Velvet Haven

crawled on top of her as she sank low beneath the covers. “It is not just sex,” he whispered in her ear. “There is more here binding us. Can you not feel it?”
    She could and it scared her.
    “Give me your fears. I’ll keep you safe.”
    Mairi allowed her fingers to run through his hair. “Please. First I need to know how this has come to be.”
    He avoided her gaze as he lowered his mouth to her lips. “How what has come to be?”
    “How did you know where I live?”
    He pulled back, his gaze narrowed, the gold and pewter darkening. Mairi sat up, pulling the sheets around her. He growled, heaving himself up off the mattress, but she reached out to him, tracing the twining vines of ink on his arm. His hair was brushed back from his forehead and she saw that the same marks adorned his left temple. As her finger slid over the tattoos, his skin quivered and the design seemed to move, to curl in and out as if the ink were absorbing her touch.
    Shoving away from her, he moved from the bed and walked toward the arched window, which was draped with black velvet. He put his arm on the window casing, his hair shifting with his muscles. And there on his back she could now see a long silver tattoo in the shape of a sword running along the length of his spine.
    Her breath caught and Mairi knew for certain who he was. He was the man from her dreams, her midnight lover. And he was . . .
    “Why don’t you tell me how you think I found you?” he asked as he stared out the window.
    Taking a deep breath, Mairi couldn’t quite bring herself to believe what she was going to say. “I think you knew where I lived because you were the raven I picked up from the road and brought home.”
    His fingers curled into a fist. “And why would you think I was a bird?”
    She paused, trying to understand how she could believe something so unbelievably impossible. It didn’t make sense, but neither did this consuming passion she had for Bran.
    “Because I felt the same connection to the bird as I do to you. I don’t understand it, but it’s true. We had a night of . . . of pleasure and now I can’t stop thinking of you, or wanting to be with you. And the bird, every time I looked at it, I thought of you.”
    She slipped from the bed. Her legs were unsteady and she reached for the post of the headboard for support. Before she knew it, Bran was beside her, his thick arm around her waist. He held her, steadied her, and that arousing hum from his body ebbed into her. “Are you going to faint?” he snarled. “Shouldn’t you be screaming and running the other way?”
    She saw fear in his eyes. The first time the emotion had ever been there. He was right, of course. What he was defied physics, God . . . even the devil himself. She didn’t understand it, couldn’t grasp it, but somewhere deep inside her, waiting to be acknowledged, was the fact that from the very beginning he had attracted her because he was different from other men.
    “I don’t know how I can think this. How I can bring myself to believe. I—I—” she stammered, licking her dry lips. “I know this is crazy, but I believe you’re not a man. You’re something else, part raven, part . . . I don’t know what.”
    “Sidhe.” He forced her back on the bed and helped her to sit, then looked her in the eye. “I am king of the Night Sidhe.”
    “A faerie?” she asked incredulously. When he nodded, Mairi felt her eyes widen in shock. “I didn’t think they were so huge and—where’re your pointed ears?”
    He glared at her. “There are many species of faeries. The Night Sidhe resemble humans, only we’re bigger.”
    Mairi looked her fill and had to agree, he was much bigger—in every place that counted. He was looking at her, too, studying her. The pieces suddenly seemed to fit. She remembered Rowan saying that the Celts had believed the raven was the ruler of the Otherworld. That the name Bran was Gaelic for raven.
    “Are you from Annwyn?” she asked, needing to confirm her suspicions.
    He nodded and smoothed her hair back over her shoulder. The hospital gown she wore slipped down, baring the crest of her breast. His touch slipped down through her hair; then his fingertips caressed her exposed flesh. So many thoughts were now swirling in her head. But they weren’t the right thoughts. Like how was it possible he could change his shape and create electricity? How could he be a faerie king and live in a magical world, yet be sitting here beside her?