Ain't Myth-Behaving

by Katie MacAlister

  Her blush deepened, as if she knew I was speaking of something other than the accommodations.

  Three

  A h, there you are. Good man. We have work to do,” I said a little while later as Stewart entered my study.

  “I’m just here to get some painkillers for this massive headache you’ve given me,” he answered as he went to his desk. “I’m not staying. I have things to do elsewhere.”

  “Forget them,” I said as I strode across the room. I’d been pacing for the last five minutes, trying to make plans but being disturbed by the memories of Megan’s eyes…and lips, and hair, and the deliciously round curve of her ass as displayed in a pair of tan linen trousers. The sight of it moving in a wonderfully feminine way as she climbed the stairs ahead of me had kept me speechless in rapt appreciation until we’d reached the room assigned to her.

  It had taken all my strength not to drop down on one knee and propose to her right then and there, but hindsight had taught me much through the centuries. No longer would I be swayed by the sight of a beautiful woman into immediate lust and an offer of marriage. Well…at least not the offer of marriage.

  “This time,” I told Stewart, “things are going to be done differently.”

  “They are?” he asked, picking up the bottle of headache tablets.

  “Yes. I offered for Fidencia the moment she was done vomiting up river water, and just look where that got me. This time, I will be circumspect. I will investigate before I propose. I will make sure the woman is the right one for me, one I can spend eternity with. I will take things slowly.” I glanced at my watch. “As slowly as possible, given that I need to be married in six days. Three days for courtship, I think, three more for a general getting-to-know-you period that will include a determination of sexual compatibility, and then the last day for adjustment to her new role as my goddess. Yes, that should be plenty of time. I’d best get started on the courting right away.”

  Stewart stared at me with his mouth hanging slightly open. “Courting? Marriage? What woman? You don’t mean the American?”

  “Of course I mean Megan! Didn’t you see her? She’s prime goddess material! Those startling eyes, magnificent breasts, and her ass is a work of art. Add to that she’s literate—she’s a writer, after all—and has a sense of humor, and is obviously ready to fall into my arms.”

  “She is?”

  “She said she liked my accent, and she blushed when she said it. Oh, yes, she’s ripe for the plucking.”

  “I…you…she…” Stewart shook his head, winced, and poured out several pain tablets.

  “That takes care of the basic pronoun situation, yes.” I said, striding past him as I put my thoughts in order. “The first thing is to check into her past. A private investigator, do you think? That’s so impersonal. I think I should do the investigating. I’ll simply work a few investigative questions into our conversations, and that will be that. Not only will it allow me to make sure Megan is the right woman, it will prove I’m interested in her. Women love it when you ask them about themselves.”

  Stewart moaned and washed down his pills with a hefty splash of whiskey.

  “You’re not going to get drunk now, are you?” I asked with a frown.

  He eyed the whiskey bottle with a look I recognized.

  “I need your wits as sharp as a battleax,” I said quickly, whisking away the bottle before he could take another swig from it. “You can get pissed another time. Right now your job is to keep the druids hidden from Megan and the film crew until I have a chance to explain how things are to her. And vice versa—no need to get Elfwine in a fury because there’s a woman present I want over her tree huggers. While you’re at it, you can put in a good word or two about me to Megan. Although it’s clear she’s already smitten with my manly Irish self, it won’t hurt for her to see that my staff adores me.”

  Stewart stared at me with bleary, disbelieving eyes.

  “Get to it, man! We don’t have much time to pull this off! Need I remind you that if I do not marry at Beltane, I will lose this position?”

  “Yes, I know. That would be a terrible tragedy.” Stewart remained sitting, his expression showing anything but the stark horror such a hideous contingency should generate.

  I leaned over his desk, saying very softly, “The real tragedy will be the manner in which Taranis’s replacement will wreak revenge on the staff left behind. You remember the man who was Neit, god of war, about two hundred years ago? Do you know what happened to his servants when Taranis replaced him?”

  Stewart shook his head mutely, his eyes widening in apprehension.

  “Let’s just say the things they did with a spoon and two egg cups guaranteed there would be no vengeful descendants pursuing them.”

  “Erp,” he said, his legs tightening.

  “I see you understand the truly hideous nature of the situation now,” I said before heading briskly for the door. “Off you go, then. I’ve offered to show Megan around the grounds so she can do some preliminary work on a feature about the castle. We should be back in time for supper.”

  “But…Elfwine isn’t going to listen to me—” Stewart started to say, leaping up from his chair.

  I closed the door on his protestations and quickly trotted down the spiral stone staircase that ran down the center of the tower. The upper floor had been given over to my private rooms, but the two lower floors held four guest rooms, while the ground floor held the living areas. I made a mental note to point out to Megan the cunning way I’d worked the castle’s original torture devices into the kitchen decor.

  “Settled in? Comfortable? Finding the ambience impossible to resist?” I asked a minute later as she answered the knock on her door.

  “Yes, very much so, and we’ll see,” she answered with a laugh as she left the room. “I appreciate your giving me the grand tour, Dane. I’m sure you have much more important things to do than drag a tourist around the grounds.”

  “You wound me, dearling,” I said, putting a hand over my heart. “I can think of nothing I’d enjoy more.”

  She paused on the top of the stairs leading to the ground floor, glancing back at me over her shoulder. “Darling?”

  I smiled. Women like my smile. I’ve been told by several lasses that I have a particularly effective smile, that there is something about green eyes and black hair, not to mention dimples, that melts their knees. Or some such nonsense—all I know is that they seem to be particularly susceptible to a full-frontal smile. I put a little extra wattage into my smile and waited for Megan to swoon.

  An annoyed look flickered in her eyes. “Are you all right? Are you sure you didn’t hit your head too hard this morning?”

  I turned down the smile a notch or two. Maybe it was too much for her? Perhaps I was overwhelming her with my masculine charms. I would pull back a bit and let her get her footing before I blasted her with the full effect. “Thank you, I’m fine.”

  She turned until she was facing me, three steps below me. I could see down the front of her lacy white shirt to where her pale pink bra encased two delectable, slightly freckled mounds that suddenly had my mouth watering and my hands itching.

  “Then would you mind telling me why you’re calling me darling, and if you could do it while not actually drooling as you look down my blouse, that would be worth bonus points.”

  My penis stirred at the sight of those bountiful swells of feminine flesh, but I reminded it of the schedule—there were three days of wooing to get through before the Lively Lad had his way.

  “Dane?”

  “Hmm?” Maybe two days would be enough. She was clearly an intelligent girl. Two days of wooing would surely be enough to sway her.

  Her breasts heaved in a wonderful, if exasperated, sigh. I wondered, just for a moment, what the color of her nipples was.

  “Just like every other man…hello! Eyes up here!”

  Then again, if I put my mind to it, I bet I could pack three days of wooing into one day. That would leave f
ive days of bed sporting. I knew how important those things were to women—they liked to feel cherished in the bedroom, so it behooved me to give her as much time being cherished as possible before the wedding.

  Her breasts bobbed enticingly for a second before they were torn from my view.

  “Why are you taking your breasts away?” I heard a voice ask as she started down the stairs.

  She spun around to face me, her jaw tight, her eyes indignant.

  “Hell. I said that out loud, didn’t I?” I asked.

  “You certainly did! And I don’t care how sexy your accent is, or how cute those dimples are, or the wonderful way your hair curls around your neck—I am not going to stand for sexual harassment.”

  I hurried down the few steps to her, taking her hand and bowing slightly over it, managing, by a feat of strength heretofore unknown in the county, to not look down her shirt again. “You have my profoundest apology, Megan. That was very ill mannered of me. I’m a bit fuzzy brained still, and it rather slipped out without my knowing.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said in a terse voice, and tried to pull her hand from mine. I tightened my grip. “You certainly had to know that you can’t say things like that to people nowadays! Even in Ireland, such behavior has to be discouraged. As for you being fuzzy brained…well, it’s not as if you were born yesterday.”

  “No, the day before that. Come, let me show you my favorite thinking spot. You’ll like it, it’s wild and untamed and utterly glorious.” I pulled her after me down the stairs.

  “What? What did you mean the day before? Will you let go of my hand?”

  “The stairs are treacherous. I’m just trying to keep you from falling.”

  “My Aunt Fanny you are. You just want to hold my hand. First you called me darling—”

  “Dearling.”

  “You see? You just did it again!”

  “The word is ‘dearling,’ not ‘darling.’ There’s a difference. One is romantic; the other mundane. Ah, here we are, the front hall. I’ll show you the rest of the tower later, after we’ve had a ramble around the grounds, all right? This way.”

  “Dane!”

  I shoved open the heavy oak door and paused on the landing, taking a deep breath of the tangy air. “Yes, it’s true, I want to hold your hand. I like your hand. It’s soft but strong, rather like you. Would you mind if I twined my fingers through yours?”

  I suited action to words. A little tremor went through her as I rubbed my thumb on her palm.

  “Now, over here used to be the inner curtain.” I strode toward the large knoll that was partially visible, my firm grip on Megan’s hand ensuring she would follow. “As you can see, there’s nothing left of it but a long mound. Someday I’ll let the archaeologists have at it, but I rather like it as it is now, all covered in those yellow flowers.”

  “Dane!”

  “Hmm?” A gentle tug had her half-running down the grassy mound to the far side. “The outer curtain is nothing but rubble, but it’s very scenic at night when we light it up. There’s a path over here to the beach. Mind your step. Some of the rubble can be a bit treacherous.”

  “Dane, stop!” A sharp yank pulled her hand from mine. I spun around, fearing she had tripped over something and was about to fall, but she looked anything but helpless as she stood on the top of a rock, her hands on her hips, hair whipping around her in the afternoon wind, those gorgeous eyes of hers skewering me with blue fire. “Goddamn it, why won’t you listen to me? I have been trying to get your attention!”

  “Dearling, you have my attention—”

  “Stop it!” Her hands waved in a wild dance of emotion. “Stop calling me darling, or dearling, or whatever Irish endearment you’re using. Just stop it!”

  “It’s not Irish, actually—”

  “I don’t care!” Even her bellow had a melodious quality to it.

  “All right, then.” I thought for a moment. “How do you feel about ‘sweeting’?”

  Her eyes got a bit of a wild glint to them.

  “I’ll take that as a no. We can go with sweetheart, but that’s a bit mundane, don’t you think?”

  Her magnificent breasts heaved as she struggled to get control of herself. “Why are you doing this? Why do you want to call me anything but my name?”

  “I’m a bit of a romantic,” I admitted with a wry little smile. “I’ve always used affectionate terms for the women I love. Woman, singular. That is, there’ve been women, plural, but not at the same time. I’m a monogamist, in case you were wondering.”

  “That’s fascinating, but,” she said, closing her eyes for a second and rubbing her forehead as if she had a headache, “we’re not in love.”

  “No, of course we aren’t, we’ve only just met.” She relaxed slightly. I took advantage of her distraction to take her hand and pull her gently off the rock. “There’s loads of time yet for that—three days, possibly one if I am especially clever. Come along; my special thinking spot is around the point, here.”

  “You…this is a trick, isn’t it? Or one of those goofy reality TV shows where they film people in impossible situations, then air them with horrible shots of an audience laughing at them, right?”

  “You have an interesting mind,” I told her, wondering what sort of television she watched. “I like it.”

  She said nothing for a few minutes while I helped her over the occasional boulder or pile of driftwood. We rounded the point to the small inlet that was a peaceful haven in an always turbulent sea.

  When she did speak, her voice bore unmistakable signs of control. “Would you mind telling me, if it wouldn’t be too much bother, why you are under the impression that we will be falling in love with each other, thus making the use of affection terms desirable?”

  I had to think quickly. Women liked to know a man found them desirable, but my somewhat limited experience the last few centuries—limited to the few weeks I had before I married Fidencia each Beltane—had proved that women’s attitudes toward sex had changed somewhat. It followed, then, that their attitude about marriage had changed, as well. Therefore, I needed to keep the ultimate goal of the wooing quiet until she had time to get used to the idea. Say, by tomorrow.

  “Dane?” She stood a few feet away from me, something about her reminding me of a deer about to bolt.

  “Sorry, I was thinking about something. What was the question?”

  She marched over to me and smacked me on the arm. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “You’re beautiful, intelligent, and you are clearly aware of the spark of attraction between us.”

  “I am?” Her mouth dropped open slightly. I took a slow step forward, so as not to startle her into flight, leaning in to her until I could smell the wonderful scent of a sun-warmed woman. Her eyes dilated. “There’s an attraction?”

  “Oh, yes, there is.” The smell of her was heady stuff, bringing my penis to life again. “Not to mention the fact that your breasts damn near bring me to my knees. Why shouldn’t we give in to our primal instincts?”

  “Why?” The word was spoken on a breath that fanned across my face, her lips temptingly close.

  For a moment I hesitated, not wanting to press her into a response lest she take fright, but it had been too long since I had possessed a woman. Blood rushed to my head—and the lad in my pants—with a roar.

  My mouth brushed against hers gently, carefully, her feminine scent wrapping itself around me until it sank into my flesh. Her lips parted, a siren “Oh!” escaping before I took possession of the sweet, tender offering. Around us, the birds cried and wheeled, the sea pounded, and my heart set up a thundering beat that drove my need.

  Her eyelids fluttered shut, her body swaying against mine as I enveloped her, pulling her tighter against me, my hands shaping the enticing curves of her bum. It was heady stuff, kissing Megan, and I hadn’t even swept inside her mouth, where I knew I would find the sweetest of all nectars. The thundering in my ears took on a new note, a sharper, hi
gher note of anticipation, a primal sound that trumpeted my desire.

  Megan moaned into my mouth, her tongue gently foraying forth to caress mine, and I knew that I had made the right choice. No other woman had possessed me quite like she had in only a few minutes. No other woman felt so right against me, as if her body was made specifically to fit against mine. And no other woman drove my passion to such a height that the sound of it deafened me, the sharp, rhythmic sound burrowing deep into my brain, pounding, pulsing, throbbing against me with a familiar sense of urgency…

  I ripped my mouth from hers. Megan gave a faint whimper of dissatisfaction and confusion, but I had no time to reassure her. Beyond us, a horrible noise rent the air, a harsh rhythm that I’d somehow heard despite being wholly occupied with kissing Megan.

  “Run!” I yelled, shoving her toward the washed-up tree trunk. “Take cover by the tree.”

  “What…huh?”

  The noise grew closer, more strident. I spun around and raced up the path, waving toward the tree. “Now, woman! Before they’re here!”

  “What? Who’s here? What’s that horrible noise?”

  “The hounds! Someone has released the hounds! For the love of the gods, woman, run to the tree lest they find you unprotected!”

  “You have dogs?” she asked, nonetheless scrambling over rocks and driftwood toward the tree. I lurched up the path as fast as I could, despite the full-fledged erection that didn’t understand why it was no longer nestled up against Megan.

  “These aren’t normal dogs, they’re hellhounds, come from the depths of the Underworld. They are the bane of mortals…Bloody hell!”

  The baying of the hounds reached a fevered climax that threatened to burst my eardrums. Just before I reached the top of the path, Stewart appeared, his hair standing on end, his eyes wild as he gestured behind him. “My lord—”

  “Yes, I hear, someone has released the hounds. Get out of their way before you’re torn to shreds!”

  “But, my lord—”