Healing Hands (The Queen of the Night series Book 2) (22 page)

“We should go back inside the cave.” 

I agreed. Sunset was still a couple of hours off, but the temperature was dropping fast. It was still cold at night.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Together

Once inside we stood still for a moment wondering what to do next. It was too early for dinner, but too cold to stay outside.

Evan thought of it first. “Can you show me Tai Chi?”

I showed him a simple routine, and soon laughed hysterically as he tried to mimic my movements. I ran around him, readjusting his posture, his arms and his legs until he understood the forms. We moved through the routine in tandem, matching each other pose for pose. He learned fast. I liked that about him.

“I still don’t understand how you could use this to fight McCoy.”

“It’s not about fighting,” I explained passionately, “it’s about avoiding violence. I waited for an opportunity to flee. As long as I evaded his grasp, I had a chance. Then you arrived and decided to fight. That was stupid.”

“I wanted to protect you,” he argued, “besides; I’m not a 98-pound weakling.”

“You’re right, you’re not…you are strong, athletic and
really
muscular,” he wagged his eyebrows at me, but I continued, “...for a normal man. Steve’s physical attributes are all magically enhanced. You have no idea how preternaturally strong he is. Plus, with his Hunter’s enhanced reflexes, he’s super-fast. He could have killed you with his pinky standing on one foot. He’s trained in Krav Maga.” 

“What’s that?”

“It’s the martial art Mossad uses to assassinate people without getting caught.”

He waved a hand dismissively. “I wasn’t thinking with my head at the time.”

“What were you thinking with?”

“Maybe I’ll tell you later,” he said mysteriously.

***

He made a tasty campfire dinner. Afterwards, he rested against the wall of the cave and I rubbed my temples with my eyes closed.

He spoke, so softly I almost didn’t hear him, “You know, I fell in love with you the very first time I looked at you.” 

My eyes snapped open.

He shrugged and gave me a sheepish grin. “Think about it. Fiona had an emergency patient and couldn’t leave. She didn’t want you guys to be stranded, but Rose had already left for California, so she asked me to pick you up from the airport. Once I got there, I found your arrival gate no problem, but I had no idea what you guys looked like. What was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. What did you do?”

“I turned on my aura vision. I figured with your parents being as magical as they were, you guys probably had magic too, and guess what I saw?”

I shrugged to indicate my ignorance.

“I saw the most amazing aura I’ve ever scanned. It contained so many pinks and greens and purples, all covered by an amazing amount of gold. Your aura floated next to another magical aura and little fingers of pink kept shooting out of your aura to encircle it. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I turned off my scanner and saw your face. I was lost from that point on.”

For a moment, it felt like the wind had been knocked out of me and I couldn’t respond. Hesitantly, I said, “You didn’t act like you were attracted to me at all.”

“You’re right. I regret that now, but in spite of how much I
was
attracted to you, I couldn’t help but remember how it was your parents who ruined my life. Of course, now I realize they just wanted to stay alive, and to keep you and Corey alive, so I’m grateful they did what they did. Anyway, that’s why I charged McCoy.”

“I still don’t get it.”

“I wasn’t thinking with my head. I thought with my heart.”

I needed to be close to him, to feel the heart that beat for me, but he remained with his back against the cave wall, so I scooted myself up between his legs. I bent my knees to cross my thighs over his, folding myself almost in half, and I leaned up against him, with my ear over his heart…yay for yoga.

When convinced his heart beat strong and true, I looked up to his face.

He closed the distance at once, wrapping his arms around me and kissing me with pure, primal need. His hands slid below my butt and scooted me backwards, until I lay on my back and he lay on top of me, with one knee between my thighs. Our pulses raced and our breathing became increasingly shallow. It wasn’t enough to kiss his lips. I needed to feel every part of him, raining kisses all over his face and reaching down to yank his t-shirt out from the waistband of his jeans. He leaned back to let me remove it. I ran my fingers over his muscled chest, back and arms. He explored as well, with his lips on my collarbone, behind my ear, the V of my collar, just above my breasts. He was hard, straining against his jeans. I reached down and rubbed the place on his pants with the palm of my hand. He groaned and jumped back, as if I’d hit him with burning coals.

I still panted. “What…what did I do wrong?” 
Goddess knew I had no idea what I was doing or how to go about it.

“Nothing,” he grunted. After a moment he said, more composed, “Maybe we should change into our nighttime clothes.”

“Uhm…” I hesitated.

“Don’t tell me,” he said, grinning at me, “Your nighttime clothes consist of the camisole with the straps and a pair of underwear.”

“I twist and turn when I sleep,” I offered as an excuse, “clothes get bunched up.”

He chuckled. “I figured as much. That’s why I brought you this.” and I looked at him, curious. “Is this your football jersey?”

“Once upon a time, I made a pretty good wide receiver on the JV team. I might have played varsity when I got older, but…”

I finished for him, “…once you became the Great Seer, the council wouldn’t let you play football anymore.”

“They said it was too dangerous.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well it’s yours now. I’ve grown too big for it.” 

I squealed with delight.

He looked pleased. We slipped out of our jeans and shirts into comfortable clothes. By tacit agreement, neither of us watched the other undress and we changed as quickly as possible. He wore knit shorts and a t-shirt. I wore my usual tank top and panties, with the jersey hanging down loosely on me. Even at fifteen, his shoulders would have seemed huge to me. I lifted the flap of the tent and crawled into it, not expecting what I saw.

“You zipped both sleeping bags together.”

He was on all fours, directly behind me under the tent flap. His breath was warm as his baritone spoke into my ear. “My plan was to hold you in my arms all night long.” 

Dang my Hunter reflexes
. I flew in between the covers so quickly he blinked and missed my movement. He chuckled and took his time slipping in next to me.

Then, I had a thought. “Oh, wait…I’ll be right back.”  Racing out of the tent, I grabbed my mostly empty backpack and brought it in with me, leaning it up against one of the tent walls before crawling back to his side. He didn’t ask and I didn’t tell him why I’d done that. Instead, he opened his arms and I snuggled against him. For a while, I was content to have his arms around me, my body pressed against his.

I said, almost as softly as he had, “You know I’m in love with you, too.”

He tightened his grip. “I suspected as much.” 

I lifted myself onto my elbow and looked at his face, “…so now what?”

“What do you want?” he asked, carefully.

“Everything.”

He started to get hard again against my thigh.

I reached my arm under the covers to touch, but he intercepted my hand with own.

“You heard what Fiona said, we can’t take a chance you’ll get pregnant.”

I scoffed at the thought. “You’re kidding, right?  You know about birth control, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t pack anything.”

“Well, you didn’t think of everything, did you?”

“I didn’t bring you up here to take advantage of you. I just wanted to spend some quiet time alone together.”

“Oh, well, I’ll have to take advantage of you.”  I reached into the outer pocket of my bag and pulled out the strand of packets Rose had forced me to bring.

“Where’d you get those?” he cried, incredulous.

I shrugged, “Rose gave them to me.”

“What is it about your family?” I just shook my head. We laughed so hard we split our sides, but we were so close together we soon became serious again.

“Are you sure you want to do this?  Are you sure you’re ready?” He asked me, looking earnestly into my eyes. “Because you know I can wait.”

“For how long?” I teased. I didn’t think I could wait another five minutes, but he said, dead serious, “Years, if I have to.”

I shook my head. I needed him to know my decision wasn’t made lightly. “No…We’ve already suffered every negative repercussion that could result from being together, without the actual experience!” 

He looked thoughtful. “It’s not like we’re going to get another chance. We’re not adults with our own apartments. We can’t go get a hotel room. We’re alone now…tonight.”  He looked wistful.

“Besides, if Corey’s right and we’re already at war…well, bad things might happen, and I don’t want to regret…”  I trailed off, not knowing how to phrase the unthinkable.

His expression had changed to one of determination, so I bared my soul. “Please…”

This time the kiss was wholly possessive. I moaned in agreement. All of me belonged to all of him.

“Are you…”

“…a virgin?” I finished for him. I nodded in the affirmative. “I’ve never wanted to be with anyone else.”

“Well, we’re going to have to do this carefully.” 

I nodded again.

“It might hurt…”

“Just tell me what to do.” 

He sunk back down under the sleeping bag and invited me to curl up next to him. The kisses were slow, and deep. We took our time stripping off layers of clothing and discovering what hid underneath them. He showed me the world. Then he made it explode.

Finally, he tore open one of the packets. I helped him roll it on, running a finger down the length of his manhood. He’d positioned himself over me and had barely slid in when I felt the pressure.

“Okay?” he asked. I nodded. He pushed in a bit more. The membrane tore and a small cry escaped my lips. He became as still as a deer. I wrapped my legs around him and pushed his butt cheeks with the heels of my feet until he believed that he couldn’t hurt me. We undulated to music of our own composition. The waves started to crash over me and for a while I was back in the Pacific Ocean, clinging to Evan, dragging him with me. Eventually, the amplitude diminished and the music subsided. I fell asleep still clutching him, my head on his chest, listening to the slowing of his heart.

When I woke the tent flaps were tied back and there was daylight streaming in through the fissure in the ceiling. Evan walked around, naked as a jay bird, adding fuel to the furnace and starting a pot of coffee on the camp stove.

I sat up and looked at him. “Again,” I ordered.

He smiled a sexy, knowing smile.

***

We were packing up and getting ready for the hike down the mountain. He threw out the burned coffee and I collapsed the tent.

“What do you think will happen when we get back to town?”

“I expect we’ll have even more to deal with now. Did you see what happened?”

“No, what do you mean?” 

“Come here, stand next to me.”

I did.

“Tell me what my aura looks like.”

I tried, and gasped. “OmiGoddess, you don’t have one!”

“I do,” he said, “but you can’t see it, just as I can’t see yours.”

“Why not?”

“Because when we stand close enough together, we share one aura now. It’s what happens when people are totally in harmony with each other.” 

I figured out what he was trying to say. “So you mean any Seer worth their salt will know we’re sleeping together. That’s gonna help.”

“Yeah, it’s a really rare phenomenon. I didn’t expect it would happen to us, at least not for a long time.”

“Oops.”

“Yeah, oops.”

“Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we print flyers explaining Fiona’s opinion on clan law?  We’ll post my weekly pregnancy test results in front of Holy Trinity and people can get back to their own lives and leave us alone. What do you think?” 

He laughed before he sobered. “Between this and Corey’s being the Destroyer, we’ve got a lot more stress in our future.” 

We heard a sound remarkably like a chair tipping over from the other side of the privacy screen, scrambling and someone calling out, “Buach, what are you doing?” 

Evan tore down the screen but we didn’t find anything on the other side of the crystal.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Perfect Harmony

By the time we’d hiked all the way down the mountain, I was really thirsty. Evan suggested we stop at the Well of the Young. He drew a bucket of fresh water. I’d finished drinking and had given him the ladle when we heard someone thrashing about in the woods.

I went to see who or what made the noise. A few moments later, Buach came stumbling through the trees back and forth as if he were too drunk to stand. Worrying that he’d been injured, knowing I had not yet studied Sidhe physiology, I hurried to do what I could for him. “Buach, hey Buach…are you okay?” 

He looked up but his eyes were not focused. He started lumbering in my direction.

Evan walked up behind me. “What’s wrong with him?” he said in my ear.

“I’m not sure yet.”  He was almost close enough to scan.

Then Buach called out, “Fiona, oh ach, my love, there you are…” he slipped on wet detritus and fell hard on his backside.

Evan and I ran to help him.
Why did Buach keep calling me Fiona
? As I reached down to take his arm and pull him up, he looked pleadingly into my face. “Why did you leave me for him?”

“I’m here, Buach, I didn’t leave.”  I showed my confused and concerned face to Evan, and mouthed ‘What is going on?” 

He shrugged.

“You know what you did, Fiona. You married him, Duncan!”

It was Evan’s turn to be confused. “But Fiona and Duncan aren’t married,” he whispered.

I busied myself with a top to bottom scan of Buach. I used both hands and healer vision. I didn’t want to miss anything. I made a mental note to start studying Sidhe illnesses as soon as possible, because I didn’t find anything physically wrong with him. I did notice something unusual, though. His aura had the dark walnut haze I’d seen in Madison and Mooney.

Evan tried to stabilize Buach on his feet while I took a step back.

Buach wasn’t cooperative. He kept swaying from side to side crying out, “I told you not to go to the water!  The river’s edge…it’s where she has power and you went at night! Why?  Why did you leave me, Fiona?”  He pulled on my arm and stared into my face, but clearly he didn’t see me through his sheen of tears.

Should I indulge his delusion?  Or should I try to shake him back into reality?
Who the hell was Fiona?  Our Fiona was alive and well…and unmarried.

I remembered, having memorized my entire family tree. Evan had, too. Of course, he’d been able to memorize the whole thing in a few minutes.

We looked at each other and said, at the same time, “Fiona McManus!”  Fiona McGovern McManus had been the last of the McGovern Healers. She drowned in the Cacapon River a few years after giving birth to my great-great-grandfather. Buach was having a post-traumatic flashback, and I had a good idea who killed her, Arianrhod.

Evan made the decision for me. He shook Buach and dragged him back to the well, shouting into it. “Dariene!  Dariene, come quick. Something’s wrong with Buach!”

Faster than I expected, Dariene floated out of the well. I’d be motivated too if something had happened to Evan.

She took one look at him and her face fell. “Sometimes he gets lost. The years all run together for him now. I’ll take care of him. Thank you, Great Seer.”  She gave a nod in my direction, and said, “I am pleased you followed your heart, young one.”  She took Buach by the hand and they glided away through the forest.

“That was weird,” Evan said after they left.

“No kidding, but also sad, do you think he really had a love affair with Fiona McGovern?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Hey, Evan, did you scan his aura?”

“Yeah…why?”

“Did you notice a dark walnut color in it?”

“I did, I thought it was odd.”

“Do you know what it means?”

“No, but I bet Mom does. Why…is it important?”

“Madison McLoed and Mooney the Gnome had the same thing in their auras.”  He searched his photographic memory databanks. “Oh yeah, I see that. Maybe we should head to my house first.”

***

It should have occurred to me. A family of Seer’s was probably not the best place to go so soon after leaving the cave. Evan and I walked into the kitchen and immediately heard the sound of dishes being dropped. They shattered on the floor. Jenny had seen us.

Evan bent down and whispered to me, “Let me handle it.”

I nodded.

Evan’s dad, Bob, came running into the kitchen. Brandon and Lissy came in soon after him. He took one look at us and barked, “Kids, go to your rooms!”

“Why should we?” argued Brandon.

“…because we need to have an adult-only conversation. Go on, take your sister upstairs.”

“But Maggie’s not an adult yet…” he tried to reason.

“She is now,” Jenny said bitingly.

Brandon relented. He took Lissy by the hand and started to lead her upstairs.

Lissy asked, “Why do Evan and Maggie only have one aura?” as they left.

I cringed. As if I wasn’t embarrassed enough, even little Alyssa knew what had happened.

In contrast, Evan wasn’t embarrassed at all. He stood deliberately defiant. When his mom ordered us, “Sit…now…” and pointed to the kitchen booth, he stalked there proudly.

I kept my eyes downcast and slid onto the bench beside him. I rested my elbows on the table while he leaned back. It was a valuable lesson. Sex is permanent. It can’t be undone once it’s done. I wasn’t ashamed of loving Evan, but was ashamed of hurting others by my actions. We should have waited.

He put his arm around my shoulders and urged me to lean back with him.

Gratefully, I did it as I waited for Jenny to start yelling at us. I didn’t have to wait long.

“WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING!?!?!?”

“We love each other, Mom.”

“So you broke clan law to show your love?”

“We haven’t broken any laws!” I interjected. Then I remembered I should be quiet.

Evan smirked.

Jenny stared at me open-mouthed.

Bob was reticent.

“She’s right, Mom. Fiona told us we weren’t breaking any laws. The council has already deliberated and studied the law.”

“Fiona knows about this?” she cried, shocked.

“Well…not exactly.”  Evan shrugged. He added, “But she gave us permission.”

“Do you mean to say you asked for permission first?  You planned this out!  I never should have agreed to let you go camping.”

“No!” Now even Evan sounded frustrated, “we didn’t ask, she just gave us permission, after the council let us off house arrest. I didn’t plan anything!”

I wriggled a little in my seat. With Rose’s help, I had. I wasn’t going to tell them that, though.

For the first time, Bob spoke. “But look at them, Jenny,” he said, slowly and thoughtfully, “they’re in
perfect harmony
. Did you ever think your son would find
perfect
harmony?” 

It took the wind out of her sails. She physically and verbally backed off to think about his comment. A wistful expression crossed her face, as if she remembered a happy event.

I took the pause to scan Evan’s parents. They were in perfect harmony, too.

“Tell us what Fiona told you about clan law,” Bob urged.

Evan replied, “She said neither of us can get married or have children. Anything else is nobody’s business but our own.”  He tightened his arm around me.

I relaxed a little against him.

“Oh…I doubt the rest of the coven will see it that way,” Jenny considered the news. She smiled at us. “I always knew you two would make a good pairing. There will still be repercussions. Now what?”

“So now the rest is none of our business,” Bob said. With that comment, the matter was put to rest, at least within the Keach household. In all of the drama, and with the broken dishes to help clean up, I forgot to ask her about Buach’s aura.

***

When Evan dropped me off at my house later, he kissed me breathless, and then told me to take the bus into school in the morning.

“Okay…can I ask why?”

“There’s something I need to take care of. Don’t worry. It will help us deal with those repercussions my mom spoke about.”