Читать книгу The Immortal's Hunger - Kelli Ireland - Страница 11

Chapter 2

“Fifteen minutes, as promised,” Gareth announced to the men gathered around the large corner table. “I trust you didn’t drink the house dry.”

His teasing was met with laughter and jests. Several men rearranged their chairs or scooted deeper along the lone bench to make room for Gareth. Instead of slipping in among the men, though, he tossed his jacket down before retrieving a vacant chair from a neighboring table. Flipping the battered and aged oak seat around, he straddled it loosely, rested his forearms along the square back and leaned forward. “Who’s buying the first round?”

“Age before beauty,” Jacob announced.

Gareth grinned. “Like that is it? Need I remind you to respect your elders lest you find yourself on indefinite kitchen duty?”

“You’ve resorted to pulling rank. That means I managed to back you into a corner in moments,” Jacob said, grinning. “That’s worth peeling potatoes for a week...hell, a month, and without a word of complaint—mostly because I’d no idea it would be so easy.”

The men laughed, Gareth included, though he was obliged to reach over and cuff the young man on the back of the head. “Mind your manners. I’m older than you, but I’m far from old. I’ll kick yer arse to the Aran Islands and see you come summertime when it’s warm enough for you to swim home.” A flash of color and the tinny sound of a cheering crowd drew Gareth’s attention to the wall-mounted television where Ireland’s national soccer team played Scotland. “So, what’s the score?”

“Two minutes into the second half. Ireland’s up by one.”

The woman’s voice was as smoky as a two-finger shot of single barrel whiskey and as smooth as the waters of Loch Mor.

A jolt of pure, sensual pleasure arrowed through Gareth and settled a solid eight inches below his navel. He closed his eyes and took a bracing breath. “Care to repeat that?” Please.

Instead of answering, she chuckled. “Sure and if anything changes, I’ll gladly shout it out for you. In the meantime, what may I get you from the bar? Guinness? Whiskey? Murphy’s?” She must have shifted because the air moved and carried with it her scent—campfire smoke, warm flannel and the faintest hint of something spicy, like cloves. “The kitchen’s only open for another half hour, so you’d best get your order in if you’re hungry.”

Gareth fought the compulsion to look at her, the pull that urged him to face her where she stood and pair the voice with the rest of her, head to toe. “Order of chips and an Irish coffee. Be generous with the Irish.”

“I’ll see that you’re not cheated a drop,” she replied, the smile in her voice an audible caress.

Again, air moved, but this time with her departure.

Gareth spun in his seat, his narrowed eyes homing in on the seductive sway of the tall woman’s hips. Narrow waist. Long, long legs clad in skintight denim and knee-high boots. A simple white T-shirt. Skin on her arms bordering on pale. And her hair... It was a red so brilliant, so vibrant, that every strand seemed to come alive as the mass tumbled to her waist. Large, soft curls swayed back and forth as she walked, and the dense mass crackled with static.

He swiveled in his seat to face the men he’d come out to celebrate with. “She’s a new face.”

Jacob snorted. “And I told ye so earlier. ‘She’ is the new bartender as of several months ago.”

Gareth leaned his heavy forearms on the worn tabletop. Once, he’d have been the man to pursue her, the man to charm her right out of her tight jeans and onto a smooth-sheeted bed for a night of unparalleled pleasure. Now?

He shivered, his near hand drifting to the persistent ache at his side.

Now, not so much. If at all.

So much for finding a means to forget.

The men bantered back and forth, the sound mixing into the mishmash of noise in the crowded pub until all Gareth heard were random words, shouts of encouragement at the telly and, below it all, the faint vibrations of both fiddle and bodhran from the corner where the musicians had begun to prepare for the show.

A fiver slid into his view, followed by Jared’s voice. “So what of it, Gareth? You in?”

Slipping the euro back into the middle of the table, he looked up and forced an approximation of a smile. “My mind’s been wandering about. I’d be a poor Regent and even poorer assassin to take a blind wager, don’t you think?”

Jacob’s smile fell a bit, and the other men went still.

Gareth wanted to yank at his hair, wanted to shout at them to just behave normally, but he knew it had taken months of his withdrawing from them to get the men to this place where he was now unfamiliar. He didn’t want them to remember him this way after he was gone, but rather they should remember him as he had been. Might as well attempt to set things to rights.

With an air of feigned casualness, he retrieved his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out a hundred note, sliding it across the table with the general irreverence he’d been known for over his lifetime. “But it’s not to say I can’t sweeten the pot for the man about to dive into the seedy Shadow Realm of bloody taunts and bodily wagers.”

The men leaned in as if he was their puppeteer, the money their master.

“Go on, then,” Jacob said, eyes bright.

“I’ve a hundred that says not a one of you can get the redhead to take you home tonight.”

“That was the wager—that you could talk her out of the bar and back to her place,” Jacob said, smirking.

“I’m not favored in this one, gents. It’s not fair for me to use my gods-given charms—plural—against the lot of you.” He leaned back, hands gripping the chair back, and kicked his feet out in front of him. “Too much like taking candy from babes. So, you care to play or is it all talk with the lot of ye?”

There was a great deal of shifting in seats and casual glances left and then right to see who would be the first to man up or bow out. Finally, a lad named Alex, slapped a ten-euro note on the scarred table and grinned. “I’ll take that wager.”

Gareth chuckled. “You’re barely out of short pants, Alex. What could you possibly know about seducing a woman?”

“Far more than you think, you gobshite,” he responded, his broad shoulders squaring. “I’ll have the lass eating out of me palm before sunrise.”

Gareth grinned. “And that, right there, is why you’ll lose.”

Alex’s brow furrowed.

Leaning forward with an air of absolute seriousness, Gareth clasped the younger man’s shoulder. “The goal in spending the night with a woman has nothing to do with feeding them like a wee bird.”

The men all laughed. Several more bills were added to the pile as their group grew more boisterous.

Gareth chanced a quick glance over his shoulder at the woman in question. If he was honest, what he really wanted was another look.

She’d nearly reached the bar. From somewhere deep in the group of men she passed through, a brawny hand snaked out and grabbed her backside hard enough he imagined she’d bruise.

He was out of his chair before his mind registered that he’d responded. It turned out his intervention wasn’t at all necessary.

In what appeared to be a single move, the bartender grabbed the offending man’s hand at the same time she whipped the tray out from under her arm and swung it down, edge first, on the tender spot between wrist and hand. Before the man could properly yelp, the woman spun the tray in her hand and smacked the man over the head with it. The tray splintered and the man slumped forward. Issuing rapid apologies, two of the patron’s companions eased him to the floor.

Gareth hardly spared the downed man a look. No, he was too fascinated by the woman standing over the proverbial body and holding nothing but the metal ring of what had been a wooden serving tray. She wielded it like a weapon. And standing over the man like she was, Gareth could imagine her gladly wrapping the ring around the offender’s neck should he offer anything other than an apology following his physical set-down.

But something about the woman, something he knew he had overlooked, forced him to focus on her with more intensity.

With her shoulders thrown back, her breasts appeared fuller, her body leaner, her waist thinner and her legs impossibly longer. Her hair seemed to crackle with life. And her eyes? They conveyed competence and fury in equal measure.

The man at her feet stirred and Gareth took a step forward, intent on aiding her whether she needed it or not.

As if she’d singled out his movement among the bar crowd, her eyes met his. Fists clenched, she tossed her hair and turned back to the man at her feet. A firm nudge of her toe had his head lolling back. A partial beer she claimed from another table roused him...when she tossed it in his face.

The bar quieted so much so that the commentary from the soccer game’s announcers seemed to skate across the tension strung person to person—tension that centered wholly on the redheaded woman.

It was sexy as hell.

Behind him, Jacob stood and sighed dramatically, propping his forearm on Gareth’s shoulder for mock support. “I’d love to be trapped between those thighs, gents. I’ve an inkling she’d hurt me in the best possible way.”

Gareth knocked the young man’s arm aside with only partially feigned irritation. “Sit down, Jacob. You’re no match for the likes of her.”

He continued to watch the woman. Something about her wasn’t quite right, but damn if he could put a finger on the vibe she emitted. It was nothing he’d ever encountered before. But before any of his trainees engaged her, be it in a bit of fun or...something else, he’d know who, and what, she was.

* * *

Ashley tossed the drink tray’s metal ring over the antlers of a large Irish sika deer with the misfortune to have found itself mounted on the wall in the name of art. She’d never understand men’s minds, no matter the effort she put into it. But if her epithicas was about to occur, she would indeed spend a great deal of time considering ways to harness one of them into giving up a week of his life for bed sport. A night? Oh, that was fine. But for her to be safe, to ensure her fertility remained suppressed and as undetectable as possible, she had to have a beck-and-call lover on hand for the hormonal surges. Only regular sex would satisfy that need. It had humiliated her for years until she’d come to realize it was either take a lover or risk end up a branded wife. There was always some part of her that wondered what it would be like to stay with a man by choice versus need, to wake up to him in the morning out of love and not compulsion. The epithicas had always destroyed that, though. Until she’d met Geoffrey the Swedish incubus, befriended him and set up a routine over the last several cycles. That this one might be early? She could call him...

Stepping behind the bar, she dropped the pass-through. It landed with a loud whump. The sound reanimated the crowd. Men and women alike began to chatter. More than one looked at her with open curiosity, and she knew that wouldn’t bode well. Strangers in Ireland never stayed strangers long. People were too friendly. And curious. No, not “curious”—wicked curious. A good Irishman or Irishwoman would have your life story from you before you’d finished your first cup of tea and your hopes, dreams and heartaches before you were halfway through your second. It was part of the reason she loved the obscurity of tending bar. Patrons came in looking to talk to her or with her, not about her. Until now. She’d botched that up with a fair hand.

Toeing her backpack not unlike a child affirming her security blanket’s location, Ashley couldn’t stop her shoulders from sagging in relief when her foot made contact with the worn canvas. It was there. She had choices, and choices, no matter how limited, were always better than the alternative.

She glanced up and searched out the table of men she’d just served, the antithesis of the smaller traditional Irishmen yet Irish through and through. They tried for inconspicuous as they stared at her with a strange, almost ravenous look. It wasn’t too disconcerting. However, the man who sat at the head of the table set her back a step.

His eyes were such an intense blue, heavy-lidded but not with lust. If she read him right from this far, and she prided herself on such things, he was sizing her up more as potential trouble than potential bedmate. That she wasn’t accustomed to. At all.

Calloused hands curled in on themselves, and he gave a short nod and three-fingered swiping gesture low and to his side. Acknowledgment, then. That single move said he’d recognized her as Other, and he’d just given her the same confirmation. Whatever brotherhood that group belonged to, it wasn’t the local farmers’ collective.

She knew he wasn’t phoenix. None of her kind was built with such a thick, muscular overlay. No, they were far leaner, faster. Potentially meaner.

A second glance at him and those blue eyes narrowed.

Okay. Maybe not meaner.

Heat pulsed through her veins, hotter than molten rock. Her knees buckled. The only thing to save her arse meeting the floor was dumb luck and fast hands as she grabbed the counter. Smells intensified—the weight of the Guinness she’d pulled, the pungent yet sweet smoke from the pipe of the old man sitting closest to the taps, the hot oil in the kitchen.

Her sex ached, and she issued a small, quiet curse. Definitely the epithicas, then, and damned early at that. It had never been early. Sure, it fluctuated a couple of days either way, but it was never weeks early. Ever.

Only one choice made sense, and that was to try to talk Geoffrey into leaving Sweden now. If he’d hole up with her in her small garage apartment, he could see her through the worst of the cravings.

A quick dip below the counter and she had her cell in hand. Geoffrey was buried deep in her contacts, but she found him without trouble and placed the call.

Three rings. Four. Then a breathless, “Ashley.”

“Tell me you’re free, Geoffrey.” The slightly manic edge to her voice irritated her. She wasn’t that person, wasn’t the woman to panic in a crisis, and she’d be damned if she’d start now.

“I’m not on your rotation for five more weeks.” He groaned and, in the background, a woman gasped.

Ashley shoved a hand through her hair, little static pops pricking her skin. Oh, yeah. It was time. “Things seem to be a bit early this cycle.” And there it was again—the wobble in her voice that brought her fear into the open.

“How soon?”

She bit her bottom lip and let herself simply be aware of her body. The vibration in her blood became a steady hum, the need a constant presence, and she knew it was as bad as she feared. Worse, her subconscious whispered. She swallowed and pinched the bridge of her nose with trembling fingers. “I’m guessing, since this is the first time this has happened, but based on the way things have happened in the past? I’m thinking I have two, maybe three days at best. Tomorrow at worst. Then it’s here.”

“I can’t get there, my love. It’s simply not possible. Prior commitments and all that.” He paused. “You could join us here.”

“I’m not one of the merry harem,” she said quietly. “You know the only reason I do this at all is necessity.”

“Sure. Admit it, though. It’s been good for both of us.”

True, damn him. But she wasn’t feeding his ego. “If things change, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll manage.”

“Be safe, Ashley.”

Hanging up, she assessed the bar again. She had to do something. If it meant finding a lover among the locals, she would. But he’d have to be strong—strong enough to ensure neither of them would be at risk if one of her clan or kind came after her. Sex would diffuse the call of her epithicas to the men of her kind, but they could still find her if she didn’t handle this right.

That could never happen.

Never.

The vehemence of her denial echoed through her so loudly she instinctively shook her head in response.

“Problem, Red?” The question was delivered with quiet indifference.

Her gaze shot across the bar where the largest man from the corner table now stood. The blond Adonis with the air of wicked sin made her heart race, but his aura winked around him for a split second, an aura so dark it shrouded him like a fathomless black hole. Worrisome, but not so much as the fact she hadn’t seen him cross the room.

“Oy! Guinness down the way!”

“On the way,” she called back without looking at the patron. She couldn’t take her gaze off the man across from her. She blindly retrieved a pint glass and began to expertly build the requested stout, managing the building head without trouble.

At her silence, the stranger’s eyes darkened, and he slipped onto the only vacant barstool.

Instinct had her backing up a step at his predatory, assessing look. She reclaimed her ground, but with caution, and fumbled with the Guinness tap. At more than four centuries old, she’d spent three and a half of those defending herself from men she’d never loved and never would. Over three centuries she’d been pursued, her freedom dependent on evading her clansmen with every epithicas. All of the time factors and stresses added up to harden her heart where men were concerned, no matter how pretty the man in question might be.

Like this one.

“Problem?” she asked, repeating his question as she slid the Guinness down the slick bar top. Without taking her eyes off the man across from her, she grabbed a cherry from the setup tray and popped the little fruit in her mouth. “The problem is that you’re far too pretty for my tastes yet you keep popping up in my line of sight.”

He grinned, slow and wicked. “And here I thought a woman like you would have refined ‘tastes.’ While it’s good to know, I’m not a menu item. Play with the boys in the corner if you’re looking for some flirtation.”

The hairs on her arms stood up. “I don’t play with boys, darling. And ‘flirtation’ is the last thing I’m about.” She pulled the cherry stem out of her mouth and held it up for him to witness the double knot she’d tied it into with just her tongue. “I’m very selective when it comes to choosing the man I take to my bed.”

“In the interest of seriousness, I’ll ask you for your name and a promise.”

“Ashley. No promises. Now run along before I change my mind and decide you’re my type.”

“Good enough. For now.” He nodded and moved away from her before she realized she hadn’t obtained his name in kind.

Foolish woman.

She watched as he settled into his seat at the table amid the jests and teasing from the younger men. They ended up huddled close together over the table, each of them pretending to watch the game on the screen.

Ashley knew better.

The problem she now faced was greater than the enigma of the man, though. She had limited time to find a bed partner. Having engaged the blond, she couldn’t seem to dredge up interest in anyone else. But she’d have to. Her mouth tightened and turned down at the corners in a righteous scowl.

Good luck with that, Ashley.