by Gayle Eden
She raised her head and looked into those silver grey eyes, seeing the tears had wet the mask. Her own aqua ones swimming until crystal drops tumbled out, Sefare added, “May God give me sons and daughters possessing half so much heart as you give to those you care for. May there be no darkness, no hour in the night, where I cannot be there, to hold you through the dreams that haunt you…Aye, even those I will fight with you.”
He raised his fingers and touched her lips. His lashes damp but his eyes a pure washed gray. “I once thought that I would sell my soul for one kiss from a woman’s lips. Now ‘tis only you and yours I thirst for. The only dreams I have had since you gave yourself to me, were of you. God grant us children or none, my life, my heart, is forever changed. Now I thirst and I crave such as I never knew before…”
He reached up and caught a tear, staring into her aqua eyes. “I have the sky and sea, the stars and the white moonbeams—I have heaven, such as a man never dreams of, such as I dared not. It tastes sweeter than water or wine.”
“Ronan.” She took his scarred hand and held it against her cheek. “When I was a girl and dreamed, ‘twas you I dreamed of. A brave knight who would love me, know me, desire me, as none other. ‘Tis I who feel blessed, to get this second chance, this life, however long it is, with you.”
He rolled her under him and after kissing her a long time, breathless in fact, he said gruffly in her ear, “I want to hear you laugh again, ‘tis music.”
She sputtered hoarsely, “I cannot laugh on demand.”
He raised his head. “Nay?”
“Nay.” However, she was already smiling.
He pretended to consider her and then laved her ear with his tongue. Sefare squirmed and giggled. By the time he tickled her ribs and blew in her ear, she was bucking and swatting at his large form astride her.
His laughter joined her own, and Ronan, so deprived of his boyhood joy, his childhood, got into the play as she grabbed a down pillow and smacked him in the face.
The romping went on, progressing to her crawling from under him and trying to jump from the bed. He caught her foot and she turned hitting him with the pillow until feathers spewed up and drifted down like snow. Coughing, laughing, they romped, chased around the room, across the bed, guffawing. Sefare, screaming with it when he picked her up, stark necked and carried her over his shoulder to dump her on the disaster of a bed.
Ronan watched her get tangled in the sheets trying to scramble off. His own helpless laughter held behind it a heart swelling joyfulness at her play.
Aye, he mused as he helped her get free and watched her stand in the center of the bed, hands on hips, daring him with a brow raised—He was keeping her—forever. His bride. His wife. His little star. The sparkling light that came suddenly into his darkness.
He threw himself to the bed with a low rumbling chuckle and knocked her off her feet where he could gather and hold her close. Ronan watched her laughter, laughing with her—and he saw the love, the expression in her eyes that looked into his own. God’s mercy, he wanted to weep and to laugh too, to hold her and be inside her, to kiss and breathe and taste her all at once.
What Sefare did though was to push at him and set up suddenly, her eyes wide. “Would you like for me to dance for you?”
“Dance for me?” he choked just imagining it.
“Yes. I’ve my bangles and veils, and I know all the traditional —”
—His body aroused, heart beating like a wild drum and mouth dry, Ronan nodded. “Aye. Yes. Dance for me.”
Sefare smiled and winked at him. “You acquire wine for us whilst I find my costume? There isn’t much to it.” She jumped up and left the chamber.
Ronan pulled on his clothing haphazard and paused only a moment to look up at the plaster ceiling. His bride. His. He swallowed and went in search of wine, some fruits and returned to wash hastily, fix the bed and light candles which he sat on the floor. He lit incense and watched it waft past the haze of candlelight.
Sefare floated in with her head covered in a gossamer blue spangled veil, her midsection and breasts bare…and a veil tied low on her hips, below a belt of diamonds. On her arms, across her forehead on each ankle were bangles of silver that twinkled in the night. At her first sensual movements, they made a tinkling sound.
In those surreal moments Ronan’s eyes could not drink her enough, follow her sensual moves enough, or see enough, though she ground and undulated her hips and made sluggish sensual turns around the bed. She arched, leaning far back. Her body glowed and its taut form moved sexually and erotically. Dew bathed his body. Blood went rushing and every muscle and inch of sinew was afire.
Sefare felt his fixation, his entranced focus that was wonder and desire. She felt euphoric with the power to put that look in her brawny knight’s eyes. Wetting her salved lips, having bathed, lined her eyes with kohl, perfumed with jasmine, she came close and arched her back, rolling her hips and moving her hands to cup her peaked breasts.
Ronan shuddered, pulled his gaze from that touch, up to her eyes and rasped, “You are lovely, maddeningly exquisite at dancing. My blood is hot enough to boil in my veins. God’s mercy, I want you, Sefare!”
She smoothly tugged the veil off her face and let it fall to her feet; gliding a hand down her tummy to her hip, she reached the tuck of the other, until she stood before him only in the diamonds and bangles.
Running her tongue over her lips, Sefare husked and reached for his hand, “Show me, my knight…show me how much.”
He moved off the bed and into the spill of candlelight.
First Ronan unbound his long raven hair and removed his shirt. His mane flowed like black silk around his powerful shoulders and arms, glowing on his dark skin. Next, he slowly removed the breeches, carefully pulling each tie and peeling them down his powerful thighs- exposing a full arousal, sex thick and potent.
He stood still, bathed in the amber glow with only his mask, all other scars and skin exposed in saffron light.
As he reached for the ties of the mask, Sefare, her heart filling her entire chest, went to him, knelt at his feet, and began kissing from there upwards. Rubbing and caressing, laving ankles, calves, past scars, ridges, dents. His legs wide with his stance, she went up, around, and around him, moving caressing, as sensual as the dance had been—bathing him, kissing, laving, and tasting him, the man, the lover.
His scars hurt her, the thought of how he suffered, but she knew she must show him the beauty she saw in him.
She was on her tiptoes laving his nipples when his knees bent and he dropped to the floor on them.
Sefare brought his scarred face to her breast without looking at it, feeling warm skin even as she felt the scars on his brow and cheek. His hands cupped her, caressed her, his breathing hot and thick, his body holding a tremble of intense emotion, need and hunger.
She plunged her hands into his cool silken hair and fisted it while lowering herself down, down until his sex slid into the wet heat of her own. Locked snug and full, throbbing, feverish and drugged by the intensity, she began to move upon him whilst he held her buttocks and moved sensually with her.
Through the veil of her half-mast lashes, Sefare saw his burning silver eyes; his white teeth sank into his sensual lower lip. Her lips parted, wet, her moans were the erotic music they moved to.
His big hands lowered, lifted and clasped her waist moving her as he undulated and stroked her, stroked himself with her snug, wet, sex.
They were two bodies, two lovers, dancing unashamed in the haze of candlelight and incense. Two souls giving and taking, burning hotter and reaching deeper into the passionate world they were only just beginning to explore.
Sefare drifted, arched back, lost in the pleasure, the burn of lust and love, abandoning herself to the fever he evoked in her blood. She was free as never before, truly the core of her woman’s soul, she felt unbound, uninhibited and her every pore and sense open to the man who drew that out.
When his hand glided, moved between th
em, to stroke the swollen and slick nerves, abraded already by his undulations, she whispered his name, molten and melting, soaring on waves that drew a cry of wonder from her lips.
He followed swiftly, spilling hot, deep. Lost—far away, in a beautiful ecstasy, weightless and dizzying. Ronan lay back and carried her with him, holding her heart to thudding heart, to prolong the joining that was ever still amazing.
* * * *
When Ronan knew she slept, he carefully rose and carried her to bed. Cleaning her did not stir her more than a soft moan. He finished swift and took himself to bathe, to don his mask and dress in trousers. Instead of joining her though, he sat in the window seat, holding the jasmine scented veils and watching her sleep.
The candles long sputtered out. The incense burned. It was the waft of dawn’s fog that drifted in.
He sighed, shuddered with the power of his emotions, and at last lay the veils aside, climbing into the bed, holding her. She was soft as clouds, small and yet alive with energy and life. She smelled like heaven.
Sefare reached back to pull his arm around her tighter, covering his hand and holding it to her breast. “I love you, Ronan.”
He swallowed and closed his eyes. His throat seeming too tight, he managed low, “Sefare, my bride…My heart and soul are yours. Forever.”
She sighed and snuggled back, tighter against him, her body surrounded by his, Sefare sleepily. “…My beautiful, beautiful love...My knight of passion, smoke and night wind…”
His lips pressed against her hair, Ronan let the tears burn his throat and nose, without escape. However, in his dreams, moments after sleep came, he saw himself as he had been before the tragedy, without blemish, with no need to cover himself. He saw himself, through her heart and eyes, and he knew for the first time, he knew—he was healed.
* * * *
Ualtar sat on the wall near the sea, his exotic face during the night oft turning toward the castle at the sound of their twain laughter floating down.
He smiled and shook his head. He had watched another’s joy as Isola received her message from the king. He realized ‘twas more than making swords she was called to do. He also grasped that Mshai had influenced it. Though he admired the redhead, found her intriguing, he knew better than to hope where fate had other ideas.
Considering both Pagan and now Ronan had ended up with the perfect mates. He had time yet to see where it led for himself. He would travel to Dunnewicke to see the birthing of Illara and Pagan’s first child. It was a wondrous thing for a man who had been through what the brother’s had. Absently touching the markings on his face, he wondered would he frighten the babe? He hoped not.
* * * *
In the Smith shop, Isola held the scroll with the King’s seal to her chest, looking down at the velvet-lined box that cradled the elaborate daggers with their lion heads.
Night wind teased long strands of her wine hair, blowing it across her lips. She was looking back, to the evening when she had followed the mysterious Mshai out of the castle, to the stable, where he had left his horse with the Celt.
When Ualtar left them, she had laid her hand on the pitch stallion’s forehead and made her offer, and it had unfolded the way she told Sefare. Except—that she had given away more apparently as he had looked into her eyes, reading them.
“I would not expect a nobleman’s heir, even were he outlawed, to choose a Smith.”
He had rasped, “It would be one or the other for you, Isola. Either the oath to the Prince, to live this secret and duel life, or be some man’s mate. For you will discover that the two cannot exist together. ‘Tis not just detaching your heart to do what you must and kill—’tis that you will always be in peril of that yourself.”
He had reached out and touched her hair. “I saw you in that village; have seen you with my sister when spying here. What man with blood in his veins would not want you? However, I have chosen my path, long ago. I know I am master at what I do.”
“I understand. Well…I do not really. At least not why I am being so blunt, nor why I feel so drawn to you. There was…something in the past that has kept me from encouraging men…”
“We all have our demons. I am hated by many and as much for my foreign blood as for what they suspect me to be. I have been at war and been at what I do, since I was a boy.”
He had met her gaze and uttered softer, “Those things—they do not weaken us, but strengthen and drive us. I would rather give you half of what you ask, were it in my power—than even promise what I cannot. Men such as I, do not have forever to give, Isola.”
“I will take working with you…however you need me to. I can use my skill. I can be trusted—and you need that.”
“It is out of my hands. If fate changes that…”
When he made as if to climb in the saddle, she stood behind him, almost as tall as his six-foot and three. She smelled his heady scent of wind and forest, some illusive mix, too, of tropical sun and manly flesh.
He turned slowly at her touch, their bodies close and her full breasts against his cloak, his dark exotic eyes holding her tawny ones. Sblood, but she had never seen a face such as his; high aristocratic bones mingled with some untamable sensuality. He reminded her of a black cat in the dark, a watchful raven, an elusive and yet alluring half-phantom, half-human.
Isola whispered, “I am stronger than you assume, Mshai. Are you as resigned to pass on this chance as you claim?”
“I have women. You are not meant for that. You—”
She smiled. “Not me, Mshai. You have never had a woman like me.” She raised her ungloved hand and touched his sensual mouth, her gaze going from that lovely mouth, to his eyes again. “They don’t know you. They cannot touch you as I can. When I first saw you, I felt something of your soul, deep in my bones… I could almost taste you with every dark breath.”
She turned then and left him. However, not a night went by that he was not in her dreams.
Particularly when she thought of him passing by her and halting that horse to say—in Farsi—, which he assumed she could not understand, “The shadow and the flame… I felt you too, Isola—that is what cautions me. I dreamed of you—long, long, ago.”
Shivering she stood and put the scroll and box away. Standing at the entry later, Isola regarded the sky. She may never have forever, likely would not, considering the dangerous role she was agreeing to undertake. Nevertheless, she wanted, just once, to feel and taste the dark fires that she saw in Mshai’s eyes. If only—for one time—no matter what the cost, she would lie in that man’s arms and drown in passion with him. She could protect her heart if that was what it would take, but never in her life had she felt a soul that called out of the dark to her like that. It was as if his shadow passed over her, and she was never going to be the same.
The End
Look for Book 3, Shadow and Fire… coming soon.
Book One, Illara’s Champion, available now.