Worlds of Obsession (Celtic Otherworlds) (29 page)

Chapter 30
             

              Carman opened her door to find a very large and very fine male standing there.  Unfortunately for her, he was not available, and besides, he looked quite… disturbed. 

             
“She doesn’t remember and she won’t have me”, he said before she could even ask him in.

             
“Bastien.  How nice to see you again.  Won’t you come in dear, and have a seat?”

             
Bastien ducked under the door frame, and his large, muscular body seemed to take up most of the room in the small cottage. 

             
“Now, tell me what has happened.  You have your mate back, do you not?”

             
“Yes, but she doesn’t remember me.”

             
“Well, that’s perfectly normal.  It will take time, but eventually the memories will return.  You must remember, she’s been through a lot.”

             
“But how can I help her remember if she keeps pushing me away?  We had sex… before I fucked everything up, but now she won’t let me near her.”

             
Carman grimaced and rolled her eyes.  “Made love, Bastien.  You made love with her.  For us females, there’s a big difference.”  She thought for a moment as Bastien squirmed impatiently.  “Why don’t you tell me what you said to her, when you were um… trying to convince her.”

             
“I told her that she is mine, and that if she ever even thinks of leaving me again, I’ll find her or die trying.  Something like that, anyway.”

             
Carman stared at him for a moment before slapping a palm to her brow with a little shake of her head.  “Look Bastien, I realize it’s been hundreds of years since you’ve had a serious girlfriend, but let me fill you in on the trends.  Barbarism is out, romance is back in.  A little wooing will go a long way, here.”

             
“But she’s already mine.  Fate has ordained it.  She’s been mine all this time, and we would have been together if Balor hadn’t stole her from me.”  His expression turned murderous at that thought.  “For which I will have my revenge.”

             
“Yeah, yeah… revenge and all that guy stuff.  We all know the bastard deserves it.  But you’re not seeing the whole picture here.  Karis is not the same female she was before all this happened.  Her soul was held prisoner in Anwnn, she was born into a new life and raised as a human with no idea who she really is.  Then she finds out she’s really Fae and a Demon is coming after her claiming to be her mate…”

             
“I’m not a Demon, I’m Fomoiri…”

             
Carman rolled her eyes again.  “Whatever… my point is, the poor girl needs some time to process all that.  You can’t expect to pick up where you left off centuries ago.  You need to be patient and understanding.”

             
Bastien looked at her as if she was speaking a foreign tongue.  “Patient?  A Fomoiri male
needs
to be with his mate.  On a regular basis.  Do you know how hard my…”

             
Carman held up both hands and bit her lip.  “Yes, I’m sure it is.  I’m just saying you’re going about it the wrong way.  Try tenderness.  Seduction by compassion and understanding.”  She sighed, her face going dreamy.  “That’s what any female wants… a male who’s considerate
and
passionate.”  She shook herself.  “Where is Liv now?”

             
“I locked her in our room so she’d be safe while I’m gone.  I also posted a guard outside the window, and one outside the door.  No one will take her from me, and there’s no way she can escape while I’m gone.”

             
“Ooooo Kay.  Let’s start again from the beginning, shall we?” Carman said with a sigh.  “The Fae race do not have pre-ordained mates, now do they, so the first time you met Liv… er, Karis, did she know she was yours?”

             
“No.  Not at first”, Bastien admitted grudgingly.  But
he
had known.  The instant he had laid eyes on her, it was all over for him.  His heart had started pounding right out of his chest, he could barely breathe… she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he knew right then that he would die if he did not possess her.  The first time she held his hand, he became addicted to her touch.  The first time he had kissed her lips, he was drowning in a sea of desire. 
Addicted, well and truly
.  Helplessly so.  For all these years he had been an addict without his drug, and his heart… well, he had lost that too.  Funny how you can live your whole life, thinking you’re happy… complete.  Then, in one instant, your innocence is shattered, and you know that there is so much more, that another soul can meld so entirely with your own and make you so much more than you ever were before.  Karis had done that for him… taken his innocence, filled up every empty place in his heart until he was overflowing with his love for her.

             
“How did you win her?”  Carman asked quietly.

             
Bastien’s expression grew distant, his eyes unfocused with memories of another lifetime.  He would have done anything…
anything
, to have her.  “I… I brought her red roses.  I stood beneath her window each night, just to be near her because her father would not let me see her after a certain hour.  I begged him for her hand, and even sent my brothers to vouch for my honor and the wealth and status of our line.  I killed her clan’s worst enemies in cold blood, because they were a threat to her and those she loved.  There was nothing… nothing on earth I wouldn’t have done to have her.  She meant everything to me… my mate, my partner, the mother of my children should I have been so blessed… my very life.”  Bastien drew in a deep, trembling breath, his eyes becoming haunted as he recalled what he had kept buried in the depths of his heart for so long.  “I had waited so long.  Her father rarely let her out of his sight, and when he did, she was heavily guarded, and so the most we could do was to hold each other’s hand and walk in the garden, steal an occasional kiss.  It was never enough for me.  There were still three months left before the wedding, an ancient custom of the Fae, but pure torture for a Fomoiri male.  When we find our fated one, our blood calls for us to claim her, possess her. 
Immediately
.  Waiting on ceremony was completely unnatural, and it wasn’t long before I was driven half mad with lust for her.  If I could have stolen her away without causing hardship for my family and hers, I would have done so in a heartbeat.  Day and night, I could think of nothing but my Karis, my heart already bursting with the fullness of my love for her.  So beautiful.  So clever and spirited.  When she offered to slip out of her father’s house to meet me in private, I could not say no, even though I should have.  The thought of holding her in my arms… of tasting her lips… it was so much more than I could resist.  Just one kiss, maybe a touch, then I would see her safely home.  What harm could there be?  After all, she was already promised to me, would have been mine already were she any other race but Fae. 

So I waited for her
near the Sacred Oak and she came to me just after midnight.  I took her into my arms and for a moment all I could do was look down at her beautiful face, glowing like alabaster in the moonlight.  Then I kissed her, and I knew I was finally home.  The peace… the desire… the ache for more and more.  It was all so overwhelming that I never even heard the movement all around us… until it was too late.  My enemy had chosen to attack when I was most vulnerable, and when I had the most to lose.  They knew a Fomoiri male would die a slow and painful death without his mate, and so they overwhelmed me with their numbers, ripping her from my arms and killing her there right before my eyes.”  Bastien paused and looked up, then said in little more than a whisper, “The pain was indeed unbearable, unrelenting, unending.  But I never died of it, as much as I wanted to.  And there was nothing I wanted more, just to make it all stop.  Now…at least I know why I survived.  Now, I can go on.” 

             
There was a loud sniffle as Carman reached for a frilly lace handkerchief and blew her nose, then held up her hand in a signal that she needed a moment to compose herself.  Bastien waited.

             
“And now?  Liv?” Carman asked after blowing her nose and wiping her teary eyes.

             
Bastien pushed his hands through his hair and sighed.  “I should have known.  When everything I felt the first time I saw my mate came back stronger than ever that night in the alley, I should have known she had come back to me, but I was too blind and jaded to see it.  Now I’ve gone and fucked everything up.”

Carman tapped a finger on her chin in thought.  “No, you haven’t.  Well,
you kind of have… but at least not completely beyond repair.”

“She says I dumped her for her other self.  But I didn’t know!  When I heard
Karis might still be held by Balor, I had to go.  I had no choice, no matter what I wanted.  It was my duty.”

             
“Yes, I understand.”

             
“I
need
her.”

             
“I know, Demon.”

Chapter 31

              Jess turned the deadbolt and opened the door, and there stood Liv, red-faced and obviously fuming.  “He locked me in here, Jess!  He fucking locked me in!  Thank
god
I had my phone with me.  Wait, how did you get past the guards?”

             
Jess shrugged with a little quirk of her lips.  “Just a little trick I do sometimes.  They’ll be fine in a few hours.  Come on Chicky, we’ll go back to my place and have some wine and gossip.  You look like maybe you need to vent.”

             
Liv levelled her friend with a meaningful stare.  “I might need to vent, but you have a hell of a lot of explaining to do… Selkie.”

Jess lost her smile and sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, trying to gauge how angry Liv was.  “I’m
… sorry?”

Liv sighed
and smiled at the anxious look on her friend’s face.  “I’m not mad, just… shocked.  Let’s get out of here, then we’ll talk.  Oh…wait, I need to at least leave a note.  Bastien will flip out and start ripping things to shreds or something if he doesn’t know I’m safe.” 

             
“Yeah, good idea.  You are
so
lucky.  Bastien is wicked hot, I mean H.O.T.,
hot
, and he can kill with his bare hands.  Talk about sexy…”

             
Yeah, she kind of agreed with that assessment.  Liv went to the desk in front of a big bay window which overlooked some mountains in the distance, and found a pen and piece of paper.  She chewed the tip of the pen as she thought about what to write, but settled on: 
Bastien, you cannot just lock me when you go out.  I am not your prisoner or anyone else’s.  I’ll be in touch when I’m ready to see you again.  Liv.

             
That should make him think about things, hopefully.  Liv tried to ignore the ache in her chest as she turned to leave, but it wasn’t like she’d never see him again.  “All set.  Let’s go.”

             
They walked right out the front door, where there was yet another guard staring into space and drooling slightly, completely unaware that they were leaving.  The other one had been near the elevator at the end of the hall.  “What did you do to them?  Are they really okay?”

             
“Oh, don’t worry so much Liv.  Believe me, they are enjoying what I’ve done to them, one hundred percent.  Best sex dreams they’ll ever have.”

             
Liv felt her cheeks blush a little.  “Oh.”

***

              Fifteen minutes later, Liv sat on the fluffy white couch in Jess’s living room, still struggling to take it all in. 
This
was Jess’s home, a place she never even imagined could exist, not the apartment in Boston. And though her friend had never actually lied to her, it still felt strange to find out the truth.  Jess had been a part of Carman’s plan all along, sent to watch over her in Boston and make sure everything went smoothly at the end.  Liv couldn’t stop a certain feeling of betrayal surfacing for a time. But in her heart she knew that the friendship that had grown between them was genuine, and Liv understood that Jess was working for what she thought to be the greater good.  That had to count for something, in her book.  Besides, she just really needed a friend right now, and Jess knew her better than anyone.

Jess returned from the kitchen with a smile and two big glasses of white wine, sitting down on the couch
next to Liv and pulling her legs up beneath her as she handed her a glass.  “Chardonnay.  Okay!  Girl talk time!  First we drink, then we do our nails, just like old times, though I must say, it’s good to be home.  Boston was freakin’ cold!  Not that Glasgow is much better, but at least from here I can be on a sunny beach in two minutes flat.”

             
Liv laughed and took a sip of her wine.  “Right.  You’ll have to show me how to do that.  I’ve missed our girl talk time Jess.  I really have.”

             
“Me too.  And I’m so glad you know everything now.  It was so damned hard not to say anything… like, ‘Hey, come with me and I’ll introduce you to the man that’s going to knock your panties off’, or ‘Hey Liv, did you happen to know you’re actually an immortal creature of the Sidhe?  Really, being human is way underrated anyway’…”

             
Liv giggled and almost snorted a mouthful of wine through her nose.  “I think I probably would have driven you straight to the psych ward.  And Bastien might have knocked my panties off and then some, but I’m still mad at him.  It might be completely irrational, but that’s just how I feel.”

             
Jess leaned back and sighed wistfully.  “Yeah, those big, gorgeous alpha male Demons can be a little hotheaded.  The fact that they’re invariably well-hung helps make up for that, though.” She giggled as Liv playfully cuffed her on the arm.

             
“The thing is… I can’t blame him for going back for her, I really can’t.  I know about the whole mating for life thing with Fomoiris, and I get that he didn’t have much of a choice.  But it still hurts… it hurts that he was ready to just walk away from me, and everything I thought we had together, to be with his first love.  And if he hadn’t found her after all, would he have just expected me to take him back like nothing had happened?  No matter how you slice it, I was second best, someone who worked to fill the void, but would never fill it completely.  And now I find out we’re actually one and the same person?  Talk about a mind-fuck!  Speaking of which, I still have yet to get over the fact that the entire life I have just lived was little more than a carefully orchestrated play that I had no real say in.”

             
Jess bit her bottom lip and gave her a sympathetic look.  “Well, when you put it that way, yeah it sort of sucks.  But… if you look at it another way…”  She took a long swallow of her wine and then smacked her lips.  “You have gained an incredible male who quite literally can’t live without you.  You hold all the cards Liv.  The rest is just a matter of hammering out details.  I hear Demons are highly trainable, with the right inducements.  And he has quite the spread in Anwnn.  The place is a mansion.  It has two pools,
and
a private lake that portholes directly to the best shopping district in London.  Can you imagine?  You want new shoes, you jump in for a swim.”

             
They both laughed at that.  “God, Jess… what would I do without you?”

             
“Right back attcha Chicky.  Now, let’s get out the polish.  We can keep dishing, but I have a date tomorrow, and I
cannot
go with my nails like this.”  Jess got up to pour more wine, but the bottle was empty.  She frowned.  “Well this will not do at all… I’m gonna have to go out and get some more.  I’ll grab some take-out too.  You’ll be okay here alone for a half hour?”

             
“Yeah, of course.  I’ll just relax, read some magazines.”  She gestured to the towering stack of Cosmos and Vogues on the coffee table.

             
“Okay, good.  Chinese all right with you?”

             
“Chinese sounds wonderful.”  Liv grabbed a magazine off the top of the pile and sank back into the couch as Jess left to get the wine and food.  This was exactly what she needed… a little down-time to gain some much needed perspective on things.  Yeah, she was hurt and a little angry, and Bastien was the cause of it all.  So what if he thought he had no choice?  He had still chosen the old her over the new her, and that had stung.  But she still wanted him, right down to her toes.  She was completely and utterly in love with him, and she knew it.  She also knew she was going to take him back, eventually.

The sound of the door opening made her jump.  How on earth did Jess get back so quickly?  It should have taken at least a half hour.  She closed the Cosmo and put in down on the table, getting up to help dish out the food.  She had only taken two steps when she knew something was terribly wrong.  It was quiet… too quiet, and a feeling of dread prickled at the back of her neck. 

“Jess?  Jess it that you?”

In the next instant, two large
men stepped into the doorway, and she knew trouble had come for her. Especially since one of them she recognized instantly.  It was Bastien’s father. 
Oh crap, not again!  Didn’t this guy ever give up?