

# THE ROUSING

A Celtic in the Blood novella

PAULA BLACK

###  www.ravenandblack.blogspot.com

### twitter @RavenandBlack

### Published by Raven & Black.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Paula Black & Jess Raven

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

THE ROUSING

A Celtic in the Blood novella

When unwelcome stranger Jack Pembroke arrives in Darcy McShane's rural coastal village, the last thing she anticipates is falling for him, but a deadly storm, a night of unrestrained passion and the rousing of an ancient Irish myth conspire to change her life irrevocably.

From the authors of The Becoming Trilogy, The Rousing is an adult romance novella, set on the wild coast of Southern Ireland. The story blends mystery and eroticism with a paranormal twist on an ancient Celtic vampire legend said to have inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Due to graphic scenes of sex and violence, The Rousing is recommended to an 18+ readership.

## CHAPTER ONE

###

"Eyes right, Darcy."

Liam nudged my elbow. I looked up from the clouds in my glass of Guinness and followed his pointed look to the blonde who'd just walked into our local bar.

A blonde walked into a bar. Sounded like a bad joke, right? Except nobody was laughing. A draft of cold air and expensive perfume billowed in the new arrival's wake. The door swung shut behind her and the ambient noise petered out as all eyes settled on the strange creature invading our Thursday night routine.

She wore sunglasses, blood-red lips and vertiginous heels. With a waist like a wasp corseted in striped black satin and Veronica Lake hair, she fit into our rural village pub scene like a whore walking in a nunnery.

Vamp.

That was the word that came to mind.

"Jesus," Liam breathed. "Would you look what the cat dragged in." Along with every man in the place, he was openly gawking, transfixed by the sashay of those tightly-encased ass-cheeks as she sex-walked her way to the bar, seemingly oblivious to the attention she drew.

"Lady Gaga comes to Crooke?" I asked under my breath. "Or did I miss the posters for the dominatrix convention?" Maybe Paddy, the flat-cap wearing owner, had decided to spice up the entertainment with a little burlesque show. It'd sure make a change from the usual fiddle and penny-whistle trad music. "This should give the old-timers something to gossip about at Sunday Mass," I laughed.

Ignoring me, Liam slid off the red-leather banquette, drawn toward the exotic stranger like his dick was some kind of divining rod. I couldn't blame my brother. Our little village in the South-East of Ireland didn't see a lot of action. Had it been a smoking hot guy, perhaps I'd have been the same, jostling with the competition to buy the newcomer a drink.

I sat up straighter and drained my glass, feeling inadequate, in spite of myself. Jeans and a sweater were perfectly acceptable pub attire for a weeknight, and it wasn't as though there were any men here worth trying to impress. Any guy worth getting in a lather over had upped and emigrated years ago. Well, one guy in particular, but I refused to get drawn down that dark alley of loathing and regret.

Feeling like the plain bridesmaid at a wedding, I looked enviously towards the exit. Trouble was, I had to rely on Liam for a ride home, and he was otherwise occupied. I stood, began making my way through the crowd to get a refill, only to find myself detoured, mashed into a corner by a big flabby body in a blue Argyle sweater.

"Grab your coat, love, you pulled." He leered drunkenly, smelling vaguely of sheep-dip and stale body odour. Beer breath hot on my neck, he pinged my bra strap and his slobbery tongue was probing my ear before I had a chance to push him off.

"That your idea of foreplay, John-Joe?" I demanded, shoving him away, repulsed by the lingering sensation of wetness in my ear. "Go home and try that out on your wife." Feeling contaminated, I ducked into the ladies' toilet before things got way out of hand.

A good ten minutes later I was still sat there, locked in the cubicle. Anything to escape the reality of my life out there in the bar. At twenty-seven years old, were these really my prospects? Nights out drinking with my twin brother as chaperone, staring at the same old faces? A disgusting affair with some married farmer whose idea of seduction was to tongue-rape your ear, followed by a fumble in your knickers and a knee-trembler up against the wall outside _._ The same wall the drunks liked to piss against.

I shuddered. That couldn't be my life.

Outside, I heard the restroom door open, admitting the sounds from the bar, along with a click of heels on tile and a waft of distinctive perfume. Then it closed again, deadening the noise, but that scent lingered. The vamp.

I sensed her on the other side of the cubicle and for some stupid reason, was afraid to breathe. I waited, stock-still, just listening. I could tell she was at the bank of sinks by the clink of buttons or nails against the ceramic. Grooming herself, I imagined, re-applying lipstick, whatever it was these high-maintenance type girls did in bathrooms for interminable hours. I visualised myself stepping out of the cubicle, forced to stare at my own reflection alongside hers as I washed my hands, and the seconds ticked by with me hoping she'd just leave.

She didn't.

You're being ridiculous, Darcy. Can't hide in a toilet for the rest of your adult life.

I flipped the lock across, swung open the cubicle door and immediately caught the woman's reflection in the mirror.

I got just the briefest glimpse of her eyes when her gaze jerked up to mine in shock, and they didn't look right. There was no pupil, no iris to speak of, all-white with just a burst of black veins across the surface.

What the...?

Her reflexes were lightning fast. The shades were back in place before I could even be sure I'd seen what I thought I had.

She turned to me, twitching her full mouth into a forced smile. "I thought I was alone," she said, moving uncomfortably closer, making the toilets seem too small to fit us both.

"Sorry, I was just leaving," I said apologetically, heat flooding my face as I tried not to cringe back into the cubicle.

I felt the urge to run, but her back was to the door, impeding my exit. There was no place to go that didn't involve physically tackling her aside or actually spending the rest of my life sat on a toilet seat.

"Oh," she said huskily, in an accent that was hard to place, "how pretty you are, such beautiful skin. The blood in your cheeks. I was so much like you once."

She touched her manicured nails to my jaw and I visibly flinched, my skin recoiling from the cool tap.

"Don't be afraid of me," she said. Her smile widened and panic flared in my chest.

"Was that man out there bothering you?"

"Pardon?" I stammered.

"Darcy! You in there?" We both startled towards the sound as Liam's head appeared around the door.

I could have kissed him, brother or not.

"Been looking everywhere for you, sis. Thought you left without me."

I sagged with relief as my bathroom companion went back to teasing her hair in the mirror, as though nothing at all had passed between us.

"What is it you ladies do in here that takes forever?" Liam asked, oblivious to the strange tension he'd broken up.

The blonde pressed her lips together suggestively and grinned at him through the mirror. He dug his hands into his jeans' pockets and grinned back, like some lovesick puppy.

"We really should go now," I said.

"Leaving so soon?" The other woman pouted, her dismay clearly directed at my brother.

"Yeah, we have to work tomorrow," I said, hustling Liam out of the ladies room and back into the bar.

He failed to hide his disappointment.

"Please," I wheedled, "I can't handle any more of John-Joe's groping tonight."

Liam's brows knitted together and his body tensed with aggression. "You want me to set that fecker straight? I'll fix it so he never touches you again, sis."

"That's sweet of you Liam, really, but we're not in the playground anymore. Your sister's a grown-up who can handle herself. Right now, I just want to go home." The last thing I needed in this village was a reputation as a home-wrecker, and John-Joe's wife was actually a nice person, as was John-Joe, when he wasn't drinking.

I steered Liam out front where his Ford was parked. I half-expected to see a sleek sports car to match the killer heels and corsetry, but there was only the usual collection of muddy trucks and hatchbacks, and I could have told you who drove each one.

"Strange woman. Where'd she come from?" I asked.

"She said she was looking for the Regency hotel, but her GPS led her down a wrong turn."

"Weird," I said, scanning further down the road for any sign of a car and finding none.

"Was she planning on leaving tonight?" I asked.

"Hope not," Liam said, popping the locks on the Ford. "I got her number." He waved a beer-mat scrawled with digits.

"Probably fake," I laughed. "Anyway, I think she might have some kind of eye condition," I said, sliding into the passenger seat.

Had to be. How else could I explain what I'd seen in that mirror?

"Huh," Liam said, belting up and starting the engine, "maybe she's an albino. It'd explain the shades."

"Yeah." Still no sign of any car though, and she wasn't exactly dressed for a hike. "An albino, for sure," I said doubtfully.

Liam smiled over at me. "There are things I might like to hold against a woman like that, sis, but that ain't one of them." He laughed, driving us off into the night.

## CHAPTER TWO

###

"Bronach is up for sale."

Liam barged his way into the tiny back office of our village real estate agency, while I hurriedly clicked the red 'x' on the wedding announcement and snapped down the lid of the laptop. I'd stared at the damn thing so long, I wondered if he'd be able to see it, burned into my retinas, as I still did.

"Don't you know how to knock?" I demanded, cutting him a death-glare. I ruffled papers to distract from my ruffled self, willing that tell-tale salt-sting to retreat back down my tear-ducts.

"Didn't you hear what I said? I thought you'd want to know," Liam said, landing himself in the wheelie office chair opposite me with a bounce.

"Know what?" I asked.

"Bronach Lodge is going up for auction."

"You can't be serious. The old lady's still warm in her grave." I'd caught the lingering scent of incense from Lady Pembroke's funeral on my scarf just this morning. It had been a solemn, impersonal, rain-drenched affair; she'd had no family left to mourn her.

"I'm deadly serious," Liam said. "Just got off the phone with the executor. He's flying in from New York this evening for a valuation. Insists on being there in person." Liam scooted closer. "This could be really good for us. The commission on a big house like that-" His smile fell at the corners as he finally did a double-take on the blood-shot eyes and smudged mascara I was failing to hide through the fall of my hair. "Are you crying, Darcy?" he asked.

"No, of course not," I lied. Fortunately for me, my twin brother wasn't the observant type. Not unless it involved particular attributes of the female variety, and those did not include tears.

My ex-fiancé might have officially moved on with his life, but I was far from ready for the pity-party that was bound to follow. One sympathetic word from Liam and I'd be a hot mess of pathetic, bawling woman.

"You get your knickers in a twist every time these old estates get put up for auction," Liam said, totally misreading the source of my distress, "but you can't take each one like a personal blow. Times change, sis. People move on."

"Yeah," I exhaled. _Except somehow I got left behind._ My smile was fake.

"An auction will attract international interest. Not like any of the locals would touch that place with a shitty stick."

"True," I conceded. Bronach was aptly named for the Gaelic word for sorrow. The house had seen its share of it, and though these days the village had broadband and satellite TV and all the mod cons, not even the invasion of twenty-first century technology could completely douse the flame of local superstition.

"So -" Liam pushed.

"So what?"

"So," he said, trying to ply me with that same rakish, raised brows and twinkly-eyed look I'd seen him use to melt many a girl's panties down the local pub, "you'll take the client? He'll meet you at the property at five."

"You're shafting me to work Friday night, again?" I said, incredulous.

"I would never shaft you, sis," he laughed, brows wagging, and his voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper "but there's this killer blonde I'm hoping to run into again down the pub tonight."

"Seriously, you like her?" Damn. That woman gave me the creeps with her weird eyes and her sunglasses and the inappropriate touching. "Don't you ever think outside of your crotch?" I asked.

"You should try it some time, Darcy. Cut loose. Getting 'shafted' once in a while might do you a world of good."

I glowered at him, refusing to rise to the bait.

Christ. Was that my reputation now? The frigid, abandoned spinster? I was still on the right side of thirty, for God's sake, and it wasn't as though the laughable, fumbling seduction techniques of the village idiots round here were even remotely tempting.

"Do I need to remind you I'm your boss?" Liam prodded.

I balled a sheet of paper and tossed it at his head. "You know if you weren't my brother, I'd be slapping my hand across your face and a sexual harassment charge on your arse."

Liam's grin widened. "I knew you'd come good, sis."

"You owe me. Big time," I said, stabbing a finger in his direction,

"Sure." He rubbed his hands together as he rose from the chair, smug in his victory. "Who knows, maybe this executor fella will turn out to be a real catch."

The look I gave him was withering. "Oh yeah. Another paunchy, pasty-faced, cigar-sucking fat-cat from the U-nited States of America, come to rape what little is left of our dwindling heritage. What's not to love?" I said drily.

## CHAPTER THREE

###

An hour on the road, navigating the winding, dusk-cloaked country lanes with my camera, phone and notepad my only companions on the passenger seat, and I was still berating this stranger I was yet to meet. I hadn't laid eyes on my client, but already I hated him. I knew the type all too well: pseudo-Irish wannabes with more money than sense. They bought up ancient family estates like they were just any other commodity. Then they stripped out their souls: marble fireplaces, mirrors, bathrooms, family heirlooms, all destined for the swanky New-York antique shops, while they installed their obscene swimming pools and their libraries of fake books and faker furnishings and swanned around playing fake lord of the manor. Who said the pillaging of Ireland had ended with the Vikings?

"And when did you become so bitter and twisted?" I said to myself. All I needed were a few cats and a bobble-hat, and my eccentric old bird credentials would be sealed.

I knew I was being crabby. I knew it was unreasonable, but damn it, it was that or dwell on that salt-in-the-wound, picture-perfect, kissing-in-the-sunshine wedding announcement I couldn't get out of my head. That depressingly apropos Adele song came on the radio and I punched through the stations, hoping to lift my mood. I paused, catching the tail end of a storm warning on the shipping news. There hadn't been a breath of wind all day, but here on the coast, the weather was fickle.

_Let's hope the American's not a talker_ , I thought, driving on, singing along to angry rock anthems at the top of my lungs. As though the landscape was tuning into my dark mood, slate-grey clouds roiled on the horizon. A wind whipped up out of nowhere, buffeting my little car as I approached the remote headland on which Bronach Lodge had perched above the waves, unmolested for centuries. _A bit like you, Darcy,_ I thought, laughing at myself. John-Joe's groping didn't count.

My client's car was already there, staking a claim outside the property, when I pulled up a short distance away. A huge, sleek, racing-green gas-guzzler of a sedan, I recognised it as a Jaguar from its animal insignia. How predictable. I felt my upper lip curl. The black-out windows ticked yet another box on my douche bag checklist. Assuming he was watching me through all that dark glass, I flashed him a megawatt smile whilst simultaneously flipping him the bird, unseen behind the dashboard.

I slid the vanity mirror open and glossed my lips a dark red. If I was going to defend Ireland's coastline against invading marauders, a little war-paint was definitely in order. My fraternal twin, Liam, and I shared the same colouring: almost black hair, blue eyes and porcelain-pale skin that didn't take the sun. Nothing exotic in this neck of the woods, nothing as overtly sexual as the blonde bombshell in the bar last night, but foreigners seemed to find it alluring, and I wasn't above using all the weapons in my arsenal to secure this deal. It was no secret the country was in an economic slump - why else would these bald-headed vultures in business suits be circling? - and since my father's diagnosis, the bills were mounting at the little estate agency that had once been his pride and joy. So game-face on, I gathered up my camera and notepad, slung my bag over my shoulder and exited the car.

You might think it was reckless for a woman to meet a stranger alone in some backwater of Ireland, but the crime rate here was so low they'd actually shut-down the police station. Suicides, teenage drinking and the odd driving-under-the-influence was about as dangerous as it got around here. Besides, I kept an illegal can of pepper spray in my bag, and wasn't averse to delivering a swift knee to the groin of any chancer who might try it on with me.

I approached the penis-extension-slash-Jaguar with the wind lashing around my ankles and flipping the hem of my skirt high enough to give its occupant an eyeful of my underwear. I cursed into the gale. Wrestling the skirt back into place whilst simultaneously dragging stray hairs from my freshly-glossed mouth proved to be a battle too far. So much for multitasking. My camera fell victim to the struggle, landing in the wet grass.

Way to make a first impression, Darcy.

I hunkered down to retrieve the camera, and found myself staring at the leather uppers of a very expensive looking pair of men's shoes.

"Kneeling won't be necessary."

_What_?

"No need to kiss my feet either."

My head shot up, a pithy retort at the ready, only to find my anger deflated by a smile. Not the blinding-white, fake Hollywood veneers that leave you picturing the skull beneath, but normal, nice even teeth with normal imperfections. It was a genuine smile.

"A joke," he said, by way of apology. "I'm Jack. Nice to meet you. Thanks for coming at such short notice."

That voice, with its foreign accent, rubbed over me like long-pile velvet. He extended a hand to help me up, and I couldn't help but notice the expensive looking watch and the light dusting of hair on his tanned forearm. I took what he offered on reflex and he helped me back onto my feet. As he did so, I cast my eyes up to his face and was arrested by a pair of eyes greener than the stormy sea behind him and framed by the kind of dark, thick lashes any woman would kill for.

Ok, so maybe my client wasn't bald. His hair was thick, dark and straight, groomed at the sides, but longer on top, and tousled by the wind.

Not exactly old either. I pegged him as early thirties, max.

And I couldn't say he was fat. In fact, the way he filled the charcoal-grey suit, all broad-shoulders and narrow hips, I'd have said underneath all that expensive tailoring was a strong, athletic frame.

Not a trace of cigar smoke either, damn him. Just the clean, male smell of classy aftershave.

"Drop something?" he asked.

Yeah, I dropped something alright. My jaw. Probably my panties too. Bastard.

"Just my camera," I said. I had to smile up at him. He out-heighted me by a good half-foot, even in my low heels. Against my will, I felt my face heat.

Windburn, Darcy. Most definitely.

In that moment, I hated the man even more for proving my assumptions wrong. Beyond that, I hated him for the undeniable flare of attraction that flushed my cheeks and flooded parts of my body I'd begun to think had gone to rust.

Appearances are deceptive, I berated myself. An asshole who happened to be sex on a stick was still an asshole.

I'd been right about one thing, he was American. There was no mistaking that smooth, liquid-sex drawl.

"Is it always this unsettled 'round here?" he asked.

I sure couldn't recall the last time I'd felt this unsettled in the presence of a man.

"No," I replied, raising my voice against the wind, "I think you brought this weather with you. There's always a stiff breeze along the coast, but I've lived here all my life, and I've never seen anything like this."

"You're a local then?" he asked, still wearing that disarming smile.

I nodded. "Yeah. What part of the States do you hail from? My brother said you flew in from the Big Apple?"

"I live in New York, but I'm Irish. You could say I'm a local too."

_Oh here we go_ , I thought. _This is the part where he claims nationality on the back of some great-great-third cousin called Philup McGroin who crossed the Atlantic on a Famine ship_. These guys were all the same. They thought they could buy themselves an Irish identity.

My client, Jack, no surname given, fell silent for a moment. "It's been a very long time," he said rather mysteriously. "Did you know the previous owner?" he asked.

"Lady Pembroke? Yeah, she was nice enough. Lonely, all on her own in the big old house. She had no family."

A dark look crossed the American's eyes, but I put it down to the storm clouds brewing above our heads.

"She kept to herself mostly," I went on, "Bronach is in a very isolated spot and she was crotchety. People didn't feel welcome here."

He said nothing, just cast his gaze over the rambling house with its moss-covered, granite walls, skeletal wisteria and shuttered-up windows. Closed up like this, it resembled a mausoleum, as uninviting as its occupant had been. If he wanted a good price for the place, I'd need to rectify that. The right photo could make or break this kind of sale.

"I didn't think your sort liked to get into personal details," I said eventually, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

"My sort?" He turned to me, lifting a brow. "What sort is that?"

"The international property magnate sort."

"I'm not a property developer."

"Weren't you sent by Lady Pembroke's legal team to liquidate her assets?"

"No," he replied. "I'm the named executor of her last will and testament."

"Oh. What is it you do in New York then?"

"I own a publishing house."

"Seriously?" my face lit up like a break in the clouds. "Maybe, when we're done here, you could let me pitch to you? I have this great idea for a novel ..."

His face went so stony, you could have sparked flint off his jaw.

"Gotcha," I laughed, swatting his upper arm. "I can barely write a check, let alone a novel."

Relief softened his expression a little. "I suppose I deserved that," he said tightly.

"Yes, you did. You get propositioned a lot then?" I asked.

A devilish lift shaped the corners of his mouth.

"By writers, I mean." Crap, there went the wind burn again.

"All the time," he drawled.

"Something you should know about the Irish," I said. "Power and celebrity don't impress us much. We don't fan girl, and we don't kiss ass. Ever. We'd rather sit in the dark feeling sorry for ourselves, than ever lower ourselves to ask someone else for help."

"I'll remember that," he said, with a smile that creased the corners of his eyes and made my insides quiver.

Damn it. Maybe Liam had a point. I was clearly deprived.

"What else can you tell me about Kathleen Pembroke?" he asked.

"She was quite the local character," I said, leaping on the chance to change the subject from my propositioning of tall, dark and American. "Rumour has it she murdered her husband."

The wind howled around us, growing in intensity. He wrapped his coat tighter to his body and I found myself mirroring the action.

"I was just a little kid when it happened," I explained, raising my voice above the gale "but, apparently, one night, - the stormiest on record for this part of the world - Lord Pembroke disappeared off the face of the earth, never to be seen again. The police suspected his wife, of course, but without a trace of evidence and no body, they eventually left her to her eccentric, reclusive life. Some said she kept the body hidden in the house, and that she was involved in the dark arts." I offered him my best creepy smile. Americans ate up this supernatural crap, after all.

"She was my mother," he said flatly.

"What? Oh very funny. Another joke, right?" I laughed awkwardly. He was kidding. Had to be.

"No joke. Lady Kathleen Pembroke was my mother," he said, deadly serious.

My face fell into shock. "That's not possible. Her son died of fever, or measles or something, when he was five years old. I should know. He used to tease me at kindergarten, and his name was John, not Jack."

I frowned. Hang on. Wasn't Jack a common nickname for John? Like JFK. Oh no ...

"I'm afraid the rumours of my tragic death were vastly exaggerated. After we lost my father, my mother sent me away to boarding school, and I haven't gone by John in a very long time."

Oh God. I'd just pronounced his recently deceased mother a murderer and a witch.

A rash of mortification crawled up my throat and inflamed my cheeks. "I'm so sorry. I was out of line to speak ill of the dead," I said, flustered. But how was I to have known? "You weren't at the funeral," I countered defensively.

"No, I wasn't."

That's all he said. I was dying of embarrassment and he was utterly unmoved. We could still have been discussing the weird weather, for all he was affected.

Realisation clicked into place.

"But you're here now," I said drily. Like some vulture, picking over a lonely old lady's possessions. My gut instinct hadn't deserted me, then, even if my hormones had decided this guy was a prime candidate for the pants-off dance-off. "You couldn't make time to go to the funeral, but now you've seen the size of her estate and got dollar signs in your eyes. I get it." To paraphrase the Bard: An asshole by any other name would still smell like a piece of crap.

His jaw visibly tightened, but he didn't speak a word.

"I'm sorry," I exhaled. "That was out of line, not to mention unprofessional."

"I'm a busy man. Don't we have a job to do here, Miss... ?"

"McShane, Darcy McShane. You're right, we should get this over with, before the storm hits," I said. "Do you have keys? I'll need to take some interior shots and measurements, and we should open the shutters, make the place look a little less sinister for the brochure."

"Of course," he said, his tone aloof as he fished a chunky set of rusted keys from a brown envelope. He walked up the short gravel drive to the hall door and I followed after, scowling at his broad back. "I've heard the locals tell more colourful tales about what happened to my father," he said, turning the ancient locks. He opened the door wide and motioned for me to enter. "Ladies first," he said.

Determined not to be impressed by his show of chivalry, I swept past him into the dark hallway and began hunting the wall for a light switch. "They say this land is cursed," I explained, "that, long ago, a beautiful girl was married off to a sadistic lord who abused her horribly. It's said she took her own life here and was buried overlooking the sea. Legend has it she rose from her shallow grave, bloodthirsty for vengeance on her evil husband. They called her the Dearg Due: the drinker of red blood."

"Like a vampire," he said, those green eyes gleaming with curiosity in the half-light.

"Yes, Jack," I breathed, "like a vampire."

I felt a pang of guilt, playing up the folklore for the tourist, but given he hadn't had the decency to show up at his own mother's wake, and now was blatantly cashing in on the land, I couldn't muster more than that, a pang.

What a creep.

"Fascinating," he said, smiling. "You must tell me more."

"There really is no more to tell."

I finally spotted a row of old-style Bakelite light-switches on the wall and flipped each of them in turn. Nothing happened. "I think the power's been disconnected," I said. "I'll need more than natural light to get any decent interior shots of the house."

"Maybe there's a generator," he said. "I can check the basement, unless you'd rather stand in the dark than accept my offer of help?"

"Touché," I said drolly and he smirked. Irritating man. "Knock yourself out, boy scout." _Preferably by falling head over heels down that dark, rickety stairwell_ , I thought, returning his smirk.

The American pulled out his cell-phone, switched it into snazzy flashlight-mode and disappeared down the steps, while I went through into the drawing room and worked my way along the huge bay windows, folding back the internal shutters as I went. Grey light flooded the dusty, cobwebbed space with its sun-faded antique furnishings and I marvelled at how quickly an empty house could develop that musted atmosphere of abandonment.

Do I smell like that? I wondered, resisting the urge to sniff myself as I glanced around.

Old family portraits lined the damask-covered walls: dark, handsome, green-eyed men, attesting to Jack Pembroke's claims to his wealthy Irish lineage.

As I pulled back the final shutters, the windows rattled, the wind whistling through their joints. The sea-view here was truly breathtaking, the power of nature unleashed in the swollen waves that crashed into foam on the slippery rocks below. The sunset on the horizon cast everything in a purple hue. That vista alone would double the asking-price for the house. I whipped out my camera and searched the view-finder for the perfect shot, wanting to include the cairn of rocks up on the hill. That ancient, man-made pile of stones was what started the myth of the Dearg-Due. Old Irish tradition dictated that rocks be heaped over a grave-site to prevent its occupant rising from the dead. Legend said the abused girl, driven by desperation to take her own life, was given no cairn of stones to house her soul, and so came back to wreak her vengeance on mankind.

Rich Americans would go crazy for the folklore attached to the property. They might wipe their gym-toned asses with hundred dollar bills, but they also believed in leprechauns, and in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In my experience, those things were oil and water: incompatible. The vagaries of life rarely granted you the freedom to pursue true happiness.

And there I went again, bitter and twisted, just like Jack Pembroke's jilted mother. I knew what it was like to be stared at and pitied in a small place like Crooke, just as she had. No doubt I'd end my days alone and crabby in some tumbledown house as she had, with rent-a-crowd mourners at my grave.

I pressed the zoom button and the camera's lens whirred, bringing the cairn into clearer focus. "Oh my God," I breathed. "I don't fucking believe this."

## CHAPTER FOUR

###

On my way out, I heard Jack calling, asking if everything was ok, but the wind slammed the front door shut behind me before I could answer. Oblivious to the weather, I trudged across the grass and mounted the hill. The heels of my shoes squelched, sinking into the marshy ground and making me fight for every step. "Goddamn teenagers," I growled, stepping up to the scattered rocks. The ancient cairn lay in ruins, with broken beer bottles strewn through the rubble. I swore into the wind. "Who would do a thing like this? Defiling a burial site. No bloody respect." I dropped to my knees and started re-piling stones as best I could. That's when I saw it: a blue Argyle sweater, smelling of sheep-dip and body odour. "What the ...?" I picked it up, saw the blood, and screamed.

"Darcy, are you ok?" I heard Jack running up the hill behind me but I was frozen, my breath coming too fast to reply, and then I didn't need to. He saw what I was seeing. "What happened? Oh shit, what is that? Is that blood?"

It was everywhere, not just on the sweater. Reddish brown puddles had formed on the ground and streaked the grass like rust on wire. They seemed to lead a path towards the headland. Together, with dread in our steps, we followed that path to the edge of the cliff. I had to force myself to look down. On the rocks below, John-Joe's naked body lay crushed and bloody, misted in the spray of the waves.

I felt dizzy, nausea roiling in my stomach like the sea-swell far below.

Jack grabbed me by the arm and turned me from the cliff's edge, and I was grateful for his guidance. I couldn't have navigated my way around a circle right then.

"Did you know him?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said shakily, "his name's John-Joe Walsh. He's a local farmer. God. He's dead, isn't he?"

"I'm afraid so," Jack said, wrapping his arms around me in an awkward hug. "I'm sorry."

I looked again, had to be sure. John-Joe's neck was twisted at a completely unnatural angle. No way he could have survived the fall.

"I saw him in the pub, just last night. He..." No. I couldn't think about that. "Oh God, his wife and kids will be devastated."

"A friend of yours?"

"No, just a guy I saw around sometimes."

"Was he depressed?"

"I don't know. No more than any of us in this godforsaken place, I suppose. You think it was suicide? What about all this blood?"

"Perhaps he cut himself, then jumped. Who knows? We need to call the police." Jack pulled out his cell phone and walked a circle in the grass as I watched numbly. "No signal," he growled. "You?"

I hunted my phone with trembling hands. "No, me neither." I said, when I'd managed to still my quaking long enough to check if my phone fared any better. "Could be the storm messing with the signal."

"We can try back at the house. There might be a fixed line." He paced back to me and I pocketed the useless phone, my eyes fixed back on the crashing waves.

"Probably disconnected, just like the electricity _,"_ I said.

"Then we drive back into town," he offered. Putting his hands on my shoulders, he steered me away from the image of the bloated, lifeless body on the rocks below us.

## CHAPTER FIVE

###

Long minutes later, sat in the plush, heated passenger seat of the Jag, my hands shook. I dropped my head back and shut my eyes, replaying what happened in the pub last night, and my brother's promise to fix it so that John-Joe would never touch me again. What a stupid thing to say. I didn't think for a moment Liam would have followed through on the threat. I just prayed no one heard him.

"You doing okay there?" Jack asked, looking over at me. "You look a bit shook-up."

"Yeah I'm shaken. Maybe corpses are as commonplace as spat-out gum on your New York sidewalks, but round here it's kind of a big deal, you know?"

"I didn't mean to -"

"Oh shit, look out!" I shouted.

Eyes torn back to the country lane, Jack slammed on the brakes. The tree came down almost gracefully, landing across the hood of the car with a sickening crunch. Next thing I knew I was breathing in a mouthful of airbag and the car's alarm triggered, its high-pitch squeal the soundtrack to a flurry of panic as I battled to open the passenger-side door. _Could this day get any worse?_ I thought.

"You alright there, Jack?" I asked shakily.

"I'm fine," he groaned. He rubbed at a graze on his forehead and his hand came away bloody. "Are you hurt?"

"No, but my door's stuck," I said. Between the wind and the tangle of huge branches outside, the thing refused to budge.

"This way," Jack said, offering me a hand as I scrambled gracelessly over the driver's seat.

Out in the gale once more, the full extent of the damage became evident.

"Christ, if you hadn't hit the brakes, the police would have been dealing with two more dead bodies," I said.

He nodded. "We got lucky."

I raised a brow. "You call this lucky?"

Jack shrugged. "We're alive."

I winced. The hood of the Jaguar was utterly mangled. The old sycamore was huge, its branches bare. It had probably been dead for some time, but it'd taken the high winds to finally bring her down. "Sorry about your car. Looks like a write-off."

Another shrug. "It's a rental. My PA, Adriana, organised it. It's what she thinks I should drive."

"What do you drive?" I couldn't resist asking, any more than I could stop myself imagining a perfectly groomed, waspish assistant fawning over his every need.

"Not much call for a car in NYC. I have a motorcycle for my time off."

The inordinately sexy image of Jack Pembroke on a motorbike triggered another dose of windburn.

"What do we do now?" I asked, tucking my hair behind my ears and getting myself back in the game.

"We've still got your car, but it'll take a crane and a chainsaw to shift this monster," he said, patting the dead tree-trunk. "Is there another road off the property?"

"No," I said, frowning. "We're surrounded by bog, forest and the coastline. No chance in hell my little car would make it off-road in this terrain. The nearest neighbour is fifteen miles away," I said.

"That's too far to walk. It's almost nightfall. Another half hour and we won't be able to see three feet in front of ourselves. I suggest we go back to the house and bunker-down until the storm passes. Hope the phone signal kicks back in."

"But - " The thought of spending the night alone in that dark house with a virtual stranger ignited fear in my belly, along with other feelings I was too cowardly to explore, " - that could take all night. My brother will be worried." I wondered if was that strictly true. Liam's mind was on other things tonight, like that blonde vamp. If he got lucky, he might not even get home tonight to notice I was gone.

"You got a better plan?" Jack asked.

"There's a sheltered cove with a row-boat behind the property. We could row across the bay to the village. It's not far at all by sea, but in this weather, it'd be suicide." I shook my head. Much as I hated to admit it, the American was right.

## CHAPTER SIX

###

"There is no generator," Jack said, emerging from the cellar with spider webs in his hair. "Just a big-old boiler that looks like it's from another century. I did find this though," he said, arms laden with firewood. "At least we'll be warm."

"I found a huge box of candles, and these," I smiled, shaking the box of matches I'd found in the back of a dusty cupboard. I struck a match and lit a couple of the big beeswax columns, setting them around the drawing room while Jack went to work piling the logs in the big open fireplace. I watched him work, marvelling at how much he looked like he belonged in the big house. It was the Pembroke family seat, I supposed. Like his arrogance and good looks, it was something he'd been bred to.

"And Darcy said, let there be light," I said, blowing out the match and handing Jack the box so he could kindle the fire. "Your mother was prepared, I'll give her that."

"I imagine power outages are a regular enough occurrence in a place like this. If only she'd stocked up on emergency champagne and caviar."

"I'd settle for a strong coffee and a bag of chips. The larder's pretty bare. Just some tea-leaves and a few dried herbs."

"Hungry?"

I nodded. "Starving. I skipped lunch." Nothing like seeing your ex's wedding announcement to kill a girl's appetite. Then there'd been the corpse on the rocks. Now though, knowing we were stranded, my body seemed to have shifted into survival mode, and I was ravenous.

"I've got some saltine crackers in my bag. It's in the trunk of the car," he said.

"You don't have to..." But boy scout American was already out the door into the storm. I'd barely hunted a big cooking pot from the cupboard when he arrived back.

"I found this too," he grinned, waving a bottle of red wine and tossing the little cellophane packets of crackers on the table. "Compliments of the Regency Hotel," he explained. "The perks of a five-star establishment."

"We're a regular pair of castaways."

"Not much of a feast, I'm afraid."

"I had an idea while you were gone," I said, holding up the empty pot.

"Is it a magic one?" he asked, quirking a stupidly handsome brow as he peered into the empty vessel.

"Thought we could do a little hunter-gathering."

He looked at me like I was insane. "You expect to hunt game? In this weather?"

"Not game. _Fruits de la mer,_ " I explained. "The cove beneath the house is famous for its mussels. You eat shellfish?"

"Hell yeah," he grinned.

"I can go. I know the way down," I said.

"You think I'd let you go down there alone? After what we found today?"

"Safety in numbers, then. We go together?"

"Together," he agreed.

## CHAPTER SEVEN

###

Even in full daylight and fine weather, the stone steps down to the cove were treacherous, slippery with moss and eroded by centuries of sea air. I found myself grasping onto hanks of grass, testing every step. Jack Pembroke, needless to say, navigated his way down to the sand and pebble shore like a Sherpa, and was stood at the bottom waiting for me, pot in hand. The towering cliffs either side formed a natural shelter from the wind, and the sudden stillness lent a surreal edge to the scene. The waves clapped against the sides of the little row-boat moored in the shingle beach, and in the distance, Hook Head lighthouse cast its beam over the white-tipped waves at the confluence of the Celtic and the Irish seas.

"Such a wild place," Jack said.

"You know this is where Strongbow is said to have boasted he'd take Ireland 'by Hook or by Crooke.'

"Yeah." Jack smiled. "My father told me the story when I was young. You know Strongbow was the Norman Earl of Pembroke?"

"Seriously? A Pembroke, just like you. Are you related to him?"

"Probably a distant relation." Jack smiled up at me, a charming, crooked smile. "Pembrokes can be traced back to this land for many centuries." He'd taken off his shoes and socks and was busy rolling up the ends of his suit trousers. I couldn't help but notice he had nice feet, clean and manly. There was something oddly intimate about watching a man in a suit bare his feet. An image of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy, pulling himself sodden from the lake at Pemberley came to mind. Shaking that thought from my head, I slipped out of my leather pumps and stockings, balling them up inside one of the shoes, and carried the big pot to the rock pools where the mussels clung to the stone amongst the glistening fronds of seaweed.

"I haven't done anything like this in a long time," Jack said, hunkered down as he prised the shellfish from the rocks.

"Me neither," I replied. "My parents used to bring me here sometimes, when I was a kid."

"Darcy. That's an interesting name, for a girl. Your mother named you?"

"Yeah."

"Let me guess, she's a Jane Austen fan?"

"The only Mr. Darcy I'm named after is John Patrick Darcy, my grandfather."

"I see."

"But yes, as it happens, my mother was an Austen fan," I said, emphasis on the past tense.

"She passed?"

I nodded.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"It was a long time ago," I shrugged and smiled sadly. "I'm sorry for yours."

He stared at his bare feet and for a long time said nothing. I filled the silence by filling the pot with more mussels.

"After my father left us," he said, eventually, "she sent me away to boarding school."

"How old were you?"

"Six years old."

"God, that's so young. I'm sorry."

"She wasn't right in the head after he left. She took me out of school, told the headmaster I was sick. I still remember her, dousing the house with holy water and hanging all these bundles of strange-smelling herbs from the windows. She said they were to ward off the evil spirits. Then one day, she dragged me out of bed early and told me I had to go away, or they'd be coming back for me."

"They? The evil spirits?"

He nodded. "I was just a kid, you know? I didn't understand that she was sick. All I knew was that the rug was being pulled out from under my entire life. I look back on it now, I think maybe my mother thought he'd left her for another woman, and she was afraid he was going to come back and take me away from her."

"You think that's what really happened?"

He shook his head and took a deep breath. "No. If he were still alive, he'd have shown up somehow, eventually. None of his bank accounts or assets were ever touched. It was a real stormy night, like you said. You ask me, I'd say my father took a tumble off the cliffs and his body got swept out to sea."

"That's terrible." A shiver crawled up my spine and I tried really hard not to think of John-Joe's body lying dead on the other side of the rocks. "Is this your first time back to Ireland?" I asked.

"Yeah. My mother forbade me to ever return here." The tightness in his words betrayed the emotions he tried to suppress. "Not even for her funeral."

So that was why he hadn't shown. Damn. I couldn't imagine how that kind of rejection must have hurt him. I'd lost my mother to cancer when I was just fifteen, but even at the bitter end, when the pain was unbearable, I knew she'd have suffered anything just to stay with us. I felt like a bitch for having prejudged him.

"I'm so sorry," I said, and I meant it.

"She was sick in the head. Delusional. I can't blame her."

"And you never tried to come back?"

"She didn't want me here. She made that abundantly clear. The doctors said it would probably be for the best if I stayed away."

He moved to another rock pool and got busy harvesting a fresh crop of shellfish. His damp hair fell across his eyes as he bent forward, shielding his expression. The thin gold band on the ring-finger of his right hand glinted in the moonlight. It was the wrong hand, but curiosity got the better of me.

"You have somebody, back in New York?"

He shook his head and threw me a quick smile. "Married to the job," he said.

Yeah, parental rejection at that tender an age was sure to leave you with some kind of attachment issues.

"You're really going to sell the house?" I asked. "Given that it's been in your family for so many generations."

"There's nothing here for me," he said, "only bad memories."

"You could make new ones," I suggested.

"You don't think I should sell?" he asked, finally looking up at me with those piercing green eyes.

"No, I... Obviously, it's your choice. It's just that this house, it's your heritage, and this place is so beautiful. The view alone is priceless. With a little love and attention, I believe Bronach could rival any of the big country estates. You don't know how lucky you are to have such a treasure in your possession. You sell Bronach to some big-city developer, they'll rip the soul out of her."

"You're very good at your job, Miss McShane," Jack said, and his eyes creased into a twinkling smile. "What would a city-slicker publisher like me do in a big old place like this? The house doesn't even have phone signal, let alone broadband."

"We're not stuck in the Middle Ages here," I said, unable to disguise the note of bitterness that slipped into my words.

"I'm sorry if I offended your home-town," he said.

"Technically it's your home-town too. We may not be bright lights and big city here, but Crooke has a lot going for it."

"Such as?"

"Just look around you, it's wild, and beautiful."

"Yes, wild and beautiful, for sure," he said, looking right at me with those smouldering green eyes.

I felt something clench, low in my belly. My body wanted to believe he was telling me I was beautiful. Pathetic. I felt the heat creep over my cheeks. My lips parted, but I had no words.

"Is your mother the reason you stayed?" he asked.

"Sorry?"

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't imagine a charming, intelligent, funny girl like you being happy to spend her entire life in such a small place."

I wanted to deny it, but I couldn't, any more than I could deny that his inane flattery affected me. "No," I said. "My mother died of breast cancer when I was a teenager. I stayed for my father's sake. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's right before my then fiancé and I were due to emigrate to Australia."

"That's rough," he said, frowning. "I'm sorry. How's your father now?"

"He's end-stage, in a care-home. Liam and I managed to keep him home until three months ago, but now he doesn't even know us anymore."

"So you sacrificed your own future for him?"

"I did what any daughter would do."

"And your boyfriend? Where's he?"

"My fiancé," I corrected him. "Ex-fiancé, to be exact. He's in Australia."

"He went anyway, without you," Jack concluded.

My silence confirmed it.

"Then he's a fucking idiot."

"Yeah, well, I guess life isn't something you can really plan for," I said, getting back on my feet. "Just when you think you're headed in one direction, fate jumps out and spins the signpost another way."

There was more I didn't tell Jack Pembroke. Like how I'd come home early from the hospital one afternoon and found Alec in bed with my roommate, Sally. At least I'd only got a broken heart. He'd got a killer dose of herpes from Sally, and God help me, but the bitter and twisted part of me hoped it flared up on his wedding day.

## CHAPTER EIGHT

###

An hour later, and a combination of the roaring fire and a huge glass of red wine had put a distinct glow in my cheeks. I sat on the hearth-rug with my legs tucked under me, while Jack took possession of one of the big fireside wing-chairs. A huge mound of empty mussel shells stood testament to the feast we'd just enjoyed. Sated and just a little tipsy, I ventured to ask what had been on my mind these past few hours.

"What do you suppose happened to John-Joe?"

Jack balanced his wine glass on the arm of the chair and swirled its contents, ruby in the firelight. "If I had to guess, I'd say he came up here to drink."

"I saw him at the local pub last night, and he was pretty well-on."

"That fits, then. There was a lot of broken glass around. He could have cut himself, staggered away and lost his footing on the cliff."

"How'd he get here, though? I didn't see any car, did you?"

He shook his head, brows pulled together in thought. "You think he wasn't alone?"

"Somebody messed up the cairn," I said. "I can't imagine John-Joe doing that, even three sheets to the wind drunk. Folks around here are superstitious."

"Teenagers maybe, underage drinking? Sounds like the kind of prank kids would pull. It'd explain all the empty bottles too." He drank deep, licked his lips, and I was momentarily transfixed by his full, wet mouth. "What's your theory, sleuth?" he drawled.

"My theory?" I laughed. "Somebody disturbed the final resting-place of the Dearg Due, and now she's back from the grave, sucking the lifeblood of poor, unsuspecting men."

"You have a vivid imagination," he said. "I like that. Does the vampire myth excite you?"

"Why? Are you a vampire, Mr. Jack Pembroke?" I teased.

"Would you find me more sexually appealing if I were?"

_More sexually appealing?_ "You mean if you were a sharp-dressing, powerful, broody, manipulating, bad-boy bloodsucker?"

"Touché, Miss McShane." His smile was lazy, a gleam of teeth in the firelight.

"What makes you think that's what women want?"

"I'm a publisher. My desk is strewn daily with female fantasies: every dirty, taboo thought laid bare in print."

"I'll let you in on a little secret, Mr. Big Publisher. Most of us would settle for a man with decent personal hygiene who could make us laugh."

"Why would a woman like you ever settle?"

"Oh you're smooth," I laughed.

"I'm serious. Arrogance. Dominance. Confidence. Power. Danger. How does a flesh and blood man compete with the product of a woman's secret desires?"

"There is no competition. Vampires don't exist."

"I disagree. The mind, fantasy, those are very real and powerful things."

"But they're just that: a fantasy."

"Why shouldn't they be reality? If a woman wants to be noticed, to feel attractive, to be desired, if she gets off on the power that comes with feeling she is the sole object of a powerful man's sexual obsession. Is that so wrong?"

"No, I suppose not," I said. My finger played with the rim of my wine glass. "As long as it's in the context of a healthy relationship. No girl wants some psycho obsessive stalker, not in real-life."

"Very true, and not all the stalkers are men, believe me," he said, drinking deep.

"Anyway," I said, wanting to turn the focus back onto him, "it's not just us girls. Men have their fantasy women too."

"True," he replied. The corners of his mouth curved with a grin that was all wickedness. "And what would a man like me have to do to make a beautiful, intelligent woman like you the object of his fantasies?"

I almost choked on a mouthful of wine.

"You're very direct. Is that an American thing?"

"It's who I am. I'm not afraid to go after what I want in life."

"What is it you want, Jack Pembroke?"

"I want to make love to you. I've wanted it since you first looked up at me from down on your knees in the grass."

I stared at him, open-mouthed. It hadn't just been me who'd felt that instantaneous, panty-dropping first-sight attraction then. Crikey.

"I'm prepared to do whatever it takes. No apologies," he said, in a voice that was pure smoke and gravel.

The intensity of his words made me nervous and excited in equal measure. "Whatever it takes? Even if it meant pretending you were a vampire?" I teased, resorting to humour in an attempt to disguise my nerves.

"I'm prepared to play along," he said, lifting another shell to his lips. The way he sucked the pink morsel into his mouth was borderline indecent. Or maybe that was just my filthy mind.

He eased himself back into the armchair, owning it in that shameless, spread-eagle, loosened-tie sprawl only a man can pull off. His lids were at half-mast, the corners of his mouth lifted in a wicked half-smile when he drawled the words that changed the course of the entire night. "I like to fuck when I feed," he said.

A jolt of surprise arrowed through my gut.

He hadn't just said what I thought he'd said, had he?

Definitely my dirty mind.

"Excuse me?" I ventured warily.

"You heard me, Darcy," he said slowly. "Now how about you show me those skimpy panties you were trying to tease me with earlier?"

"You're serious?" I laughed tentatively.

I swallowed, hard. Was I going to do this? Was I willing to play along with this man, this stranger?

Wine and lust mixed, a potent cocktail in my bloodstream, made my head light and my skin tingle. I was shy and excited all at once.

Fuck it, I thought. This was one night of reckless freedom, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The American dream.

Tomorrow, the gorgeous man sat opposite me would go back to New York and consign whatever happened in this room to what was, no doubt, an impressive résumé of conquests.

Tomorrow, I could walk shamelessly through the village with no witnesses to spark local gossip. No repercussions, no regrets.

Jack wet his lower lip, watching me, like a chess player, waiting for my next move.

In the end, I took my courage from his eyes, the way they devoured me, like I was some irresistibly exotic delicacy. He was so right, there was power in being the object of a man's sexual obsession.

I rose up from the floor onto my knees. Bracing them slightly apart, I closed my eyes and slid the skirt up my bare thighs, inching higher, higher, until I knew he had a good eyeful of my white, lace-trimmed hip huggers.

"Very nice," he rasped, his voice a good octave lower than I remembered.

I dared to peek through my lashes and my eyes were drawn straight to his impressive erection. Tense behind his suit pants, the silky fabric left nothing to the imagination, outlining his cock in rude anatomical detail. Thighs parted, he was utterly unashamed of what my little display had done to his body, and how fucking sexy was that?

"Show me more," he commanded, stroking his thumb across his lower lip, making me wonder what it would feel like to kiss that mouth.

He was daring me, and the heat of his gaze, sending shivers over my skin, made me bold. With trembling fingers, I reached up to pop the buttons of my blouse, one by one, slowly revealing the lace-covered swells of my breasts.

The appreciative sound that rose from the back of his throat was so guttural, I felt its vibration between my thighs, like a strum of pleasure.

"Sit up there," he said, motioning behind me with a tilt of his jaw.

"Okay," I replied softly, turning to see that he meant the solid mahogany dining table.

I rose slowly, holding his gaze, backing up until my thighs hit the edge. If I looked away, I'd have lost my nerve. Hitching my skirt waist-high, I slid my ass up onto the cool, polished wood. Sitting primly, hands braced on the lip of the table I asked coyly, "What now, Jack?"

"Open your legs, Darcy. I want to see you touch yourself."

"I'll touch if you will," I dared him, spreading my thighs to gift him another glimpse of my panties. I was so wet at this point, I was sure the fabric must be see-through, that he could make out every crease and fold of my throbbing flesh.

"Deal," he replied, letting his hand fall from his face to the straining bulge at his crotch. He ran the heel of his hand down the thick length, once, twice. I watched his thighs tense, the strain of desire hardening his features. I was so entranced by the shape of him through his pants that I didn't notice he'd opened the zip of his fly until his hand dipped inside and he freed both his erection and the heavy sac beneath. The sight of his bare flesh, thick and gloriously long, lying up his stomach, turgid with veins and pulsing against the dark contrast of his suit, was both obscene and an incredible turn-on.

He looked right at me, green eyes dark and smouldering beneath those heavy lashes, challenging me to cry uncle on this lewd little show and tell we had going on between two virtual strangers.

I bit at the smile forming on my lips, spread my legs wider, leaned back onto the table and snaked my hand down between my legs. I ran the tip of my index finger along the seam of my cleft, all the way from my entrance to the pulsing bud of my clit, once, twice, as he had done, outlining where I ached through the sodden material of my panties.

I heard Jack groan, turned my head to the side and watched him fist the thick girth of his cock. He pumped, slowly, sensuously, and any remaining inhibitions I had unravelled in the puddle of my quaking lust.

Tugging my panties to one side, I gifted him the raw sight of my glistening sex and he rewarded me with a growl that was all male. Arching back on the table, I let my fingers glide through the slippery velvet folds, easing the ache but simultaneously cranking up my need.

Caught up in the sensation, I never heard him move until his hands were shaping my bare knees. I braced myself on my elbows, staring up into his dark, lust-filled eyes as he positioned himself between my thighs. I felt the underside of his erection pressed into my belly and the soft weight of his sac resting against my soaked panties. He took my mouth in a sensual, sucking, wine-flavoured kiss. His tongue flicked against mine, his teeth grazed my lower lip and I felt my hips undulate, desperate to get him closer to where I throbbed. He left my mouth, trailing kisses along my jaw, leaving smouldering imprints of passion in their wake. He rimmed the shell of my ear with his tongue. Soft, wet and deliciously warm, the velvety tip swept inside my ear, amplifying the moist, slippery sensation until all I could think of was how it would feel to have that tongue stroking between my legs. A mewling plea escaped my lips and my head fell back, fanning my hair across the table. This man was nothing like I'd ever had, and I suspected he could make me do anything he wanted, and make me love it.

"If I were a vampire, this is when I'd penetrate your flesh," he said, closing his teeth around the pulsing column of my throat, nipping softly.

"You're killing me," I groaned.

"You're beautiful, Darcy. The most exquisite thing I've ever laid eyes on," he crooned to my ear, slipping the cups of my bra beneath my breasts. My nipples tightened, and with the pads of his thumbs he worked them into hard, deliciously painful peaks. "Will you let me penetrate you?" he murmured, while sucking at the sensitive pulse-point of my throat.

Oh God, at that point he could have asked for anything, and I'd have begged him to take it from me. "Please, Jack," I breathed.

Keeping us joined as we were at the hips, he reached into his jacket and deftly removed a condom from its foil packet. Thank God one of us was still thinking above the waist. I was so far gone, I'd have taken him bareback.

He was fully dressed. Technically, I was too, yet the moment seemed all the more erotic for that. I watched with hungry eyes as he rolled the latex down to the base of his shaft, the heel of his hand grazing my inner thigh as he did so. I watched, lips parted, breath ragged as he hooked my panties to one side and rubbed the head of his cock against my clit, parting the seam of my slippery flesh, glossing himself in my arousal. I moaned as he gripped himself, guiding his shaft to my threshold. I felt my flesh throb around his, I savoured the thick stretching invasion of him as he thrust slowly, relentlessly, burying himself balls-deep inside me. I cried out in pleasure, and so did he.

Only then did the eye-contact resume, and it was electric, each knowing what the other had just seen, each feeling that beautiful, visceral connection than only full sex can create.

He gripped my thighs, spreading me wide, and I lay back against the hard, polished mahogany, giving myself up to him. I felt his cock pulse inside me as he began to thrust: hard, slow, almost painfully deep, rhythmically slapping his thighs to my buttocks. He looked drugged, mesmerised by the bounce of my breasts with each stroke that threatened to ride me further up the table. I shaped them in my palms for him, pinching my nipples, arching my back. He rewarded me with a shift in tempo. With mounting urgency, his thrusts quickened, pounding my hypersensitive flesh, punching up into that deep spot inside of me that left me on the verge of screams. His thumb found my clit, circling pressure where I was already set to explode.

"Darcy," he growled. Teeth gritted, jaw tense, the muscles in his neck were strung into tight cords. I could only imagine how his body moved beneath that suit, but I had a vivid imagination. He threw his head back on a pained cry. Every muscle in my body tensed, just as his did the same. My thighs trembled in his grip, my toes curled and I reached up to fist his jacket, grappling for purchase as an orgasm like none I'd ever felt detonated inside me, clenching his cock through the rhythmic spasms of his release. The waves of ecstasy spread through me like a current, radiating out into my limbs, jolting through my body until I was nothing but a boneless puddle, sprawled across the dining table, speechless.

He withdrew from me carefully, breaking contact only long enough to deal with the condom, and then he was back, resting his cheek on my still-pulsing stomach, stroking his fingers through my hair.

"That was incredible," I laughed huskily, my throat raw from cries of pleasure.

"I'm only getting started," he replied. "So many filthy, depraved acts I want to commit on this beautiful body," he whispered, stroking my flushed skin, the smile curling his lips laden with wicked promise.

"If you're not careful, I might let you," I replied.

And God help me but I did. That night, I discovered the delights and tortures of his tongue between my thighs. I felt those thick inches breach my lips and fill my throat, I felt the power I had over his body, in the sounds he made when he came, in the beautiful flex of his muscular body, which exceeded all my imaginings. And in return I allowed him inside of me, in every intimate way possible between a man and a woman. Things I'd never done with another, things I'd feared as much as I had secretly desired, but he made them beautiful. He was slow and tender, careful when I needed it, hard and passionate at my command, and above all, utterly unashamed. That night, in the middle of a storm, in that isolated house by the sea, my American lover taught me the true meaning of life, liberty and the pursuit of ecstasy.

We fell asleep in the armchair, me curled naked in his lap with my ear to his heartbeat.

## CHAPTER NINE

###

I woke, in the dead of night, to the sounds of the house creaking against the buffeting wind outside. Desperate to pee, I eased myself away from the sensual heat of Jack's sleeping body and pulled on his discarded shirt to go in search of a bathroom. He groaned softly and curled in on himself, but didn't wake.

Carrying a candle, I padded barefoot down the hall, my body aching in the most delicious ways with every sway of my hips.

I found a downstairs bathroom and rested the candle on the edge of the sink. After taking care of business, I stared at my reflection in the dusty mirror and smoothed my tousled hair. In the yellow light of the flame, smudged mascara made my eyes look wild and abnormally bright. My cheeks glowed and my lips were puffy and swollen from the biting passion of his kisses. God, he was an incredible lover. My core muscles clenched at just the memory of him moving inside me.

It was just one night, I told myself. The man was selling up Bronach and going back to his fancy job in the Big Apple, where he probably had a line of beautiful women queuing up around the block for his bedroom skills.

I wasn't going to be one of those women: the ones who confused sex-happies with love. However drugged-up on bonding hormones my body might be, I refused to acknowledge any real kind of attachment. Any connection I felt with him was just Mother Nature's biological trickery. He'd be out of my system before he got back on that plane. He had to be, or I was in very serious danger of getting burned.

## CHAPTER TEN

###

At first, I thought the knocking was just the wind rattling the window panes, or maybe a tree-branch tapping rhythmically against the glass. But the closer I got to its source, the more urgent the rapping grew. Candle in hand, I diverted from my path back to where Jack was sleeping, and instead approached the glass-paned doors that led out onto the veranda.

Outside, a shadowy figure moved against the glass, and I could just make out the knuckles of the hand responsible for the incessant rapping. The door handle rattled, testing the lock.

We were no longer alone.

Perhaps Liam had come looking for me after all. Maybe it was the police, out searching for John-Joe when he never returned home. Either way, I looked down at myself, dishevelled, and naked but for Jack Pembroke's suit shirt, and I cursed. This was going to look just peachy. I contemplated walking away from the caller. I could run and get dressed quickly, make myself look even half-respectable before opening that door, but something made me brazen - probably the fact I was still riding the high of a night of powerfully disinhibited sex with a drop-dead gorgeous stranger. Screw whoever it was, I'd done nothing wrong. I'd open the door with my chin high and Crooke's gossip-mongers could choke on their juicy titbit for all I cared. Besides, whoever was out there was freezing their ass off in the storm. I doubted my bed-headed state of undress was their first priority.

"Okay, I'm coming," I said.

I padded over to the veranda doors and slid the upper bolts across. As I bent to open the lower ones, the door pushed violently in on me, sending me tumbling backwards in a graceless sprawl.

Standing over me was last person in the world I'd expected to see: the blonde vamp from the pub the night before. Shades pushed up into her hairline, I could see now her eyes were in fact a normal shade of chocolate brown. What I thought I'd seen had been just a trick of the light, after all.

She stared at me a moment, brows knitted, like I wasn't who she'd been expecting at all. Then, as her eyes scrolled down my scantily-clad body, her expression morphed into a glower to rival the storm that was raging outside and banging the veranda door on its hinges.

"You little slut," she hissed. Catching me off guard, she snatched a fistful of my hair and yanked hard enough to bring tears to my eyes. "Where is he?" she demanded.

"Where's who?" I asked, voice strained by the rip of pain dragging at my scalp. I struggled in spite of it.

She rewarded me with a stinging backhand across my cheek that freed me from her grip even as it dashed more pain across my senses. "Don't play the dumb whore with me," she snarled, "you know who I mean. Jack Pembroke is mine."

"Yours?" I squeaked, scrambling backwards. This crazy bitch had me at a total disadvantage on the floor. All I knew was that I had to get back on my feet.

"Mine," she sneered, "he's always been mine, and he always will be. He needs me. I'm so much more than just his PA. Just because you let him deep-throat you and fuck you in the ass doesn't make you special. You're just like all the others. He'll use you like toilet paper, then flush you away and forget all about the dirty little stain you made on his life. Trust me."

Staggering on my feet, my back hit the wall. I felt as though I'd been kicked in the gut, and the fermenting flotsam of mussels and red wine in my stomach threatened to eject themselves onto the floor.

"You're married?" I asked tightly.

"He's wearing the ring, isn't he? Or did he take it off beforehand? Such a gentleman, is my Jack."

Oh God. When was I ever going to fucking learn when it came to men? _Married to the job_ , he'd said. Right, meaning married to his PA. I was such a bloody fool. My skin crawled with disgust. I hadn't felt this contaminated since that god-awful day I'd walked in on Alec and Sally doing the nasty on our bed sheets.

"I didn't know," I said, defeated.

"No, you wouldn't know, would you? That's what happens when you let any old random stranger fuck you," she sneered. "Just get out of here, you ugly little skank, before I fucking kill you." She grabbed me by my upper arm and I shoved her away roughly. "Go crawl back to the other fat, stupid wallflowers, where you belong," she said, clearly seething, even as she primly smoothed the clinging black fabric of her dress down over her hips. "He was seriously dredging the swamp with you, honey. Be thankful he couldn't see your cellulite in the dark."

"Adriana," I heard Jack's voice as he approached down the corridor. He was bare-chested and zipping up his pants as he walked. "Jesus, Adriana. What the hell are you doing here?"

I couldn't bear to even look at him.

"I followed you from New York, obviously." She planted her hands on her tiny hips and pouted at him. "Figured I couldn't trust you to take care of yourself, and clearly I was right. I found that beautiful car I arranged for you, destroyed. I thought you were hurt, Jack. I was so worried, I trudged through all that mud, all the way up to this awful wreck of a house. My Blahnik's are ruined, and my hair. Christ, I hate this fucking country. Does the weather never stop?"

Ignoring her pathetic pity-party, I pushed my way past him.

"Darcy," I heard him say, but I couldn't listen. I didn't even want to hear his voice.

"Don't bother," I replied. I held up one hand as I turned away, fighting back tears. "Just don't, okay, please."

I power-walked back down the corridor to retrieve my clothes in a truly perverse version of the walk of shame.

"Darcy, let me explain," he said, jogging up behind me.

"There's no need," I said tightly, snatching up the strewn pieces of my clothing from where they'd fallen in the heat of passion. "Adriana already explained everything."

"Adriana is my PA," he said stonily.

"Yeah, I know what she is, and I know what this was, between us," I said. "One night of conscience-free fantasy fulfilment. That's fine, that's what we agreed. I'm a big girl, Jack. I'll be just fine. Besides, you weren't that great a lay," I lied, snatching at the tattered shreds of my pride along with my still-damp underwear. "I'll have Bronach on the market just as soon as the police are done collecting their evidence on John-Joe's death, and you and Adriana can go back to your happy little fucked-up New York lives."

"Last night meant nothing to you?" he asked, and I thought I heard the smallest crack in his voice. Wishful thinking that would get me nowhere.

"Not a thing. Call it scratching an itch. Urgh, on second thoughts, no, forget that metaphor. You better not have given me some horrible sexually transmitted disease." I crawled under the table to grab my skirt, probably flashing him my bare ass in the process. "What the hell was I thinking, letting you get me so drunk? Here, you might need this," I said, brazenly peeling his shirt off my naked body and throwing it at his chest.

He caught it and clutched it, and for a moment, the bastard actually had the nerve to look hurt. I guess the bad-lay jibe had been a real punch to his raging man-ego. Un-fucking-believable.

"Very well," he said, "if that's how you want to play this. But it's still the middle of the night. Surely we can all be adults about this and wait 'til morning. I'll make sure you get home safe, at least."

"You are some piece of work, you know that?" I laughed sarcastically.

"I don't understand," he pleaded. "What happened?"

"What happened? I woke up to the truth, Jack." I dragged the skirt up my thighs and buttoned my blouse, hastily shoving my bare feet into my shoes. I snatched up my coat and bag and started walking. "I left your arms and the fantasy evaporated, and if you think I'm spending one more minute in this place with you and your fucking psycho wife, you've got another thing coming, asshole. I'd walk five hundred miles just to get the hell away from you right now." I snapped open the hall door and marched out into the storm.

_You idiot, Darcy. Shoulda listened to your gut when it told you this prick was gonna take you for a ride._ I pictured myself at that mirror, all sex-blissed and squishy, feeling the love connection, and I wanted to puke.

"Did you say my wife?" I heard him shout. "You said my wife."

## CHAPTER ELEVEN

###

"Darcy," he called. "Hear me out."

No. I was out that door before he could pawn me off with his lame-arse excuses, my sole objective to get myself back home. Then I could shut myself away from the world. Then I could let the tears come, and wallow in my own bloody stupidity.

"Yes, go, you fat, ugly slut!" I heard Adriana's shout and straightened my spine. Sticks and stones, right?

"Adriana," Jack growled a warning, but it was too late.

She was on me like a woman possessed, tackling me down into the muddy grass, ripping at my hair and clawing at my face with her fake nails.

I cried out, winded, and stunned. Jack was leant over us, trying to drag her off me, but her clutches were so tight in my hair that he only succeeded in lending her traction, and I felt the sickening pain as a chunk of roots tore from my scalp. She snarled in my face and glared at me with eyes that struck icy terror into the marrow of my bones. Just as I thought I'd glimpsed them at the pub, those eyes had no irises, just a starburst of black veins across solid white.

Jesus Christ, she was some kind of demon.

Panic flooded my veins, and the rush of pain and adrenaline kicked my survival instincts into high-gear. Directing my knee hard up into her stomach, I delved a hand into the bag hanging from my shoulder and found what I needed. I shoved the little can of pepper spray in Adriana's face and depressed the nozzle with everything I had.

Such a pathetic hissing sound it made, but boy was it effective.

For a split second she was stunned, enough that she released her grip on my hair, and I witnessed her eyes bleed back to that normal, human, chocolate brown they'd been earlier. As I rolled away, the screaming started, then the choking noises and the hacking cough. Adriana curled up on herself and shielding her face with her hands, she wailed like a banshee. Jack looked ashen. He had one hand on her shoulder, the other prising at her fingers, trying to get her to show him her face.

I staggered to my feet and tripped into a dead run across the lawn, my mind racing like a rabbit on speed, frantic for an escape.

Taking my car was out of the question. I'd only get as far as the fallen tree. Adriana's car would be on the other side, but unless she'd left a key in the ignition, I hadn't the first clue about hotwiring the damn thing.

I could keep running, but what if they came after me? In these dainty shoes, I hadn't a hope in hell of out-running an athletic man like Jack. I'd experienced his stamina, up close and personal. As for his demonic wife? My mind refused to even process what I'd seen back there. I just knew that having that thing chase me across the countryside in the pitch dark was a definite no-go. Knowing my luck, I'd fall in a ditch and break my neck.

The wind had died down some, though, and that opened up another possibility: the row-boat. I was a strong swimmer, competent enough with a pair of oars, and the village was just a short stretch across the relatively sheltered bay. Liam and I had crossed it many times as children. I could do this. Thighs burning, I sprinted up the hill to the cliff top.

The wailing and panicked choking grew more distant the farther I ran, reassuring me Adriana was still incapacitated at the front of the house. I thought I made out her voice once or twice, shouting, "I can't see," and "what happened?" I stole a glance over my shoulder and confirmed that, as yet, no one had followed me. With any luck, Jack would be distracted taking care of Adriana long enough for me to get away. I had no idea how he'd react to me pepper-spraying his psycho-bitch wife, but experience said that if you messed with family, they'd turn on you quicker than piranhas on a drowning cat.

For all I knew they'd murdered John-Joe. Adriana had mentioned him to me in the toilets at the bar. Poor John-Joe. I peered over the cliff to where we'd seen him earlier, broken on the rocks, but there was nothing there, just the crashing waves on the jagged black stone far below.

His body was gone.

Maybe, in my panic, I'd misidentified the spot, but no, it had been right where I was standing, a stone's throw from the defiled cairn. Was the body washed out to sea in the storm? Whatever the reason, I couldn't delay. If they had murdered John-Joe, then for all I knew, I was next. God knew I'd provoked Adriana to violence, and those eyes, they were unnatural.

I scrambled back down the eroded stone steps, clutching onto the dune grass for dear life. Sheets of rain lashed my face, and my cheeks burned with a genuine windburn, mixed with chagrin at everything I had allowed to happen. Only hours before I had been in this same cove with him, willing him to look at me with those jewelled green eyes and tell me I was beautiful. How the tides turned.

Just across the bay, the village of Crooke lay huddled in a cluster of twinkling lights and fishing boats bobbing in the swell. The promise of sanctuary, tantalisingly close yet agonisingly far away.

## CHAPTER TWELVE

###

Some people say Fate puts you in a particular place at a particular time for a reason, that certain events in our lives are preordained to happen, regardless of free will. Fate wasn't something I'd ever given much thought to before that night. Sure, I believed in shitty luck. I'd had my fair share of that. Mostly, events in my life had taught me to trust no one and always expect the worst. That way you didn't leave yourself vulnerable to disappointment.

With Jack Pembroke, I'd expected the worst. Before I ever laid eyes on the man, I'd blackened him with the tar-brush of my own prejudice. Then, when he turned out to be nothing at all like my pre-formed ideas of him, he disarmed me, left me naked, defences down. He planted inside me the seed of that wretched thing that is hope. Hope that life might just have a little slice of happiness carved out for me, a reward for everything it had asked of me until then. Like life owed you something. Right. That's what hurt the most. Life had stolen my mother from me too young, raped my father's wits, and killed my capacity to ever openly trust another person. Life had smothered the carefree joy I remembered from my childhood. Life was a slow, ruthless killer. I had no one to blame but myself. I'd mistaken Jack Pembroke for my antidote, when really he was poison to my soul.

As I stumbled down the steps towards the little row-boat tied up in the bay, I felt crushed by the disappointment I'd promised myself never to feel again. My chest hurt, like that seed of hope had been ripped from its bed and now I was bleeding out all the shattered expectations I'd managed to keep shored-up for so long. One small slip-up and life was rubbing my nose in it. Always expect the worst and you won't be let down. Trust nobody but yourself. Well, life had shown me good. It really couldn't get much worse than this, I thought.

I was wrong.

I looked out to sea and saw a dark shadow moving across the waves towards me. As I stared, it coalesced into the distinct form of a man in a small boat. The oars sliced through the water, powering in to shore, cutting across the white-tops. The silhouette grew, gaining definition until there was no mistaking the identity of the oarsman. I'd have known the shape of those broad shoulders and the curl of dark hair at the nape of his neck anywhere.

"Liam," I shouted. "Oh my God, Liam. What the hell are you doing here?"

"Darcy? Is that you?" my brother called over his shoulder. There was a note of panic in his voice, a momentary hesitance. "Thank Christ. I came to get you," he said finally. "You never came home, sis. The road in to Bronach is blocked with fallen trees. I feared the worst."

He lifted one oar and steered the boat around until he was facing me.

His expression was grim for someone who'd just discovered his missing sister had survived one of the worst storms in Crooke's living memory. Then again, I must have cut a miserable sight, shivering in my thin skirt and blouse, with my hair bloodied and plastered wetly to my swollen, scratched-up face. In contrast, Liam was insulated from the weather by a heavily-padded black parka, gloves and a beanie hat. He put his back into the oars with renewed vigour and heaved the boat into shore, hopping out into the shallows to drag the vessel up onto the shingle.

It was only then, staring into the boat, that I discovered the truly grisly explanation for Liam's grim face.

"Oh God," I breathed. "It's John-Joe."

Flopped across the bottom boards of the boat, John-Joe's half-naked body lay face-down, bloated, slick with seawater and battered black and blue. Dead, his pale, hairy back streaked with blood, he resembled a harpooned whale.

"What's he doing here?" I said shakily. "Why is he in the boat Liam?"

Worst case scenarios swarmed in my head. Liam had come good on his threat in the pub. He'd killed John-Joe, after all, and was back to dispose of the evidence. He hadn't come here looking for me at all. My brother was a murderer and I ...

"Darcy. Darcy!" I felt Liam's gloved hand on my cheek as he turned my face from the gruesome sight. He gripped my jaw and forced me to look at him. "Darcy, keep it together," he said. My whole body went leaf in the wind, trembling in his grip. "I hit something on the way over," he said ardently. "It was him. He was floating, face down, out in the bay. I dragged him into the boat, but he was already gone. He must have been washed out to sea. I think something attacked him, Darcy. A wild animal or something. His neck is ripped wide open."

"A wild animal?" I asked, incredulous. Ireland didn't have any wolves or bears or big cats outside of zoos. I stiffened and my own voice sounded frigid to my ears. "Tell me the truth, Liam. Did you kill him?"

Liam's gloved hand dropped from my face. "Did I kill John-Joe?" he asked. His brows pulled together and he regarded me like I was some alien, unfathomable creature. "Of course I didn't bloody kill him. Darcy, what's gotten into you? What the hell happened here tonight?" His eyes narrowed on me like he was really seeing me for the first time since he'd arrived. "Did somebody hurt you?"

What had happened me? Between the storm and the dead body, the wild passion, and Jack Pembroke's wife attacking me with those freaky demonic eyes, I started to wonder if I'd totally lost my mind. And now, here I was, accusing my own flesh and blood of murdering some harmless farmer, just for copping a drunken feel of my ass down the pub. Had any of it happened at all? Was I dreaming, delirious in my bed with fever? If I was, I needed to wake from this nightmare, and quick, because there was nothing dream-like at all about that cold body in the boat, with the smell of death and the sea on it, with its jugular torn out and its blood drained dry.

"Darcy, talk to me," Liam pleaded.

## CHAPTER THIRTEEN

###

A cry from the cliffs above stole the response from my lips. Shrill, hoarse and anguished, like the scream of a fox, the sound chilled my blood to ice-water.

Liam turned to see what had transfixed my eyes with terror. A female figure, clothed in grey and crowned by a halo of long, wind-blown hair, stood perched on an outcrop of rock. Her hands were curled into claws and her eyes, oh God, I knew those demonic eyes, and yet this woman definitely wasn't Adriana. She was something altogether more dreadful. Hunched forward like a vulture, poised to swoop down on us at any moment, the corners of her mouth lifted in a macabre smile, revealing rows of sharp, pointed teeth.

I struggled to stifle the scream bubbling in my throat, and instinct had me backing away. One step, two, never taking my eyes off the cliff. She didn't make a move, but then neither did Liam. I grabbed at the sleeve of his parka and tugged. We had time. We could dive in the boat and escape out to sea, assuming the creature with its sights trained on us couldn't swim, or fly, or worse. Fear pulsed through my body, pounding in my throat until I thought it would choke me.

"Liam," I whispered, "Liam, we have to get out of here."

"You go, Darcy," he said, without even turning to look at me. "I'm good right here." His voice, calm as a slow breath, filled me with cold dread. The creature was doing something to him, influencing him, and before I could even react, he was striding forward, mounting the steps towards it.

"Liam," I shouted. "Liam, don't!"

I ran, grabbed onto the back of his coat and with all the strength I could muster, attempted to drag him back. But he was so much stronger than me. He shrugged me off him, and I tumbled backwards down the slippery stone steps.

I landed hard, pain bursting through my head as my skull cracked against a jagged edge of the rocks. Momentarily stunned, I was forced to watch as Liam reached for the creature's outstretched hand and she pulled him into her. I saw his woollen hat fall to the ground as her blackened fingernails raked his curly hair, closing in a fist that jerked his head to one side, exposing his throat.

"No," I cried, "please!"

But Liam was docile in her hands, even as her tongue shivered across those pointed fangs and she spread her lips on the pulse at his neck.

Driven by pure desperation, on hands and knees I crawled towards the steps, still reeling from the concussion of my fall. All I knew was that I had to get to Liam before he ended up like John-Joe in that boat. I couldn't lose him too. He was all I had left. My vision blurred, but still I saw with crystal clarity the moment when her pointed fangs penetrated skin, bleeding crimson ribbons down his pale neck. His pliant body jerked as she sealed her lips to his pulse and sucked from him in long, greedy draws.

A cry of pure anguish breached my lips. Liam was dying and I was powerless to prevent it. "Let him live," I begged her, "please, let him go."

"Let him go."

Confused, I heard my words repeated back at me, not an echo, but the grim authority of a male voice I recognised instantly.

"Let him go," he said, louder this time. "It's me you want, not him."

Squinting up at the cliff top, the image of Jack Pembroke came into focus. Wild-eyed, shirtless and buffeted by the wind and the sea-spray, he looked larger than life. This was no Colin Firth coming from the pond, this was crazy Heathcliff on the moors.

"It's me," he called to the creature. "Jack Pembroke."

At the sound of that name, she paused in her feeding and her black-veined eyes flipped up to pin him with a death-glare. Having drawn her attention away from Liam, he pressed the advantage.

"You came back from the dead for me, didn't you?" Jack shouted. "Just as you did my father, and countless generations of Pembroke men before him. That's what my mother was trying to protect me from. That's why she sent me away. But I'm here now. The debt lies with my family bloodline, not with this innocent man. Let him go, Dearg-Due. Take me instead."

Teeth still embedded in Liam's throat, the creature regarded Jack with the ominous stillness of a bird of prey sizing up its kill. She looked to be ruminating on his offer, but the wildness in her eyes betrayed her hunger for what he offered. She released her grip and my heart rate slowed to a nauseating pound as I watched Liam's body crumple down onto the rocks. The Dearg-Due stepped over his limp, discarded form, a bloodied smile spreading on her lips as she ghosted towards where Jack stood his ground at the summit of the cliff.

Frantic, I scrambled up the steps and over the rocks to where Liam lay sprawled. His skin was parchment-pale in the darkness. I cupped a cold cheek, and his head lolled to one side, exposing the ravaged mess where she'd bitten him. Tears clouded my vision as I pressed my fingers to the wound, willing the blood back into his body. With my free hand I sought a pulse at the other side of his throat, and for an eternity, there was nothing, but then I felt it, weak but unmistakable, tap-tapping against the pads of my fingers.

"Thank you God," I cried, sobbing on Liam's chest as I felt his lungs inflate beneath my cheek.

I was never much for prayers or church-going. My teenage-self had exhausted any faith I'd had, on my knees, begging a lifeline for my mother that never came. But that night I was convinced. If a demon of vengeance could rise from the grave to drink the blood of men, then there was more mystery to the world than the mundane human mind could ever possibly comprehend. Some higher being, call it God, call it Fate, call it what you will, something in the universe conspired to put Jack Pembroke on that cliff at the very moment my brother's life hung in the balance, and it was Jack Pembroke's courage in the face of certain death that tipped that balance in Liam's favour. For that reprieve, I would be eternally grateful, but we were far from out of danger.

Satisfied my brother was alive for now at least, I dared to lift my eyes to the scene unfolding on the cliff top. The Dearg-Due had Jack in her thrall. As though reeled in on some invisible wire, eyes glazed, he walked towards her and dropped to his knees at her feet. I watched in horror as she gripped his face in her clawed hands, drawing blood where her nails cut into his flesh. Seeing the family resemblance she sought, she opened that fanged maw and screeched in his face. One word, over and over, "Pembroke," she roared, slashing viciously at his chest. Head thrown back, arms hanging limp at his sides, Jack was powerless to defend himself, but his face was etched with pain.

This would not be the seductive death she'd granted Liam. This was vengeance incarnate, and it wanted to savour its victim's agony as it carved its pound of flesh. Vengeance for a wrong committed against an innocent girl by some distant ancestor of Jack's. To the Dearg-Due, I could tell they were one in the same, this man and the sadistic husband who tortured her to the point of suicide, to the point of bargaining with the demons of Hell, all those centuries before.

I was never a particularly brave person, and God knew, not an hour before, I'd been craving some sweet vengeance of my own, but I knew in that moment, I could not stand by and watch Jack Pembroke martyr himself for the sake of my family. I had to do something, but what? Something told me pepper spray wasn't going to cut it with this hell-spawn, and being non-religious, I hadn't even a crucifix to my name. I suddenly found myself with a newfound respect for Lady Kathleen Pembroke and her knowledge of the occult. If only I knew what to do... then it struck me: the legend of the cairn, and the ancient Celtic tradition of piling stones upon a grave to prevent its occupant rising after death. The cairn on the hill had been disturbed.

It was a long shot, but it was all I had and I was willing to believe in anything to get that thing away from Jack.

Quietly as I could, desperate not to draw the Dearg-Due's attention, I left Liam and scurried up the last of the steps to the grassy headland. As I made my stealthy run for the cairn, I saw her wrench Jack's neck to one side, exposing his jugular, just as she had with Liam. She was going in for the kill, and my time was running out. Dropping to my hands and knees, I frantically gathered up the scattered stones from the grass, piling them back onto the cairn where they belonged. I didn't care that they were tainted by John-Joe's blood, or that they stained my hands a rusty brown.

Jack cried out and my whole body jolted with adrenaline and rushing terror. I stole a glance, but instantly regretted it. The Dearg-Due was at his throat like a rabid animal.

Despair crashed over me in a wave. Surely this was pointless, piling stones on her grave when she was already risen from it? But what else could I do? I searched the ground for the few remaining stones and tossed them on the cairn until there were no more to find.

Nothing happened.

Crap. Maybe the kids who'd pulled the cairn apart had tossed some stones in the sea? Maybe I was an unmitigated fool for ever thinking this could work.

I could hear the horrible sucking noises as she fed from his neck, and they turned my stomach over in a churn to rival the tempestuous waters below.

I sat back on my heels, dropped my head in my hands and let out a low whine. That's when I saw it. A single stray stone lying in the grass between my legs. What the hell, I thought. Here goes nothing. I snatched it up and threw it on the pile.

An ear-splitting screech rent the air, and a sudden wind whipped up around me, a hair tangling rush that knocked me flat on my back. The air above the cairn swirled into a mini tornado of crackling electricity, lit up like a plasma globe. I could feel the intense draw of the vacuum within, had to grip onto the grass to hold myself back. I watched in disbelief as a dark grey shadow dissolved into smoke and was sucked into the eye of the supernatural storm.

It stopped as suddenly as it had started, with a pop like a break in the sound barrier, then nothing. Stillness. No wind. No rain. Gradually the world came back into focus: the sound of breakers striking the rocks below, gulls crying out in the bay, the first hint of dawn breaking on the horizon.

Stunned, I clambered to my feet and looked around.

Jack was lying in the grass, motionless. The world tipped on its axis.

I staggered over to where he lay and dropped to my knees. So much blood. So pale, even as I watched, his lips took on a bluish tinge. So still.

"No. Please. No."

I pressed my fingers beneath his jaw and waited for the thud of life.

It didn't come. I dropped my ear to his mouth, listening and feeling for the merest whiffle of a breath.

None came.

"You don't die on me, you son of a bitch", I cried. "Not now, not like this."

Desperate, I locked my hands and pressed them to his sternum, pumping, hard and fast, as I'd been taught. It was the longest, most desperate count to thirty of my entire life.

My vision swam with tears that fell on his cheeks as I pinched his nose and sealed my mouth on his, pushing my breath into his lungs. Once. Twice.

God, could this really all be happening? Just hours ago I'd kissed this mouth with the kind of passion I'd thought would burn me alive. Now, those lips were cold as ice.

I squeezed my lids and the tears came freely, jagged sobs wracking my chest.

Then a cough. Not mine, his. A rattling wheeze, a sharp intake of breath.

"You're alive!" I cried. "You're fucking alive."

His lids cracked open. He looked right at me with those sea-green eyes. I could have sworn his mouth tipped up in a grin. A swell of raw emotion rose up in my chest like a wave and I beamed back at him with a smile that rivalled the dawn breaking out at sea.

## CHAPTER FOURTEEN

###

"His body needs rest, Miss McShane, and if you don't mind me saying, you look pretty dead on your feet yourself. Go home, get some sleep. I'll call if there's any change in his condition." The nurse gave my upper arm a reassuring squeeze and smiled. Her version of a gentle dismissal.

I picked up my bag from the floor and glanced at Liam as I rose stiffly from the chair beside his hospital bed. Tucked beneath starched white sheets, the colour was already returning to his face, thanks to the bags of O-positive being drip-fed into his arms. His neck was stitched and bandaged, and he'd suffered severe blood loss, but the doctors were confident he was going to make it just fine.

In the aftermath of the storm and all that had happened, I'd wandered the cliffs aimlessly for a time, in shock most likely, until finally some practical part of my brain kicked in with a plan. I went back to the house and retrieved my bag from the front driveway where Adriana had attacked me. The hall door was wide open, and I spotted her inside, sitting on the floor, staring into space with her arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth. Her face was a mess, red and horribly swollen from the pepper spray, her make-up streaked like coloured molten wax, but what I could see of her eyes looked normal. I had no explanations for what had happened to her, or how much of her behaviour had been down to her apparent possession by the spirit of the Dearg-Due, but I was keeping a cautious distance between us, nonetheless.

I pulled my phone from the bag and squeezed it, offering up a silent prayer before flipping open the case. My prayer was answered. By some miracle, or perhaps just on account of the storm having run its course, three healthy bars of signal popped up. I dialled emergency services, not having the first clue how I was going to explain the dead body and the three casualties of the night. A terrible accident, I said.

A short time later, the helicopter touched down in the grass. The roads into Bronach remained impassable due to the fallen trees, and the rocky shallows of the cove were deemed too dangerous for the coastguard.

They bundled up Jack and Liam onto stretchers, threw a blanket over Adriana's shoulders and airlifted them to the regional hospital. Poor John-Joe went home in a body-bag. The paramedics came to the same conclusion Liam had, that some wild animal, a feral dog perhaps, had attacked the victims. There was no other plausible explanation for the bite marks on their necks, and I wasn't about to set them straight and earn myself a prolonged stay in the regional psychiatric unit. Adriana didn't speak for the entire journey, other than to say she was 'fine' and to tell them to keep their hands off her.

That was the last I'd seen of either her or Jack. The hospital had been a whirlwind of consent forms and emergency surgery to patch Liam back together. As they'd wheeled him into the operating theatre, I thought I spotted Jack, on a bed, being pushed through a set of double doors, but I couldn't be sure.

The last twenty-four hours I'd spent folded into that uncomfortable chair at Liam's side, surviving on watery coffee and vending machine sandwiches. He'd woken eventually, as though from a nightmare, but seeing me, the relief washing over him was a visible thing. We talked about what happened in hushed whispers, setting our stories straight for the inevitable questions the police would have. I only hoped that Jack and Adriana would have the sense to keep their mouths shut. So far as I knew, Jack's wife hadn't seen any of the supernatural goings on at the cliff top. She could have me prosecuted for the pepper-spray, but then she'd have some serious explaining to do about her unprovoked assault on me. Something told me she'd be claiming the whole thing had been an unfortunate accident.

Wearing my borrowed hospital scrubs, and carrying my few tattered possessions in a yellow plastic bag, I left Liam's room, determined to head home for a long hot shower and a change of clothes. My hair was matted with blood and the scratches on my face had scabbed over and were itching like a mother. Safe to say I was avoiding mirrors like a Bram Stoker vampire.

Feeling a little woozy on my feet, I stepped out into the brightly lit corridor, cast my eyes to the nurse's station just up the way, and paused. Adriana was standing at the desk, seemingly arguing with a nurse. Her blonde hair was scraped back in a ponytail. Her face, makeup free, still looked a little red and puffy, but it was obvious there was natural beauty underneath all the slap she normally wore. Probably one of the reasons Jack had married her. I'd told myself a hundred times while I sat waiting in that chair that her insults hadn't gotten to me, but there was no denying the sting, or the guilt I felt for having been with her man. It was one of my few hard limits: taken men were totally out of bounds, even if they were as delectably seductive as the likes of the heroically flawed Jack Pembroke. I'd been on the receiving end once, and it wasn't a place I ever wanted to be again. In truth, I felt kind of sorry for Adriana, clinging on for dear life to a cheating husband, desperate to lay the blame at the feet of the women he seduced, rather than the man she clearly still loved, in spite of his failings. There but for the grace of God I might have gone. What would have happened had I not walked in on Alec and Sally that day, if my father's appointment with the dementia specialist hadn't finished early because the therapist's kid broke his arm in the school yard? I might have wound up just like Adriana, chasing the ghost of a soulless marriage. It really didn't matter how beautiful the man was, or how good a lover. If he didn't respect you, then he wasn't worthy of your heart. I'd had a lucky escape with Alec, and with Jack Pembroke too. Both times, I'd gotten away before the damage was fatal. I saw that now. Sometimes, when I thought life was dealing me a bum hand, really it was working behind the scenes to save me from a world of heartache. My near-death experiences up at Bronach house had me thinking a lot about fate and destiny, and how things happened at a certain time for a specific reason, and it was about to happen again.

"I'm sorry, Miss Cavallo," I heard the nurse say, "but I can't let you in to see Mr. Pembroke. Immediate family only at this time. It's hospital policy."

"But I _am_ family," Adriana insisted.

"What is your relationship to the patient?" the nurse demanded.

"I'm his PA," she argued, "I do everything for him. I pick up his underwear from the laundry for chrissakes. I order his groceries. We might as well be married."

"Unless you are legally married, Miss Cavallo, or you can prove to me that you are an immediate blood-relative of Mr. Pembroke, then I am terribly sorry, but you are simply going to have to wait until his condition is more stable and he is in a position to accept visitors."

The plastic bag fell from my hands and I felt the blood drain from my face, all the way down into my feet. My back hit the breeze-block wall, and I slid to the ground, Adriana's voice becoming muffled, as though I'd been dumped in a fish bowl and was witnessing the argument underwater.

"This is an outrage," she shouted, tossing a bundle of papers from the desk. "What kind of shitty little backwater hospital is this? Do you even know who we are?"

"I know you are not Jack Pembroke's wife," was the nurse's clipped reply. "Now, I suggest you calm the hell down, Miss Cavallo, or Thomas here will be escorting you from the premises." She motioned to a burly security guard who had stationed himself at the nurse's side.

My world swam in and out of focus in front of my eyes, bone-deep exhaustion and emotional overload catching up with me like a steam-train pulling into station. I felt myself get dragged under the ocean of sleep I'd tried so hard to deprive myself of ever since we'd arrived. I'd been running on adrenaline and the tank was finally run dry. My last thought before drifting into that blissful unconsciousness was that Jack Pembroke was not actually married. Question was, what, if anything, did that change between us?

## CHAPTER FIFTEEN

###

"Looks like Bronach has a potential buyer." Liam dropped the manila folder on my desk, braced his hands on the polished surface, and offered me an apologetic smile.

Three weeks since the storm, and even though the angry red wounds on his neck had faded to a healing, fleshy pink, the strain of that night still showed in my twin brother's pale expression.

I wondered if he saw that same haunted look in me.

As expected, we'd been grilled by the police to the point I'd almost begun to believe the fake story myself. Eventually, the detective conceded that Jack and Adriana claimed no memories at all of what happened, and so they had little choice but to accept Liam's and my sketchy version of events. A hunting party was formed to scout the land for the animal responsible for the attacks. I never expected them to find anything, obviously, but one Saturday afternoon, they came back having shot a stray dog they'd caught in the act of savaging a sheep. That seemed to satisfy the locals and the authorities. John-Joe was buried on a dreary, wet Tuesday, and the whole sorry tragedy was put to rest along with him.

I hadn't seen or heard from Jack Pembroke since that day I left the hospital in a daze, having discovered he and Adriana weren't actually married. When I returned to the ward that evening, rested, freshly showered and feeling half-human again, I'd got the nerve up to ask after him. Who knew, maybe if I got a nurse who was a little less Nurse Ratched than the one Adriana had gone up against, I might even get the chance to see him, and apologise for how I'd acted.

Turned out I was too late.

The male nurse on night duty told me, on the QT, that Jack had been transferred to a high-tech hospital in Dublin. Apparently he needed a more complicated vascular repair that was beyond the local surgeon's expertise.

Only that the police detective let slip about his claimed amnesia, I wouldn't even have known whether Jack had lived or died. I could hardly blame him for not wanting to get in touch. I'd said some pretty horrible things and rejected him in no uncertain terms. Not to mention I'd pepper-sprayed his psycho PA, though to my mind, that jealous bitch had it coming to her. I supposed fate was playing her hand again. I was back at my desk, and he was back in New York at his. End of story. It just was never meant to be. Still, the lack of closure meant that Jack Pembroke, and that one crazy night we'd spent at Bronach Lodge haunted my every waking thought. Even my dreams were Technicolor flashbacks to the events of that night.

Perhaps going back there, seeing the deeds to the house signed away to some stranger, would finally draw a line under the whole episode for me.

"Want me to find another agent?" Liam asked, drawing me out of my thoughts.

I realised I'd been drumming my fingers on the file.

"No, I said," placing a proprietorial hand on top of the folder. "I can do this. I want to." Want was a strong word. In truth, I was afraid, but I was determined to face my demons. Besides, we needed the money. The sale on an estate like Bronach would keep Dad's real estate agency afloat, and no way was I was going to put the moral guilt on Liam to go up there and do the dirty work. I could see it in his eyes: the hidden fear that I'd ask him to go. I'd always considered myself the stronger of the two of us, even before he'd had some demon creature try to suck the life out of him. "I'm happy to go, I really am."

"You're a hell of a woman, Darcy, you know that? Bravest person I know. If it wasn't for what you did up there, I wouldn't be here. I'd be in the ground, just like John-Joe."

"I'm not brave," I said. "It was Jack Pembroke who saved your life."

And I'd never got the chance to thank him for it.

"You saved all our lives, Darcy."

"Not John-Joe's," I replied sadly.

"No," Liam agreed.

"Why do you suppose she left me alone?"

He stared at me with those haunted blue eyes. "Because you're a woman?"

"Yeah," I agreed, "maybe she only goes for men, or maybe she just hadn't got around to killing me."

It niggled at me, all the same, how Adriana had seemed almost protective of me in the pub that night, asking whether John-Joe was bothering me.

"Damn it, did it really happen?" His head sagged on his shoulders and he rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Sometimes I think I'm going crazy. I mean that thing, what was it, a vampire?"

"Something like that, I think, yeah," I breathed, covering his trembling hands with my own.

"It bit me. What does that mean? I'm worried Darcy."

"What? That you're going to turn into one of them?" I cupped his face in my hands, scrubbed at his stubble and offered him a smile. "You feel very much flesh and blood to me, Liam McShane. Besides, that stuff is only in stories, right?"

"Vampires were supposed to only exist in stories," he said, and I hated seeing the fear in his normally carefree eyes. "If they exist, what else is out there?"

I had no answer to that.

## CHAPTER SIXTEEN

###

The memories that filled my return drive along the coast road up to Bronach Lodge were tempered by the glorious turn in the weather. It was hard to imagine those dark things really existed, when the sky was such a pure shade of blue, and the sun sparkled on the waves like shoals of diamond fish. Not a full month had passed since the night of the storm, and yet the season was in full change. I'd changed too, irrevocably.

After I discovered the truth about Jack and Adriana, I'd taken a long, hard look at who I'd become in the years since my father's illness, and found I hardly recognised the jaded, cynical person staring back at me.

I was alone in life, not because Alec had cheated on me, but because I'd chosen to shield myself from ever getting hurt again. I'd been an idiot. I'd let my own foolish distrust lose me the opportunity to find love. I'd leapt on the chance to believe Adriana's lies, because that's what I'd come to expect. I'd refused to let Jack defend himself, and now that I knew the truth, he was gone from my life. It was a hard lesson, learned too late.

He wasn't coming back. I'd lost him, as I'd lost my mother, and my father and my ex-fiancé. The difference this time? I wasn't going to let it break me. I wasn't about to go chasing him all the way to New York like a lovesick puppy. That'd make me no better than his blonde stalker. We'd had one night of connection, one night of unbridled passion, and I'd ruined it by pushing him away. His letting Bronach go felt like he was closing the book on us, and that seemed only fair. I hoped my cruel lies would help him forget me sooner than I'd be able to get him from my mind. I had a feeling it would take a very long time.

I'd have forever to live with the regret, but from now on, I'd decided I was opening myself up to life and fate and everything they could throw at me: the hurt, the losses, the dizzy highs. I could embrace them. I could learn from the hurts, I could forgive, and I could move on. I could learn to trust again.

I drove past the spot where the big sycamore had fallen on Jack's car, and I couldn't help but smile, picturing myself taking his hand and crawling on my hands and knees from the wreckage. I'd thought the night couldn't possibly get any worse. How wrong I'd been. The giant trunk was now a giant pile of firewood, drying in the early summer sunshine.

I pulled up to the house only to discover I wasn't first to arrive. Out on the gravel drive, a big motorcycle stood balanced on its kickstand. It was a powerful looking machine, sleek and black. No sign of a rider, though. I checked my watch, and my diary, confirming I was there in good time. I hated to keep a client waiting.

Slipping from the car, I smoothed the creases out of my blue shift dress and shrugged into a short, grey rain mac. The heels I'd worn to smarten up the outfit crunched over the stones as I walked towards the entrance. Although the window shutters were all closed, the hall door to Bronach Lodge stood wide open.

I stepped into the gloom of the hallway and called, "Hello?"

Nobody answered.

Dust motes shimmered in the random shafts of sunlight that found their way in through the gaps in the shutters. Stepping through them, I made my way along the corridor towards the drawing room, breathing in memories of the night spent here, with him: so vivid I swore I could still smell the beeswax candles burning.

I stopped outside the library, and inhaled. That scent was more than just a memory.

The door was ajar. I pushed it inward and stepped into the room. The flames of numerous lit candles cast a soft, flickering glow on everything, and I wondered absently why the room's occupant would have gone to the trouble of lighting them, when they could simply have opened the shutters to the sun. Then my gaze settled on the figure sat at the polished-wood desk, and the rest of the room receded out of focus.

"Jack Pembroke."

"Darcy McShane."

"I wasn't expecting you to be here," I said, hesitant. "Are you well?"

He looked incredible, in a form-fitting black sweater and dark jeans, surrounded by ancient, leather-bound tomes. Less tanned than I remembered, but that was hardly surprising, given what massive blood loss and weeks holed up in a hospital bed with no natural light were liable to do to your complexion. The pallor only served to highlight the arresting green of his eyes.

"Never felt more alive," he replied. "Nothing like a near-death encounter to get your priorities all lined-up in a row, wouldn't you say?" His mouth curled in a crooked grin that melted something inside me. "This is for you," he said, all business as he pushed a white envelope across the desk towards me.

Ah, so he'd come to hand over the deeds to the house. A huge gilt mirror on the wall behind him reflected my disappointment back at me, and I had to school my expression before he read it.

But why come in person, when his legal team could easily have dealt with the paperwork? Unless he'd come for an apology. I certainly owed him one, and the sooner I got it said, the sooner we could conclude this business, and I could go hide under a rock someplace for the rest of my reproductive life.

Chicken that I was, I went with apologising for the least personal of my affronts to him first.

"About Adriana," I said, glancing at my feet when the intensity of his gaze proved too much. "I'm sorry about the whole pepper-spray thing."

He waved me off. "Don't be. It was self-defence. Adriana got what was coming to her."

"I'd like to apologise, all the same. Is she here?" I asked, risking a look over my shoulder.

One dark brow quirked in amusement. "If she is, she's breaking the restraining order I had my lawyers put on her."

My jaw went slack, and my mouth took the shape of a silent 'Oh.' Quickly snapping it shut, I struggled to fill the awkward silence. "She told me, well, actually she led me to believe you two were married."

"Yeah, in her tiny, deluded mind," Jack scoffed. "We dated once, as in one single date, years ago. I knew right off it was a big mistake, but she begged me, swore it wouldn't interfere with our professional relationship, and I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Turns out you're not the first woman she's scared away." He laughed drily. "And here I was, thinking I had halitosis or body odour, or I just wasn't cut out to be boyfriend material."

My brows shot up. Who was this gorgeous man kidding? He wasn't boyfriend material, he was the stuff of any woman's wild, debauched fantasies. Well, all of my wild, debauched fantasies, at least. Too bad I'd blown it with him when I had the chance. Regardless of that, though, I still felt the need to explain myself.

"She mentioned the ring you wear, that's why I believed her. You'd told me you were married to the job. I thought you were being economical with the truth."

He twisted the gold band from his finger and handed it to me on his outstretched palm. "This ring? Take, it. Examine it."

"That's really not necessary," I said.

"Take it, please."

I tentatively plucked the ring from his hand. Engraved on the inside were the names Kathleen and Jonathan and a date.

"It belonged to my father. I found it, not long after he disappeared. I was playing in the mound of stones up on the hill and there it was, glinting at me in the sunshine. I never showed it to mother. I knew it would make her angry. Just the mention of his name and she'd be off on another month-long ritual cleansing of both me, and the house. So I kept it with me, for sentimental reasons, and occasionally, when it suited, I wore it on my left hand. I get propositioned a lot in my job, sometimes it's less complicated to let potential clients assume I'm unavailable. Adriana chose to read something more into that than there was."

God help my misguided foolishness, but there was a part of me that also relished the idea of Jack making himself unavailable to other women.

I handed back the ring and he slid it onto his finger. "Thank you," he said.

"You think she'll be okay?" I asked.

"I expect so. I arranged a good severance package for her, and her psychiatric bills will be taken care of."

"That's really generous of you, considering."

He shrugged. "Adriana and I go back a long way. She claims to have no memories at all beyond arriving in Ireland, and getting lost on the coast road whilst trying to find my hotel. After that, everything's a blank, up until you Mace'd her."

Wow. I wondered if she'd found her way here, to Bronach, and the Dearg Due had possessed her somehow. We might never know for sure.

"How about you?" I asked, recalling what the police had told me. "Do you remember?"

"Every detail," he replied.

And wasn't that a loaded comment?

"I'm sorry for not hearing you out that night. I ... I've been hurt in the past. Once bitten, and all that jazz. You Americans would probably say I've got trust issues."

"My blood is as Irish as yours," he replied.

"Except you don't plan on living here," I said, unable to disguise the note of regret that crept into my voice. "Are these the deeds?" I asked, quickly sliding the envelope from the table. This was proving to be much harder than I'd thought. "I'll see they're in safe hands until the sale is finalised."

"There's not going to be any sale," he said.

"There isn't?" I frowned, perplexed.

"Nope," he shook his head and leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms behind his head. "I've decided to make Bronach my home."

"You have? But what about the ... what about _her_?" I asked. My voice dropped to a whisper, as though the mere mention of a name might bring the Dearg Due back from the dead.

"The way I see it, I've been hiding from this family curse all my life. I just didn't know it. We know now how to keep _her_ contained, and I've been doing some research." He motioned to the faded books around him. "You might find these enlightening," he said, turning the dusty, leather-bound manuscripts in my direction. "There are Pembroke family histories here going back many hundreds of years. I've unearthed records of the marriage into the family and the subsequent untimely death of a certain young village girl. You might want to take a look at her name."

He directed me to a place half-way down one of the pages. The paper was yellowed and cracking with age, the handwritten words archaic, but very beautiful. I underlined the name with my finger as I read it aloud. "Áine d'Arcy." I looked up at him in disbelief. "She was a Darcy?" It had been my maternal grandfather's surname, and I'd been named for him. I'd known the family ties to the village went way back, but I'd never in a million years imagined I might share some genetic link with the creature that had tried to kill Jack and my brother. Could that have explained Adriana's reaction to me in the pub? John-Joe's death? The Dearg-Due leaving me alone, while she targeted the men? Answers to questions I'd been pondering for weeks seemed to be slotting into place, while at the same time the events of that night grew more mysterious than ever.

"Hardly a coincidence," Jack said. "All of this seems predestined, wouldn't you say? I think this is where I'm supposed to be. I believe you and I were fated to meet, Darcy McShane. This is my ancestral family home, after all. If I'm not here to see the cairn remains intact, then it's only a matter of time before this tragedy repeats itself. I won't have any more deaths on my conscience. I believed my mother hated me, when, all along, she was only trying to protect me. She sacrificed everything she had trying to keep me safe. Now that she's gone, I owe it to her memory to stick around."

Oh, so that explained why he was sticking around. Guilt and a sense of family responsibility. I knew all about those. But ... "If you're not selling, then why am I here? And what's this?" I asked, clutching the envelope.

"I wanted to apologise," he said.

I gaped at him, incredulous. "You? I'm the one who owes you the apology."

"Call it a peace offering, then. Open it," he said.

I peeled back the sticky fold of the envelope and drew out a single sheet of paper. It bore the letterhead of a private clinic, Jack Pembroke's name along with some personal details, and two columns, one listing a long slew of diseases they only taught you about in sex-ed classes to scare you off doing the act, the other that was an equally long line of negative results. "I don't understand," I said, growing more flustered by the moment. "What's this about?"

"You expressed your concern that I might have transmitted a disease to you when we were together. I wanted to reassure you that you have nothing at all to worry about on that front."

I felt the flush spread from my neck all the way up to my hairline and down to the tips of my toes. "I ... Oh God, I swear that was just something I said in the heat of the moment. I didn't actually mean ... Oh my God. I'm so sorry." I let the paper fall onto the table and covered my face in my hands, but with my whole body burning in shame, it was pretty useless.

"There was something else you pulled me up on that night," he said.

There was? What else had I said? My brain rattled through a rapid rewind of the night, before the Dearg Due had shown up and things had gone ballistic.

"I was hoping you might give me the opportunity to prove you wrong about that too."

Oh Jesus. I remembered now, I'd called him a bad lay.

All I could do was laugh. It was that or break down in a blubbering mess.

"You find it funny?" he asked. He placed a hand over his heart, as though my laughter had mortally wounded him.

"No, of course not. Well, actually, yes. It is funny, it's downright ridiculous. You and me together, that night? It couldn't have been better. You must know I only said what I did because I was trying to save face."

"Couldn't have been better, huh?" His grin was wickedly smug. I could see his confidence growing in the squirming shadow of my admission. "I do love a challenge," he said. He sucked on his lower lip and raked me with a covetous, head-to-toe gaze that heated every inch of my skin.

Not knowing where to look, I picked up the sheet of test results and waved it in his face.

"You know, most men go with the standard flowers or chocolates, maybe buy a girl a drink. You've certainly got a unique approach going here, Jack Pembroke. Not sure it'll work on just any woman."

"I don't want just any woman, Darcy McShane. I told you. I want you, and I'm prepared to do whatever it takes."

"Whatever it takes?"

"Umhmm. So, is that a yes?"

I remembered my promise to myself, to grab life by the horns.

"Yes," I said. "That's a very definite yes." I couldn't hold back the stupid grin tugging at my lips. "You're really staying?" I asked, scared to believe.

## CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

###

"I'm really staying," he said. He rose fluidly from the chair and walked around the desk until he was standing at my back.

Resting his hands on my shoulders, he smiled at me through the mirror, the kind of secretive smile that conjures up all manner of mischievous thoughts.

"May I?" he asked. He hooked his fingers behind the lapels of my short trench coat and drew it back off my shoulders, like a true gentleman would do for his date at a fancy restaurant. But the hot growl of his breath and the graze of stubble behind my ear told me Jack Pembroke had no intention of playing the gentleman with me.

He swept my hair over one shoulder, his fingertips raising goose bumps on my sensitive skin as he slid the zipper of my dress all the way down to the small of my back, and just as the dress gave way to his deft hands, I too found myself surrendering, fluid to his touch. The smallest push was all it took to send the silky fabric shimmying down my body to the floor, and all my inhibitions went with it.

Instinct told me to be still, to let this predatorial man take his own sweet time unwrapping me like a gift. To give is to receive. Something told me giving him control was going to make me freer than I'd ever been.

Looking at my own half-naked body, bathed in candlelight, I found a new appreciation for Jack's subtle lighting choice. I should have felt self-conscious, staring at my own reflection, wearing nothing but my underwear and heels, but the noise he made in the back of his throat, a mix of pure male appreciation and raw arousal, empowered me in ways no designer clothing ever could.

"Don't move a muscle," he drawled, in that sexy American accent.

As if I could. I was deer-in-the-headlights frozen to the spot, vibrating with the blind anticipation of his next move.

One bra strap, then the other fell victim to his fingertips. A skilful tug, and the cups dropped away from my breasts. I felt my nipples tighten in the rush of cool air. Reflex had my hands going up to cover myself, but slowly, masterfully, he reached from behind me to close his fingers around my wrists.

"Please don't cover yourself, Darcy," he said, his voice like a purr in my ear, "I want to see you."He eased my arms down, extending them behind my back until my wrists were crossed at the hollow of my spine. I wondered for a moment if he was going to tie them there. Just the thought of being trussed up and at this man's mercy sent an unexpected punch of lust arrowing between my thighs, but there was no need for bindings. I was already at the mercy of Jack Pembroke's commanding seduction. I would be a good girl, for him. I would keep my hands exactly where he'd placed them and await my reward.

His arms encircled me, his large palms taking the weight of my aching breasts as he kissed an erogenous path up the column of my throat. His lips at my neck made every inch of my exposed skin tingle with a low-level electrical charge that sparked at the slightest touch of his hands. Through his jeans, I felt the hard swell of his erection pressing against the heel of my hand, and when he groaned at the contact, I stroked up that long, pulsing ridge. My head fell back against his chest as he worked my nipples, rolling and flicking them to hard, sensitive peaks.

"You are beautiful, Darcy," he said.

I risked a glance in the mirror. Flushed with arousal and with his hands touching me, I was beautiful, if only because he made me feel that way.

"You are wicked," I replied huskily.

"Yes I am, and you love it, don't you?" He traced my lower lip with one index finger and I took the bait eagerly, sucking it into the wet, warm heat of my mouth, riding my lips up and down its length until he rewarded me with a low moan and his hips rocked against my hands, seeking friction where I knew he really wanted my mouth to be.

"So wet," he growled, circling the peak of my nipple with his moistened finger tip and sending another shower of erotic sparks across my skin. "Where else are you wet for me?" he demanded, tugging on my earlobe with his teeth. His hand skimmed my sensitive rib cage to the round of my ass, where he gripped my flesh and squeezed. Then he slipped that hand down the back of my panties, following the cleft of my backside to where I felt the hot rush of arousal pooling between my thighs. Instinctively, my pelvis tilted, my legs parting just enough to allow him access to where I so badly needed him to be. His fingers found the slippery seam of my intimate flesh on a groan that vibrated right through to my core. His wet fingertips grazed my clit and I cried out, thighs trembling with the effort of remaining upright. He entered me roughly, two fingers pushing past the tight threshold of my sex, and it was all I could do not to come at that first penetration. My inner muscles clenched as I rode his hand, throbbing around his fingers. Perhaps sensing my instability, he pressed the palm of his free hand firmly to my lower belly, cradling my pelvis between his strong hands, even as he pumped his fingers inside me from behind and teased my clit from the front.

"Oh God Jack, I can't take any more," I cried. I was shaking, poised on a hair-trigger, ready to detonate.

"Come for me," he demanded. Once again, I felt the thrust of his hot tongue in my ear and the wet sensation sent me careening over the edge. Who could have known that the tongue equivalent of a wet willy would get me off so hard? He did, apparently. He played me like I was a Stradivarius, and he a great virtuoso. My entire body tensed and shuddered with the force of the orgasm rocking through me. I fell forward, bracing the desk with my hands, breathing in ragged pants.

"I'm not done with you yet," I heard him say, and what do you know? Just the erotic threat in those words had my body already gearing-up for another round.

Holding my position, bent over the desk, I lifted my head and stared at him in the mirror through glazed eyes, devouring the very male flex of muscles as he peeled the sweater off his gorgeously toned body. Last time we'd done this I'd been tipsy on wine. Now I had the benefit of experiencing the raw animal masculinity of Jack Pembroke in the full of my senses, and it was almost overwhelming. Even the way he unbuckled his belt and snapped open the buttons of his jeans was erotic. By the time he was rolling the condom down his long, thick shaft, confidently and in full view, I was drooling with anticipation.

He took me from behind, shimmying my panties down my legs, lifting and separating the cheeks of my bottom until the head of his cock was positioned right at the slick entrance of my sex, and then he gripped my ass in both hands and thrust, balls-deep. I whimpered as he filled me, almost to the point of pain, tipping that sensitive target inside me that had my hips kicking back for more. He gave me exactly what I needed, slapping my ass with the backs of his thighs as his hips beat a punishing rhythm that had my body simultaneously gripping onto that desk for dear life and climbing the walls of insane ecstasy. Whimpering with every powerful thrust, I watched him through the mirror, the corded flex of his muscular body as he pumped inside me, the passion carved in the intensity of his expression. He was truly a magnificent specimen.

"Do you trust me, Darcy?" He said in a gravelled voice that told me he was as close to the break-point as I was.

"Yes," I cried.

"Do you trust that I would never do anything to harm you?" he demanded.

"Yes, Jack, I trust you," I cried, and I meant it. I did trust him. This was the man who put himself on the line for my brother and me, the man who'd shown me all my prejudices for what they were, the man I should have trusted earlier, the man I was dangerously close to falling hopelessly in love with. If I hadn't already fallen.

"Look at me," he said, still moving inside me as he coiled a fist in my hair and jerked my head up until I was looking right into his eyes.

His eyes, oh my God. Their green had always been intense, but now? Now they glowed, literally, two pinpoints of green phosphorescence shining back at me through the mirror.

"If this is a joke, Jack Pembroke, then your timing really and truly sucks," I said, laughing huskily through another groan of pleasure as his hips collided with my ass. I mean, those had to be some glow-in-the-dark contacts, and he was taking the whole fantasy fulfilment thing to a new level entirely. I could have told him it wasn't necessary. He was already kinky enough to fill the pages of a lifetime's fantasies, and I could tell I'd only scratched the surface with him sexually.

His rhythm slowed and he stalled. I could feel him, thick and pulsing inside me as my inner muscles clamped down in protest at the sudden deceleration.

"I'm not joking," he said gravely, "Something happened to me that night, when she bit me, and then you brought me back from the brink of death. He opened his mouth and I saw his canines, long and white, sharp as needles.

My heart took up a drumbeat behind my ribs, fear spiking through the lust in my veins.

"But I'm not like her," he said. "I promise you, I will never do anything to hurt you or your family. It's just that, like this, with you, I can't control it. I'm sorry, Darcy, I have to -"

He yanked my hair, pulling my throat into a taut, pulsing column. In that split second, I saw my own heartbeat, a living thing, a target, fluttering beneath the skin. His glowing eyes fixated on it just as mine did, and then his jaws snapped around my jugular.

I cried out in surprise.

There was pain at the beginning, just a momentary stab as his fangs punctured my skin, but then he started sucking at me with hard, greedy pulls that tugged at something deep and visceral inside me. Perhaps I should have been horrified, disgusted, and fighting to get away from him so I could sign myself into the funny farm, but the truth was I felt none of those things. What I did feel was incredibly, inexplicably turned-on.

"Oh God Jack, don't stop," I pleaded. "I need you to move inside me now."

Through the haze of his bloodlust he obliged, driving his cock so deep I all but lost my hold on the desk. I went up on my toes as they curled involuntarily, my tensed thighs shaking with the need to come. With my spine arched in his fisted grip, he sucked and thrust again, nailing me from behind, and I watched our reflections come apart in the mirror. He moaned through the seal of his lips, his muscles seizing in rhythmic jerks as he drove his release deep inside me. I came harder than I ever had before, the kind of mind-bending, head-blown orgasm that leaves you unable to think straight, never mind walk straight for weeks afterwards.

Jack was a vampire. That alone was enough to short out my brain circuitry. A goddamn bloodsucking ancient myth brought to life - or should that be death? I watched him through the mirror, drinking from my neck in the most incredibly intimate way, and all I could think was that the old wive's tale about vampires not casting a reflection was so much cock and bull.

I was still riding the aftershocks that pulsed around his cock when he finally withdrew his fangs from my throat and licked at the puncture wounds. They were surprisingly neat, nothing like the Dearg-Due's ragged mutilations, and I was far from drained. On the contrary, I'd never felt more alive.

Reluctantly I shifted, turning to face the man who'd just sucked my blood and at the same time rocked my entire world.

"You've got some serious explaining to do, Jack Pembroke," I said, sliding my ass up on the desk.

"I'm still learning myself," he said, and the look he gave me was a smouldering half-smile, somewhere between sheepish and cat-who-got-the-cream smug. "I have an issue with sunlight, hence the gloom and candles, but that's the first time I've ever, well, bitten anybody."

"I liked it," I admitted.

You're not afraid of me?" he asked, tucking a stray curl behind my ear.

"No," I said, looking deep into his eyes, "I'm not afraid. I said I trusted you, and I meant it."

"Good, because I love you, Darcy McShane, and I mean to make you love me too," he said. "If you still want me, that is?"

"I've wanted you since the moment I laid eyes on you, Jack Pembroke" I replied. "At this point you could tell me you were Frankenstein's monster and I think I'd still want you."

A boyish grin spread across Jack's beautiful face. His eyes had returned to their normal green and his fangs were nowhere in evidence when he framed my jaw in his hands and claimed my mouth in a savagely passionate kiss. When we finally came up for air, he kissed me again, tenderly this time.

"Stay with me here, in Bronach, my love, and we will have a lifetime of learning and explanations, together."

"Yes." I breathed the word against his lips, feeling like I'd been lost and was finally finding my way home. "A lifetime, my love, together."

THE END

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Coming December 2014

### THE SUMMONING

A Celtic in the Blood Novel

Liam McShane fancies himself as the village stud. Not difficult in a rural Irish backwater that boasts a bigger population of sheep than humans. Life is simple, until a fanged encounter with the mythical Dearg Due leaves him trapped in the limbo of the undead, where he must drink blood or face the prospect of becoming a mindless, flesh-eating revenant.

And Liam isn't the only one in Crooke guarding a secret. He meets his match in Hollywood movie star in hiding Odette Taylor. Escaping a past that's come back to haunt her, the media backlash of a sex tape that's gone viral, and an aggressive fiancé, she's come to the rural backwater hoping to find peace. Instead she encounters a horde of rabid paparazzi, all too eager to feast on the carcass of her tarnished celebrity stardom.Her unlikely saviour is a hapless, hunky vampire who's failing miserably at keeping a low profile.

Liam and Odette find themselves increasingly embroiled in the train-wrecks of each other's lives, and it's all good fun, until somebody gets hurt. Then the Lost Boy of Crooke finds he has some serious growing-up to do.

The vampire and the movie star, a star-crossed couple with no foreseeable future together, must battle gods, mythical monsters and the relentless media if they are to stand the smallest chance of getting out of this mess unscathed.

## BY THE SAME AUTHORS

###

THE BECOMING TRILOGY

Book 1 Becoming Red

Book 2 Becoming Bad

Book 3 Becoming Blood

The Becoming Trilogy box set edition

Irish myths, never sexier. A paranormal romance/ urban fantasy series with wolf shifters. Set in modern-day Ireland, The Becoming weaves a dark world in which ancient Irish myths are larger than life and roaming the streets of Dublin.

Ash DeMorgan has long since consigned the fairytale nightmares of a troubled childhood to the realm of fantastical childish imagination. Now, lured back to Dublin, the scene of her tragic past, Ash encounters a city pulsing under the dangerous sexual influence of a new street drug the locals call Rave. Nothing is as it seems. Ash is about to discover that her nightmares are real, and she has become the prey in their erotic hunt. A step back into her past is about to become a high adrenaline race for survival.

Connal Savage, outcast, assassin, and living, breathing hunk of ancient mythology, has lived a thousand years servicing a debt of revenge. Dead inside. Until he encounters his boss's granddaughter, an infuriating woman who threatens to lead him to hell with all his good intentions, who manages to chip away at the hard encrusted defenses of a lifetime spent at war and burrow herself deep into a part of him that hasn't breathed for centuries. He is about to discover that when it comes down to the wire, when you're bargaining with the Grim Reaper for the life of the one you love, you will do anything.

Available online in ebook and paperback formats, wherever books are sold.
INFERNAL: Bite The Bullet

Neva Raines is the only person who believes the death of her brother Daniel isn't what it appears. Pumped full of drugs and dumped in a London underpass, the circumstances surrounding his murder—and their mother's record as an addict—lead people to all the wrong assumptions. But Neva knows Daniel, who watched their mother fight her own demons for years, would never have walked that same path.   
Determined to follow leads the police have no interest in pursuing, Neva goes on the hunt for Daniel's killers. Instead, she finds Konstantyn. He's dangerous, seductive, and seems to know something about Daniel's murder. Getting information out of him proves impossible—as does keeping a safe distance.   
As her world spirals ever deeper into sex clubs, corruption, and rumours of occult influences, nothing Neva has is safe: not her mind, her heart, or her life. If she can't find a way out of the mess that claimed Daniel's life, she's in danger of losing all three.

Explicit scenes of sex and violence make this book suited to an 18+ readership. Infernal is a stand-alone novel of 63K words.

##  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

###

Front cover image: Copyright Tomasz Matuszewski,

All images used under license from 123rf.com

Wolf image used with permission from Lupas-Deva on Deviantart.com

