“And why do you want me to talk to this Circenn Brodie person?” she forged on, refusing to acknowledge his thinly veiled threat. Think him impotent? With all that testosterone and virility dripping from his pores? Ha. She’d as easily mistake the Sahara Desert for the North Pole.
“Because he has the power to return me to the Fae realm.”
“Is he a fairy too?” She stiffened instantly. No more fairies. There was no way she was going to reveal herself to another one, especially not one that possessed all its powers.
“Half-Fae. But he chooses to reside in the mortal world.”
Still too dangerous, even if only a half-blood. “And after I act as your intermediary and he takes you back to Faery, then what?”
“Then all will be made right, and I’ll be invincible again.”
She rolled her eyes. “I meant, what happens to me? While you may be the most important thing to your egotistical little self in your narcissistic little world, guess what—so am I in mine.”
His eyes glittered and he laughed. Tossed back his dark head, white teeth flashing, muscles in his corded neck flexing, and she bit back a soft, appreciative moan. His body might be human, but it was dusted with Fae exoticness, from his incredible gold-velvet skin, to those eyes that flashed with shimmering gold sparks no human had, to his flat-out intimidating sexual presence. Potent, larger-than-life Fae essence bottled—and not quite capped—in a mortal body. And a perfect mortal body at that.
Simply deadly. A pure fairy could not have tempted her so. She would have kept telling herself it was a “thing.” But now that she knew he was all human male beneath that black T-shirt and those snug, faded jeans, he seemed like an entirely different—Eew!
Her spine went rigid as the back of her chair. She snapped up straight so violently that she nearly toppled herself over.
How long had she been thinking of it as “he” and “him” in her mind?
Oh! She wanted to spit, to scrape the foul taste of her own betrayal off her tongue! Had her grandmother taught her nothing? She closed her eyes, shutting it out, painstakingly rebuilding its it-ness in her mind.
After a few moments she opened them again. It had not yet answered her. “I said,” she repeated, “what about me?”
“Anything you want, ka-lyrra,” it purred. “You have but to name it.” Its gaze raked over her body appreciatively, hungrily, those dark eyes promising the fulfillment of any fantasy she might harbor in her deepest heart. It wet its lower lip with its tongue, caught it with its teeth, then gave her the slowest, sexiest smile she’d ever seen. “Whisper in my ear, Gah-bry-yil, your deepest desires, and I shall make them yours.”
Yeah, right, she thought acerbically (stoically refusing to ponder, for even a moment, its offer of unlimited sexual fantasy that was making her stomach feel kind of sick, but not in a sick way at all), it would forget about her in a heartbeat. The moment it was its impervious, all-powerful, immortal self again.
But she’d be willing to bet no other fairy would. If it was, indeed, Aoibheal herself who’d punished it, barring it from the Fae realm, wouldn’t she want to know exactly how Adam Black had gotten back to Faery without her royal consent?
And that would lead the formidable queen to Circenn Brodie (assuming this Brodie person didn’t just immediately hand Gabby over) and ultimately to Gabby herself. And then the Hunters would come thundering down on nightmarish hooves to steal her away and—if they no longer killed mortals as it claimed—she could look forward instead to a lifetime of servitude to a host of arrogant, cold demigods.
That was so not going to happen.
“What if I don’t?” she asked stiffly, bracing herself for the worst.
It arched a dark brow. “What if you don’t what?”
“What if I don’t help you?”
“Why would you not aid me? Such a small thing I ask of you. Merely to speak to someone.”
“Oh, please. Betray myself to more of your kind and fling myself on Fae mercy? As if that’s not an oxymoron. Believe you’d just let a Sidhe-seer walk away and live out her life in peace? I’m not that stupid.”
It leaned forward, elbows on its knees, all amusement vanishing from its features, leaving its chiseled visage quietly regal, dignified. “I give you my word, Gabrielle O’Callaghan,” it said softly. “I will protect you.”
“Right. The word of the blackest fairy, the legendary liar, the great deceiver,” she mocked. How dare it offer its word like it might actually mean something?