“Something slinky and sexy for your next lover, maybe?” He paused. “Who won’t be me.” Lie, lie, lie.
“No.”
“Ah, that means you will be taking me as your next lover?”
A clerk came near. Aislinn smiled and waved her away. “Hardly.”
“Good. We’re agreed. Let me buy something for the next lucky man. You have no reason to say no and you’ll offend me if you do, since I’m trying to repay you for your kindness.”
She halted near a rack of designer shoes. “I haven’t been very kind to you.”
“All the more reason to relent and allow me to buy you a gift.”
She ran her index finger down a pair of red Jimmy Choos. “I’ll say yes just to get you to quit and let me shop. I have a feeling you won’t stop until I give in to you.”
Oh, she was right about that
.
He flashed a smile and hoped it didn’t look as predatory as he felt. “I’m nothing if not persistent.”
“Believe me, I noticed.” She turned and began to saunter away. “When I find something suitable, I’ll let you know.”
“It has to be lingerie and you have to let me see it on you before I buy it. You know, to make sure your next lover will approve.”
Her steps faltered, but she only called airily over her shoulder, “Fine.”
He blinked. He thought she’d howl at that string he’d attached.
Having no particular interest in women’s clothing other than when he was taking it off someone, Gabriel watched Aislinn. She touched the gowns, examined their sizes and lengths, talked to the clerk about alterations, but she did it all with a dull look in her eyes. Whereas Carina seemed beatific in the shop, with her ability to buy new things to wear at court, Aislinn touched the garments with listless, roaming hands, as though searching for something that wasn’t there, something she knew she’d never find between the four walls of the building. While all the time she kept glancing out the plate-glass window to the street and the passersby.
Aislinn Christiana Guinevere Finvarra of the Seelie Court, supposed purebred Tuatha Dé Danann, was bored. Bored with her life, yearning for more. That was another secret she kept from her peers. Add it to the pile.
She had to feel so lonely.
The heaviness that had settled in his chest earlier eased a bit. Luring her to the Unseelie Court was the best thing he could do for her. In the Black Tower she could develop her magick without fear of reprisal or banishment. A woman as intelligent and as interesting as Aislinn deserved that and more. She didn’t deserve to be stifled and strangled in a toxic and delusionary environment like the Seelie Court.
She wouldn’t be bored anymore. She wouldn’t be alone. Sure, she’d hate him for what he’d done. This couldn’t end any other way. But in the long run she’d be better off in Black with her own people.
“I think I found it.”
Gabriel came back to himself, realizing she’d browsed over to the lingerie section. A distance away he could hear Carina nattering at one of the store clerks. He walked to Aislinn and saw she held a red satin and chiffon slip in her hands. It looked long and . . . fascinating. Sexy. Now
these
were the kind of clothes that men were interested in, at least for the couple of minutes a woman wore them before they became a heap on the floor of the bedroom.
His eyebrows rose. “Try it on.”
She disappeared into the fitting room and reappeared a couple of minutes later. It covered her down to her ankles, yet still managed to be the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. The bodice cupped her breasts just perfectly, just the way he wanted to. His fingers curled as he imagined doing just that. The red looked incredible against her skin tone.
“Turn around.” His voice came out just a tad hoarse and he realized he was clutching a silk gown off one of the racks hard enough to wrinkle.
She turned and he lost his breath. The back dipped down very far, all the way to the top of her beautifully rounded bottom. He wanted to run his lips over every inch of slender, flawless skin from the nape of her neck to the small of her back and then—
“Gabriel?” She’d turned around and was staring at him, frowning.
He cleared his throat. “It’s beautiful on you. Your next lover will drool all over the carpet.” He knew that for certain because he would be that man. No way was he allowing any other man to see her in that gown. Aislinn was his.
“I like it, too.” She flipped her heavy hair over one shoulder, the silver locks curling around her breast and making him almost swallow his tongue, and turned this way and that in front of a nearby mirror. Her nipples were rock hard and pressing through the thin fabric of the gown. “I never wear stuff like this.”
“You looked just as pretty in your sweater and pajama pants a couple of nights ago, but luxury is good once in a while.” He turned and walked toward the shoes. She needed to put her clothes back on before he spontaneously combusted in the middle of the store. “You need a pair of pumps to go with it.”
She laughed and said in a dry tone, “Yes, with fluffy feathers on them.”
He picked out the fluffiest pair he could find while he kicked the plot for her seduction into high gear. Except this time it had nothing to do with the Shadow King and everything to do with his own desires.
SEVEN
AISLINN
was still shaking a little bit when they arrived back at the Rose Tower. Still shaking even though they’d spent the whole morning at the dress shop while Carina practically bought the place out. Still shaking even though afterward they’d lunched at O’Shea’s, where they served traditional Tuatha Dé Danann dishes like roasted sea bass with capers and lamb cutlets with honey and apricots.
Gabriel affected her that way and it made her mad.
She was exhausted and well fed, but she couldn’t shake the shivers she had from when Gabriel had watched her try on the lingerie. She’d done it thinking it wouldn’t matter. He was never going to get into her pants, no matter how high he cranked up the charm. She’d told herself she wasn’t at all attracted to him—or at least she could control her attraction—and teasing him a little bit would be fun.
The joke had been on her.
She thought she’d concealed her reaction well enough, but standing there in front of Gabriel in that very sexy swath of silk almost-nothing had completely and totally flipped every switch she had. Right now she hated herself for it, but she couldn’t deny that the way his gaze had taken her in—like she was not just the most attractive woman he’d ever seen, but the
only
woman he’d ever seen—had heated her blood.
Which was stupid.
Gabriel Mac Braire probably looked at
every
woman that way. Most likely it was a practiced look, not at all genuine, perfected after centuries of womanizing. A consummate actor, he was skilled at seduction and she didn’t buy for a minute he wasn’t trying to seduce her.
Although it seemed that her body might be working against her mind in this aspect, since being partially clothed in front of him, wondering . . .
knowing
what had been going through his mind as he’d looked at her, had made her nipples hard and her body more aware than it had been in a very long time. Sex with Kendal hadn’t been bad, but it hadn’t been earth-shattering, either. Mostly, it had been average. All those memories with him were tainted now, anyway.
They reached the tower and entered amid the usual crowd of Seelie going here and there, preparing for the evening, standing in small clutches impeccably dressed and gossiping or talking to the people from
Faemous
.
She was home. Ugh.
“I would like to make dinner for you tonight, Aislinn. Although the catch is we’ll probably miss the . . . what is it tonight?”
“Drinks in the common room,” Carina answered.
Aislinn hesitated because the prospect of having an excuse to miss cocktails was very tempting. She could only beg off with headaches or fatigue so many times before people began to talk. But the lingerie . . . “I don’t think—”
“I’m inviting Carina and Drem, too.”
“Oh, lovely. Yes, we’ll be there.” Carina gave her a side-long glance. “You, too, right, Aislinn?”
She sighed. As long as they wouldn’t be alone. “Fine. Thank you. I think I’ll go up to my apartment now and relax a little. See you at the dinner hour?”
They made their good-byes and one of the Rose Tower hobgoblin footmen followed Aislinn up to her place with all her packages. Carina would probably need five helpers.
She spent the afternoon cleaning up, drinking tea, and thinking. Restless, she put on some Nina Simone and prowled her apartment, poking in closets and organizing drawers until she wanted to scream. Close to twilight the skies clouded over and it began to rain. She found herself at her living room window, wrapped in a throw from the couch against the spring chill and looking out over Piefferburg Square. Raindrops splashed against the glass. Below her people scurried to get out of the rain, at least the ones lacking umbrellas or the magickal ability to shield themselves.
Raising her gaze, she hugged herself and stared at the Black Tower. Bella and Ronan were there now. What were they doing with their days? Surely life had to be much different. While she’d been shopping this morning, Gabriel had said they were studying their magick, developing it. She frowned, wondering what it would be like to have a meaningful purpose every day.
Must be nice.
The rain was coming down harder now, obscuring her vision, but she could just make out the roof where the Wild Hunt met every early morning.
She envied them, envied their role and responsibilities.
She envied Bella and Ronan, too. That was something she could never say out loud. Just thinking it made her fear the Summer Queen’s wrath. The Seelie Tuatha Dé were supposedly
the chosen
, the special ones. They were privileged to reside within the walls of the Rose Tower and bear the title and bloodline of the goddess Danu. To even entertain the notion that the Unseelie might have some advantages over them was unthinkable.
But maybe having a job, any kind of job, would help her get out of this rut she’d entrenched herself in. Maybe it would help her to stop feeling so sorry for herself. She hated that she did right now. Loathed this edge of self-pity. She had a beautiful apartment, all the money she could want. What did she have to dislike about her life?
Her thoughts drifted to the book she’d found in her father’s things when he died. She hadn’t looked at it for years, hadn’t dared. There was something about this time, on this rainy day as she contemplated her life and her recent encounter with the Wild Hunt, that made her want to risk taking another read.
A moment more of indecision and she was headed to her bedroom. She opened the safe she kept in her walk-in closet, pushed her inherited jewels to the side, and found the cloth-wrapped book she sought. Though she had no idea what the book was, her intuition had told her it was valuable and needed to be kept under lock and key. She took it into the living room and curled up on the couch with it in her lap, though this was not a novel to be enjoyed on a rainy afternoon. This book was all nonfiction.
About spell casting.
It was ancient, with a worn red leather cover and a locked portion at the back with a grooved indentation where she assumed an object must fit, acting like a key. Beyond that, she knew nothing about the tome—whether it was Seelie or Unseelie. It could even be Phaendir in origin; there were no identifying marks. The book contained page after page of spells written in Old Maejian. She had no idea what the locked portion might contain. That portion was smooth, seamless, sealed with some sort of magick to be released only when the key was placed into the grooves, she was certain.
She wasn’t sure how her father had come to possess it and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She didn’t know what the Summer Queen would do to her if she knew Aislinn had it . . . she wasn’t sure she wanted to know that, either.
Staring down at the gold material that wrapped it for a long moment, she remembered her father. Gods, she missed him so much. Her father had been the one to comfort her when she’d had nightmares as a child. He’d been the parent to allow her to cry on his shoulder when a boy she liked had hurt her feelings or during any number of other adolescent traumas. Her mother had always been the reserved one, the one pushing her to be stronger, better,
perfect
, while her father had just wanted her to be happy. He’d loved her unconditionally and with every fiber of himself.
As she’d loved him back.
Never in all her days could she imagine her happy, simple father with a drop of Unseelie blood or being involved in any dark political scandal or drama. Yet she’d found this book under a few loose floorboards in his bedroom after his death. He and her mother had been long since separated at the time of his demise, and it had fallen to her, the only child of their union, to manage his estate. Clearly it had been hidden there on purpose.
Slowly, she unwrapped the dark red book. The vellum pages were old and scrawled in a handwritten text that was charmed to withstand the test of time. The volume was written in the old tongue of the Tuatha Dé and was probably just as ancient. Old Maejian was a language the Unseelie learned in school for spell casting, but as a spoken language, for the most part, it was dead. Especially to the Seelie, who had no use for it.
Once the fae had been forced to disappear into human society—go underground—many of their old ways had died. They’d been required to integrate with humans in so many respects to survive—speaking human languages was just one way. Aislinn knew a little bit of Old Maejian, but most of what she’d learned had disappeared from disuse.
She opened the cover and frowned, trying to read the first page. That one was still unclear to her. Gabriel could probably read it just fine. He was probably fluent. She quashed a flicker of envy.