“Nope.”
Her face fell as her eyes flicked to the empty tables. Lorcan hadn’t been impressed when I made him open the pub at half five this morning. Told me I could drink in his apartments upstairs. But I hadn’t wanted to drink in his happy feckin’ apartment surrounded by himself and his happy wife and their pitying stares.
I wanted to drink alone.
The intruder fidgeted with her worn shawl, bunching the edge, letting it fall, and bunching it again. “We met once. Well, twice. But you didn’t see me the first time, and . . . the second time we . . . ah . . . we had relations in a coat closet.”
“You grossly underestimate how many times I’ve ‘had relations’ in coat closets.” And stables. And privies.Disgusting, by the way. Bedrooms, bathing rooms, towers, dungeons, fields, rivers, the sea. The list of places I hadn’t had sex was probably shorter. Like my own bed. Never had a woman there.
“My name’s Marina.”
The name brought something back.
A cottage on the coast.
“What can I do for you, Marina?” Wasn’t sure why I asked. Humans only wanted me for two things.
Tears sprung from her bright blue eyes. “I want you to kiss me.”
I finished my glass, slamming it on the table next to the other four. “No.”
Her mouth opened and closed. “I thought you couldn’t say no.”
“I just did.” I’d say “no” to everything while I still could.
“Please, Tadhg. Please. I can’t do it anymore.”
Her threadbare shawl slipped off her shoulder, revealing deep purple bruises on her arm. I was already drowning in misery. I didn’t need to deal with hers as well. For some reason, my cursed mouth asked where she got the marks.
“My husband is . . .” The words trailed off when her gaze landed on the empty glass clenched in my hand. “Steven is fond of the drink,” she finished in a whisper.
Fond of the drink.
The polite way of calling someone an alcoholic. Just like me. Except, even at my worst, I’d never hurt a woman.
Marina. . .
Marina.
Hold on. Ididremember Marina. She’d done that thing with her tongue. My curse wasn’t the only thing that stirred.
“What of your children?” I asked, adjusting myself in my breeches. I remembered her having at least one. Maybe two.
“He’d never lay a finger on the little ones.”
A man who struck a woman was capable of anything. “I won’t do it. You need to—”
Marina lunged, catching my shoulders. My reactions were too sluggish. Her lips had barely grazed mine, and yet it had been enough to tear a relieved cry from her throat as she collapsed at my feet.
Ruairi appeared, hair standing up at the back, shirt untucked over loose black trousers.
The moment he saw the body on the floor, he groaned. “Have ye lost yer mind? Lorcan will have yer head fer this.”
He could take his judgement and go and shite. “And is Lorcan my ruler?”
Ruairi’s eyes narrowed.
“That’s what I thought.”