The men exchanged glances. “ ‘We’?” the one called Drustan said warily.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Drustan,” a petite woman with straight silvery-blond hair and fringy bangs pushed past the towering Highlander, “where are your manners?”
A second woman, also petite, but with long curly hair streaked with copper and gold, emerged from behind the other twin, and they both hastened forward to greet her.
“I’m Gwen,” the silvery blonde said, “and that’s my husband, Drustan. This is Chloe and her husband, Dageus.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Gabby said, suddenly feeling like the queen of grunge, confronted by the two beautiful women. Here she was in an elegant castle, with four elegantly dressed people, she’d been traveling nonstop for a day and a half—or at least she thought she had; the time zones had gotten her rather discombobulated—and four plane changes and hours of stressful driving later, she looked it. Her hair had slipped out of its clip hours ago and she could feel it poking straight up from her head in back, she had no makeup on, and even the wrinkles in her clothes had wrinkles. She shot Adam a withering look. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me we were going to a castle and that all these people would be here. Look at me, I’m a jet-lagged, bedraggled mess.”
“Um, excuse me, but who are you talking to? And you’re not a mess,” Chloe assured her. “Believe me, Gwen and I have been in our share of scrapes and felt bedraggled ourselves, and you’re not bedraggled. Is she, Gwen?”
Gwen smiled. “Hardly. Bedraggled is being in the full throes of nicotine withdrawal, and after a week on a bus with a group of senior citizens, falling into a cave, and landing on a body.”
“And then getting tossed back a few centuries, with no idea of what’s going on,” Chloe agreed. “Naked, too, weren’t you?”
Gwen nodded wryly.
Gabby blinked.
“I gave you my plaid,” Drustan protested indignantly. “ ’twas ne’er my intention to send you back bare as a wee bairn, Gwen.”
Gwen gave her husband a loving glance. “I know,” she said softly.
The one called Dageus tossed his head impatiently. “All of which is neither here nor there. To whom do you speak that we canna see, lass?”
Tossed back a few centuries? Naked? What?
Good heavens, were these people like Adam’s half-Fae son, displaced in time? Her own life, her little corner of the Tri-State was looking increasingly normal to her with each passing day.
“Tell them, Gabrielle,” Adam urged impatiently.
Blinking, Gabby nodded. “I have one of the, er . . . fairies here with me—”
“Tuatha Dé,” Adam corrected irritably. “You’re bloody well making me sound like Tinkerbell.”
“One of the Tuatha Dé,” she amended, with a wry smile. “He says I’m making him sound like Tinkerbell, but, believe me, no one could ever confuse Adam Black with Tinker—”
“Adam Black of the Tuatha Dé Danaan?” Dageus exclaimed, those exotic golden eyes widening.
“You know him?” To Adam, she said peevishly, “You didn’t tell me they knew you.”
“I wasn’t certain if Dageus retained any memory of me,
ka-lyrra
. He was near death at the time, and I didn’t know if Aoibheal would permit him recall,” he said mildly.
“You mean, the Tuatha Dé Danaan that saved my husband’s life?” Chloe exclaimed. “He’s here with you?”
Okay, that threw her completely off balance. Adam had saved Dageus’s life? When? How? Why? What was he doing, going around saving people’s lives? What kind of fairy did that? None of the ones she’d ever heard of. Fairies didn’t go around
helping
humans.
For heaven’s sake,
she thought, staring up at him, mouth ajar,
do I even know him at all?
Damn the O’Callaghan
Books
.
Had they gotten anything besides his immense sexuality right?
Adam smiled faintly and, with a gentle finger beneath her chin, nudged her mouth shut. His gaze fixed on her lips for a moment and he lightly traced the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. When he applied a gentle pressure, she was mortified to feel the tip of her tongue slip out to taste him. She hadn’t meant to do it; she hadn’t been able to stop herself.
His face went instantly taut with lust and he made a guttural sound in his throat. Nostrils flaring, he drew several slow breaths, then said tightly, “What, didn’t read about that one in your silly
Books,
Gabrielle? Doesn’t mesh with your preconceptions? Imagine that.”
“Why didn’t you
tell
me?”
“Would you have believed me?” he countered coolly.
She winced.
“Hence, I didn’t tell you.” He let his hand fall from her face.
“Oh, do you see that?” she heard Gwen exclaim, as if from a distance. “She just disappeared again! This is
so
fascinating! And now she’s back.”
Gabby was still staring up at him when Chloe took her hand, gushing, “Oh, welcome, welcome, both of you. Are you hungry? Thirsty? What can we get you? And here, let us take your bags. So, er,” she hesitated the briefest of moments, “I know this probably isn’t the time for it, but just how old is Adam Black anyway? You see, I have a few questions about the Iron Age. Actually,” she confided earnestly, “I have quite a few questions about several—”
“
Can
he eat and drink?” Gwen interrupted, with an utterly fascinated expression. “I mean, is he actually there? And, er . . . exactly where is there? Is he in another dimension or something? Parallel to ours, maybe?”
Dageus and Drustan exchanged wry looks and shook their heads.
Then Drustan stepped forward and slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. Silvery gaze resigned, he said, “Why doona we just address whether or not the lass is hungry and let matters of history and physics bide a wee.” To the general vicinity near Gabby, he inclined his head and said with quiet formality, “The Keltar bid you welcome, Tuatha Dé. The Old Ones are e’er welcome in our home.”
Adam watched Gabrielle through narrowed eyes and, though he appreciated Drustan’s formal welcome, was pleased that Dageus recalled him, and delighted that his
ka-lyrra
was finally beginning to see him for who he was, it was all currently doing little to appease him.
He’d not anticipated his reaction to seeing Gabrielle around the twins.
He didn’t like it. Didn’t like it one bit. There was too much testosterone in the room. And all of his—no inconsiderable amount—was invisible.
And knowing Drustan and Dageus were married wasn’t doing a damn thing to ease his mind. Really, did she have to smile at them like that? Didn’t she understand they were men and men were not to be trusted around a woman like Gabrielle, no matter how happily married they allegedly were? And Christ, he couldn’t even mark his territory. Touching her in small, intimate ways failed to establish anything, because each time he did it, it only made her invisible to them.
He’d never hated being invisible more. Around normal men back in Cincinnati it had been of no consequence, but the Keltar were not normal men.
He toyed irritably with his empty tumbler of scotch, rolling it back and forth between his palms, eyeing the bottle on the sidebar.
Casting the MacKeltars a black look—which of course they couldn’t see, but it made him feel mildly better—he stood, refilled his glass, and began pacing the library. It was a spacious, masculine room with cherry bookcases recessed in paneled walls, comfortable chairs and ottomans, a dusky rose marble fireplace, and tall bay windows. He circled it, absently examining books, listening while Gabby continued filling them in on their—ah, no,
her
—version of events to date. He’d tried to get her to tell it his way, but she’d seemed perversely delighted by the opportunity to tell the MacKeltars all about how her life had gotten so screwed up since his advent into it.
Gwen and Chloe were making sympathetic little noises, and he could just smell the bloody female bonding going on in the room. Everyone was bonding, except for the invisible person.
Bloody hell, he was hungry. But did he get to eat? No. Gabby had spoken for both of them, bypassing a meal, accepting a light snack in the library.
Shortbreads, candies, and nuts? A mortal body could expire of starvation on such meager fare.
And she’d not yet even gotten to the part where Darroc and the Hunters had appeared yet. Gwen and Chloe seemed fascinated by the notion of
Sidhe
-seers and had been asking dozens of utterly unnecessary questions about what it was like to be one. At this rate, it could take all night to get to the important parts—like what Adam needed them to do. If only he could speak for himself! He was beginning to wonder if she’d even manage to get it all wrapped up by Lughnassadh.
Currently she was elaborating about those idiotic, apocryphal O’Callaghan
Books,
and Chloe, antiquities lover and relentless bookworm, was trying to set up a time to come to Cincinnati to see them. Books. Faery was in danger, his queen was at risk, Darroc was trying to kill them, Hunters were on the loose, and they were talking about frigging books!
It mollified him only mildly to hear her say, “You’re welcome to see them, Chloe, but, frankly, I think my ancestors might have gotten a lot of stuff wrong.”
About high damn time she admitted that, he thought, eyes narrowing, his gaze raking over her possessively. Willing her to look up at him. To make him feel less invisible.
But she didn’t so much as cast a tiny glance his way, she was too busy answering yet another irrelevant question.
He was just about to stalk out and go help himself to something from the kitchen when Dageus said thoughtfully, “So ’tis the
féth fiada
he’s cursed with that keeps us from seeing him?”
Adam’s head whipped around. “What does he know of it,
ka-lyrra
?” he said, suddenly alert. Dageus was another human wild card, like his
Sidhe
-seer; the things he’d endured in the past year had changed him in ways of which none could be entirely certain. Had changed him so much, in fact, that when the present Dageus had encountered himself in the past—which
should
have canceled one of them out—it hadn’t. Which was part of the reason the High Council had so firmly advocated his destruction. Of course, some among them had been driven by more nefarious motives, like Darroc.
“Yes, it is, and Adam wants to know what you know of it,” Gabby related for him.
Dageus smiled faintly. “More than I e’er wished to. I used it myself to borrow a few rare tomes I needed not too long ago. We call it the magic mantle, or Druid’s fog. ’tis no’ easy to wear; ’tis a chilling spell. There are two versions of it. The version the MacKeltars were taught, and the spell the Draghar knew—a much more potent, triumvirate enchantment, in the Tuatha Dé tongue. I ne’er used that version.”
“ ‘The Draghar’?” Gabby echoed, frowning.
“For a time,” Chloe explained, “Dageus was possessed by the souls of thirteen ancient, evil Druids who’d been banished by the Tuatha Dé to an immortal prison four thousand years ago. They were called the Draghar.”
“Oh. I see.” Gabby sounded quite unconvinced of her own words.
Chloe laughed softly. “I’ll explain it all later, Gabby. I promise.”
“Bloody hell, yes!” Adam exploded, stalking to Gabrielle’s side. Closing a hand on her arm, he said urgently, “Ask him if he still retains the Draghar’s memories, Gabrielle.” During the time the thirteen dark Druids had possessed Dageus, their knowledge had been his, and they’d once been privy to virtually all Tuatha Dé lore. Adam had assumed that when Aoibheal had destroyed the Draghar, she’d stripped those memories from the Highlander’s mind.
But what if she hadn’t? If Dageus knew the ancient countercurse in the Tuatha Dé’s tongue, he could terminate Adam’s enchantment! No mere mortal could do it, nor could he himself, but a full-blooded MacKeltar Druid who knew the ancient words certainly could.
He’d be able to speak for himself, be seen again, be solid again, be able to make it unmistakably clear that Gabrielle was
his
.
“Okay, but they can’t see me again, Adam. Stop touching me.”
Stop touching me.
Being invisible was making him feel impotent enough around the Keltar, and impotent was not a feeling Adam was capable of dealing with on any level, and her words provoked something fast and furious and primal in him. He was consumed with the sudden imperative to make her remember that not so long ago she’d been begging him to kiss her deeper, that he’d had his hand down her pants. Damn near inside
her,
and would have been there—with something far more intimate and personal than a hand—if they’d not been interrupted. That they had some serious unfinished business to attend to.
In one smooth motion, he tugged her up into his arms and crushed her mouth with a hot, savage kiss, plunging deep, claiming, saying with it:
I am your man, and don’t forget it.
Had she not yielded instantly, gone soft against him, accepting his kiss completely, he wasn’t sure what he might have done. He was merely grateful that he didn’t have to find out. In the library, invisible, with little to no foreplay was not how he wanted her first time to be. He wanted her first time to be an overwhelming, mind-numbing, perfect seduction that would brand her to the very core of her glowing golden soul.
Fortunately, she not only yielded, her knees did that little, utterly feminine buckling thing that made him feel like a veritable god among men, and he was able to make himself let her go.
When he did, she sank limply back into her seat, lips parted, eyes unfocused. She flushed, looking dazed, then shook her head abruptly.
He was pleased to see that Dageus and Drustan eyed her intently, then exchanged a thoughtful glance. Good, he’d finally marked his territory, at least a little.
“He wants to know if you retain the memories of the Draghar,” Gabby said with another shake of her head, as if she were still trying to clear it.
Dageus nodded. “ ’tis why I brought it up.”
“You do?” Drustan said, looking startled.
“Aye, though they’ve gone, their memories remain. Their knowledge is mine.”