CHAPTER13
“It’s quite straightforward, actually.” Aodhan dragged a stick of chalk across the floor of his bedchamber, drawing intricate, looping sigils with fluid sweeps of his wrist. “A simple matter of joining our auras. My own etheric signature will disguise your human energy.”
Despite his brisk, confident tone, Cathy couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Aodhan been oddly evasive ever since their conversation with the others through the portal. He’d dispatched Motley on some unspecified errand, then locked himself away in his workshop for most of the day, leaving her with just the crow-cat and Noodle for company.
He’d finally emerged at dusk, carrying enough herbs and candles to outfit an entire chain of New Age stores. Now he was bustling around the bedchamber, evidently preparing for some kind of magic ritual. She flattened herself against the wall to avoid getting in his way, wondering if it was just her imagination that he didn’t seem to want to meet her eyes.
“So people will think I’m a fae?” she asked.
“Not exactly.” Aodhan sat back on his heels to consider his handiwork. He made an annoyed sound under his breath, rubbed out one rune, and redrew it. “There’s no disguising the fact that you’re human. But my aura will, for want of a better term, bleed into yours enough to make it look like you’ve been in the fae realms for decades rather than days. People will assume that you’re a changeling, taken from the human world as an infant.”
She watched him place candles around the room, lighting them with snaps of his fingers. Some of them took two or three attempts, his fingertips slipping against each other as though his hands were sweating. He still hadn’t looked at her.
“Aodhan,” she said. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He halted, back to her. His shoulders rose, then fell.
“There’s a catch,” he said, without turning round.
“Of course there is.” She took a step toward him, being careful not to brush any of his carefully chalked symbols. “It’s all right, Aodhan. Nothing is more important than rescuing Kevin. Whatever price this magic requires, no matter how high, I’ll gladly pay it. Just tell me what I have to do.”
She saw him take another deep breath. He turned round, meeting her gaze at last. From his tight, set face, she honestly expected him to produce a cleaver and order her to hold out a hand.
“We have to sleep together,” he said.
“But—” Cathy very nearly blurted out, what’s the catch? She stopped, cleared her throat, and tried again. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You.” Aodhan shaped each word with icy, precise clarity, as though reciting an incantation. “And I. Have to. Sleep. Together.”
The whole universe seemed to collapse to a pinprick, sucking all the air out of her lungs. There was a ringing, not in her ears, but her whole body.
“U-um,” she managed to stammer out, her tongue gone as dry as sand. “And by sleep together, you mean…?”
“Only in the literal sense,” Aodhan clarified, and Cathy was not sure whether the great wave that rushed over her was relief or disappointment. He still stood rigidly upright, hands behind his back like a soldier under inspection. “In order for me to link my aura with yours, we have to be physically close for an extended period of time. The most efficient way to achieve that is to share a bed tonight. To put it in layman’s terms, we will have to… snuggle.”
He pronounced the word as though it was from a foreign language. Cathy was willing to bet he’d never said it before in his entire life. Putting the very concepts of ‘Aodhan’ and ‘snuggle’ together was like mixing matter and antimatter.
In other words: Explosive.
Even the prospect of nothing more than a chaste embrace was enough to send her body into critical meltdown. Her ovaries were practically sending up fireworks. And Aodhan…
…Aodhan looked like a man uttering his own death sentence.
Oh.
Her surge of arousal died a quick, humiliating death. Of course he didn’t want to touch her. She wasn’t exactly a sex siren for human men. To Aodhan, she was probably as attractive as the average cabbage.
Kevin. Agony made a tight knot in her throat, but she forced herself to shake her head. There were lines you didn’t cross, no matter what.
“No,” she said firmly, not allowing even a hint of regret to escape. “I can’t ask you to do that. Not even for my son.”
“I appreciate the prospect is unpalatable, but—” Aodhan stopped, his grim expression faltering. “Wait. What do you mean, you can’t ask me?”
“It wouldn’t be fair. You’re a good, honorable man, Aodhan, and I’m not going to take advantage of that. It’s not right to force you into any sort of physical contact you don’t want. We’ll have to find a different…” Cathy trailed off, uncertain how to interpret the way his face had changed. “What?”
Aodhan continued to stare at her for a long, long moment. Once again, she had the strange sense that he was seeing something entirely different to what she herself saw in the mirror every morning.
“I,” he said at last, “rather expected that I would have to persuade you.”