Chapter 18 Changeling
Brun climbed the staircase two steps at a time and caught up with her when she was halfway to her bedroom. He reached for her wrist, preventing her from going any further. She spun on her heels, turning to face him. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“You know I am not her, don’t you?” she sobbed, “You know that I’m not Triarell?”
Brun could not explain why, but the way she spoke Triarell’s name made a bubble of anger burst inside him.
He moved like a flash, grabbing her by the shoulders.
“I know that!” he shouted and she blinked at him. He took a deep breath to calm his voice, “When I first kissed you, I was very confused,” he confessed. Right now he owed her his full honesty, “I had Triarell cemented in my heart for centuries and suddenly you arrived, the very image of the woman I loved for four hundred years!”
Lizzie tried to shrug free from his hold, but Brun trapped her against the wall and she yelped in surprise. Heavens, he was shocked with his own savage behaviour.
“Please, listen,” he beseeched and she stopped struggling, more out of weakness than acceptance, which made him feel like a scoundrel for pinning her like this, but he truly needed her to listen.
Hardening his resolve, he did not let her go.
“But I came to realise,” he went on, gently brushing a lock of hair away from her face and tucking it behind her ear, how he had dreamed of doing since seeing her for the first time in Aberfeldy, “that I desire you, Lizzie Endell. I want you more than anything…”
Her lips parted with a small gasp and Brun leaned a little closer, struggling to resist the allure of her mouth, like a little comet trying escape the pull of a star.
She needed more time and the only honourable thing to do was to step away. He ought to show her how he felt.
But instead of following the most sensible plan, words just tumbled out of his mouth as if they had a life of their own, his heart overriding all common sense.
“If you have feelings for me, Lizzie Endell,” he repeated her name as if it were an oath, hoping she would accept his vow. He was so close that he could feel her warm breath on his face. It smelled of sweet wine and berries, “let me love you with all that I am. Let me love you, as you deserve.”
Each word embraced her soul like a warm blanket. She wanted so much to believe him…
Not that she thought he would lie in such a despicable way: she just was not entirely convinced he was not transferring his infatuation for Triarell to her.
Tears kept rolling down her cheeks. For the briefest moment of stupid vanity Lizzie wondered whether it was spoiling her make-up and almost laughed at the shallowness of her thoughts. Brun was holding her against the wall, baring his soul to her and she was fussing about her make-up!
She was definitely not the same person since reading his letter more than a month before.
Lizzie searched his eyes, hoping to find the answers there, but of course, found only his truths, the ones she could not fully trust. There were strong emotions playing on his face, emotions which his usually stoic mask kept hidden from view. There was desire and hope and his heart was beating strongly against his ribcage.
But was it for her?
Does it bloody matter?
The stupid little voice had a point. Did it matter whether he still loved Triarell? Her ancestor was dead, while she was alive and burning for him. Wasn’t it worth to quench her desire even if it meant nothing?
Everything could change overnight. If Brun were right, and this infamous Dreams Thief was still lurking somewhere, just waiting for the opportunity to suck her soul out, or whatever it was he sucked, shouldn’t she take whatever happiness she could from life?
Yes, you bloody should!
Stupid little voice was right again.
Ah sod it! Doppelganger be damned!
She tilted her face up and closed her eyes in acceptance, hearing Brun’s sharp intake of breath. On his next exhale, his fingers touched her face, sliding down her neck and then finding purchase in her hair, holding her in place as if he were a castaway holding to the wreckage of a ship.
His lips brushed hers and she shivered. It had been such a soft contact, almost just the warmth of his skin, but she felt it deeply in her core.
“I swear I will never make you cry again, Lizzie,” he promised in a whisper that echoed into her heart.
The heat between them increased and she could feel his breath blowing on her face and her lips parted.
Finally, he lowered his mouth to hers.
Lizzie melted from inside out when Brun pressed her on the wall until her breasts were flat against his chest. His tongue conquered her mouth while his hands slowly slid down from her neck, palming her ribs, before coming to rest on her waist while hers move up to his face. He took another step closer till there was zero space between their bodies and Lizzie gasped at how hard he was.
God bless the Scottish kilts…
The kiss stretched for seconds, minutes, or hours. She could not tell, nor cared, so lost she was in the otherworldly sensation. He left no corner of her mouth unexplored and their tongues moved together almost rhythmically, matching stroke by stroke. His hands slid up slowly, first circling her ribcage and then sliding under her breasts in a sensual movement that set even her skin on fire.
She was fairly sure to be only seconds away from self-combustion…
Brun broke the contact between their mouths and she groaned in protest.
“Dearest Lizzie…” he muttered against her lips, then leaned down to deposit small sensual kisses along the line of her jaw, “Please, tell me that you want me too…”
The raw need in his voice completely disarmed her.
“I want you, Brun, more than anything,” she confessed, repeating his words back at him, her voice a sigh louder than a whisper.
She yelped when Brun slid his arm under her legs, lifting her as if she weighted nothing and kicked the door beside them open. His bedroom, she realised as he carried her in and set her down on his mattress ever so gently, recapturing her mouth with unsatiated hunger.
His fingers found the zipper of her dress and slid the soft fabric down her chest. The piece pooled around her waist and Brun lifted his face from hers, his sapphire gaze studying her chest before reaching the hooks of her bra and popping them open, throwing the piece to the side.
Her nipples went impossibly hard just at his hungry stare. He lowered his face to her breasts, his tongue briefly stroking one and then the other as if choosing which one tasted better, and Lizzie nearly climaxed when his lips closed around one nipple.
Needing to feel his skin on hers, her hands went to his waist and she tugged at his shirt, pulling it free from the kilt. Groaning with obvious impatience, Brun pulled the garment over his head, exposing his absolutely glorious chest to her scrutiny.
But what she saw horrified her.
Her hand flew to cover her mouth in a bid contain a cry of terror.
Almost every inch of his skin was covered in scars, and she had enough knowledge of medicine to know that there was a wide variety of origins for those wounds: cuts, burns, and even bullet marks.
Some were battle wounds, but others looked deliberate as if they had been inflicted over and over on the same spot, and she did not need to be an expert to know that those had been the result of torture.
More like gruesome battles… A proper war.
Lizzie slid her fingers over a particularly nasty set of scars cutting across his left ribs and felt his body tense under her touch. She traced the whitish lines finding that they went all the way across his back.
Those were whipping scars.
His back was criss-crossed with whipping scars. Some were old and faded, others more recent, and she had no doubt that most had been acquired during his childhood.
“Oh Brun!” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears, “Who did this to you?”
He turned to face her, bringing the palms of her hands to his lips, kissing them eagerly, “It matters not, sweet Lizzie, it was done a long time ago…”
His tone was nonchalant, but Lizzie heard the trauma in his voice.
“Who did this?” she insisted.
“The training of a Changeling can be… difficult…”
“Training?” she repeated horrified. When he mentioned that the Changelings’ training could be harsh she had pictured some sort of medieval sword-centred boot camp, not plain abuse! “Are you saying that Fayla did this to you?”
Brun lowered his eyes to his hands and she hesitated. Part of her wanted to ask why Fayla would do such thing to him, but she could feel his pain and shame. For five hundred years he had been treated as an object, a weapon to the service of the Fae, a pawn to be sacrificed.
No more, Lizzie decided. She would show him that he was cherished now. Loved.
Oh God, do I love him?
Lizzie did not know the answer to that question yet, nor did she care. She reached for his shoulders and forced him to turn his back to her. Then she lowered her mouth and began to kiss each one of the scars on his back willing the pain to become nothing but a sad memory. Brun shivered and groaned aloud, his muscles tensing under her touch.
Her lips found the scars on his arms, those on his chest. She kissed each one, hoping that with each brush of her lips, she could ask forgiveness for the misery her ancestors had inflicted on him.
She placed her hands on his thighs, sliding them under his kilt, but Brun grabbed her hands, halting her advance.
“Let me touch you…” she breathed hard.
“Darling, I want you to touch every single inch of my body, but after two hundred and fifty years taking matters into my own hands, I fear that if you touch me there after all the fantasies I have been entertaining in the past few days, I shall embarrass myself before I have the chance to give you any pleasure.”
Lizzie felt her cheeks warm while she reclined on his pillows.
“Then make love to me.”
He thought he was going to explode just at the sight of Lizzie lying half-naked on his bed. The reality was even more beautiful than the fantasies he had nurtured.
Hoping to prolong that moment forever, he tugged the dress down her hips unhurriedly, pulling it away from her legs, revealing a piece of white underwear covering her female parts. Her body seemed to perfectly fit in his hands, his fingers moulding around her curves seamlessly, as if they had been made to touch her. He growled, the noise sounding primitive to his own ears, as he removed that last piece of clothing from her body.
Lizzie squirmed, and he knew that it was not out of shyness, but desire. She was burning up for him as much as he was for her.
Breathing hard, Brun fumbled with the buckles of his kilt, but Lizzie stopped him.
“Please, keep the kilt…” she whispered demurely.
Heavens, this woman is going to kill me!
Willing to obey her every wish, Brun tenderly pushed her knees apart and rested his hips against hers, his manhood now was as hard as a rock pressing her belly.
He lowered his mouth to hers and Lizzie kissed him back eagerly. His hands caressed her thighs and when he slid his thumb over her core, she cried, arching her back.
As if he were a bloody psychic,Brun’s finger stroked her exactly where her most sensitive points were. Her body tensed quickly, begging for release. His mouth drifted down her neck, lapping and nipping her skin, while his finger moved faster and faster, almost in rhythm with his heart.
She moaned louder, torn between the primitive desire to reach her release and the more profound wish that that sensation would never end, but her choices were taken from her when his mouth closed around her breast one more time and he pushed a finger deep inside her.
Lizzie screamed while her body was shattered apart by the most mind-blowing orgasm of her life.
Brun had to take a deep breath to control himselfwhen Lizzie cried his name and her nails dug into the skin of his back while her body was shaken by pleasure.
Unable to wait a moment longer, he allowed her to guide his manhood between her thighs and then pushed himself inside her.
He clenched his jaws at the heavenly sensation. It took all his willpower not to go over the edge right on the first thrust. He froze, afraid to go too fast and spoil everything.
“Don’t be afraid to hurt me…” she panted, sensing his hesitation, “You know I am not… I have been with men before…”
The thought of that bastard Finn touching Lizzie, being gifted the honour of claiming her maidenhood and then abandoning her, made Brun want to bellow. Had he sought her earlier, had he been there to protect her since she was born as it was his duty–
Then what? He would need to use aging spells and she would see him as father figure now, she would never… desire him as a man and to court her would be an ignominy. Then bastard Finn or another man would have attracted her interest.
Heavens, this is all so complicated!
He took a deep breath to control his absurd jealousy of her past and the hectic direction of his musings.
“I just…” he started, “I just don’t want it to end too fast… I am burning for you…”
In reply her eyes melted and she smiled, wrapping her legs around his waist. Before he could do anything else, Lizzie aptly pulled him inside her, till there was no space between them.
“Lizzie… Heavens!” he moaned when his hips slammed against hers, forgetting everything about Finn or any other man she had in her life. There was only Lizzie and him now and the perfection of their bodies united.
When her body tightened around him, his most primitive instincts took control and Brun began to thrust into her faster and faster, fuelled by her moans of pleasure.
Heavens, she was killing him.
He kissed her breasts and her neck till their lips met again, never stopping the frenetic movement of his hips, feeling the tension building up in his loins till the point of pain.
When Brun felt he could no longer hold himself, Lizzie trembled and cried with pleasure once more and he let go, emptying himself completely inside her.
I am in Brun’s bed!
The soft light of his bedside lamp made her eyes burn as Lizzie inspected the unfamiliar room. Everything was practical and simple in masculine tons of white, gray or black, and his furniture had a simple, minimalist design. The only touch of colour, breaking the nearly military atmosphere of the bedroom were a handful of paintings on the walls, but like in his office, they were only landscapes.
There was not a single portrait in his room, from any century he had live through.
Changelings were not encouraged to make friends outside our circle.
No family. No friends. No connections.
Five hundred years alone.
Blinking back the tears, she checked the clock: it was a little after midnight.
She turned her head away from the light. Brun was asleep, his breathing strong and even. He had one arm under his pillow and the other lay possessively over her breasts, tucking her close to his chest. She smiled, slowly brushing a lock of hair away from his face. Awake, he had always seem so powerfully masculine to her, serious and resolute, but sleeping Brun had an almost boyish quality to his face, vulnerable even, despite his long and daunting past.
It looks like there are many layers to this man to be unravelled.
Like a paintbrush on a canvas, her fingers traced the lines of his face, down to his shadowed jaws, finding the strong pulse on his neck. To think that his heart had endured five hundred years of bondage and forced solitude.
She touched the scars on his torso. There were so many… The hallmarks of his centuries as a warrior, as the protector of the Endellys Clan. The phantom of the pain he endured at each one hung in the air, and she could feel with astonishing clarity how blades and bullets ravaged his flesh, burying deep into his body, grazing past bone, making him bleed. Some scars were wrinkled and ugly. Those must have taken a long time to heal, opening again and again, getting infected, making him sick for days, weeks even.
Lizzie did not know when she started crying, but suddenly her face was wet with warm tears and a knot formed on her throat as she tried to hold back a sob.
Brun’s eyes snapped open, startling her into a gasp.
“Lizzie!” her name on his mouth sounded different now, more intimate, “You are crying!” his voice was croaky and thick with sleep. He pulled her so close against his chest that she could feel his heart beating, and then kissed her on the forehead, “What happened?”
“Your scars…” she started, touching the nastiest ones on his ribs, the ones from the floggings, “I cannot explain how, but it is as if I could feel the pain you endured… It’s… daunting…”
He was silent for such a long time that Lizzie tilted her head back to stare into his eyes. His expression was serious and his brows were knitted.
“Brun?” she tried, wondering whether she should stop bringing that up. Surely there was a deep emotional trauma linked to those injuries as well.
He exhaled, “Perhaps it is not so strange that you can sense the ghost of my past wounds, Lizzie, because some Enchanters were able to knit wounds from the inside out with their magic alone. Triarell was one with such healing abilities and perhaps this is why you chose to study medicine.”
Brun had made a cryptic remark about her choice of career when they first met which now made sense.
In the current outlandish context of things, that is.
“What I don’t understand is why Fayla did this to you,” she puzzled, unable to remove her fingers from the scar on his flank. It seemed to exercise some kind of morbid fascination on her, as if it were the key to unlock the mystery of Brun’s life.
He glanced beyond her head to the window and Lizzie was surprised by the complete absence of emotion in his expression. She knew him for barely more than a month now, but despite his reserved and stoic attitudes, he was not an uncaring man.
No, his expression was one of acceptance of the fate that had been laid before him. He carried no resentment towards the people who had taken him from his family and turned him into fodder for the Dreams Thief. He truly viewed his abduction, isolation and torture as his life’s purpose and Lizzie wondered who Brun would be without those beliefs.
“Changelings were raised to be the shields of the Fae. We were raised to fear no pain nor death. Our sole purpose was to die so that the Fae could endure…” he declared, voicing Lizzie’s assessment.
He locked his gaze on hers again and brushed a lock of hair away from her face, softly touching his lips to her forehead once more.
“I guess Fayla was harder on me because I have always been a wee… rebellious, in particular after she told me that I was human.”
She was taken aback by that. Most Changelings had no knowledge that they were not Fae-born, he had told her, but Lizzie had assumed he had figured out the truth by himself.
“Fayla told you that?” she repeated untangling herself from his embrace and sitting up on the mattress, “Why would she do such thing?”
He shrugged, but frowned, as if he had never pondered over that question before, “I am not sure… Fayla was… She did not share much. Understanding her motives was not an easy task… She had the talent of scrying and seldom gave straight answers to anything, always speaking in riddles and presages.”
“Scrying?” Lizzie repeated, “You mean like, soothsaying and stuff like that?”
“That’s right,” he acquiesced, “Fayla is the one who foretold your birth.”
His eyes wandered away again, as if he were sifting through his memories, “I reckon that Fayla bore no illusions about the demise of the Fae and wanted to prepare me for my mortality once no magic was left to keep me from aging,” then he brought his gaze back to her and placed a hand on her arm, “Lizzie, is there something wrong?”
Again, in the weird context of Fae logic, parallel worlds and magic, that line of thinking made sense, however Lizzie could not shake the feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong in that story.
If Changelings were nothing more than pawns to be sacrificed in the deadly game of chess between Fae and the Dreams Thief, would Fayla really be worried about something as trivial as one human’s feelings? Was it possible that in a twisted way Fayla had… loved him?
Fayla had bequeathed Brun with all her properties and fortune, he had explained. Perhaps in her own child-abuser-psychotic way she had seen him as a son?
Her brows still furrowed when she brought her eyes back to him, unease coiling in her belly.
“I… I’m not sure…” she admitted. What could she understand of a world she did not know existed until a little over a week? “Probably it is nothing… I mean… This is all surreal…”
He chuckled, “For someone who likes fantasy and science fiction stories so much, you seemed too sceptical of magic…” he teased, brushing a lock of hair away from her shoulder and allowing his fingers to trace the line of her arm.
”Because magic was not supposed to be real!” Lizzie countered, trying to ignore how the seemingly innocent touch made her skin pebble, “All these things about Fae and enchantments belonged to books and movies until very recently to me… Perhaps I am just still digesting it all…”
Or perhaps this mystery has more layers than we thought…
He pushed himself up, his broad shoulders taking up all her line of view and Lizzie’s breath hitched.
“You don’t need to take in everything at once. I know it’s a lot,” his hand rested on her cheek and then his eyes dropped from her face to her naked breasts, “In the meantime, I believe we have some unfinished business right here…”
She yelped when he pushed her against the pillows and pounced over her, trapping her hips with his and lowering his mouth over hers until she was panting with desire.