Blood In Fire (Celtic Elementals Book 2) by Heather R. Blair Read Free Book Online

He growled as his cock jerked at the thought and he tapped the back of his head into the wall in frustration.
    Not loudly enough to alert her to his presence, of course. He didn’t want her to stop, no matter how much it was torturing him.
    Helluva pisser, though. He was going to come in his pants if she didn’t finish soon and there was nothing he could do about it. Or almost nothing.
    He did have a hand after all.
    With a Gaelic curse and a rueful laugh, Aidan ripped open his fly.
    Two could play at this game.
     
    The man that had seen Aidan and Heather was well over an hour west of Rathkeale by the time she stepped into that shower. Deep inside the area of County Kerry known as MacGillycuddy's Reeks.
    High and wild saw-toothed mountains concealed a castle known as Du'n Dreach-Fhoula. Normally invisible on the mortal plane, a human wouldn't be able to find the castle even if they knew it was there.
    Unless the inhabitants were hungry, of course. In that case the black doors would appear and open…to let one or two in.
    Though never out again.
    Declan Foster was different. He belonged here. Or rather he belonged to the owner of the castle.
    His hands were fisted on the great stone table in his master’s dining hall. The surface was bitterly cold and rough under his skin, a sharp contrast to the opulent comfort of most of the castle. There was a reason for this as the demon fae didn’t dine in the manner humans did. Oh, they ate, to be sure, but less for sustenance than for the act itself. The taking of another life force to increase their own was a serious ritual. It mattered not if that life force consisted of the fruit of a tree or human flesh and blood. All consumption was sacrifice and this table had been an altar of sorts to many dark feasts.
    The man dearly hoped that wasn’t to be his end.
    His master was at the head of the table. Not sitting in the huge throne-like chair—carved from tortured trunk of a hawthorne tree—but standing behind it. His large, thin hands stroked the gnarled back contemplatively.
    This particular tree had contorted back into itself so many times it lent a twisted air to the room—one of deformed, agonized existence. An existence that no matter the cost had been endured . It was a fitting seat for the man behind it, a man who was no man at all. Only a demon who reveled in pushing all creatures to the limits of their endurance .
    Abhartach was not looking at his slave but at the painting that graced the far wall. It was of a young man with the dying sun in his fair curls, his legs spread wide in a fighter’s stance and planted firmly on a rocky outcropping with the hills of Ulster in the distance. The young warrior’s hands were wrapped around the grip of an enormous great sword whose lethal tip touched the stone between his booted feet. The pommel appeared to glint in the firelight of the chamber, an amber-colored stone with a blush of fire set at its heart. The artist had captured both the sword and the warrior in exquisite detail, down to the gleam of sunset along the blade’s double edges like blood and the fierce, crystalline gaze of the man—who had been called Áedán.
    O'Neill had modernized the name centuries ago, but a face didn't change as easily as a name.
    If the man Declan had seen this morning was not the same as in the painting, then they were doppelgangers. He wasn’t wrong, he couldn’t be wrong, but if he was…
    “You better not be wrong, daor .” There was no hint of a threat in Abhartach’s flinty voice as it rang off the stone table, only the absolute promise of a long and drawn-out death.
    Death is what he wanted, what he had always wanted, but not as an ending… as a beginning .
    “I assure you, Master, it was him.”
    Abhartach’s eyes stayed on the painting for a moment longer, lingering with a possessive caress, before turning on Declan.
    It was an effort, but he managed not to flinch under the king's unholy gaze.
    “If it is…if it truly