He’d blinded himself to the truth, all the while determinedly pursuing her, because if, at any moment, he’d admitted she was his one true mate, he might have wavered in his resolve. And he was a man who never wavered. He decided. He committed. He paid for what he purchased. For this sin, he had no doubt he would pay with his soul.
And consider it worth it.
“I can’t believe you lied to me!”
“I know.” Knowing she was his mate, knowing she would live on after him, and undoubtedly find a husband and make a family with some other man, he’d tried to burn himself into her, to conquer some small corner of her heart.
He was supposed to have been her man. He was supposed to have been the father of her children. Not some twenty-first-century asshole that would touch her breasts and kiss her soft mouth and fill her up and never be good enough for her.
Not that he was good enough for her. Still, it was supposed to have been him.
“I hate you for this!”
He flinched, hating those words. “I know.”
“So what the hell do you have to say for yourself?”
He clamped her face between his hands and stared into her eyes. “Fourteen days,” he hissed. “‘Tis all I’ve left. What would you have of me? Apologies? Self-recrimination? You’ll get none.”
“Why?” she cried, tears springing to her eyes.
“Because I knew the moment I saw you,” he ground out savagely, her “I hate you” still ringing in his ears, “that in another life—a life where I didn’t become a dark sorcerer—you were my wife. I cherished you. I adored you. I loved you until the end of time, Jessica MacKeltar. But I doona get to have that life. So I’ll take you any fucking way I can get you. And I’ll not apologize for one moment of it.”
She went motionless in his arms. She stared up at him, her lovely green eyes wide. “Y-you l-loved me?”
He inhaled sharply. “Aye.” Staring down at her, something in him melted. “Och, lass,” he relented, “I will rue for all eternity every moment of suffering I’ve caused you. The entire time I’m burning in Hell, I’ll regret each tear I made you weep. But if Hell were the price for twenty days with you, I’d condemn myself again and again.”
She sagged back against the wall, her lashes fluttering down, her eyes closing.
He waited, watching her, committing every last cell of her face to his memory. From her tousled raven curls to her thick, dark lashes staining sooty crescents on her cheeks, glistening with a sheen of unshed tears, to her dainty, crooked nose to her luscious, soft lips to the stubborn thrust of her chin. He was going to die remembering it. He felt as if he’d been born already knowing her face. That he’d been watching, always waiting to see it coming at him from just around the next corner.
But it hadn’t come.
And he’d stopped believing in the Keltar legends of a true mate.
And he strayed into Dark Magycks.
“Mine,” he whispered fiercely, looking down at her.
Her eyes fluttered open then. In their jade depths he saw pain, rawness, and grief, but he also saw understanding.
“You know what the sad thing is?” she said softly.
He shook his head.
“I think that if you’d told me the truth from the beginning, I’d just have slept with you sooner.”
He winced, as time-lost-never-to-be-regained sliced like a knife through his heart. Then he realized that she’d just granted him an absolution he could never deserve. She’d said, Even knowing, I would have anyway. Wee woman, heart of a warrior.
“So take me, Cian. Take me as many times as you can.” Her voice broke on the next words. “Because no matter how many times we get to have, it’s not going to be enough.”
“I know, love, I know,” he said roughly.
He wasted no more time. He took her. Cupping her face between his big hands, he kissed her, sliding his hot velvety tongue deep. Threading his fingers into her silky curls, he cradled her head delicately, tipping her at just the right angle.
Jessi melted against him. You were my wife, he’d said. I loved you until the end of time. Jessica MacKeltar, he’d called her, as if he really had married her in another life.
She’d wanted such words. She’d neither expected nor been prepared for them. The moment he’d said them, she’d realized that it would have been kinder if he’d not said them at all. If he’d let her think him a callous prick, let her hate him.
But his words would keep her from ever being able to hate him. They’d ripped her open, ruthlessly exposing her heart. Her anger had dropped away as if it had never been, leaving only a desperation akin to his: to have whatever she could have of him, for so long as she could have it. Because she felt it too. As if they were supposed to have made a direct hit, to have had a full, long, crazy, wild, passion-filled, child-strewn life together, but somehow they’d come at each other from the wrong angle, and missed what could have/would have/should have been.