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As if her body had heard his unspoken request, the point of connection between them heated, seeping through his palm, up his arm and into his shoulder. Sensation trilled through him.
Warmth. True warmth.
Gods, he’d missed it. Having that comfort now, he wanted more. And what he wanted, he typically made sure he got.
Twirling her out and then back, he stepped into the move at the last moment so she didn’t have time to adjust her trajectory or stop her forward motion. Their bodies collided. He wrapped an arm around her trim waist and anchored her against him. Despite his heavy sweater and worn denim, the woman’s heat all but seared him.
Ashley’s chin snapped up and she gasped. Her breath was sweet and sharp on the heels of the whiskey shot she’d taken with the brokenhearted lad. She was a heady mix of alcohol’s influence and natural sultriness. The combination speared through him, the sensations so sharp he had to wonder if the gods hadn’t shown mercy on him and manipulated the experience to fit his preferences.
He knew better. The gods had abandoned him.
Gareth forced the bitterness away, focusing instead on drinking in Ashley’s gift. He fought to keep up with the dance versus simply holding her tight against his body. Reflexively, he tightened his grip. She didn’t even flinch. Whatever she was, she could handle at least his rudimentary strength. Or what was left of it.
Good to know.
Crossing their hands, he twisted her around in his embrace under the guise of the dance. He knew better. And from her quick glance over her shoulder when he pulled her against him, her back melding to his front, so did she.
He directed her across the floor, modifying the dance so she was in front of him rather than to his side.
She never missed a beat.
Apparently invasive by nature, her body temperature bled deeper into him, and he missed a step as his element surged toward her. He forced it back. The last thing he needed to do was burn her. Or reveal his gift in front of a roomful of locals who already thought him odd, no matter the respect with which they treated him. It would draw unnecessary attention.
None of the assassins or tyros needed the extra challenge of wiping memories years before it was time. The Elders were the ones to perform that general spell every six years, the spell that made locals forget their faces. It was the only way the Assassin’s Arcanum, the assassins and the rotation of trainees could stay in one place across the centuries.
“You’re lagging,” Ashley called back, reclaiming the whole of his focus. “A man of your stature should be able to dance circles around a common bartender.”
He stopped her still in the middle of the floor and leaned forward, his breath against her hair. “Is that so?”
She turned in his arms, the movement slow, almost wary. “So it would seem.”
He bent forward, into her space, their noses almost touching. Something elemental sparked in her gaze, something that looked like desire. His heart skipped a beat, and his voice dropped low, emerged gruff. “Let me assure you, bean álainn, nothing is what it seems.” He’d called her a beautiful woman. And he’d meant it.
Her eyes widened at the endearment. Obviously, she had the Irish. Reaching up, she tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, then cupped his cheek. “Nothing? I’ll ask you to prove it.”
He grinned. “Oh, I will.”
Several wolf whistles sounded, and she startled.
He didn’t give her a chance to balk.
Without forecasting his intent, he whipped her out to the end of his grasp, their arms extended. When she would have spun back to him, he twirled her again and landed her at his side. Glancing her way, he was thrilled to find a flush riding high on her cheeks. She was the picture of health, the epitome of beauty, the manifestation of his most vivid dreams. A deep well of craving opened in him, a well he’d believed capped and closed. Not so. Not if the burgeoning hunger he had for her was authentic, not manufactured. The thought irritated him. “Are you a siren, love, because you’re doing things to me that defy nature.”
She tipped her chin up and laughed. “And have I sung to you then that I don’t remember?”
His grin returned, wider than before. “No.”
Her eyes met his, the amusement in them clear. “There’s your answer, then. A siren I’m not.”
“A seductress for sure,” he murmured.
Something odd passed through her gaze, but her smile never faltered. “Only under the waxing moon every thirty-sixth month.”
“Smart-ass,” he teased. She started to respond, but he gave a short shake of his head. “Step dance in three, two, one.” Gareth started the traditional dance, setting a rapid pace.
Ashley watched for a moment and then picked up his rhythm, matching him move for move. She followed his lead beautifully, increasing her speed as The King’s Footmen sped up the tempo.
Gareth’s heart thundered in his chest, and he wondered briefly if the band was trying to kill him. It seemed possible given that they kicked the tempo up a third time.
Ashley laughed again, the sound rich and full.
Sparing her a glance, Gareth found a faint sheen of sweat covering her rosy skin. Her hair seemed to crackle. Her face was more radiant, her lips fuller.
The music stopped abruptly and the crowd’s raucous cheer nearly raised the roof. Gareth glanced over to gauge Ash’s reaction. For the first time he could recall, he gaped.
If a being could radiate robustness of, and for, life, she did. Her skin positively glowed. A faint sheen of sweat dotted her nape, and stray short curls stuck to her skin while longer strands that had come loose during their dance hung past her shoulders. Hazel eyes had taken on a burnished bronze shine. Her smile was infectious, particularly when she took a flamboyant bow and then threw her head back and laughed. Her voice was captivating. Lyrical. She was, in a word, radiant.
She grinned wider before taking another flamboyant bow.
As she rose, Gareth pulled her into his body and, without a thought beyond the need to taste those decadent lips, kissed her.
She kissed him back.
It was short and swift, and it wasn’t enough. Might not ever be enough. Not if the buzz that raced through his veins was an indication of what this woman did to him. No one had ever affected him like this. Never had a woman left him so on edge with wanting, so hungry for her he felt like a starved man given an all-he-could-eat token to the richest buffet in the country. She was vibrant. Spirited. Vivacious. And he wanted her with a desperation he’d never known.
She met his stare and the merriment in her eyes softened. Retrieving her hand, she offered a small curtsy and an almost conscientious smile. “I suppose I should thank you.”
“For?” he asked, voice a bit churlish, his heartbeat tattooing a rapid-fire rhythm against his rib cage—and it had nothing to do with exertion. The wound forever frozen on his side burned from the heat rolling off her.
One thin shoulder lifted casually, and she seemed to struggle to hold his gaze. “I didn’t realize I needed to let off a little steam.”
Gareth stepped into her space. Dancers began to spin around them with the band’s next set. She smelled of warm grass, sunshine and fresh earth. Like comfort. A refuge. Like home.
Taking a loose curl between his gloved fingers, he suddenly resented the separation between them. He wanted to feel the silk of her hair. With infinite gentleness, he tucked the curl behind her ear and uttered the only words that came to mind as she gazed up at him in undisguised confusion. “Take me home tonight, Ash.”
“Man the bar!”
The words cut through the din and sliced through the music.
Ashley glanced over her shoulder at Fergus, the bar’s giant of an owner, before again meeting Gareth’s direct stare. “I have to finish my shift.”
Blood thrummed through his veins. “That’s not a denial.”
“Neither is it acquiescence,” she retorted.
Gareth reached out and dragged a finger down her neck. “I’ll only keep asking until you say yes.”
“Persistent.” She eyed him carefully. “Care to own your heritage?”
He blinked slowly, surprised at her brazenness. Most Others were far more inclined to pass each other by giving a wide berth and an averted stare, particularly in these parts where the assassins were suspected to reside. But if she wanted to play it straight, he could check off the first of his three wishes—discovering her species. “I’ll show you mine when you show me yours.”
She leaned into him and the smell of sunshine and dry heat intensified. “Clever man. I suppose closing time will provide us both the answer I’ve not yet decided on. Stay if you will.”
Spinning on her heel, she strode across the pub, slipped behind the bar and returned to working the sticks and tossing bottles without pause.
Gareth stole a look at his watch.
Midnight.
Two hours to kill.
The common vernacular stung, but he shrugged it off. Killing time wasn’t what had earned him his damnation.
Still, it was too much time to waste on a maybe. He might not even be able to touch her without excruciating pain. Except for the warmth she’d infused him with...
One last glance at the bar and his mind was decided. He would stay. Ashley could be the only chance he had for skin-to-skin contact without excruciating pain before he was returned to the Shadow Realm and the Well of Souls. And just once more before the goddess returned for him, Gareth wanted to know warmth. If the woman behind the bar was truly his last chance? If she could give him the chance to find even a moment’s peace before an eternity of torment? There was nothing he wouldn’t do, no mountain he wouldn’t move, no army he wouldn’t slay, no sin he wouldn’t commit. And he would do any of it, all of it, without batting an eye. After all, he was already damned, a dead man.
There was nothing left to lose, only a warm woman to gain.
* * *
The clock’s hour hand rested well past 2:00 a.m. when Ashley finally closed and locked the bar door. Talented as they were as a whole, each man in The King’s Footmen was quite certain he posed a far better catch than any of the others. They’d come on to her individually, each going so far as to offer her the moon and the stars. The lead singer and guitar player had even written her an impromptu little ditty, but she’d been firm. No sex with anyone professionally affiliated with the bar. She didn’t fish from the work pool. It complicated things when the affair ended, and, with her, it would always end. Nothing good lasted in her vagabond lifestyle.
The fiddler, with his windswept hair and broad shoulders, that strong jaw and eyes as green as the fields, might have tempted her to break her rule. But the musician’s wild appeal couldn’t compete with the man who’d ignited her need earlier that evening.
Gareth Brennan.
He’d only offered his first name. It had taken little more than a couple of well-placed questions to discover his surname. Odd that no one knew much about him. He’d seemed a rather amiable fellow, popular with the ladies and well liked by the gents. His reputation at snooker and traditional pool had her itching to pit her skills against his, though it seemed unlikely the opportunity would present itself. Apparently he hadn’t been out and about much over the last few months. Shame, that. Her pride could have used the boost of beating him at his own game.
But wasn’t that exactly what this was? A game? At least to him. He was intent on seducing her, convincing her to spend the night with him.
As for her? She was intent on convincing him to spend at least the next week with her. So who was beating whom here?
She snorted as she dug out the wide dust mop, broom and dustbin. Her pride would stick this out for the win, willing to take a beating before it bowed out. Always. Such was the curse of most phoenixes. Winning equaled dominance, dominance equaled power and power was everything.
Cleaning the last of the peanut hulls out from under the bar, she repositioned the stools and dumped the pan in the bin. One final polish of the bar and she was finished. The weighted knowledge she’d be back here within hours, stocking the bar and checking kegs and bottles to make sure everything was ready for another go round, had her sighing with exhaustion. She needed to go home, needed to sleep—as much as she could possibly get.
The kitchen door whacked the wall as Fergus shoved his way through. Grease-stained apron hanging loose around his neck, he stomped across the rough-hewn oak floor on feet so large they were more suited to a draft horse than a man.
“For the love of all the gods, Fergus, spare a soul the unnecessary fright of seeing you emerge from your cooking cubby like a raging bull,” she snapped, exhaustion making her words sharper than usual. “You take a decade off my life every time you blow through that door and I don’t know you’re still here.”
“You’d have been wise to pay more attention over the last three months,” he groused. Stopping at the obscured door tucked around a blind corner, he pulled a set of keys and rifled through them. “Seeing as I live here, it shouldn’t shock you so that I come from the kitchen to go upstairs every night.”
“Smart-ass. It’s not that you emerge from the kitchen, it’s that you do so like a Pamplonian bull with the gleam of death in his eye. I’m never sure whether to run or...run.” She shrugged and grinned.
He grunted, the sound as close to a laugh as he ever issued. “Beyond your impromptu Riverdance, I both saw and heard you toyed with Gareth Brennan tonight.”
Her mouth worked like a landed trout’s—open, close...open, close—before she finally sputtered, “‘Heard?’ How in the hell could you have heard anything? You never leave the kitchen.”
“So you did.” He gave a short nod. “It would be humane—” he sneered the word “—to warn you to be wary of that one. Used to be as he was a fun sort, the type that both silly girls and jaded women alike took to like a hummingbird does nectar. Something’s changed him, though, and recent-like. But two issues impede my warning. First, I’m no’ humane. I could give a rat’s ass what happens to you that doesna benefit me and mine. Second, it’s never wise to get wrapped up with someone else’s problems when you’ve plenty of your own.”
Fear skipped down her spine faster than the denial passed through her lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking—”
“Sure and you don’t.” He stared over her shoulder, focusing on something so tangible she felt that the “thing” he stared at could only be hovering inches behind her. The sensation intensified until, casting pride aside, she had to turn, to look.
There was nothing—and no one—there.
It took her a moment to work up the nerve to face her boss. Stiff shouldered, tendons corded in his neck, a ruddy flush to his skin, the warning to stay away from the new male... Fergus knew something. His scent shifted, and suddenly she was surrounded by the wildness of the Burren, that alien landscape strewed with dolmen, ocean squalls and scrubby little wildflowers. Sea salt would have glazed her skin had she stood still long enough. Luckily, she never stood still.
Moving a bit farther out of reach under the guise of returning her cleaning supplies to the cupboard, she called over her shoulder, “Where’s this oddity coming from, Fergus?”
“It would be none so odd if you’d been paying me the attention I’m due. You and your kind have always had a superiority complex, thinking your ability to resurrect is your right.”
She froze. You and your kind... Resurrect is your right... He knew what she was. “How?” she wheezed.
“Your scent changed tonight after Brennan arrived.”
Studying him in the reflection of the bar mirror, she watched as something not unlike a rolling black-and-white television channel skipped across his appearance. He showed himself as one thing for fourteen of every fifteen seconds, but that one, lone second that rounded out every quarter minute? That one blip? Fergus became something Other.
Hunching forward, he folded in on himself before rising. When he finally stood as straight as he could, he was so tall he had to cant his head to the side to avoid bumping the ceiling rafters. His temple brushed the iron chandelier and set it swinging. He reached to still it with a hand that now sported a palm the size of her dead drink tray.
She couldn’t get her mind around what she saw and understood to be true. Both magnificent and terrifying, Fergus had changed. With a sheet of hair as brilliant as a new star and eyes that blazed a myriad of crystalline colors, skin that shone with a diamond hue and hands the size of dinner plates, she couldn’t look away. Legend said that the last of the genii—giants who could change their appearance and proportion at will—had faded, passing to the afterlife centuries ago. But that couldn’t be true. Not if what Fergus presented was a fleeting image of his true nature. And if that was the case...
Years of education rolled through her mind, flipping faster and faster as she tried to recall what it was the genii wanted with the phoenix. What was it that had rendered them friend or foe? It had all centered around one thing. What had it been? Somehow, it involved dice. Or a card game.
“Confused, little phoenix?” He huffed out a sound of genuine disdain. “I expected better of you. Turns out you’re nothing but a stupid bitch in heat. However, your cycle changes my time frame. It saves me having to pay the male I located. They’ve been looking for you, you know. This saves me having to defend my rights against any of the men of your clan should one or more of them respond to the gods-be-damned scent of you. The timing isn’t perfect, but it’ll be what it is.”
Ashley kept her gaze loosely focused, trying to take in everything around her that she could, certain she needed to find her way out of this mess before she was forced to fight her way out. But... “You called me a bitch. Do it again and I’ll be calling you a hearse.”
Fight it was.
That’s when she remembered the connecting pieces of history.
Their king had made a last stand in the final Tribal Wars, and he’d lost. Desperate, he’d challenged Daghda, the All Father, to a game of dice. Daghda had declined, asserting his right to dissolve the band of giants. The giants’ king, with nothing left to barter, wagered the giants’ immortality against the god’s ability to beat him in the game of Daghda’s choosing.
What. An. Idiot.
Daghda chose archery, and the genii’s king lost. Badly. In a final stand that had been recorded in the blood of the fallen, the last of the giants had disappeared. Only their legend remained. Those rumored to have survived had been rendered mortal, their lifespans still far greater than a human but shortened all the same. So what could a genii want from a phoenix who had to be less than half his age...
Ashes.
Horror stole over her and her skin felt as if it shrank.
A female phoenix’s ashes were the key to immortality if a being knew how to harvest them. To get to the point of harvest typically involved murder and theft—of the phoenix’s life and ashes, respectively.
To kill any phoenix was nearly impossible, but the females were far more difficult to dispense than the males. Few knew the secret to forcing a member of the secretive race into irrevocable death. The phoenix had to take her life by removing her own heart. Once that happened, the heart had to be burned to ash. Those ashes could then be harvested. If a mortal tattooed her ashes over his own heart in the constellation symbol for the phoenix? The phoenix’s immortality transferred to the mortal and gave him what so many coveted. Immortality.
She had to get out of here. Now.
