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her belly and lower.
    She blinked, her head tipped back and he loomed over her, staring directly into her eyes. “Your life is not your own anymore, Maggie. Do you not see that? Do you not see that this”—he lifted his gaze to sweep the town of Castle Bay with a dismissive glance—“is no longer where you belong?”
    “No.” She said it firmly. Loudly. Convincing him? Or herself? Didn’t matter. Both of them needed to hear it. “I won’t give it all up, Culhane. I can’t. This is who I am and hey, it should not be a big surprise, Mr. Great Fenian Warrior.” She yanked herself free of his grip. “You’re the one who’s been peeking into my life for years. Not like knowing who I am is a big shocker. So dial down the caveman attitude, okay?”
    “You try my patience, Maggie Donovan.”
    She clucked her tongue at him. “Is that any way to talk to your Queen?”
    He gritted his teeth so hard, Maggie was pretty sure she actually heard his teeth dissolving into powder; then his eyes blazed a pale green fire at her and his image shifted, blurred and disappeared.
    Alone again, Maggie shot a look into the beauty shop, hoping to hell no one had seen Culhane doing the vanish thing. But everyone inside was busy combing out hair, sitting under dryers reading magazines and slurping down coffee while gossiping—none of them had a single clue that a Fae Warrior had just been outside their cozy little shop. They would never dream that a place like Otherworld existed.
    Lucky bastards.

Chapter Three

    Culhane embraced the change, letting his body dissipate, molecules disbanding, as he shifted dimensions, moving through time, space and the magic doorways that separated his world from Maggie’s. He appeared a brief moment later in his home at the Warriors’ Conclave—his body hard and tight, his temper tightly leashed but straining to be free. And the familiarity of his rooms did nothing to ease the tension clawing at him.
    “Damn woman will not listen,” he muttered, sweeping one hand through his hair impatiently. “Will not do as I say. Can she not see that without my help she’s no hope of surviving what comes next?”
    Could she not see that his hunger for her was making him half crazed with want? Since the moment when she’d awakened to her new power—no, Ifreann take him—since long before that, Maggie Donovan had been nothing but a temptation to him. His mind tormented him daily with thoughts of what he wanted to do to her. With her. He wanted his hands on her breasts. He wanted to explore each curve and valley her body possessed. He wanted to taste her, delve deep with his tongue until she screamed his name and begged for the release only he could give her.
    And damn if he could manage any of it.
    But then, mayhap she did know what she was doing to him and was enjoying it as well. She was no shy virgin. He could sense that there had been other men in her life before him. Men who hadn’t deserved her. Men unworthy of her, he told himself with a shake of his head. But since she was no innocent, why then did she keep him at arm’s length?
    Why had they shared no more than a few kisses? He’d had only the one lingering touch of her heat—the night Mab had slapped him into prison before she’d gone on to be defeated by Maggie.
    Why was she being so bloody coy ? She felt the rush of passion between them. He saw it in her eyes when they were together. Her destiny— with him —was there before her and she clung to her past. To the mortal world when she had no reason to. Was her life so perfect that she could not bring herself to turn her back on it? Was what he offered her worth so little in her mind that she refused to reach out and take it?
    She felt the fire between them. The hunger. Yet she fought her own nature and held instead to the idiotic notion of celibacy, when raw, wild sex would have freed them both.
    What kind of woman was she?
    In his long life, thousands of mortal years, Culhane had never known