by Ann Gimpel
“They told us how they were taken by surprise and overpowered.” Jonathan sucked in a breath. The dragons’ story of what had happened on South Uist Island had been hard to listen to. They’d fought valiantly, but it hadn’t been enough to save them.
Britta nodded. “It shocked me how easily the Morrigan masterminded their kidnapping.”
He cupped the side of her face with his hand. “You’d have done anything to save Tarika. I saw it in your mind, in your face, in the set of your body.”
She nodded. “Aye, I would have.”
“Good.” He brushed his knuckles over her lips. “Then you’ll understand that’s just the way I feel about you. I love you, Britta. I would die to protect you.”
She laid a finger over his lips. “Let us hope it doesna come to that because Tarika and I would fight to the death for you as well. She and I both love you.”
He bit back an awkward laugh. “Here I’d planned to sweep you off your feet, make love with you, and we’re talking about death and dying.”
“Nay. We’re talking of love. I love you, Jonathan James Shea. I am so grateful ye are a part of my life. Death. Battles. Sex. Life. ’Tis all intertwined. We doona get the sweet without the bitter.”
He tightened his arms around her and stood just holding her, reveling in the feel of her body in his arms. “Would you like to bathe before we make love?”
“Aye.” Her voice was muffled against his neck. “That would be nice, particularly since we doona have to scare up a servant to heat the water.”
“May I undress you?” Jonathan’s voice cracked. He felt suddenly shy. Though they’d made love before, this time words of love stood between them. He hoped his lovemaking would live up to their newly acknowledged feelings.
She stepped back from his embrace and nodded, her expression serious, eyes shining with emotion. With his fingers suddenly none too steady, he slid her jacket off her shoulders and her top over her head. He reached behind her, unhooked the bra she’d borrowed from Maggie, and dropped it atop her other clothes. His throat constricted; his heart thudded inside his chest. “Your breasts are incredible.” He traced the nipples with a fingertip.
She made a tight, little noise deep in her throat. “If ye keep that up, we willna get to the hot water. And I would like to bathe. I can smell myself.”
He undid the fastenings of her pants and hoisted her until she sat atop an occasional table. Then he knelt to remove her shoes and socks. He caressed her feet with his hands, massaging the arches and each toe. She pushed them against him and sighed. “Och, but ’tis heavenly. Ye can rub my feet anytime ye want.”
“Here.” He rose, placed his hands on either side of her waist, and lifted her to her feet. A small push, and her pants slid to the floor, followed by her underwear. She stepped out of both.
“Are ye planning to bathe with all your clothes on?” she inquired roguishly.
“Probably not a bad idea.” He grinned. “They smell just about as bad as I do. We’ll have to toss everything in the washer tomorrow.”
“Another word I doona know.” She reached for him and began removing his clothes. When she was done and he stood naked before her, cock jutting in front of him, she walked behind him and unbraided his hair. “Ye have the most amazing hair.” She ran her fingers through it. “Long, thick, shiny. Any woman would be envious.”
“Not you.” He turned to face her. “Your hair is a miracle. I can’t wait to see what our children will look like.”
A soft smile wreathed her face. “I canna wait, either. Just as soon as we are certain there is no more danger…” A shadow crossed her features.
He shook his head and placed a hand on each of her shoulders. “You have nothing to worry about. I will protect you. Care for you always. I set wards when we first entered my home. You can add to them if it makes you feel better. Tonight, there is just you and me, Britta, and our love for each other.” He took her hand, led her down the hall to the bathroom, and bent to start the tub filling.
While they waited, he held her in his arms and rocked her against him. Sexual heat washed over him, receded, and built again. Knowing he would bury himself in her body before they slept was like a balm, a promise of their commitment to one another. “Tub’s full enough,” he murmured against her hair. “Why don’t you get in?”
“What about you?”
He nuzzled her neck, tasting the sweetness of her skin, inhaling the scents that were hers, and hers alone. “I’ll be right behind you. I just want to get a dipper so I can rinse the soap out of your hair.”
He felt aroused but playful too. For the first time since he’d met Britta, it didn’t feel as if the world would implode if he didn’t get his cock inside her immediately. He lowered himself into the tub behind her. She settled against his body. Tenderness for the woman in his arms filled him. Sandwiched between them, his cock twitched against her back. She arched and pressed against him.
“Ye feel exquisite.”
“Nay, lassie.” He aped her brogue. “Ye wrote the book on that one.”
He worked soap into her skin and hair and rinsed her. She twisted in his arms and washed him, all except for his hair, which she couldn’t reach. In the end, he slid down, dunked his head under, and soaped it. Britta stepped from the tub and helped him sluice water over his head until it ran clear.
She wrapped herself in a towel and held one out for him. He glanced at the water, wrinkled his nose, and stepped from the tub. “Wow! Pretty dingy. We probably should have let it out midway and run new.”
“It doesna matter. We can bathe again come the morning. ’Tisn’t far away. Summer nights are short this far north.” She rubbed him dry, turned to him, and winked. “No more excuses. We’re clean, fed, the only thing left…”
“…is to tell you you’re the most beautiful woman in the entire world. And I’m the luckiest man.” His breath caught in his throat, and he crushed her against him. No more waiting. He’d toyed with his passion for hours. He closed his mouth over hers, feeling her open to him. Her tongue sparred with his. He pushed the towels trapped between them aside, desperate to feel her skin against his.
She wrapped her arms around him and buried her hands in his wet hair, mouth still glued to his. Her nipples hardened where they pressed against his chest, and she made a little moaning noise he’d come to recognize. The lust he’d denied roared to life. He ran his hands down her back. She had the silkiest skin. Her scent intensified, along with her passion. He inhaled lavender, amber, and the musk of her arousal.
He raised his mouth from hers and strung kisses down her neck, bending to capture a nipple in his mouth. She gasped and pulled him against her. He moved from one nipple to the other, lost in the wonder of her body. Kneeling, he moved his mouth lower and settled between her legs, licking and sucking the sensitive nub cradled in its nest of red-gold curls.
Britta thrust her pelvis against him; her legs shook where he leaned his head against her thighs. “Hurry,” she murmured. “Och, hurry. I canna stand much more.”
Jonathan cast a glance at the towel-strewn bathroom floor but then opted for the bed. His cock felt like it would burst anyway, no matter what happened next. He rose to his feet, scooped her into his arms, and carried her across the hall to his bed, where he placed her tenderly. She lay in the welter of bedclothes left from their last lovemaking and kindled a mage light. Her skin glowed golden in its glow. Surrounded by her long, damp hair, she looked like a goddess. A Botticelli angel.
“What would you like, my love?”
“Ye. Inside me. Now.”
“I could put my mouth back on you,” he teased. It wasn’t easy to talk. His balls ached. His cock was on fire.
She rolled into a sit and wrapped her hands around his shaft. Her mouth followed. The heat of her was almost more than he could tolerate. When she circled his glans with her tongue, he cried out.
“Och.” She kept her hands on him but tilted her head back. “Did I hurt you?”
“
No. Everything gets really sensitive when I’m about to come.”
She moved her hands to his hips and pulled him onto the bed. Flashing a coquettish smile, she turned away and got onto her hands and knees. The view of her damp pussy with its halo of tight curls drove everything else from his mind. He wrapped a hand around his cock and guided it into her. He tried to not move, to make the moment last, but she tightened her muscles around him, tentative at first, and then again and again. He moved a hand between her legs, gripped her hip with the other, and drove himself into her.
She came, screaming her ecstasy, almost immediately. He kept rubbing her clit as he slammed into her. Maybe, just maybe, he could hold off long enough for her to come a second time. His cock had never been so hard. Sensation poured through him. Rhythmic contractions began high in her vault, and he knew she was coming again. He let go of any semblance of control.
His climax began deep in his belly. His balls snugged up against his body. Semen hurled from him in huge spasms that shook him to his core. He heard himself cry out and then say her name over and over like a prayer.
Overwhelmed by the intensity that had passed between them, it was all Jonathan could do to guide them back to where they lay next to one another. He turned her toward him and placed a hand on either side of her face. “I love you. God, but I love you.” Emotion was so close to the surface, he felt raw, exposed. But he had nothing to hide from this woman.
“Aye.” She smiled, soft, tender, and brushed her lips over his. “I love you too. We shall be together throughout time, ye and I.”
“Promise?”
“Promise. No matter what befalls us. We are joined, body and soul.” Britta grinned. “And dragon. Doona forget about her. She was with us just now, in my mind. She is happy for us.”
Doubts that had plagued him, silly qualms about work and where they’d live and how they’d manage, fell away. All that mattered was right here in his arms. “Tell her thank you.”
“Tell her yourself,” Tarika’s voice sounded in his head.
“My heart’s so full, I scarcely know where to begin.” Jonathan shut his eyes for a moment to focus his thoughts. When he opened them, he knew the best thing would be to keep it simple. “Thank you for sharing your life with me. I’m most humbly grateful and will do everything I can to be worthy of both of you.”
“Ye picked well,” Tarika told Britta.
“Aye, I know. See you verra soon, bond mate.”
“The Callanish stones four days hence.”
“We shall be there,” Britta concurred.
Her mage light moved closer and dimmed. She ran her hands down his face and shoulders. “Sleep, my love. Tarika and I will take first watch.”
He felt her spell but didn’t fight it. His eyelids grew heavy. “Wake me so you get some sleep too.”
“Aye, I will. I doona need much rest.”
Cradled against her body, Jonathan slid toward sleep. His last conscious thoughts were of riding astride Tarika with Britta in front of him and the wind whipping against his face. Dragons, magic, shifters, goddesses. I was born for this.
“Aye, love, that ye were. And we will challenge your magic to its utmost, but not until tomorrow at the earliest.” The sweet chimes of Britta’s laughter lulled him to sleep.
Epilogue
Arianrhod moved briskly up steps leading to the Celtic gods’ main meeting room in Inverlochy Castle on the south bank of the River Lochy. To human eyes, it lay in ruins, but magic could resurrect most anything. The Morrigan pranced along by her side in the form of a teenaged girl, blonde curls bouncing, silken skirts rustling against the wooden risers. Arianrhod blew out a tense breath. The Morrigan hadn’t given her a whit of trouble, but Arianrhod was drained from keeping her guard up. She’d been ready for anything, from an outright attack to the Morrigan pulling power and making a run for it, but the only thing the battle crow had done was to don her current form a few minutes ago.
Arianrhod had called the other Celts telepathically. While they might not all be here to meet her and the battle crow, at least some of them would. She hoped. She was on fairly shaky ground after the revelation about her true-born, half-human son. If I’m verra lucky, the others willna hold it against me. After all, ’twas many years ago.
She glared at the Morrigan. “Why’d ye pick a maid’s illusion?” The Morrigan shrugged. For a moment, the expression on her face was anything but what a fifteen-year-old innocent would wear. Understanding dawned. “I get it.” Arianrhod grunted. “Ye think if ye appear childlike , virginal yet slightly slutty, ’twill go easier with you.”
“Well.” The Morrigan licked her lips suggestively. “They are mostly men.”
And easily sidetracked. “If ye’re verra skilled,” Arianrhod didn’t bother to temper her sarcasm, “mayhap ye can get a battle going in our council chamber.”
“Oooh, doona tempt me.”
Arianrhod pulled open the twelve-foot high oaken door. “Get in there,” she hissed and followed the battle crow into a huge chamber decorated with crystals and natural stone in every hue of the rainbow. Rich carpets covered the stone floors, thick wool woven with depictions of Celtic glory. A fire burned in an enormous hearth that took up one end of the room. Ceridwen sat before the fire stirring her cauldron. A handful of other Celts looked up from where they sat.
“Sister.” Gwydion got slowly to his feet. “What have we here?”
Arianrhod gave the Morrigan a push. “Get yourself to the witness seat. Ye’ve been trouble enough.”
“As ye say, mistress.” The lovely girl-woman that was the Morrigan dropped a curtsey and sashayed up the center aisle, hips swaying provocatively. She pushed her blonde curls over her shoulders and settled herself onto a plain, oak chair on a raised dais.
“What we have here,” Arianrhod strode to her brother’s side, “is the Morrigan.”
“Aye.” He nodded tiredly. “I can see through her illusion, but why have ye brought her to the tribunal?”
“Let us do this formally.” Arianrhod swept past him and up to the front of the room. She turned and faced the Celtic gods, disappointed so few had heeded her call. “I found the Morrigan in a future time. She’d kidnapped two dragons and had them chained to a tower with iron.”
A collective gasp spread through the room. Andraste, goddess of victory, surged to her feet and shook her blonde hair out of her face. “Is this true?” she demanded.
“Och.” The maid masquerading as the Morrigan cast her eyes downward. “I am afraid it is. I doona know quite what came over me, but when Arianrhod pointed out the error of my ways, I freed the dragons immediately. And I also helped do away with two dragon shifters, who’d actually chained the dragons to that tower.”
“Two dragon shifters ye’d co-opted to do your bidding hundreds of years ago,” Arianrhod inserted smoothly.
“It scarcely matters.” The Morrigan’s voice was sweet, melodic, and laced with compulsion. “They are dead and their dragons’ souls safely ensconced in Fire Mountain.”
Ceridwen rose from her place next to her cauldron. She stalked in front of the Morrigan. “Enough shenanigans. Take one of your common forms. I doona wish to look upon this new creation of yours.”
“As ye will.” The maid shimmered; the battle crow took form where she’d sat. “There.” The crow cocked her head to one side. “Am I more…acceptable?”
Ceridwen turned to face her fellow Celts. “The Morrigan admits she broke the covenant betwixt us and the dragons. What shall her punishment be?”
Arianrhod took a deep breath. Her gaze raked the small group. While she was grateful for Ceridwen’s assistance, she had a hard time believing the Morrigan would suffer at all for what she’d done. We are not good at meting out punishment to our own.
Andraste stepped forward. “Found any good battles lately, crow?”
The Morrigan cawed. “Nay. ’Tis part of the problem. I grew bored and sought to entertain myself.”
Something in Arianrhod snapp
ed. “Mayhap, afore you pass judgment,” she said to the Celts, “you should travel into the future. Not far. Fifty years will do. Take a good, hard look at a dying planet. All that is the Morrigan’s doing. What she isna saying is that Lachlan, a dragon shifter, found the woman prophesied to stand by his side and defeat her. All her maneuvering has been to prevent it from happening. First she targeted Lachlan’s woman, then Lachlan, and finally, his dragon.”
“It appears we need more information.” Ceridwen folded her hands in front of her.
“Aye.” Andraste nodded. “I agree.”
“Fine.” Arawn stepped forward. “We shall reconvene in one week’s time.”
“What would you have me do between now and then?” the Morrigan asked in honeyed tones.
“Whatever ye would,” Arawn replied. “We have no way to imprison you.”
“Aye, and we can find you if ye doona return.” Andraste turned her silver eyes on the Morrigan.
“Och aye, and then I’m free to leave?” The crow took an anticipatory step forward.
Ceridwen made shooing motions with both hands. “Please. I find I prefer the air in this room without you in it.”
Incredulous that all her hard work had been for naught, Arianrhod watched as the Morrigan drew power and vanished. She turned on her peers. “I canna believe—”
“Ye canna believe what?” Gwydion strode to her side. “We have no way to imprison her. We canna kill her.”
“Ye could send her to Fire Mountain for the rest of time,” Arianrhod sputtered.
“Only if the dragons agreed.” Her brother sounded annoyed to be bothered. “’Tis enough for one day. We shall see how we are feeling a week from now.”
Arianrhod plodded toward the end of the chamber, so dispirited all she wanted to do was find her bed and sleep for days. Tense from riding herd on the Morrigan—and for nothing, it appeared—every bone and muscle in her body complained. She hadn’t expected much, but this was far less than even her most pessimistic imaginings.