He shook his head and pulled me closer. He kissed me with such desperation that it scared me. I pulled back, but remained within his embrace. My hands rested on his chest. “Mike. Tell me.”
He dropped his arms and walked away. “My uncle died, that’s what. I never met him. He’s dead, and my father’s dead, and my grandparents are dead, and what the fuck am I doing?” The wind whipped his hair into a mad tangle. “This isn’t me. This hasn’t been me for ten years. I’m so fucking angry with my father, and Patrick, and all these people who know so goddamn much about ‘the O’Connors.’”
He drove his fingers through his hair. “And I don’t know who I am here. I’ve never had to be my father’s son. And I haven’t spent this much time isolated with my mom and sisters for years.”
I had no experience with death, but I had plenty with anger and regret and family. “Then be angry. Don’t just keep it trapped.”
“What do you know about it?”
I leaned my head back. “I’m mad at my mother for not understanding me. I’m mad at my father for not understanding her. At—at myself for my general incompetence.”
“What do you mean?”
That I had let myself get swept away in Mike’s life, and Mike’s family, instead of sticking to the goal and researching Kilkarten. And I was mad at him, too, for not being able to see it my way, and then the anger turned back on myself for being so selfish. “I don’t know. I’m just not always the person I want to be.”
He tilted his chin toward the earth and cracked a small smile of self-recrimination and frustration. “I want to be the person everyone thinks I am. The charming one.” He looked up, eyes striking right into mine. “You don’t think that’s me.”
“Do you want me to?”
“No.” He folded his hands over his nose. “I want to get out of here.”
I couldn’t help with everything, but at least I knew where we could go.
Chapter Thirteen
We caught the bus back to the inn, and from there took the car Mike’s family had rented. I drove. Mike didn’t ask where we were going; he didn’t even speak, just stared out the window at the gathering dark. So I didn’t say anything either, until the road dwindled into little more than two tracks on a flat path lined by hedgerows. I pulled over to the side of the road and led him up a tiny path between two tall, full trees.
The stones came into view almost immediately, jutting out between the straw colored grasses. “There are around two hundred dolmens in Ireland, and most of them are up north. But Cork—Cork is filled with them too. Standing stones and portal tombs. Whole megalithic complexes.”
Before us, the landscape sprawled out, a majestic patchwork of rolling greens, of dark bushes and pale grasses and startlingly bright mosses. It looked endless, almost, except you could see the blaze of fire far out over the water.
Staggered stones rose out of the ground, massive boulders roughly shaped into points. We climbed a small hill and stopped before the portal tomb. A heavy, ancient capstone lay tilted across a handful of backstones, looking like it might slide off any minute and cause a small earthquake.
Mike traced a ridge in the stone. “When was it built?”
“Maybe five-thousand years ago. Older than the pyramids.” We slowly started around the monument. “I get why they believed in fairies here.” I glanced over at him. In the darkness, only his hair glinted. His strong jaw and broad shoulders made him look like he’d stepped out of the tales himself. “You’re perfect, actually.” He met my eyes, startled. “Put you in a tunic and give you a torc instead of a tie, and you could have been here for thousands of years.
“We did a unit on fairytales in seventh grade, and my project was about fairy portals. Rings of stones or mushrooms. I used to daydream about going through one. Ending up in Fairyland. Where everything was beautiful and perfect and magical.”
He reached out and planted a hand against one of the supporting boulders. And then, before I realized what he was planning, he planted his arms on the stone and swung himself onto the capstone.
I gasped and grabbed for his leg, but he evaded me easily. “Are you crazy?” My heart beat frantically as he sprawled across the stone. “You have to get off!”
“Do I?” He grinned down me. Mad, beautiful, just as a fairy king ought to be. He reached down. “Come on.”
I shook my head resolutely. “No.”
“Natalie.” A wicked gleam lit his eyes. His hand taunted me. “Now.”
And then, because I was clearly mad, too, I placed my hand in his, braced my leg and was pulled up onto the capstone. I landed half across him, and he righted me in his lap, his arms at the small of my back. His scent mingled with the summer night, grass and earth and stone. “This is very wrong.”
He laughed. “Are the fairies going to punish us?”
I wound my fingers through his hair, admiring the play of silver and fire. “You are very bad at being Irish.”
He kissed me. His hands slid along my back, pressing me closer, and his tongue met mine in a slow, perfect dance and I no longer cared what was right and who we were. Not tonight, with a dome of fast stars blazing far above us. Not here, on this portal into a different world, a different reality, one that was just us and warmth and beauty. I wanted to have him, for him to have me, to belong to each other here in this wild land on the edge of the world. So I packed my reasons for coming to Ireland away in a little box at the back of my mind, and when he lay down on the cold hard stone, I followed.
My knees landed on either side of him, my dress rucked up around my waist. I bent my body toward his, needing to be closer, to edge out the air between us until we were a seamless blend of heat. I’d never felt so urgent before, never ached with desire until I felt like my body might combust. Maybe because I’d never slept with anyone who I’d understood so entirely, inside and out, who fascinated me and drew me and pulled me apart. I’d always been so comfortable, so relaxed, like sex was just one more recreational activity that wasn’t so important one way or the other, but I wanted Mike like I’d wanted Kilkarten, and I wanted him now.