Kiss of the Goblin Prince (21 page)

“No shoes on the sofa.” Cream-colored sofas and children didn’t mix, something Eliza would learn.

“Call me for cake.” Brigit kicked off her shoes and lay down.

“I will; you can even lead the song.” Because there was no way there was going to be cake without a song. Brigit would sing by herself if need be.

Brigit nodded. “But quietly because Dai has a headache.”

Amanda paused. Yeah. If only it were a headache, they were easier to fix than heartache and she’d seen the look in his eyes. One she saw too often in her own.

With Roan and Eliza laughing and cleaning up, she slipped outside. She almost convinced herself it was just to make sure he was all right until she saw him. A tall silhouette in the moonlight. His back was to her, head tilted to stare at the sky as if he looked for answers to questions she hadn’t asked. Her heart gave an extra beat and she knew she just wanted an excuse to be alone with him.

Her foot touched the grass with barely a whisper, and he turned. His eyes were dark wells of trouble.

“Escaping your own birthday?” she asked as she joined him.

“Guilty.”

“I didn’t think men worried about getting older.”

Dai gave her a quick grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s not that so much.”

Amanda stayed silent, leaving him an opening he could fill, or not. Her toes gripped the inside of her low-heeled boot as she hoped he would share something with her. Something more than his love of languages and belief in magic. They were the things he showed the world, but they weren’t him. They weren’t what she wanted to know. She suppressed a shiver as a tendril of longing coiled around her.

“I’ve been out of touch with the world for too long…too obsessed with the dead and obsolete…” Dai shrugged as if changing his mind.

“I know the feeling.” She’d wanted him since the moment she saw him in the church. That first glance woke her and she couldn’t go back to sleep and ignore what she’d tried to forget. Desire.

He turned to face her, the moonlight catching on his cheekbone and lending him a sharper edge. But instead of running, she leaned closer. The heat of his body lessened the chill of the air. Her pulse pounded in her ears as if her heart remembered how to beat after too many years being still and was making up for lost time. Their eyes met, and for one painful moment she thought he wasn’t going to kiss her and she’d misread all the signs.

Then he stepped closer. His fingers trailed up her arm and caressed her neck so softly it was as if he expected her to break. His hand slid into her hair and cradled her head. She tilted her chin to meet his lips. His mouth moved against hers, teasing and tempting. Offering a hint but not satisfying the lust that was unleashed and raging in her blood, demanding more. She didn’t realize how hungry she was until she tasted him. Her lips parted, tingling from the lightest touch, and her tongue flicked against his lip. Her hand slid up his chest, hard with muscle she hadn’t expected to find. Her fingers pressed against him, enjoying the sensation of feeling a man.

Dai pulled back, breaking the moment stolen out of time and place. “I’m sorry.”

His gaze remained on her as he drank in the sight of her as if she was a mythical creature he shouldn’t be near.

“Dai.” She reached for him but it was too late. The magic was gone.

He turned and without a word he stalked back into the house. Amanda exhaled and hoped the chill of the night would cool the fever in her skin. What the hell happened?

Had she forgotten how to kiss?

No. It had barely been a kiss. An experiment, a testing of desire. Did he not like her after all? She frowned. He’d kissed her. She pressed her lips together, but the memory of his mouth remained and couldn’t be erased. Why had he walked away?

The wind whipped her hair about her face as she glanced back at the house. But Dai had disappeared. What was she doing? She was playing games in the dark with a man she hardly knew while her daughter was inside watching a movie.

And yet she wouldn’t take it back. For the first time in too long she felt alive instead of going through the motions and living for everyone else. She wanted something for herself. And he hadn’t brushed her off. He’d apologized, as if he thought she didn’t want to be kissed. No, she wanted so much more. She bit her lip. But maybe he didn’t, and that was why he’d apologized. It didn’t make sense. None of it did. They were adults dancing around each other like teenagers.

She hadn’t been on a date with anyone but Matt since she was eighteen.

“What do I do?” she whispered into the night. She couldn’t go back, but should she, could she go forward?

Chapter 12

Dai closed the laundry door to keep the chill out and the heat in. Amanda’s touch as she’d pushed him away was burned on his chest. Why had she done that? Because he’d helped himself to a kiss. He wanted to taste her lips to see if they were as soft, as sweet, and as yielding as he thought. They were everything he dreamed. Everything he was always denied.

He leaned against the wall and pushed his fingers through his hair. He was defenseless against Amanda. One glance and he was captivated. Resisting left him shaking, but giving in was worse; like a goblin, he craved more.

More. But unlike the lust for gold or knowledge, it was hot and fast like a wildfire let loose to destroy. Destruction was all he would bring Amanda. He didn’t want to know if years of cruelty soured his blood. He couldn’t risk hurting her or any woman. Taking a kiss when none was offered was a sign of his poison.

Screw being normal. He wasn’t even close.

He held his hand up and let his vision slip. The damage was worse than he’d thought. This was no tentative connection; instead a silken thread of sunlight passed through his hand, wove through the door and out. He knew where it ended. Amanda.

Could he pull it out like a splinter?

It didn’t hurt. He turned his hand over and examined it closer. It pulsed and glowed with a life of its own. Dai gave the thread a tug, but it remained enmeshed in the weave of his body. The bond between him and Roan was loose and pale. The bond between family was weaker but more permanent than those connections made willingly. The tie between him and Meryn was both a family bond and more, but it was gray, tainted with the Shadowlands.

He frowned and looked at the golden thread. She hadn’t pulled it back despite the stolen kiss. If she hated him, the thread should’ve snapped.

“Why don’t you like birthdays?” The little voice jarred Dai back to reality.

He looked up with his eyes still clouded by the sight and saw the tattered cloth that made up Brigit’s body. Across her neck was a cut and from the cut her body unraveled. The fabric around her chest gaped, the damaged threads unable to hold her together. When they snapped she would die. Not even the long colorful threads that Amanda had wrapped around her daughter would help—no matter how much love Amanda pushed through them.

But that wasn’t the worst thread he saw. Between him and Brigit was a wispy strand as fine as spiders silk. A faint blood tie. But that shouldn’t be possible. Then he realized where it joined her body. Her throat. For a moment he couldn’t breathe and the world seemed to stop. Brigit reminded him of his sister for a reason…she was Mave reborn and still carrying the wound he’d caused. It was no accident she was in his life again. But he wasn’t sure that was a good thing. The last time they met it had ended in her death. If Mave was there to teach him a lesson, he had to learn it or he’d be damned to repeat it in his next life, and so would she.

How many lives had she lived unable to breathe properly? Waiting for him to come back and make amends? What was he supposed to do? How could he ever make up for taking his sister’s life?

Heal
her. Save her. She doesn’t have to die this time.

“I like birthdays. Just not mine.” With a slow blink he cleared his vision.

He couldn’t save Brigit. His magic was unpredictable. Something as delicate as a child’s body could be ripped apart with a stray thought or a misplaced string. And if he touched her, Birch would no doubt fix the outcome like they did with the tree. The image of the tree with its life cut off remained burned in his mind. Would Birch really kill a child because they didn’t want him using magic? Even if they didn’t, their threat was clear. They would hold him and Roan responsible. Once again their fates were tied, and he was damned no matter what he did.

“Why?” She never looked right at him. Her gaze always slid away like she couldn’t bear to acknowledge his existence.

He didn’t blame her after what he’d done. In the background the TV was talking to itself. “Aren’t you supposed to be watching a movie?” And not talking to him.

Brigit shrugged as if she was used to getting her own way. “Why don’t you like your birthday?”

Dai considered her for a moment. What could he tell her that wasn’t a lie, but would satisfy her curiosity?

“It’s been a while since I had a happy one.” Claudius made each birthday memorable for all the wrong reasons.

“But this one is a happy one?” She smiled and nodded encouragingly.

And he was obliged to agree. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

As he spoke he realized it was. He was human, with family, and a thousand miles and two thousand years away from the life he’d had. If he ever got the feel for his new life, he’d be all right. But all he wanted to feel was Amanda. He didn’t care where they were. But she would. She had an established life. She had Brigit and he wouldn’t do anything to upset the life of the girl who’d been his sister. He owed her that much.

She glanced behind him. “Do you want to watch
Cinderella
?”

When Dai hesitated, she snatched up his hand and pulled him into the living room. She let go when she plunked herself onto the sofa. Dai sat at the other end, but it was already too late. Another creeping tendril had invaded his body. Brigit was trying to befriend him, to strengthen the bond that already existed. Did she sense the connection they shared as brother and sister?

The movie ran unnoticed. Sitting with her, after all the time that passed, he had to remind himself that she wasn’t Mave; she was Brigit now. She’d been plenty of other people over the years. Had she suffocated in every life the way Fane was lured by gold? What did it mean that they were both part of his new life? Maybe he could find a way to save them both and heal himself in the process. But that was too simplistic, and if he voiced that to any mystic they would’ve laughed. They were separate, yet tied events; there was no chance it was mere coincidence his past was re-forming. He’d escaped it once by being cursed. He’d have to face it. He wasn’t ready. He’d never be ready.

Brigit took her eyes off the screen where the girls were getting ready for the ball. “Are you an angel?” She stared at him, challenging one of the heavenly order to lie.

“No.” Those who met angels didn’t tend to live long. He’d wanted to break the curse, but not that badly. Not even Roan had wanted to try that cure.

She scrunched up her face as if trying to understand. “Then why do you have wings?”

Brigit lifted her hand and pointed to a spot just over his shoulder, the place where her eyes were drawn every time she looked at him.

Dai’s blood became iced mud in his arteries. He turned his head slowly. At first he saw nothing. He blinked and saw nothing with his magical sight either. But he knew children saw some of the other planes that made up existence—the ones where ghosts and shades existed. He hoped he had no extra shadow.

He relaxed as his heart pounded hard against his ribs, then stretched and glanced away. From the corner of his eye he saw the silhouette of wings. Eagle wings. He glanced at his chest where he knew the thick ropy talons wrapped around his bones. They were there, and they were attached to the ghostly wings like they were feeding them, feeding off him. Beads of frozen sweat rolled down his back. He didn’t need any magical training to know the wings weren’t a good sign. He had the eagle on his back. Rome was still riding him and wouldn’t let him go.

Brigit waited for an explanation. He couldn’t tell her it was his very own angel of death waiting to rip out his heart.

“Must be my guardian angel standing close by.” Like hell. Where was it two thousand years ago when he’d needed a protector?

She smiled knowingly. “Mommy says Daddy is my guardian angel and that he’ll never leave me.”

Dai wished that were true, but he saw no one by her side watching over her except her mother.

“You’re a lucky girl,” he said, unable to look at her as his lie reinforced her belief. He stood up as Cinderella began crying in the garden. “It must be time for cake.”

In the doorway Amanda stood watching them, her face unreadable. Dai drew in a breath ready to defend himself. Would she mention the kiss he stole or let it go?

“Is it time for cake, Mom?”

“It must be since it’s Dai’s birthday and he said it was.” Amanda gave her daughter a smile.

Brigit picked up her bag and ran into the kitchen.

Amanda’s green eyes assessed him. Confusion had replaced the heat. Yet, every time he looked at her lips he would remember and hunger. He’d have to live like a starving man again. He was used to that, but he didn’t want her thinking he was a cad.