Ashes of the Fae: (Leila Davis Book 1) Read online

  “From Heather Pixies?”

  “Yes.” His hand retreated to lightly scratch at the bedspread. “Such sweet things, but temperamental. Not very trusting, easily offended. They filled Ireland for a long while before she started wiping them out.” His voice grew angered and then solemn, his fit of rage quickly diminishing.

  “How do you know so much about…all of this?”

  “Well, I picked up a lot along the way, I suppose.”

  Several more pages of history and a new kind of picture caught my eye; a well-drawn portrait of a captivating, dark-haired beauty, head full of bouncy curls and her body shaped with a flattering black bustier. The words “Elisabeth, 1858, Manhattan” written elegantly beneath her.

  “She’s beautiful. Who is she?”

  But once I saw the picture, I noticed his fingers curl inward, making a loose fist. His body teemed with a steam of unease. Something about that question made him nervous.

  His throat hadn’t cleared like that in a while.

  “Well…um…heh.”

  “Maddy, it’s OK. Really. I want to know.” I slid a hand over the book to his, slipping my fingers inside his grasp as he eased his grip to take hold of them, letting out a timid sigh.

  “Elisa. I met her a long time ago, a few years after I came to America.”

  “Was she your…lover?” With a slanted brow, I held his expression in my sights.

  “Uh…well, see…” he grew more nervous, like he was worried how I’d take the answer, but in truth I was curious. “She was a…prostitute.”

  “Oh…” I beamed forcibly, not expecting an answer like that. I wasn’t one to judge, but that definitely surprised me. I never took him for the type to go for that sort of thing. “I mean…that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with—”

  “No, but…” He shook his head, chuckling as he tried to correct himself, redirecting my thoughts. “That’s not…we didn’t meet that way.”

  “That’s okay too.” I laughed, equally strained, relief washing over me as my shoulders relaxed.

  “I’d found her in an alleyway in Manhattan, on Christmas Eve no less. I smelled the blood, so much blood.” His face was crippled with a profound sadness and disgust. “She’d been beaten senseless and raped. Some men, drunkards, had gutted her and left her for dead in the cold rain for no rhyme or reason other than to be cruel, foul,” he spat, fury boiling over in his eyes before he caught and calmed himself.

  “She had crawled halfway down the alley by the time I found her, a stream of blood trailing behind her in the rain. When I tried to help her, she screamed bloody murder. Even bleeding to death she tried to fight me before she realized I wasn’t going to hurt her.” I watched his hand involuntarily open and close around what appeared to be an imaginary one, but instead he closed it around mine, peering down at it. His eyes were still and focused. “‘Please, I don’t want to die’, she told me. And she meant it.”

  “Did you ever find the men responsible?”

  “Oh, I found them…” his pupils widened, a dark satisfaction flooding them as he stared off into the night. “I found them.”

  Somehow I was glad I couldn’t see this memory of his, but I had sense enough to put the pieces together.

  “So…you did save her then?”

  “I did.” He snapped from the daze. “I remember she gasped when my hand set on fire, but as she watched, it was the funniest thing. She was just quiet…and fascinated. And she never asked me about it after that, but we developed a… bond.” He smiled at the distant thought, a fond one that passed quickly before his eyes opened wide at the sight of my hand turning the page again, almost in horror.

  “Wait!” As he reached to stop me, his words slipped out so fast they slurred, “I should’ve mentioned some things in there might be a bit—” his hand froze as I turned the paper.

  “Oh! Hello…”

  “Off-putting.”

  Before me was an entire page with a sketched obscenity—a nice-sized cock buried halfway into a dark-haired girl, a huge scar across the flesh above her pelvic bone. I might have recognized the dick alone, but a fire-scarred hand plastered to her thigh confirmed that. This picture was dated 1859.

  “So is this Mrs.122?” I could feel my cheeks flush in a slight bout of jealousy crossed with envy. The poorly drawn photo of him on the page opposite the smut helped to bring in a bit of humor.

  “Eh, em…yes.” His voice cracked, a heat flowing through his hand and into mine, but in fear. I could tell he was anxious by the look on his face. “If you want the truth, she asked me to draw that.”

  “Before or after?” I smirked as his eyes paced the room. His laughs grew more apprehensive.

  “Well, during.”

  “During? But…how?”

  “Um…you’re sure you want to hear this?” I could tell he was uncomfortable, but I was intrigued, having such a personal part of his history bared to me like this.

  “I’m sure.”

  “Okay well, um…it’s funny, we had started to, you know, and halfway through she just stopped. Gasped loud as can be. I thought I had done something wrong; I wasn’t all that experienced then you see, when really she just got excited and told me, ‘you have to draw this.’”

  “This?”

  “You know…” he hinted, gesturing at the vulgar pencil whip.

  “I was a bit skeptical at first, to be honest. It’s surprisingly hard to displace enough blood from there to my other head to try and make…art…” I’d never seen him filled with such childish excitement, a hand flailing in the air humorously. He took great pleasure in telling this story.

  “So when I said no, she pouted and gave me an ultimatum. If I didn’t oblige, I wasn’t allowed to finish.”

  “Oh, the horror,” I tried to joke, smiling, but still fighting the jealous twinge in my chest.

  “What made it worse was that she was allowed to finish as much as she wanted, and so she did. Needless to say, it took a long time to finish that picture, but there it is…”

  “Did she let you finish at least?”

  “Of course. She always did,” he said matter-of-factly. “I told her she had to draw me as payback and well…you see how that went.”

  But his confidence in the conversation suddenly drained away when he saw my face. I could no longer suppress the clenching feeling. It actually made me feel worse to see how guilty he looked.

  “Oh, Leila. I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have told you. I don’t want you thinking—that was so long ago.” He kneeled to the floor to lean down to my level, taking my hand in both of his and staying quiet until I met his gaze. “It was very different from what you and I have. With her, I could control myself, easily, but with you—”

  “Don’t. I know, I’m just emotionally spent is all…I know I’m being irrational.” I sniffled, unruly emotions flowing through me as my eyes watered. “I mean it was forever ago, and to be fair, you do have a nice dick, so I probably would’ve told you to draw it too.”

  “Flattery…” he snickered, his face cringing in a blush. “It’s funny you say that because Frances hated it.”

  “Frances?”

  “Arden’s mother. ‘It gives me a right ache, Quinn.’” he said mockingly, taking on the tone of a scorned school teacher. “And forget sex for pleasure; I think Arden being conceived was one of the few times we actually had sex.”

  “That’s crazy. I’d take that ache any day.” More coy smiles were exchanged when the conversation started to ease up, before he fell back onto the former topic.

  “But do you want to know the truth? About Elisa?”

  I cocked my head at him in confusion; unsure of what “truth” he could be referring to.

  “If it weren’t for her mania, I don’t think we would’ve ever gotten…physical.”

  “Her mania?”

  “Nymphomania, they call it.”

  “Oh, Maddy surely that’s not—I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a woman having a high sex drive.”
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br />   “That’s what I told her, too. I believed like you did. But a few days after I saved her, I started to believe her. It turns out she was abused, sexually, all her life and that was all she knew. So she would have…episodes.”

  Whatever these episodes were, I could tell they didn’t thrill him too much. He sucked in his lip a moment before letting it go, opening his mouth to let it hang in limbo before offering an explanation.

  “She wanted to be good, you know? She didn’t want to work the streets anymore. She hated it, hated the way men treated her and made her feel, especially after the alley. But her appetite made it hard. And I was there for her. For weeks, we tried to find alternatives, but it wasn’t enough, she always said. One week after the New Year, I thought everything was fine until I walked in on her curled up on the bathroom floor in a cold sweat, crying, shaking. She’d rubbed herself raw trying to sate the itch. She was suffering.”

  “Wow…the poor girl.”

  “Aye.” His chest hummed with glumness, “So I told her I could try to help, since I realized it was a real problem. Things kind of took off from there, and…it worked. I took care of her and her needs and she never went back to working the streets, never touched another man after that, even up to the day she died, and we built a friendship. A trust.”

  “So it was just a friendship?”

  “Aye.” Regret wrung from his expression like water from a rag, a hurtful truth dripping from his lips. “It was only after she had grown old and weary that I found out she’d had stronger feelings for me all along. To hear someone tell you they loved you like that on their deathbed…” His chest tightened and he shook his head, as if disappointed in himself. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it before then. Maybe I was too afraid to…”

  “But was she happy?”

  He said nothing for a moment, but turned to me with a questioning glance, a watery grief in his eyes.

  “Yes. At least…I think so.”

  “Well, that’s all that matters then, Maddy. I mean, you gave her a life. A real life, a full life; one she would’ve never had otherwise.” Both of us sniffled quietly, our hands holding each other tighter.

  “Maybe you’re right…”

  “I am. And hey, maybe I’ll make it into your book one day.” I nudged him hopefully, seeing him perk up at the statement. This time he flipped farther to the back of the book, and that’s when I saw myself staring back at me as my heart dipped and bobbed in a wave of emotion.

  I did have my own page. I recognized my disheveled state from our drunken night together, amazed by the detail he was able to capture from memory alone. Beneath the picture was only my name, an asymmetrical heart hanging beside it.

  There was no hiding the tears now, my emotions made sure of that, and his warm smile didn’t help ease them much. And as I flipped the page, I erupted with a crying sort of laughter, seeing the cleavage I had so teased him with standing out on the page. Below that was a downward view of me, my heated expression, skirt lifted and a finger to my mouth, body begging to be taken—just as I had been beneath him that night.

  “You see so much, don’t you?”

  He simply smiled. But as I looked at the risqué photo, I noticed something a bit off about the page. Small but noticeable stains appeared newly splattered all over it.

  “Maddy?” I asked, counting the darker spots as an embarrassment befell him. “What are these?”

  “I…I…” I’d seen him nervous before, but never had I seen him so nervous that I expected him to burst into flame. “Forgive me.”

  “To be honest, it’s kind of hot. I just hate that it had to go to waste.”

  “T-to waste?” but as I shot him a devious glare, he knew. “Oh, right.” He took to rubbing his knuckles against his lips, resting his chin atop them as he eased himself.

  “This…I know this…” I muttered under shaken breaths, seeing a quote scribed beneath the sketches that sounded somehow familiar. “Tá mé i ngrá leat.” Though in reality I knew I was butchering that pronunciation.

  “What does it mean? I know I’ve heard you say it before. Wait…last night—that’s what you said last night, isn’t it?”

  But he was silent, and slowly he slipped the book from my grasp, re-wrapping it as he rose to set in on the end table. “Maddy?” This time he sat on the bed by my feet, plopping down as his head hung in sadness. I came to my knees, the towel falling away from me as I pressed myself against his back, arms wrapped around him.

  “It’s too soon…too soon for me to say it, and I don’t want to ruin this by being foolish…”

  “Say what?”

  “Leila…” he groused, a hand coming up to cradle mine even through his frustration.

  “Tell me, Maddy. It’d be hard to ruin things between us. Trust me…”

  He sighed heavily, collecting himself through a long pause before I felt him take in a breath to speak. “I have feelings for you, Leila. Loving feelings. And I just, I needed to tell you that before—in case something happened. I didn’t want to make the mistake of not saying anything…again.”

  “I’m in love with you too, you know. Take it or leave it. Even if it has only been, what, a week?” I tickled the middle of his chest. “Besides, since I had no idea what you were saying, would that have really counted anyway?”

  “Point taken…” he yawned, stretching his shoulders before he reached over to turn off the light. The moonlight gushed in through the window above the bed as we sat there in a quiet embrace. After a while we crawled beneath the blankets, not even bothering with clothes. As I curled up to his side, my head rested on his shoulder. His arm wrapped around me and my leg draped over his.

  “I could get used to this,” I muttered. As I traced the many lines of his chest, he squeezed me tighter, kissing the top of my head before we nuzzled one another.

  “Me too…”

  Moments of silence passed, until paranoia began to gnaw at me.

  “Maddy?” I grumbled, unable to make out more than his blurry outline through tired eyes.

  “Mmhm?” He too sounded half-asleep.

  “Are you sure Iris is safe?”

  “Yes, Leila. She’s just in the other room.”

  “Mmm, good. And, Maddy?” I yawned, pulling out a question that had been bugging me ever since the last time we spoke.

  “Hm?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Mmm…” he too yawned, rubbing the length of my arm, “I’ll be 197 this fall.”

  “Damn…” I mumbled. My eyes closed now as I traced random shapes along his chest. “You are old.”

  We laughed weakly at my statement, and that was the last thing I remembered before we both fell into a deep, much needed sleep.

  10

  My dreams were lovely for once, titillating. Filled with delectable imagery and the many possibilities of lovemaking that awaited. A future, with the three of us, a family. Happiness. I saw the smiles, the adventures, and the years as they passed; it all felt so real. Even in the short time I’d known him, I could easily admit that these were the things I wanted, with him. My dreams would’ve continued like that had I not felt a strange tingle run through me, an overwhelmingly good feeling that shook me from my sleep.

  I awoke to a hand tracing the length of my torso as I lay on my back. Warm fingertips danced up and down my skin, only the hand wasn’t mine. Maddy was molded to me, his large frame enveloping my side. With the hand beside me, I fumbled around to feel a substantial erection pressing against me. I’d never grown so hot so quickly.

  Gentle caresses moved my breast as I felt a warm mouth hug the opposite nipple, which soon grew hard with desire. He teased it with lips, tongue, and delicate teeth as I felt heated breaths skate along the tender skin, my body riddled with goosebumps. I could feel a pulsing between my legs, worsening as his fingertips swept down the contour of my belly.

  His lips moved to my ear, tickling the lobe with his tongue as shivers jolted through me. His fingers met a short prickle
of hair as they danced soft circles around my clit. It was a unique kind of torture. As I whimpered, my hips rolled slowly, trying to meet the fingers that maddened me so. I could feel him grinning between kisses down my neck.

  He finally humored me, increasing the pressure as my fingers dove into the hard flesh of his back, releasing a squeal as he began to rub me. Sometimes he would pause to slide down into the slit, bringing a wetness back up with him. He held me on the edge for so long, rubbing just slow enough to keep me from coming and sometimes even stopping just as I was about to finish, before he stopped altogether.

  I couldn’t take it anymore, but he knew. My eyes had been closed, but as I heard him rustling the sheets, I opened them enough to see him snaking his way beneath them. I giggled at the gargantuan mound of blankets above me.

  His wet kisses left chills down my body until he paused, kneeling low between my legs. With a surprised “Oh!” I felt massive hands take a hold of my knees, spreading them as he hooked his arms around my thighs. He grabbed my waist to pull me down closer to his face, and I felt his feathered kisses along my inner thigh.

  Stumbling through my trance, I felt a bare, hot tongue entrench my swollen clit, my body jerking ferociously in his grasp. It felt so different without the lace, almost taxing, and tears of passion flowed from my eyes. He began to suck, only to lick—in all sorts of different rhythms and directions, but constantly. His tongue moved in circles for a bit, then up and down with a perfect pressure. I was so wrought with ecstasy that I couldn’t do much more than cry out between breaths.

  The vibrations of his moans drove me crazier, and a fierce orgasm surprised me as he slipped his tongue inside to devour the wetness. But he wasn’t done with me. Soon a long finger began to torment me, sliding no more than an inch inside. I pleaded with my body for more. Begging for it, I began rolling, jerking, trying to lower my hips, but he only pulled his finger away as I did. So I whined louder.