Lyrical. She was, in a word, radiant.
She grinned wider before taking another flamboyant bow.
As she rose, Gareth pulled her into his body and, without a thought beyond the need to taste those decadent lips, kissed her.
She kissed him back.
It was short and swift, and it wasn’t enough. Might not ever be enough. Not if the buzz that raced through his veins was an indication of what this woman did to him. No one had ever affected him like this. Never had a woman left him so on edge with wanting, so hungry for her he felt like a starved man given an all-he-could-eat token to the richest buffet in the country. She was vibrant. Spirited. Vivacious. And he wanted her with a desperation he’d never known.
She met his stare and the merriment in her eyes softened. Retrieving her hand, she offered a small curtsy and an almost conscientious smile. “I suppose I should thank you.”
“For?” he asked, voice a bit churlish, his heartbeat tattooing a rapid-fire rhythm against his rib cage—and it had nothing to do with exertion. The wound forever frozen on his side burned from the heat rolling off her.
One thin shoulder lifted casually, and she seemed to struggle to hold his gaze. “I didn’t realize I needed to let off a little steam.”
Gareth stepped into her space. Dancers began to spin around them with the band’s next set. She smelled of warm grass, sunshine and fresh earth. Like comfort. A refuge. Like home.
Taking a loose curl between his gloved fingers, he suddenly resented the separation between them. He wanted to feel the silk of her hair. With infinite gentleness, he tucked the curl behind her ear and uttered the only words that came to mind as she gazed up at him in undisguised confusion. “Take me home tonight, Ash.”
“Man the bar!”
The words cut through the din and sliced through the music.
Ashley glanced over her shoulder at Fergus, the bar’s giant of an owner, before again meeting Gareth’s direct stare. “I have to finish my shift.”
Blood thrummed through his veins. “That’s not a denial.”
“Neither is it acquiescence,” she retorted.
Gareth reached out and dragged a finger down her neck. “I’ll only keep asking until you say yes.”
“Persistent.” She eyed him carefully. “Care to own your heritage?”
He blinked slowly, surprised at her brazenness. Most Others were far more inclined to pass each other by giving a wide berth and an averted stare, particularly in these parts where the assassins were suspected to reside. But if she wanted to play it straight, he could check off the first of his three wishes—discovering her species. “I’ll show you mine when you show me yours.”
She leaned into him and the smell of sunshine and dry heat intensified. “Clever man. I suppose closing time will provide us both the answer I’ve not yet decided on. Stay if you will.”
Spinning on her heel, she strode across the pub, slipped behind the bar and returned to working the sticks and tossing bottles without pause.
Gareth stole a look at his watch.
Midnight.
Two hours to kill.
The common vernacular stung, but he shrugged it off. Killing time wasn’t what had earned him his damnation.
Still, it was too much time to waste on a maybe. He might not even be able to touch her without excruciating pain. Except for the warmth she’d infused him with...
One last glance at the bar and his mind was decided. He would stay. Ashley could be the only chance he had for skin-to-skin contact without excruciating pain before he was returned to the Shadow Realm and the Well of Souls. And just once more before the goddess returned for him, Gareth wanted to know warmth. If the woman behind the bar was truly his last chance? If she could give him the chance to find even a moment’s peace before an eternity of torment? There was nothing he wouldn’t do, no mountain he wouldn’t move, no army he wouldn’t slay, no sin he wouldn’t commit. And he would do any of it, all of it, without batting an eye. After all, he was already damned, a dead man.
There was nothing left to lose, only a warm woman to gain.
* * *
The clock’s hour hand rested well past 2:00 a.m. when Ashley finally closed and locked the bar door. Talented as they were as a whole, each man in The King’s Footmen was quite certain he posed a far better catch than any of the others. They’d come on to her individually, each going so far as to offer her the moon and the stars. The lead singer and guitar player had even written her an impromptu little ditty, but she’d been firm. No sex with anyone professionally affiliated with the bar. She didn’t fish from the work pool. It complicated things when the affair ended, and, with her, it would always end. Nothing good lasted in her vagabond lifestyle.
The fiddler, with his windswept hair and broad shoulders, that strong jaw and eyes as green as the fields, might have tempted her to break her rule. But the musician’s wild appeal couldn’t compete with the man who’d ignited her need earlier that evening.
Gareth Brennan.
He’d only offered his first name. It had taken little more than a couple of well-placed questions to discover his surname. Odd that no one knew much about him. He’d seemed a rather amiable fellow, popular with the ladies and well liked by the gents. His reputation at snooker and traditional pool had her itching to pit her skills against his, though it seemed unlikely the opportunity would present itself. Apparently he hadn’t been out and about much over the last few months. Shame, that. Her pride could have used the boost of beating him at his own game.
But wasn’t that exactly what this was? A game? At least to him. He was intent on seducing her, convincing her to spend the night with him.
As for her? She was intent on convincing him to spend at least the next week with her. So who was beating whom here?
She snorted as she dug out the wide dust mop, broom and dustbin. Her pride would stick this out for the win, willing to take a beating before it bowed out. Always. Such was the curse of most phoenixes. Winning equaled dominance, dominance equaled power and power was everything.
Cleaning the last of the peanut hulls out from under the bar, she repositioned the stools and dumped the pan in the bin. One final polish of the bar and she was finished. The weighted knowledge she’d be back here within hours, stocking the bar and checking kegs and bottles to make sure everything was ready for another go round, had her sighing with exhaustion. She needed to go home, needed to sleep—as much as she could possibly get.
The kitchen door whacked the wall as Fergus shoved his way through. Grease-stained apron hanging loose around his neck, he stomped across the rough-hewn oak floor on feet so large they were more suited to a draft horse than a man.
“For the love of all the gods, Fergus, spare a soul the unnecessary fright of seeing you emerge from your cooking cubby like a raging bull,” she snapped, exhaustion making her words sharper than usual. “You take a decade off my life every time you blow through that door and I don’t know you’re still here.”
“You’d have been wise to pay more attention over the last three months,” he groused. Stopping at the obscured door tucked around a blind corner, he pulled a set of keys and rifled through them. “Seeing as I live here, it shouldn’t shock you so that I come from the kitchen to go upstairs every night.”
“Smart-ass. It’s not that you emerge from the kitchen, it’s that you do so like a Pamplonian bull with the gleam of death in his eye. I’m never sure whether to run or...run.” She shrugged and grinned.
He grunted, the sound as close to a laugh as he ever issued. “Beyond your impromptu Riverdance, I both saw and heard you toyed with Gareth Brennan tonight.”
Her mouth worked like a landed trout’s—open, close...open, close—before she