  And, oh, but he took her breath away. His wide shoulders and hard chest were sinfully sculpted, his abs rippled and lean. He had those twin ropes of muscle ripping the sides of a six-pack that led straight down to his groin, disappearing into those low-slung jeans, advertising the fact that he could no doubt move said groin for hours without stopping and in ways that could make a woman whimper in ecstasy.

  And all of it was covered with that luscious gold-velvet fairy skin. She curled her hands into little fists, battling the overwhelming impulse to cop that eternally denied fairy-feel.

  Knowing that he would let her pet him, that in fact he would strip off those jeans in a heartbeat and stretch that hard body over hers and drive into her, made it all the more difficult. With immense effort, she dragged her gaze up to his face.

  But looking at his face was no better. His hair was a fall of sleep-tangled midnight silk, his eyes were half-awake, sensually hooded. His face was unshaven, dusted with black stubble; he was a beautiful, rough-around-the-edges, early-morning-sexed man.

  “Exactly how old are you?” she asked grumpily, trying to put him back into the perspective of an inhuman being. He looked about thirty, with tiny faint laugh lines at the corners of his eyes.

  He shrugged. “Somewhere between five and six thousand. It’s a bit difficult to keep track of when one moves about in time as frequently as I have. Aoibheal is nearly sixty thousand. I am a mere child by my race’s standards.”

  “I see.” Whuh. Definitely inhuman. Unfortunately, discovering his age didn’t seem to have diminished her attraction to him in the least. In fact, it seemed somehow, perversely, to have heightened it.

  He waved a hand at the breakfast tray. “A croissant perhaps? No? How about some fruit?” He proffered a bowl of freshly cut strawberries, mangoes, and kiwi. “Aren’t you hungry? I wake up starved.” He sounded mildly offended by the fact.

  Oh, she was hungry, all right. Unfortunately, the only thing in her bedroom that she wanted to eat was him.

  Suddenly she was fourteen again. And there he was, her fantasy fairy, in her bedroom, no less, serving her breakfast in bed. Her gaze fixed on his gold torque and she had to know. “What are you, anyway?” she demanded irritably.

  He cocked his head. “I’m a Tuatha Dé Danaan.” Dark brows drew together in a frown. “You know that.”

  “I meant,” she clarified peevishly, “your torque.”

  “Ah.” Those slanted brows relaxed. “I’m the last prince of the D’Jai House.”

  “P-p-p-prince?” she sputtered.

  “Yes.” His eyes narrowed. “Problem with that?”

  She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  “I’m not elitist, if that’s what concerns you. I bed commoners all the time.” A faint, provocative grin.

  “I just bet you do,” she muttered. “But not this one.”

  “Not yet,” he agreed, far too mildly for her comfort.

  “And I’m not a commoner. We don’t have those kinds of class divisions anymore.”

  “Actually,” he agreed with her, “that’s true. You’re not a commoner.” He dropped onto the foot of her bed and tucked one leg under the other, sitting cross-legged.

  “What do you mean?” she asked warily, watching him carefully. Braced for him to try something. But he made no move toward her, just sat there perfectly at ease on the end of her dainty bed in her frilly, feminine bedroom: a big dark giant of a man, surrounded by lacy pillows and silky embroidered throws, and all the girly-stuff just made him look that much more masculine.

  “Drink your coffee and I’ll tell you,” he bribed.

  An awful suspicion occurred to her. “Why do you care if I drink it? Is it drugged or something?”

  He rolled his eyes, picked up the cup, took several sips, then handed it back to her. “Of course not, Irish. I merely want your day to start well. I want you to be happy.”

  “Yeah, right.” But the aroma of fresh-ground coffee teased her nostrils, and something deep inside her sighed hugely and capitulated without further argument. She took the cup and sipped. Heavenly. Hot and dark and sweet, just the way she liked it. He’d even gotten the amount of sugar right. When he glanced away for a moment, out the window, she turned the cup to where he’d sipped, and c
losed her mouth on the rim.

  Coffee in bed—when had anyone ever brought her that? Never, that’s when. And exactly the way she liked it, with exactly what she usually had for breakfast. A croissant and fruit, so she could justify all the candy she tended to snack on the rest of the day, not to mention her weakness for cheese-smothered french fries. And Skyline coneys. And everything else that went straight to her hips. But so long as she had her healthy meal first thing in the morning each day, she felt good about herself for the rest of it.

  “Okay, so how am I not a commoner?” He’d piqued her curiosity. Here was a man, er, fairy, who knew more about history than any living person, and from firsthand experience. What might he be able to tell her about her ancestors?

  “You’re a Sidhe-seer. In days long gone, in ancient Ireland, thousands of years before the birth of your Christ, they were prized among humans and treated as royalty, for they alone could protect the people from the Unseen. The mightiest warriors in all the lands competed in tournaments for the privilege of a Sidhe-seer’s hand in marriage. Many a man died trying to win such a maiden. She answered to no one, not even human kings, so highly was she regarded. A Sidhe-seer lived in the finest of comfort and, in exchange for her protection, was protected and cared for by her people all the days of her life.”

  Wow, Gabby thought, what a far cry from her life. She—who had such a hard time keeping a boyfriend—would have once been fought over by warriors. She wouldn’t have been considered a freak but would have been valued for her curse. Rather than being ridiculed or carted off to a loony bin if someone found out, she would have been respected, born to a family whose fortunes would have been bettered by having her. Born to a mother who would have been proud.

  “Even now you continue the tradition,” he said softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Sidhe-seers were also brehons: lawgivers to their people. Though human law has become a very strange thing indeed, it is what you chose as your life’s work. Blood will tell.”

  Gabby was silent a moment, sipping her coffee and looking at him over the rim of it.

  He’s getting to you, O’Callaghan, a faint inner voice warned.

  No he’s not, she retorted silently. What harm is there in having coffee and talking about history with him? She hadn’t had anybody to talk to about fairy-things since Gram died. Four years was a long time. She hadn’t realized how much she missed it.

  This is how he’s seducing you.

  Hardly. He hasn’t even tried to kiss me again. She was almost beginning to wonder why not. How long since he’d exploded through her door—two days? Three? Four? Heavens, she was beginning to lose track of time.

  But he’s doing it all deliberately, to slip past—

  Gabby shook her head sharply, terminating the paranoid voice. Her defenses were fine. Ramrod straight and fully erected. She was in control. Caffeine was beginning to hum through her veins, soothing her nicely. It was cozy to sit tucked in bed and talk. “Tell me more about my ancestors,” she said, reaching for the croissant.

  Gabby stood under the shower feeling deliciously relaxed. She’d hit it first this morning and planned to use every last drop of hot water herself. She lathered, exfoliated, and shaved, until her skin felt silky smooth and eminently touchable (not that she was planning to let anyone touch it or anything).

  It was Saturday, and though she usually worked a full day on Saturdays, she’d decided not to go in. Not because of him; it had nothing to do with Adam Black. She’d just realized she was long overdue to send a message to her boss. It was time she made it clear that she was not his personal slave and was not going to sacrifice her weekends for him.

  Hence the Rollins research wasn’t going to get done. And if he had a problem with that, he could fire her. She knew he wouldn’t. Interns were slave labor, they came cheap. And although she wasn’t as brilliantly persuasive as a fairy that was thousands of years old, she still managed to win a sweet eighty-two percent of the arbitrations she filed. No, he wouldn’t fire her.

  A brehon, she thought, lathering shampoo in her hair. Adam had told her much about old Irish law; regaled her with tale after tale about his experiences with, and knowledge of, the ancient Celts. She almost felt as if she’d spent the morning slipped back in another time.

  He was, she grudgingly admitted, fascinating. Possessing a dry, often dark sense of humor, he was a veritable font of information about virtually anything and everything.

  Perhaps, she mused, eyes narrowing pensively, if she spent more time with him, coaxed him to tell her more about himself, she’d find a weakness she could exploit, a vulnerability she could turn to her advantage.

  The more time you spend with him, the more chance you give him to seduce you.

  Yeah, well, she really couldn’t see any other options. He’d moved in. The blackest fairy was playing house with her, and she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon, unless she could find some way to make him leave.

  Keep your friends close, Gabby, Gram had always said, but your enemies closer still.

  “So, what did you do that got you into so much trouble with your queen?” Gabby embarked on her new plan without preamble as she entered the kitchen. He was standing at the sink, eating leftovers from the Maisonette.

  Adam swallowed the last bite of cold filet mignon and shrugged. Christ, this having to eat five, six, even seven times a day to keep his body running at peak efficiency was absurdly time-consuming. Still, it was pleasurable, the feeling of hunger, and the sating of it. Taste was every bit as heightened in human form as lust was. In fact, all human sensations were more intense than a Tuatha Dé’s. It hardly seemed fair. There were some things about being human that he was going to miss when he was immortal again. “Irrelevant, ka-lyrra,” he evaded.

  Of all the things she might have asked, that was the one thing he didn’t want to talk about. Even after all these months, he still wasn’t sure why he’d done what he’d done. He’d known Aoibheal would have to punish him. He’d known this would push her too far. He’d known that defying her, questioning her authority in front of her entire court and the High Council, would force her to call him to account in ways more severe than she’d ever done before.

  And still he’d done it.

  There’d been no reason for him to. Dageus MacKeltar had clearly defied his most sacred trust and deserved to be punished. He’d broken The Compact between their races by using the time-traveling power of Scotland’s standing stones for personal reasons—to save his twin brother’s life—an action punishable by any means the queen so chose.

  And she’d chosen, at the demand of her High Council, to subject him to trial by blood, which meant the Hunters would be sent to kill those closest to him, and if he used even the slightest amount of forbidden magic to save them, the Hunters would carry out a systematic destruction of the Keltar clan from the sixteenth century forward.

  Long had the MacKeltar preserved the peace between their races, upholding The Compact and performing the feast rituals on Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnassadh, and Samhain that kept the walls between Man and Fae realms intact. Now they were to be destroyed for breaching the ancient treaty.

  And something inside Adam had reared its asinine head and opened his mouth, and the next thing he knew he’d been bargaining for the mortal’s life at any cost. Irreverently, flippantly, wagering it all.

  He’d been spying on the MacKeltar clan for millennia; the queen’s edict forbidding any Tuatha Dé to go within one thousand leagues of MacKeltar land in the lush Highlands of Scotland had only tempted him all the more (and as ever, she’d granted him leeway; she’d not liked it, but she’d tolerated it).

  He’d watched the petite, brilliant physicist Gwen Cassidy on her journey through time as she’d fallen in love with Drustan MacKeltar. He’d spied upon sensual, eclectic, and not-quite-ethical-when-it-came-to-artifacts Chloe Zanders as she’d lost her heart to Dageus, despite the younger MacKeltar twin being possessed by the evi
l souls of thirteen dark Druids at the time.

  And the thought of watching them all die had filled him with a dark restlessness akin to one he’d not felt since the ninth century.

  Name your price, he’d coolly told Aoibheal.

  And then, when Dageus MacKeltar had lain dying, she’d named it. And Adam had placed his hands on the mortal’s heart and given of his immortal essence to restore him to life. He’d thought that the temporary sapping of his immortal strength and power, which would have left him weak for centuries, was to be his price, but she’d taken it even further and made him human, powerless, and cursed.

  “So what makes you so sure she’ll just forgive you?” Gabby asked, jarring him from his thoughts.

  He shrugged again. “She always does. Besides, she wouldn’t be able to stand eternity without me.”

  She snorted and shook her head. “Oh, I see. I keep forgetting how irresistible you are.”

  “No you don’t,” he said easily, flashing her a grin. “I see the way you look at me.”

  “What I don’t understand,” she pressed hastily on, cheeks pinkening faintly, “is why you don’t just talk to one of the other fairies hanging around. The féth fiada doesn’t work on them, does it? Or don’t they want to help you either?”

  For a moment Adam was so astonished that he thought he mustn’t have heard her correctly. “What—other—fairies—hanging—around?” he enunciated each word tightly. Surely Aoibheal hadn’t taken that from him, too, had she? Made him no longer able to even perceive his own kind? The féth fiada alone wouldn’t have done that to him. It rendered its wearer invisible, but it didn’t render anything else invisible to the wearer.

  They’re not your own kind anymore, an inner voice reminded. You’re human. They’re Tuatha Dé, and humans—except for the Sidhe-seers—can’t see the Fae.

  Bloody hell, he could be so stupid sometimes! He’d thought the reason he’d not seen any others of his kind was because she’d forbidden them to spy on him. But no, it was because she’d made him human through and through.