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“Kris—”
“Don’t lie to me anymore!” she cried. Then, horrified when tears pricked hot against her eyelids, she blinked until they went away. “You’re a kelpie. You seduce, then kill. So why was I special? Why am I still alive?”
He took a deep breath, letting it out long and slow. “I no longer kill,” he said.
“But you do seduce.”
“I didnae try.” He spread his hands. “But I am what I am.”
“It was an accident?”
“I havenae seduced a woman since I became this.”
Kris snorted. “Right. I just jumped you because my slut gene kicked in. Must be the balmy Scottish air.”
“There is—,” he insisted, then when she practically hissed at him corrected himself, “was something between us. It wasnae like anything I’d ever felt. I have never felt.” He lifted a shoulder. “Lust. Desire. Aye. But anything more, never. And that’s why…” He looked away, pursing his lips.
“Why what?” she demanded.
“Why I let this go on as I did. I dinnae deserve happiness, but I couldnae resist it with you.”
“You are so full of—,” she began. “You wouldn’t know the truth if it reared up from the loch and bit you.”
Why she was surprised to discover that he was a man, just like any other man—even though he wasn’t—she didn’t know. She expected lies to spill out of every mouth that she met. So why then, when she’d discovered Liam had lied, did she want to curl up and die?
“Cry,” she muttered. She would curl up and cry. She would wish to die for no man. Hell, she’d wish to cry for no man, either. Not anymore.
He gave her a strange glance, and she realized she’d said that out loud. “Never mind. You’re telling me you haven’t been with a woman in centuries.”
“I swear—”
“Bullshit,” she said matter-of-factly. “You might not be human, but you’re still a man, or at least you have all the parts, and no sex for a millennium or two isn’t possible for your breed.”
“I couldnae,” he said. “I had hurt so many and, in the night, they haunted me.” His eyes met hers, and she felt again that odd shimmy in her chest. Must be too much coffee. “I was never at peace. Until I found you.”
She wanted to believe him so badly she ached. She knew he was lying, and still she wanted to forgive, to take his hand and let him pull her into his arms.
“Just tell me your story,” she ordered. “Leave my stupidity and your tricky dick out of it.”
His brow furrowed at her words, but instead of questioning them, he began to speak. “I came into being when the earth was new. I am of the fey.”
“You’re a fairy,” Kris said. “Right.”
“Not as ye think of them now, no. Fey is an ancient term meaning ‘bewitched’ or ‘enchanted.’ I appeared right here, on the loch as I am now, full grown and knowing my place. I was Unseelie, a malicious being; I took joy in what I was and what I did.”
“Seduce and kill.”
“Aye. I was a monster. I was born one.”
“Not born,” Kris sa
id. “Not really.”
“I dinnae know what else to call it. I was delivered to the earth, and I remember nothing before I was me.”
“Enchanted, bewitched,” Kris murmured. “By a great big witch, or maybe a god.”
“Maybe the God.”
