Of course, he didn’t know for certain. No one knew but the souls and they wouldn’t talk about it. Anytime he’d asked, some force prevented them from revealing the truth, making their words come out soundless. Not even a necromancer could command information of that nature from them.
But now the energy that had formerly been Aislinn’s father wavered in front of them, having taken the form that either they—Gabriel and Aislinn—most expected him to take. Or perhaps it was the form that Aislinn’s father most associated with himself. No one knew.
A small noise escaped Aislinn.
“Papa.”
The word was broken and filled with longing. It made pain twist in Gabriel’s stomach. Gods above, he’d never cared for a woman as much as he cared for this one.
Hells, he’d never cared for anyone more than he cared for her. It was beautiful and scared him shitless all in one go.
Her father’s face softened. “I miss you, my daughter.”
“But I’m not your daughter.” She shook her head, her fists clenched in her lap. Her voice sounded accusing. “I’m not your biological daughter, am I, Papa?”
His face fell. “So, you know the truth. I had hoped to spare you from it. No, you were not my biological daughter.” His voice sounded far away. “You were the child of my heart, a bond stronger than any genetic link.”
Aislinn ducked her head and blinked rapidly. Gabriel’s fingers curled as if to pull her close to his body, to comfort and protect her. He looked down at his hands, marveling at the impulse.
“You know you’re not my biological daughter because you can do this.” He encompassed his body with a sweep of his hand. “You are a necromancer and that ability doesn’t come from my blood or your mother’s blood.”
“Did you know Mama had an affair?”
Her father nodded. “We’d had an argument the night it happened and she’d thrown her engagement ring at me. I took it and yelled that I was happy our engagement was off and would gladly accept the ring back. She ran off into the square crying. According to her, she was approached by a dark fae. To spite me, she let him seduce her. That was the night you were conceived. I loved your mother very much, Aislinn. We got back together, repaired the engagement. We never dreamed she’d conceived a child, since it was so against the odds.” He smiled. “But she had. I embraced you and accepted you as my own from the day we first discovered she was pregnant.”
“That dark fae was the Shadow King, Papa.”
He jerked a little in surprise. “The Shadow King. Well, that explains the necromancy.”
“Is that all you have to say? I’m Unseelie,” Aislinn breathed. “The bastard daughter of the king of them all!”
He smiled. “And look how beautifully you turned out.”
Gabriel’s opinion of Aislinn’s father rose into the stratosphere. He displayed none of the snobbery that was so common among the Seelie toward the Unseelie. He just loved his daughter, no matter what.
Aislinn shook her head. “So you hid the information from me and from the Seelie Court.”
His smile faded. “It was the best way we knew to keep you safe.”
“But
you
weren’t safe, Papa, were you? Who killed you?”
His ethereal face grew ashen. “The Phaendir had me killed in the square.”
Aislinn dropped her head and a teardrop splashed into her lap.
“They killed you for the Book of Bindings, didn’t they?” asked Gabriel.
His gaze never wavered from Aislinn. “I know you found the book because you summoned me with the spell in your apartment. I saw the book fall from your lap onto the floor. I had hoped you’d never find it, but it seems all the danger I ever wanted to help you avoid you’ve managed to find.”
“I did find it,” answered Aislinn. All the shakiness was out of her voice now and it was clear and strong. “It was under the floorboards in your bedroom, Papa. How did you get that book?”
“It was handed down in my family. I don’t know how we first came to have it, but my father managed to bring it with him when he was forced into Piefferburg. He handed it down to me to keep and impressed upon me how critical it was. I never let anyone know about it. I assume the Phaendir must have tracked the book into my Seelie lineage, however we gained possession of it, and followed the trail. They contacted me, demanding the book. When I failed to produce it, they killed me, thinking they could find it on their own. You found it first.” He paused. “Get rid of it, Aislinn. Burn it. Do whatever you need to; just make sure the Phaendir never get it.”
“The Shadow King has it now, Papa.”
“How did he get it?”
Aislinn looked a hundred years older than she was for a moment. “Never mind that. It’s a long story and it’s not your concern.”
“But—”
“I’m watching over your daughter,” Gabriel interrupted. “She’ll stay safe; I swear it on my soul.” His words were strong and fierce and he felt them all the way through his body. Aislinn’s face whipped toward him while he spoke, her lips parted slightly and her eyes wide.
Aislinn’s father regarded him in silence for a long moment. “I believe that.”
“As you should.”
Her father strained as if listening to something far away that neither he nor Aislinn could hear. “I’m being called back, Aislinn.”
She nodded and wiped at a tear track on her face. “May I hug you before you leave?”
“You must command me to take a corporeal shape. I can’t do it on my own.”
She did and he solidified. Aislinn rose and hugged her father, but he disappeared a few moments into their tender embrace, leaving Aislinn to stagger forward and then bring her hands up to cover her face. Gabriel stood and went to her, pulling her against his body.
She melted against him for only a moment and then pushed away. “Okay, what now?”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” She swallowed hard and cleared her throat—clearly trying not to break down. “I miss him.”
He nodded. “I understand. I’ve escorted people I care about to the other side before. It’s a”—he searched for the right words—“bittersweet honor.”
“I was much closer to my father than to my mother.”
“I gathered that.”
“But my father is gone now and I learned a while back to deal with the grief. Anyway, I just received a huge gift. Not many people get to see their loved ones after they’re gone. I feel grateful for this.” She wiped away the last of the tears on her cheeks and looked up at him, her gray eyes turning the color of gunmetal. “Now, what’s next?”
He considered her for a long moment. “The scary stuff is next, Aislinn. We’re done with friends and family. Now we need to find weapons. Make a plan. Now we need to call the sluagh and you need to make them obey your will.”
Her expression hardened. “Now it’s time to attack dear old dad.”
THE
lights went off that evening. They’d been eating a dinner of salmon and roasted vegetables when their current living—or squatting—space was plunged into darkness.
“Piefferburg Electricity finally got around to shutting everything off.” Gabriel laid his fork to the side of his plate. She could just make out his actions by the light of the moon spilling in through the window. “Damn.”
“It was nice while we had it.”
“I’ll get some candles.” Gabriel got up.
She sat, the reflection in the window showing candles flare up one by one in the living room behind her. When Gabriel didn’t return, she cleaned up the table and walked in to meet him, leaning up against the archway separating the rooms.
He sat on the couch, one arm draped over an armrest. His dark hair hung long and loose around his shoulders and his chest was bare. The candlelight licked his skin the way she wanted to every time she saw him . . . especially when he had his shirt off.
“You didn’t eat much.” She swallowed against the dry throat that always accompanied her view of his bare skin. When he didn’t answer, she asked, “What are you doing?”
Shadows moved over his face and caught in his hair. “Thinking.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “About what?”
His head turned and his gaze fixed on her. “You.”
“Uh. What were you thinking . . . about me?” She could only imagine. Probably things that ran along the same lines she’d been thinking. Heated bodies. Silken skin. Tangled legs. The press and rub of his chest against her breasts as he kneed her thighs apart and . . . “Never mind. Maybe I should”—she swallowed again—“go to bed. It’s been a long day.”
He rose and slowly crossed the floor toward her. “Bed sounds like a good idea. No lights. Not much else to do.”
Uh-oh. Fifty alarm bells went off in her head even as her hormones did an Irish jig. She wanted to back up, retreat away from him. But if she did that, it would make her seem weak and she
wasn’t
weak.
Anyway, Gabriel was a man who got what he wanted. If he wanted her, he’d just follow.
She put a hand out and touched his chest to stop his advance. Touching his bare skin was a mistake. He was warm and the muscles under his skin moved as he breathed. It made her think about smoothing her palm down over his nipple, over his stomach, and then lower. She wanted to touch his cock. She hadn’t yet taken it in her hand, stroked him, made him sigh and moan. She craved that sort of sexual power over him, especially when he had so much power over her.
She brushed his skin once, twice. He smiled. She could just see it in the candlelight. It was the smile of a man who knew what he wanted, the smile of a man confident he would get it.
Forcing her fingers to still, she spoke again. Her voice was shaky. “I meant, I need to go to bed al—”
He dipped his head and caught her lips against his. Slowly, he brushed them back and forth, making her knees feel like they might buckle. A sexual cloud filled her mind. This was dangerous. A moment from now and she’d be completely lost. She had to act before he pulled her under.
She pushed at him, rocking him back on his heels and moving those devastating lips away from hers. “This is not a good idea.”
His mouth curved in a smile. “Why not?”
She couldn’t exactly tell him the truth:
I need to keep my distance from you in case, by some miracle, we survive this because you’ll take my heart, mash it into a bloody pulp, and then walk away
. Her mind searched for alternatives.
“I’m tired. It’s been a long day.” Oh, that was lame.
The laugh that rolled out of him was like leather, wood smoke, and chocolate. All things that gave her pause, made her stop and inhale, savoring the fragrance. “And I intend to make it a long, tiring night.”
“Gabriel—”
He captured her wrists in his hand and pressed them upward, pinning them against the wall. His head dipped, his lips coming close to hers. “I want to immerse myself in you. I want to touch your body, kiss your breasts. I want to make you forget all this, the Shadow King, the sluagh, just for a little while. I want to make you forget everything but my breath across your skin and the skim of my lips on your inner thigh and maybe a little higher. I want to make you sigh, moan, call my name, and claw the sheets.
Aislinn
, let me.”
A small puff of breath escaped her.
His lips brushed hers again and this time she didn’t fight it. She pushed forward, pressing her mouth more firmly against his, craving a deeper taste of him.
He dragged his hands from her wrists down over her arms and then over her braless breasts through her shirt. Her nipples hardened against his palms and he made a low, appreciative sound in the back of his throat. “See? I knew you’d come around,” he murmured against her lips.
“I have the force of an incubus seducing me. What chance do I have?”
“None, sweetness. You’re all mine.”
That was exactly what she was so terrified of. Yet she couldn’t push him away, no matter how loudly common sense was yelling at her.
He slipped his thumbs under the waistband of her pants and pushed down. They fell to her ankles, leaving her bare, since she had no underwear. Then he pushed her shirt up and left that part of her bare, too. His hands covered her breasts, teasing her nipples until they were diamond hard, until a rush of heat swept through her, centering between her legs.
Now she was well and truly lost.
Her fingers quested for and found the button fly of his jeans, the trail of his coarse dark hair brushing her knuckles. She undid the button and the zipper, reached in, and sought the prize she’d been longing to hold. Ah, heaven. At last.
He groaned and his head fell back as her fingers closed around his thick shaft. She used his foreskin to pump up and down. It was everything she’d imagined it would be—long, wide, and silken hard.
With one sweeping, powerful move, he lifted her, pinning her against the wall. She wound her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck as he ground his beautiful cock against her vulnerable, bare sex. This time it was her head that fell back, her groan of need that tore from her throat, her eyes that closed in surrender. His teeth nibbled at the skin of her arched neck, tongue stealing out to taste her from time to time.
“Gabriel, please,” she breathed. She wanted to feel him inside her.
He ground his hips again, this time stimulating her clit. It made her move her pelvis like she was in heat. Gabriel was the only man in her life ever able to put her into this state of erotic longing. Her fingers twined in his hair as his mouth came down on hers. He consumed every gasp and sigh she made.
“Please, Gabriel,” she murmured against his lips. Her sex was heated, needy. Her body had slipped into a place that bordered on mindlessness and all he’d done was whisper at her, stroke her breasts, and kiss her.
“Not here. Not up against the wall. Not hard and fast. Long and slow. This time I want to savor you.”
Her answering groan was something between anticipation and disappointment. If he moved just a little, his gorgeous cock would slip inside her and sink deep. He could take her up against this wall. A few pumps and she would come, screaming his name, into the quiet house. Instead, he lifted her away.