Read Online Cold Iron by D. L. McDermott - Free Book Online Page A

not made the connection before, but these were not the casually acquired vanities of a neo-pagan poseur. They had not been done under anesthetic, in a sanitized setting with the safety of antibiotics. These had been cut into his flesh with a sharp blade. She touched them gingerly now, felt the raised bands beneath her fingertips. “Did they hurt?”
    “Receiving a geis always does. Even if it is only drawn in ink. And especially if you resist. The magic tightens like a noose around your throat until the design is complete. These,” he brushed his fingers over the marks on his shoulders, “once bound me inside the walls of the mound. The Druids held me down with their magic and carved them into my flesh. These,” he touched a cluster of thick raised lines that interrupted the design, “freed me. Also courtesy of the Druids.”
    The bitterness in his voice was palpable. She decided she didn’t want to see what he would do if he got hold of a living Druid.
    “And these,” he pulled back the velvet cuffs of his coat, rolled the needle-tailored sleeves of his shirt to reveal bands of thick scars around his wrists, bracers of intricate Gaelic knot work carved into his flesh. “These bind me to the sword. But most geis bind one being to another. Slave to master. If the Fae who took the landlady’s sister marked her, he would have drawn his personal symbol on her. It would have compelled her to want him, and him alone.”
    “And when he abandoned her,” Beth realized, the thought sickening, “she had nothing but her beauty, nothing else to keep her in this life, so she pined for him, and died. And you want to do that to me.”
    “I did,” he admitted. “When I first saw you in Clonmel, I wanted you. If I had taken you, and if you’d pleased me, I would have marked you so that you wanted me, and me alone. You would have accepted it by then. The pleasure to be had in a Fae’s bed is difficult to resist. And you might not have gone mad afterward. As I said, you are no farmer’s daughter. Even the old woman’s sister had a chance: had she fallen pregnant by the Fae, she might have had something to live for.”
    His words chilled her to the bone. He had wanted that for her, and she’d come so close to succumbing.
    “And now?” she asked, though she dreaded the answer.
    “I want you still.” He paused, and Beth watched the confusion playing over his face. “More even than I did in Clonmel, but I find that I want you to desire me without compulsion. I would not mark you now. Even if you were to ask.”
    “I wouldn’t do that. Ever. I don’t have a death wish.”
    “Neither, I would wager, did the landlady’s sister. Nor most of those who bind themselves to the Fae. They beg for it anyway.”
    “I don’t believe that. There’s no such thing as sex worth dying for.”
    “It’s as I thought.”
    “What, exactly , is as you thought?”
    “You’ve never been satisfied.”
    She could feel her face turning red. “Don’t be absurd. I’m nearly thirty. Of course I’ve been satisfied .” She had no intention of telling him that she’d only ever been satisfied by her own hand.
    He grinned. It was a slow, sly, smile, creeping across his face. He knew. Somehow, damn him, he knew. “Only in darkness, and solitude.” He took a step forward, closed the distance that had been growing between them. “Let me pleasure you, Beth.”
    Her whole body flushed now with the memory of his hand between her legs in Clonmel. Probably not worth dying for. Probably. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Actually, it sounded like the best idea in the history of the world, if it wouldn’t lead to madness and death. “I’d rather not have you in my head again.” Of that, she was certain.
    “I promise not to use my glamour or my voice. There’s no danger for you if I don’t mark you or try to compel you. Just pleasure.”
    It was so tempting.
    She was nearly thirty. And she’d only ever been with Frank. That,