Free Blood In Fire (Celtic Elementals Book 2) by Heather R. Blair Page A

the others yet, though. Only Bav.”
    “She was quite enough for me.” Heather shook her head when Lacey offered her the chips. She should have been starving, but her stomach was in too many knots to try and force food into it.
    My love , the goddess had called Aidan. “I think…it seemed like her and Aidan have quite the history. Not to mention she came off as a bit of a bitch.” Heather knew that was probably unfair but, oh well. “A whiny bitch at that.”
    Lacey hesitated. “She saved my life, Heather.”
    “I know.” Heather’s tone said it all.
    “Yeah,” Lacey nibbled her lower lip anxiously. “I'm not saying that doesn’t make her a bitch. Ronan has said some things...”
    “What things?”
    “I don’t know much about it really, but I know that Aidan…. Well, he has had a terrible time. These gods of theirs—” Lacey shuddered and shook her bright coppery head. “They’re awful …wonderful, too. At times.” She added this last bit as if an afterthought, but Heather saw her head dart around. As if Lacey thought someone might be listening over her shoulder. That move made Heather grimace and get to her feet.
    “Are we really sitting here talking about ‘gods’ for fuck’s sake? Like they're real?”
    “They are real, Heather.” Lacey’s voice was quiet but firm.
    Heather whirled to face her tiny friend, ready to shout or scream, but the look of sympathetic understanding on Lacey’s face made her shoulders slump.
    Green fire, glowing bodies, glowing eyes , and dead black smiles with impossible teeth…
    Either what Lacey was saying—and the evidence of her own eyes—was true, or she was losing what was left of her mind. Aidan crashing through that wall…the wall of a building . Surely, no man, no matter how strong—
    —‘ too close to sunrise … no windows … safer .’
    “Lacey, what is Aidan?”
    Lacey started chewing her lip again and turned away, but Heather spun her back around. “Lacey?!”
    “Well, he’s…he’s a… damn. Aidan's a vampire, Heather. Think about everything you've seen. Carefully. And tell me, do you honestly not feel it when he's around?”
    The room started to spin again. Lacey guided her patiently back to the bed. Heather sat down hard and put her head between her knees. A vampire.
    She'd had a torrid three-ish night stand with a goddamn vampire. Holy shit. It was a moment before she could lift her head again.
    “Feel what, Lace? What do you feel when Aidan is around?”
    Lacey sighed and took a seat beside her on the mattress, running her fingers over the tangled bedspread. “Well, I don’t feel it always . Only when he's really angry or tired. And since he’s been that way, most of the time, since I met him… Fear, Heather. Cold fear, like someone is running ice down your bare spine. Don’t you feel it?”
    Heather stared at her friend as she considered this.
    Fear. Hmm…
    Well, sure, maybe a little. Particularly when they had first met. She shivered as she thought of his eyes when he’d first looked down at her in that Turkish café. There had been a touch of fear then, but….
    If she was brutally honest with herself, Heather knew that her defining emotion around Aidan was lust. Pure and simple.
    It kinda burned away everything else, aside from the occasional burst of anger—which was often brought on by that same lust, along with Aidan’s own cocky ass attitude. She resisted the urge to laugh and then thought of something that totally didn’t make sense. Not if what Lacey had said was true.
    “I saw him this morning though, outside. In the sunlight . Right after dawn, I kind of…hit him with my car.”
    “Well, that’s another story. There’s this po…. Wait. You hit him with a car?!”
    “Yeah. He walked right out in front of me. I hit the brakes, but it was too late. I thought I’d killed him, though I didn’t really know it was him . Not at the time. I don’t think I wanted to know it was him.”
    Lacey frowned. “Heather,