Chapter Eleven Binding
Choir practice is amazing. Rory is passed from one new adopted granny to adopted uncle to adopted auntie, and finally back to Dairmuid, who’s singing in the tenor section as if he’s been there forever. A bunch of middle-aged ladies are giving him the glad eye, and I can’t blame him.
Want to know what’s sexier than a gorgeous man with wings like stained glass hitting a pure, high note accompanying the throbbing notes of my organ?
If that god of a man is also holding my son, and watching the two of them together makes my entire chest ache.
I can’t wait to get home. Tonight, I don’t want to sleep. Tonight, I want to make music of a different kind.
“Put the baby in his safety bubble,” I pant as we chase each other up the stairs after choir practice, Rory nestled against my shoulder.
Dairmuid kisses me, mouth working the magic that turns me into a dripping mess without even trying. He whisks the baby away, snuggling him and singing to him to keep him asleep. “He’ll be up again in two hours for another feed,” he whispers.
“Two hours isn’t enough?” I ask, unbuttoning my white blouse, a piece of totally impractical clothing for a new mother, but kind of necessary for a preppy professional organist who has paired it with equally impractical beige linen slacks and dark brown pumps.
“I suppose if we hurry,” Dairmuid whispers, placing Rory in his bassinet and enclosing it in the beautiful pinkish-orange bubble.
It glows softly in the corner. As an afterthought, he flaps his wings and arms once, and encloses the room, including Rory’s little baby bubble, in a bigger dome that reflects like silver and shines like moonlight.
“There are people outside on patrol again tonight. I wanted you to feel protected from those with extra excellent hearing.”
By the way his lips twitch, I know he’s thinking about today. What I overheard. “I’m sorry about that. We haven’t had a second alone,” I whisper, striding over to him.
“I wanted to ask you for so much, Deanna. And I know humans cannot rush. Cannot take leaps, even though they have such short lives.”
“Me? I can leap.” I step out of my shoes and put my hands on his arms. His head immediately dips, sucking the soft spot on my neck that makes my blood pump harder.
“It’s your kind who can’t. You need time to fall in love, because ...
Well, usually, you’re going to be stuck with them for a long, long time.
With me? I guess it wouldn’t matter so much, huh? ”
“My offer to you... The one I’m trying so hard to craft—would break Saz’s hold, but also bind us together, Deanna.
Our lives would be very different, and your time and mine would match in more ways than one.
I don’t think it’s fair to you to make such a bargain, not in the way that would give... Well. One way—”
“Dair?” I moan when his hands slide under my open blouse, massaging my breasts even as he keeps talking.
“Can’t you tell me some ‘facts’ about what you’re thinking without offering it as a deal?
Like, for example, if I said, ‘I love Rory, and I want to protect him,’ that doesn’t activate some kind of fae bargain, does it? ”
“No, because you didn’t offer me that; you were simply explaining what you want.
All right. Maybe I can do that.” Dairmuid blinks his wings again, and his clothes shimmer away.
This time, I don’t let him do all the work.
I quickly grab at his cock, running my palm up and down his long, hard uncut length.
“Fae and mortals. We have immortal souls. But mortal bodies... They age quickly, unto death.”
“Your pillow talk sucks,” I whisper, but I really don’t mind.
I have this gorgeous canvas of a man to paint with kisses, little nibbles as I work my way down to his cock, seamlessly dropping my mouth over him and feeling how he fills it completely.
Not just the length. The width. He’s not comically big or reminiscent of some garden squash, but he’s not built like Aaron, or any other man I’ve been with either.
What’s more, his skin, his scent—it’s all things fall.
Harvest flavors, just a hint, but it’s addictive.
I slide my tongue up and down as I sink to my knees, staring up at him.
Dair’s head falls back, and he groans. His hands find my bun and loosen it, then stroke my red strands through his fingers. “Never have I ever seen anything so fucking lovely,” he moans as I bob on him.
“Keep talking.”
“Your hair, Deanna. It’s the most perfect shade. And your skin—”
I hate to stop the litany of compliments I know are coming, but we have business to attend to. “Tell me about souls. They seem to be so important, and yet I barely think about mine.”
“Funny how that is, until it’s about to leave—or be taken. If a fae were to gift his soul to a human, to keep as part of a bargain—it could keep her alive forever. But she’s mortal. And she ages. Living forever and aging forever isn’t as good as one thinks.”
“No,” I admit that the moment isn’t about pleasure anymore. I stop my ministrations, and Dair lifts me up, sweeps me into his arms like I’m weightless, and settles me onto the bed. His hand slides down my side as he looks down at me.
“You mentioned you lost your father. I can tell you love him so.”
“I do.”
“He’ll be in the heavenly realms, and you’ll want to see him. I wouldn’t be so selfish as to ask you to give that up, or to risk the endless aging. I’m looking, my lady, for just the right words to—”
“What happens if a human gives the fae her soul, and he gives his to hers? A fair trade, maybe? Or maybe...” I lick my lips.
“Maybe she asks for a little bit more, like his firstborn, too, because souls are big currency. Does that make him mortal? Does he suddenly only get eighty or ninety years instead of eight hundred or eight thousand?”
“Ah. Well, I don’t know for certain, but if they were lovers, if they were—ahem—soulmates, in the truest sense of the word—they would be bound together.
They would become demi-mortals. Or, rather, she would, and even though he might still technically be immortal, as Bonwit puts it, ‘the clocks of their souls wind down together. Stop together.’”
I cup Dairmuid’s strong jaw and bring his head to mine. “So... So, neither one ever has to live without the other?”
“Mmhm. And we can bind our time to this realm, but visit mine,” he whispers. “But someone who would do that... They have to be in love, I think. Truly in love, to bind souls. I know you love my son. But I don’t know how you truly feel about me.”
I don’t know either, not exactly. Right now, we kiss, and it’s slow, and longing, and my pants and everything else melt away. Dair’s hand strokes down my belly, massaging every inch of skin he can reach, unhurried. Patient.
I’m the starving one. He has eons of time. I have decades—I hope.
And if we don’t kill Saz, maybe we have nothing.
His fingers slip between my thighs as I let them fall open, taking his wrist to guide him where I want—but he already knows. His fingers tease and pull gently, finding where I’m wettest and spreading my juice over my clit, heating me up before his fingers slide inside.
My body relaxes, which gives my overloaded brain a chance to see things clearly for the first time in days.
Do you realize that he could save his son, and with the wrong offer, he could pretty much sentence you to a life of endless aging? He doesn’t have to do that. If it were my child at risk, would I be so caring about a relative stranger?
I honestly don’t know.
“You’re so good.”
“I’m trying,” Dairmuid sighs against my breast, capturing a nipple as his fingers start to work inside. “You’re so delicious, Deanna. You make it easy to be good. I could devote myself to this body every day.”
“You could? For how long?”
“Endlessly,” he chuckles, taking the other breast in his mouth.
“It’ll change.”
“I hope it does.”
“Hm.” I’m not sure I like that.
Dairmuid is suddenly over me, on top of me, not inside, and his eyes challenge me. “I want to be the one to make it change, Deanna. Do you know how rare it is for a faeling to have a sibling?”
“No?”
“Rarer and rarer. And if you are Rory’s true mother, he will be the first in many years to have a full sibling—if you would do me the honor of carrying my child one day.”
His hand takes hold of his cock, and he rubs the tip between my soaking lips, finding my clit and pressing hard, back and forth, making me arch. “I want to be inside of you so badly,” he grunts.
“Then why aren’t you?” I lock my leg over his calf and try to draw him in.
“Because I want to know if you want the same things. If you want to be the object of all the lusts I never fully unleash, and if you want me to plant my seed inside, and watch you grow, and share a life where we have children and pleasure, and balance human things like choir and eternal things like rain and wind. I want that, Deanna. For the first time in my immortal life, I want to share everything with someone. Even my son. Even my soul.”
Lust sinks into me, but my head is still clear.
Very clear.
Want. Dairmuid.
“Take me. Share with me. I want the same things.”
“Deanna, are you—”
“I’m so fucking sure it hurts, and you have to stop this pain. We can talk about vows and pretty words, and all of that later,” I demand, grabbing the back of his neck and dragging him to me.
The first stroke stretches me and fills me in one deep, even stroke, a perfect stroke, a stroke that touches all the hot, needy spots by default and makes me clamp down on him.
I writhe and ride, hips instantly at work.
“What?” I can’t help but cry out, a little bewildered and a lot okay with whatever this is.
“What, love? My tight, perfect love?” Dair groans, lets his hips stay low, buried inside of me, the perfect place for my greedy walls to pull and pivot on.