Page 21

Limits

Declan

So far, I’d managed to avoid the two kings who had completely derailed my next two years in less than two days.

There’d been arrangements to make—though not as many as I’d thought.

When I called my assistant, Gerard, to let him know about my hiatus, he’d acted like I’d come down with early-onset dementia.

“Yes, the PR package is all set up and ready to launch,” Gerard said in the same tone he used to remind the cleaning service never to enter our suite if I was still in the office, no matter the hour.

“Eileen and I have been working on it for weeks.”

So not only had Gerard been in contact with Tadhg’s executive assistant, but…

“You were putting together a PR package for my hiatus, and it didn’t occur to you to consult me about it?”

“Eileen said you weren’t to be bothered with it. Same as Davos. We cleared your schedule without interruption,” Gerard replied in his defense.

“By the way, The Irish Times is asking to move next year’s summit. Any idea how long this hiatus is meant to last? Eileen gave us a six to sixteen-month window, which... raised a few flags.”

Of course it did.

I hadn’t taken six days off in a row in years.

Gerard and the rest of the team probably reckoned Tadhg and I were having some kind of twin mental breakdown.

My jaw clenched. I wanted to correct him.

To say there’d been some kind of administrative mix-up.

That I wasn’t about to step away from the helm of the fastest-growing tech company in Europe for over a year.

That I’d be back in the office shortly.

I just had to pop over to Scotland to clean up one last piece of bear business.

That was what I wanted to say, what I’d been trying to say for the steadily increasing hours between now and when I discovered the other two Irish Bear Kings had completely fucked our ability to do business in The Above.

“Declan?” My assistant’s voice cut through the rising static in my brain.

“Do you have an answer for me? Or The Irish Times ?”

I gritted my teeth.

But in the end, all that came out was, “Hold off on the announcement package for the hiatus until you hear otherwise from me.”

“Will do.”

Gerard sounded relieved.

He’d probably thought I was calling to say I no longer needed an executive assistant while I was secretly checked into a psychiatric facility.

“And as long as I have you on the phone, there are a few more questions I’ve been fielding from the teams?—”

Questions with answers I already knew I didn’t have.

I ended the call before he could finish, hating this situation.

Hating myself for not being able to de-escalate this disaster like any CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company should.

I tried to work. The hiatus hadn’t been announced, so as far as everyone else knew, I’d just stopped answering my carefully curated-by-Gerard email and abruptly canceled all in-person meetings for a day or two.

There were still plenty of reports to follow up on, and of course, I’d have to tap our chief strategy officer to return to the GoNoTo table and close the deal I’d been working on before Tadhg and Cian unleashed this unmitigated clusterfuck into my life.

But without the stimulus of the outside human world, the words on my laptop began to swim.

The winter hibernation instinct kicking in, threatening to pull me under.

Until, all of a sudden, I was being awakened by pings on the kludged GoNoTo phone the Shadow King had given us to use whilst in the Secret Kingdom.

I blinked with the bleary-eyed grogginess of incoming hibernation at a new series of texts from the Mountain King, appearing underneath the ones I’d been ignoring all day.

But unlike the messages I’d swiped away about falling for his honey trap of “just meeting” with The Potential he and the Shadow King had chosen and abducted without any weigh-in from me, this one started with a one-word text.

MK: Update.

MK: So, while you had your head all the way up your ass, she countered our Potential offer.

She’s only giving you half the time to make up your mind.

SK: Deadline’s hardcoded for New Year’s Day now.

No decision by then, and she’ll terminate the deal before you can.

MK: Since you weren’t there to do your job—by assignment and tradition—Shadow King and me had no choice but to agree to her terms.

SK: Suboptimal launch to our courtship protocol.

Compatibility workflow would’ve deployed cleaner if you’d onboarded with The Potential as planned.

MK: Her name is Sadie, by the way.

SK: Though, Tadhg’s already rebranded her as Strawberry in his system files.

MK: Because she smells unbelievably delicious.

MK: Why aren’t you answering, then, lad?

Too busy holed up in your room like a teenage girl upset about her favorite boy band breaking up?

So the real Mountain King was back.

And baiting me.

Gritting my jaw, I closed my laptop and gave my full attention to answering his enraging message.

HK: After your betrayal, I’m drafting an email to my personal lawyer, actually.

Seeing how much it’ll cost me to dissolve our business partnership.

SK: Solid threat. My predictive model still puts the probability of you pushing the kill button on this at 27.

5%, rounding up.

MK: It was 98% within an hour of delivery.

So, we were happy when you just walked away.

My bear growled low inside me.

Exactly what every CEO wanted to hear—that the numbers are already stacked against him.

I needed to end this fiasco.

End it before the odds dropped even further out of my favor.

Instead, I typed…

HK: You’ll have your answer by the end of the year.

MK: I’ve a feeling it’ll come sooner.

SK: I as well.

It was only words on a screen, but I could feel both of them laughing at me.

Not taking me seriously in a way they’d never dared before.

I glared at the phone, vowing to make them eat their words.

Possibly as early as tomorrow.

SADIE

I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, not with the sun still hanging over the lake in its late-afternoon glow—at least, according to the scene playing on my wall.

But I lay down in the oversized circular bed anyway, hoping to pass a couple of hours before it felt acceptable to go looking for dinner.

And then I woke…

Not lying down.

Not clothed. Naked in a way I never was outside the brief seconds it took to step into a bath.

I wasn’t in a bath, though.

I was sitting upright, facing the lake wall, which now contained a view of the rising morning sun.

My back was resting against something—no, someone .

My sense of smell fought through the fog just enough to register the scent of butter, bread, and sugar.

Like Brigid’s, but different.

Less sweet bread and more like a pie crust.

Tadhg .

This must be what the Mountain King smelled like—his real scent, unmasked by cologne.

But I couldn’t see him.

He sat directly behind me, his giant, tree-trunk legs bent and bracketing my waist. His chin was nestled into my shoulder, his beard brushing my neck.

There was also something pressing into my lower back, hard as steel and covered in one thin cloth barrier.

Suddenly, I understood with a new kind of certainty how poor Eve must have felt.

I clamped my knees together and began to raise my hands to cover my exposed chest, only to freeze at the even more shocking sight waiting at the edge of the massive bed.

Cian, the ever-silent Shadow King, kneeled there.

His skin, pale as milk, gleamed in stark contrast to the jet-black fall of his hair.

And the ink on his skin.

It wasn’t just his hands.

Those strange god-tech symbols ran up the length of both arms and over his shoulders.

As if the gods he praised had written all over him.

He wasn’t bare, like me, but wore only a pair of black cotton briefs.

And the tent in their middle was what Naomi would call a context clue for what was pressing against my spine.

“What the…” I shifted between Tadhg’s thighs.

“Ssh…” he hushed in my ear.

“You’re alright, aren’t you? Remember we discussed this?”

“Remember?” My voice cracked.

“Your training,” he said, gently but firmly.

Like a patient, giant teacher.

“We must prepare you for the High King. Learn your body. Teach you how to receive him. This is what you agreed to when we made our pact.”

“Oh.” My heart thundered.

I let out a shaky breath.

“I thought there’d be more kissing. I liked that.”

The Mountain King chuckled, the sound vibrating through my spine.

“There will be kissing, Strawberry,” he promised.

“We liked that, too.”

After years of being treated as ugly and repulsive by the males of St. Ailbe, my heart fluttered to hear him say that he liked kissing me.

That he wanted more.

But then his affable voice darkened.

“Cian, you may begin. Start at her feet,” he ordered, “and don’t stop until she’s screaming… and begging for more.”

The Shadow King took hold of my foot and massaged the arch with his thumbs.

A strange thrill shot up my leg, straight into my spine, and my head fell back against Tadhg’s shoulder with a helpless moan.

He rumbled again, his hands finding my breasts.

“Look at you,” he teased.

“And we’ve only just begun.”

Oh my …

I swallowed hard.

What had I signed myself up for?