"The Immortal Highlander" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moening Karen Marie)

Still, if his choices were humble or humanЧ and cursed and powerless, to bootЧ he'd eat humble pie until he choked on it.
"My Queen, you were right and I was wrong. See, I can say it."
Though the lie tasted foul upon his tongue. "And I vow never again to disobey you."
At least not until he was certain he was secure in her good graces again.
"Forgive me, Queen Most Fair." Of course she would. She always did.
"I am your most humble, adoring servant. O glorious Queen."
Was he laying it on too thick? he wondered idly, as the silence lengthened. He noticed he'd begun to tap a booted foot in a most human manner. He stomped it to make it be still. He was not human. He was nothing like them.
"Did you hear me? I apologized," he snapped.
After a few more moments, he sighed. Gutting his teeth, he dropped to his knees. It was universally known that Adam Black despised being on his knees for any reason, for anyone.
"Exalted leader of the True Race," he purred in the ancient, rarely used tongue of his kind, "Savior of the Danaan. I petition the grace and glory of thy throne." Ritual, ancient words of formal court manners, they signified as nothing else could, his complete and utter obeisance. And ritual demanded she reply.
The contrary bitch didn't.
HeЧ who'd never before suffered the passage of timeЧ now felt it acutely, as it stretched too long.
"Damn it, Aoibheal, fix me!" he thundered, lunging to his feet. "Give me back my powers! Make me immortal again!"
Nothing. Time spun out.
"A taste," he assured himself. "She's just giving me a taste of this, to teach me a lesson."
Any moment now she would appear. She would rebuke him. She would subject him to a scathing account of his many transgressions. He would nod, promise never to do it again, and all would be made right. Just like the thousands of other times he'd disobeyed or angered her.
An hour later nothing was right.
Two hours later and Chloe Zanders was gone, leaving him alone in the silent, dusty tombs. He almost missed her wailing. Almost.
Thirty-six hours later and his body was hungry, thirsty, andЧ a thing nearly incomprehensible to himЧ tired. The Tuatha Dщ did not sleep. His mind, customarily razor-sharp and lightning fast, was getting muddled, sluggish, shutting down without his consent.
Unacceptable. He'd be damned if any part of him was doing a single thing without his consent. Not his mind. Not his body. It never had and never would. A Tuatha Dщ was always in control. Always.
His last thought before unconsciousness claimed him was that he was bloody well certain he'd rather be anything else: stuck inside a mountain for a few hundred years, turned into a slimy, three-headed sea beast, forced to play the court fool again for a century or two.
Anything but... so... disgustingly... pathetically... uncontrollably... humЧ

CINCINNATI, OHIO
SEVERAL MONTHS LATER ...

1



Summer. Gabrielle O'Callaghan broodedЧ always her favorite seasonЧ had absolutely sucked this year.
Unlocking her car, she got in and slipped off her sunglasses. Shrugging out of her suit jacket, she nudged off her heels and took slow, deep breaths. She sat collecting herself for a few moments, then tugged free the clip restraining her hair and massaged her scalp.
She was getting the start of a killer headache. And her hands were still shaking. She'd nearly betrayed herself to the Fae.
She couldn't believe she'd been so stupid, but, God, there were just too many of them this summer! She hadn't spotted a fairy in Cincinnati for years, but now, for some bizarre reason, there were oodles of them.
Like Cincinnati was some kind of great place to hang outЧ could a city be more boring? Whatever their unfathomable reason for choosing the Tri-State, they'd appeared in droves in early June, and had been ruining her summer ever since.
And pretending she didn't see them never got any easier. With their perfect bodies, gold-velvet skin, and shimmering iridescent eyes, they were a little hard to miss. Drop-dead gorgeous, impossibly seductive, dripping pure power, the males were a walking temptation for a girl toЧ
Brusquely she shook her head to abort that treacherous thought. She'd survived this long and was darned if she was going to slip up and get caught by one of the eroticЧ exotic, she corrected herself impatientlyЧ creatures.
But sometimes it was so hard not to look at them. And doubly difficult not to react. Especially when one caught her off guard like the last one had.
She'd been having lunch with Marian Temple, senior partner at the law firm of Temple, Turley and Tucker, at a posh downtown restaurant; a very critical lunch, during which she'd been interviewing for a postgraduate position.
A soon-to-be-third-year law student, Gabby was serving a summer internship with Little & Staller, a local firm of personal injury attorneys. It had taken her all of two days on the job to realize she was not cut out for representing pushy, med-bill-inflating plaintiffs who were firmly convinced their soft-tissue injuries were worth at least a million dollars per ache.
At the opposite end of the legal spectrum was Temple, Turley and Tucker. The most prestigious firm in the city, it catered to only the most desirable clients, specializing in business law and estate planning. What carefully selected criminal cases they chose to represent were renowned, precedent-setting ones. Ones that made a difference in the world, protecting fundamental rights and addressing intolerable injustices. And those were the cases she hungered to get her hands on. Even if she had to slave away for years, doing research and fetching coffee to get to them.
She'd been stressed all week, anticipating the interview, knowing that TT&T hired only the cream of the crop. Knowing she was competing against dozens of her classmates, not to mention dozens more from law-schools around the country, in a cutthroat bid for a single opening. Knowing Marian Temple had a reputation for demanding nothing less than high-gloss sophistication and professional perfection.
But thanks to hours of aggressive practice interviews and pep talks from her best friend, Elizabeth, Gabby had been calm, composed, and in top form. The aloof Ms. Temple had been impressed with her scholastic achievements, and Gabby had gotten the distinct impression that the firm was predisposed to hire a woman (couldn't be too careful with those equal-opportunity statistics), which put her ahead of most of the competition. The lunch had gone swimmingly, until the moment they'd left the restaurant and stepped out onto Fifth Street.
As Ms. Temple was extending that all-important invitation to come in for a second, in-house interview with the partners (which was never arranged unless the firm was seriously considering making an offer, joy of joys!), a sexy, muscle-bound fairy male sauntered right between them in that infuriatingly arrogant I'm-so-perfect, don't-you-just-wish-you-were-me way they had, so close that its long golden hair brushed Gabby's cheek like a sensual ripple of silk.
The intoxicating fragrance of jasmine and sandalwood surrounded her, and the heat radiating off its powerful body caressed her like a sultry, erotic breeze. It took every ounce of her considerable self-discipline to not inch backward out of its way.
Or worseЧ yield to that incessant temptation and just pet the gorgeous tawny creature. How many times had she dreamed of doing that? Copping one tiny forbidden fairy-feel. Finally finding out if all that golden fairy skin really felt as velvety as it looked.
You must never betray that you can see them, Gabby.
Thoroughly discombobulated by the fairy's proximity, her suddenly nerveless hand lost its grip on the iced coffee she'd taken from the restaurant in a to-go cup. It hit the sidewalk, the top flew off, and coffee exploded upward, drenching the impeccable Ms. Temple.
At that precise moment, the fairy turned back to look at her, its iridescent eyes narrowing.
Panicked. Gabby focused all her attention on the sputtering Ms. Temple. With the enthusiasm of near-hysteria, she plucked tissues from her purse and dabbed frantically at the spreading coffee stains on what had been, moments before, a pristine ivory suit that she had a sick feeling cost more than she made in a month.