by Lexi Ander
Roi squeezed Ewen’s hand. “Methinks not. He had no trust to bestow. He be not meant to share a consciousness. It be not how he be made. Do not harbour guilt over what has been.”
They crested the hill, turned, and looked down at the loch with the crannog sitting in the water. From this distance, the walled towerhouse looked majestic, the bridge arching over the water. The village and the fallow fields surrounding the small community looked inviting and quaint.
Roi’s grin brightened, turning a bit mischievous. “I look forward to meeting Xun. I would love to see his true skin.”
Xun and Ewen pressed into Roi. “Oh, we both plan to show you many things in only our skin. I—we—missed you, Roi.”
Roi dodged Ewen’s kiss, chuckling softly as he cupped Ewen’s face. “I agreed to become a druid for the gods. I be a seer already, and I thought that sharing guardianship of the land with ye… I would strive to do everything with ye.”
“I love you, Roi, with all that I be,” Ewen confessed in a rush. He had waited too long to say such to Roi and had thought his chance lost. He could not let another moment go by without giving Roi all that he was.
Roi pressed his forehead to Ewen’s, eyes never leaving Ewen’s visage. “We could spend a lifetime together and I would never tire of ye saying such to me.”
Ewen traced Roi’s bottom lip with his thumb. “Loving you be as much in my nature as drawing my next breath. I cannot separate the two, ’cause if I only have one without the other, I would die an agonizing breath. My affection for you shall not fail, my maik-marrae.”
He kissed Roi then, not the soft, demure brush of lips as afore, but ardent and demanding, rife with promises of the eve to come. Ewen watched every change of Roi’s countenance, committing to memory all of Roi until the glow of the moonstone threatened to steal Ewen’s sight, and he closed his eyes.
Ewen counted not the time, tracked not how long they stayed lost in each other. But when he finally came up for air the sight below be virgin, the land untouched by the hands of Ewen’s kin. The fields were forested, the village and bridge gone. The crannog sat bare in the midst of the loch, a relic of a people who had been agone long afore Ewen’s forefathers settled the land. All signs of his kin were erased as if they never were.
As one, Roi and Ewen entered the wildwood, countless tasks now afore them. They had a people to move to the land betwixt and between, and there was much to learn of druids and guardians. But there was time enough to see to their duties. First, Ewen would lure Roi to stop at a shieling nestled in the woods beside a river where he would make love to Roi.
Upon a pile of furs afore a warm fire, Ewen would reaffirm that Roi was his and he was Roi’s many times over afore the coming eve gave way to another bright, wondrous day.
Fine
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LEXI HAS ALWAYS been an avid reader, and at a young age started reading (secretly) her mother’s romances (the ones she was told not to touch). She was the only teenager she knew of who would be grounded from reading. Later, with a pencil and a note book, she wrote her own stories and shared them with friends because she loved to see their reactions. A Texas transplant, Lexi now kicks her boots up in the Midwest with her Yankee husband and her eighty-pound puppies named after vacuum cleaners.
Web site: http://www.lexiander.com/index.html
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexi.ander.9
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/LexiAnder1
Blog: http://lexiander.blogspot.com/
E-mail: [email protected]
OTHER WORKS BY LEXI ANDER
From Less Than Three Press
SUMERIA’S SONS
Twin Flames
Songs of the Earth
A New Beginning
Dreams of the Forgotten
Starting Fires
Surrounded By Crimson
A Child’s Wish
Dragon’s Eye
Releasing Chaos
THE VALESPIAN PACT
Alpha Trine
Striker
I.O.N SERIES
Ruby Red Booty Shorts and A Louisville Slugger
A Werewolf’s Tale and A Druid Sword
STANDALONES
The Aurora Conspiracy in Keep the Stars Running
Self-Published
Salvaging Toby’s Heart
Sūnder (Darksoul 1)
Caledonia Destiny (Blessed Bane 1)