Velvet Haven

a pair of jeans and a sweat-shirt that had been left on top of the dresser.
    “I’m not using you, Mairi, believe me. If I had any brains, I’d leave you be. But I can’t.”
    “And what the hell does that mean?”
    “You are more dangerous to me than I am to you.”
    “Well, we’ll never have to find out if you’re right.”
    “Where are you going?” he demanded.
    “Home,” she snapped.
    “No!” She heard the mattress squeak as he got up. Felt the rumble of his heavy boots cross the glistening hardwood. Her back was to him, her hand on the glass doorknob. His arms shot out on either side of her, and his fists shoved the door closed with a fierce bang. His head dropped to her shoulder and she heard him inhale deeply. “You will not leave me.”
    It was a command, not a plea.
    “Don’t you understand, Mairi?” he asked as his lips nuzzled her earlobe.
    “Yes. I do.”
    “I don’t think you do, otherwise you would be back on that bed, my cock inside you, moaning as you come for me.”
    “You arrogant bastard!”
    “Perhaps, but it doesn’t change what you are.”
    “And what is that?” she demanded.
    “Mine.” The fierceness of that whispered word terrified her.
    “I don’t think so.” She tried to match his fierceness, but her protest sounded husky and needy.
    “You sealed your fate, muirnin , when you tended my wing.”
    She closed her eyes against the warmth that was flooding her belly. He’d used her to feed a curse. She should not want him. Should not even believe in Annwyn, and magic, and immortals. But every instinct believed. Hell, she had died and been brought back to life by an angel. The same angel who confessed to having been at her birth, and present at the life-altering moment in the tub when her lifeblood ran out of her wrist. Anything was possible.
    She believed. God help her, she could actually wrap her mind around the impossible, but she could not stand here and allow herself to be used by him—not again.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

    “Should I find you another one?”
    Bran scowled as he looked out over the dockyards and the blue of the lake beyond. The sun was setting and his fucking curse was calling.
    “No,” he replied, hating to think of any woman other than Mairi beneath him.
    “You owe her nothing. She saved your life. And you saved hers. The debt is balanced.”
    “I do not want another female.”
    “But your curse—”
    “I doubt I could even get it up for another female,” Bran spat. “The thought of pleasuring another makes me ill, which is hardly conducive to an exchange of energy, is it?”
    Sayer’s elliptical pupils dilated. “That sucks.”
    “Part of Morgan’s curse. She has made me want the only woman who can destroy me. I think she cast this damn curse because she knew I would never love her. She wants me to hurt, to love another and feel the betrayal by someone I love.”
    “Morgan always had a taste for the sadistic.”
    “Then she is enjoying my misery, because I am utterly ruined for any other female, Sidhe or mortal.”
    Sayer looked at him with a mixture of shock and sympathy. “You have fallen for her?”
    Bran nodded. The truth became easier each time he admitted it.
    “What will you do?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “She could kill you.”
    “I know.”
    “Why not leave and return to Annwyn?”
    “I cannot leave Mairi alone while that madman is running loose. He is not only working in Annwyn, but here, amongst mortals as well. He wants Mairi and I cannot let him have her. I have to protect her.”
    “I could enchant her—”
    “No!” If she was to desire him, then he wanted it to be of her own choosing, not Sayer’s magic binding her to him.
    Sayer’s eyes softened. “Rhys says you bargained with Suriel for the girl.”
    Suriel. How he hated to hear that name! This afternoon when he saw Mairi with Suriel, sitting close together, heads bent over Cailleach’s book, he felt enraged. Filled with an absurd, dangerous jealousy that made red mist gather at the edges of his eyes. The way Mairi gazed at Suriel made him want to tear the angel apart, limb from sinful limb.
    “Is it true, then, that you made a deal with Suriel?”
    “I did what I had to do,” Bran growled. And in doing so, he’d handed Mairi to Suriel. Now she knew of the bond they shared. A union that was deeper than what he and Mairi shared. Suriel was Mairi’s Anam Cara , her Soul Friend. Nothing in Annwyn was stronger than that link. What he felt for