Wicked Magic by Cheyenne McCray

Rhiannon Castle is a D'Anu witch who has grown up always knowing she was different. Abandoned by her mother and father with her aunt Aga when she was just a child, Rhiannon has creatures known as "Shadows" that she keeps locked inside of her. She is deathly scared of letting them out because the last time she did so, as a child, she was playing with them, and her aunt scared her when she screamed on seeing the shadows. The shadows, in return, began to strangle her aunt, and only with the greatest of effort was she able to call off the shadows and lock them up inside her. Since that day, and after a beating by her aunt, she has never dared to let them free, scared of what they might do, and the possibility that even knowing she has this power would cause her fellow coven-mates to reject her.

The Tuatha D'Dannan Keir is a warrior who suffered equally when growing up. His father mistreated him, and banished him from the family home to the stable. He also inculcated a rivalry between Keir and his half-brother Hawk that caused them to grow up hating each other. Keir has trained himself to be all warrior, and now trains the D'Dannan warriors who go to the human Otherworld of San Francisco to fight the goddess Ceithlenn, freed from the otherworld by the human warlock Darkwolf, the man who. Together with the formorian Queen, Junga, who inhabits the body of a witch named Elizabeth, they seek to conquer the human world, but Ceithlenn has something else on her mind: bringing her Husband, the God Balor, back to the Human world so that they may rule it together.

And now Ceithlenn has discovered a new source of power: human flesh and souls. Rhiannon has visions of Ceithlenn as she devours a human, and it makes her sick. But she must warn her coven-sisters of the coming danger. Meeting Keir sets her off, as he decides to get too close to her when he finds himself attracted to her, and she disables him with a blast to the groin. Despite her actions, he cannot stop being attracted to her, and when the fighting throws them together, his attraction grows, as does his respect for her abilities.

Rhiannon, though, is gun-shy. Rejection by a man has made her unwilling to enter another relationship, only for it to bring her pain. But she cannot deny how Keir's kisses make her feel, and when Ceithlenn lashes back at her for her "spying" visions, Rhiannon is nearly crippled with pain by the mere mention of the Goddess's name.

However, when she and Keir are sent back to the otherworld that is home to the D'Dannan for reinforcements to fight the army that Ceithlenn has built, she will be forced to confront her Elvin heritage, as well as her father, Garran, the King of the Dark Elves, whom Rhiannon only knows as Evil. Keir, too, will be forced to face his own half-blood heritage, and discover the lies his father told him about his Mystwalker mother. But can they reach beyond themselves and their pain to discover new allies in their fight, or will their prejudices doom them to pain and defeat?

I really liked this book. Rhiannon is strong and peppery, unwilling to take crap from anyone, yet supportive of her sisters despite her own fear of rejection if they find out about the powers she's been hiding from them. Given the way her own aunt acted about them, she has good reason to fear. Keir is less than a total prize as the book starts. He's arrogant and a bit conceited, thinking that he can have any woman in his bed, yet is confident that no woman can possibly tame him or make him want them for more than a single night.

All that changes when he meets Rhiannon, and he finds himself feeling almost insanely protective of her, as well as attracted to her, and realizes that the face he carved in wood the night before he came to the Human world was hers. From there, their slow coming together was both hot and tender, and the fact that Keir can be both strong and fierce as well as tender and gentle was a big turn-on for both Rhiannon and myself, the reader.

The threats in the book are quite real and the humans will eventually have to face the threat that Ceithlenn represents. With the number of dead this book racks up explained away as "terrorist attacks", it remains to be seen how soon that realization will come. And with the witches being forced to retreat into the Otherworld, humanity has just lost its first and best line of defense against the Formorians. How will the human world cope? The story continues in the next book, "Shadow Magic".