Kiss of the Goblin Prince (7 page)

“Mother died in childbirth, father of natural causes…”

“And?” Amanda prompted, sure she was about to get a piece of important information about the King men.

Eliza lowered her voice. “His sister died when he was young.”

So that was the family secret, one that must have torn them apart. “That’s awful. How old was she?”

“Eleven.”

Amanda shivered; she’d been only a few years older than Brigit. Losing Brigit would kill her. “How did she die?”

“Dai mentioned her in passing but then wouldn’t say anything more. They never talk about her,” Eliza said with a look that meant Amanda shouldn’t talk about her either.

People reacted differently to grief. She talked about Matt. She wanted Brigit to grow up knowing who her father was, even though she’d never met him. Matt had swept her off her feet. They’d been madly in love and when she’d accidentally become pregnant they’d eloped. Eliza and Matt’s father had been furious. He’d thought she’d trapped him to get to the Coulter wealth.

How long until Eliza was having babies and moving on?

Amanda swallowed the last of her cooling coffee. She was only two years older than Eliza, but it seemed like decades. She felt middle-aged and stuck in a rut of her own making with no idea how to climb out.

She checked her watch. She needed to get to school or she would be late for her first appointment, and while she hated leaving Brigit, she needed to work. Matt’s portion of the Coulter Trust was for Brigit when she got older. The small monthly stipend she drew only covered the mortgage because she refused to use up her daughter’s inheritance.

“Are you sure about looking after Brigit?” She trusted Eliza, but she wasn’t sure about the new men in Eliza’s life.

“Yes. If there’s a problem, I’ll call.” Eliza liked spending time with her niece. Did she look at Brigit and see a piece of the brother she’d lost? Eliza gave her a hug and then released her. “Go on. We’ll be fine.”

Amanda picked up her handbag. “Thanks.”

She went into the living room and gave Brigit a kiss, then rummaged through her bag for her car keys. As she glanced up she saw Dai. For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.

He looked just as she remembered, attractive with an edge that was almost hidden behind the very neat, not quite relaxed way he dressed. He made jeans and an untucked shirt look too sexy, as if he should be wearing…what should he be wearing? She frowned, and he looked away as if the painting on the wall had suddenly caught his attention.

“Are you going out?” she asked, noticing the jacket he had slung over one arm.

“Yeah.” His almost black hair swept past his shoulders as he gave her a single nod. Academics didn’t look like Dai. Or they weren’t supposed too. They were meant to be older, mustier, and less attractive. And definitely less male.

Her heart gave a patter of excitement she tried hard to ignore.

“Do you need a lift?” The words were out so fast her brain didn’t have time to register or approve them. What would spending more time with him achieve?

Maybe he’d answer some more of her questions. The long hair and hard, dark blue eyes were at odds. Then there was the travel. He’d studied languages where they were spoken, not from textbooks. Lived life on the edge in places sensible people steered clear of. She could only imagine the freedom of packing everything into one bag and taking off for somewhere on a whim.

“I’m only going into the city. I can catch the train.”

“The train? Eliza won’t let you drive her car?”

“Can’t drive a manual,” he said with a hint of a curve on his lips.

She bit back the grin that wanted to form and returned a polite smile instead. He could translate obscure languages, yet he couldn’t handle a stick shift. Since she’d already put out the offer she might as well go the whole way even though she knew better. But curiosity won over common sense. Giving him a lift would hardly bring down civilization, and yet it felt like she was stepping into uncharted territory. Maybe that was all she needed. To get out and talk to interesting people. And Dai had her interest.

“How about I drop you off in Subiaco and save you the walk to the train station?” That would give her some time with the man who looked like he’d be more at home on a battlefield than in a library.

He glanced at the floor as if he was ready to admit defeat, but when he looked up he was smiling. “I’d like that.”

***

Dai closed his eyes and rested his head against the headrest of the car seat. He hadn’t found a polite way to refuse her offer, so he’d accepted the ride. The motion of Amanda’s car rolled his stomach and made him regret eating breakfast, and closing his eyes to the oncoming traffic didn’t help. There was too much color and movement in the world and it was zipping by far too quickly.

The visits he’d made at night to the Fixed Realm to obscure, isolated wilds and hidden tombs had only hinted at how the world had changed. Seen with eyes untainted by the lust for gold or the quest for magic, the world was fascinating. Everything was different. From the trees that didn’t shed in winter to the buses that stopped every hundred meters or so to let people on or off. Then there were the cars. Everybody drove; their cars hurtled along the roads at speeds that the horse-pulled wagons of his day could never have reached.

It was unnatural to travel at that speed. If he let his vision slide into his magical sight, he could see how the vehicles cut through the fabric that made up the world, sliding through the ever-changing mesh. He couldn’t work magic fast enough to keep up. Not yet anyway. Nor could he drive. At the moment he had no intention of learning.

The gut-wrenching pull of crossing between the Fixed Realm and the Shadowlands had never caused him so much trouble. He’d grown so used to the calm gray of the Shadowlands, he actually missed it. He never thought he’d miss the endless plains of gray dust that passed for landscape. But he didn’t miss the slow, seeping cold that sucked at the marrow of his bones, or the hungry ache that couldn’t be filled with knowledge…or eventually gold. A goblin’s hunger knew no bounds.

As a distraction, he fiddled with the stereo. Music, like language, could identify a culture. The melodies grew and changed as outside influences permeated. That didn’t make all of the music on the radio pleasant, and Amanda’s choice banged around the car like a battle cry for the dead. The rapid drums echoed in his pulse. He’d missed the beating of his heart for centuries and now he wanted it gone. He couldn’t control the involuntary beating or the direction of the blood it pumped through his system. Sitting so close to Amanda, all he could think of was her, and the subtle scent of her hair and skin. His body responded as if she’d run her fingers over his skin.

He was being controlled by an animal instinct he thought he’d caged long before.

He closed his eyes and fisted the hand she couldn’t see. His nails dug into his palm as the monk’s chant began running through his head. It was his body and he was going to control it—in sickness and in lust. Lust got people into trouble, and then people got hurt. The pain in his hand made the chant pause. All he knew was violence…and yet he was only hurting himself now. He forced his fingers to relax.

Amanda dialed the music down to a murmur. He was aware of every move she made as clearly as if he had his eyes open and was watching her. He opened one eye and glanced over. She was looking at him, not the road. His gut tightened as cars swept past, but she was unconcerned. He forced his eyes to open, but she noticed his discomfort at being in the car. So much for acting normal.

“You get motion sick?”

If that’s what the nausea in his belly was, then apparently he did. He almost found it funny. He’d fought battles against Romans and goblins, been coated in gore, spent centuries barely existing in the Shadowlands, crossed between realms, and raided tombs filled with all manner of creepy-crawlies, including magical entities that were created to guard the dead, but traveling in a car made him ill.

“I’m not a good passenger.” Not totally untrue. He didn’t think he’d be a good driver either, despite the license in his wallet.

“I’ll distract you.” She flicked him a smile that did nothing to settle his stomach or pulse. “Eliza said you taught English overseas.”

“Among other things.” He couldn’t just say yes and lie like Roan expected him to.

“Is it true you speak several dead languages?”

What had Eliza been telling her? Obviously enough to make her curious and leave him to dodge her questions. “If I speak them, they aren’t dead.”

“Touché.” She grinned, her eyes off the road for longer than was safe.

His lips curved immediately in response, and the monk’s elaborate, and supposedly soothing, chant evaporated like water in the desert. The words he’d been taught that calmed the anger and suppressed unwanted desire had no effect when confronted with Amanda. He was defenseless. What use was magic when it didn’t work when he needed it?

“What are you doing today?”

“Looking at apartments.”

“Oh, I thought you’d stay with Eliza and Roan longer.”

Dai shook his head and looked out the window. A shadow flickered across the glass; he turned to see what it was but only saw Amanda, with her sun-kissed golden hair, expecting him to make conversation. He wasn’t very good at that either. Slaves spoke only when spoken to, and living in the Shadowlands wasn’t exactly conducive to chatting. But if he was trying to find things to talk about, he wasn’t concentrating on the speed of the car.

“You’re off to work?” The crisp white shirt and dark pants didn’t look like the clothes Amanda would choose to wear every day. But what did he know? The only other clothes he’d seen her in was a bridesmaid’s dress. His palm warmed as if remembering the touch of the satin against his skin.

“Teen angst doesn’t stop because Brigit is sick.”

Brigit, brown-haired and brown-eyed. The first time he saw her he was struck by the similarities between her and his sister. But where his sister was bold and ready to fight with anyone who dared to argue with a Decangli princess, Brigit wouldn’t even meet his gaze. She seemed to look through him, as if there was something more interesting just behind him. It was unsettling.

“What’s wrong with her?” She looked healthy enough to his eye, but then he’d never studied medicine. That had been Anfri’s job before he’d faded to goblin—to stitch and patch when they got cut up in battle.

“Chronic asthma.” There was a tightness to her words, as if by saying them, she was giving them power.

He nodded like he understood and made a mental note to look up the condition. Next time he saw Brigit he would look a little closer and see if the illness showed up in the threads that made up her body. If his scars did, then maybe other illness did. He wished he’d paid more attention to healing than curse breaking and making.

Would it be wrong to look at the makeup of someone else’s body without their permission? How many of their secrets would be revealed in the weave of their being? Were Amanda’s words giving Brigit’s illness power? He blinked and let the magical sight take over his vision, then glanced at Amanda.

She sparkled in the sunlight, golden and bright as if she were made of spun crystal. Tendrils finer than hair reached toward him, touching the darker threads of his body, as if testing his response…and he couldn’t stop what happened. He shifted his gaze to the other parts that made up Amanda. Rope-like strands reached for Brigit, pink and pulsing with life and love. There was no dark magic in Amanda, only a mother’s love for her child and she was pouring a lot of her life into Brigit without even realizing it.

How sick was the child? If she died, Amanda would be wounded when the bond snapped. He didn’t want to see Amanda that hurt. Beneath Amanda’s brilliant exterior was an emptiness around her heart he hadn’t expected to see.

“What?” She caught him staring.

Dai shook his head and cleared the sight from his eyes. “I was just thinking. It takes a special kind of person to help others.”

He didn’t want to be admiring her determination to save her child, or her career choice, or wondering why she was alone, because then the random attraction became less random and harder to fight…and he was losing that battle on all fronts. And he knew too well what happened to those who failed. They got punished.

She shrugged as if embarrassed. For a few minutes neither of them spoke. Maybe they’d learned too much about the other to be entirely comfortable.

“The train station is just over there. It’ll get you into Perth in about five minutes,” she said as she pulled the car over to the edge of the road.

With the car stopped, he took an easy breath. “Thank you for the ride.”

“Not a problem.” Another smile that held more warmth and was more dangerous than all her previous offerings.

There was a pause he knew he should fill, but he didn’t know what to say. A thousand languages and they all failed him. He wanted to reach out and trace his fingers over her cheek, lean in, and kiss her lips.

“I hope you find something you like.” Her hand moved from the gear stick and landed lightly on his knee.

“So do I.” But he already had. He placed his hand over hers; for a heartbeat, neither of them moved. Her touch held the promise of pleasure he wasn’t sure he could reciprocate. It had been a long time since his hands had done anything but kill. When she didn’t pull away, he raised her fingers to his lips to taste her skin and test himself. His blood rose, but he released her before desire took control.