Something flickered in her eyes, as if she knew what he could never say. As though she had known from the moment she’d made her request how much capitulation would cost him.
Silently he pulled back from her and removed his belt. As he undressed, Morwyn didn’t break eye contact and didn’t offer to help. She simply looked at him, and as he ripped his undertunic from his body and tossed it across the floor he glared at her, daring her not to flinch or shudder or turn away in disgust.
Still her gaze meshed with his as she stepped toward him and grazed the tips of her fingers over his shoulders and along his biceps. Her warm breath dusted his chest, the evocative scent from her hair teased his senses, and despite his shame, desire speared his groin.
Finally she looked at him. Her breath stumbled and again he tensed. Waiting for her rejection. Expecting it.
Her lips brushed across the ragged scar where the spear had penetrated, its deadly trajectory only narrowly missing both heart and lung. His hands fisted by his sides, blunt fingernails gouging his palms. No woman but Eryn had ever touched him so. But with Eryn, the only scars he’d possessed were honorable.
Gentle fingers, as light as the whisper of a feather, explored the deep gashes carved into his chest. Reminders of the antiquated spiked club one of the attackers had slammed into him before he even comprehended their presence.
Her lips followed, tender and erotic, searing his skin with a flick of her tongue and tantalizing graze of her teeth. Hot breath breezed against his abdomen as she soothed every grotesquely twisted ridge of healed flesh and muscle, her kisses igniting the embers glowing through his blood.
Jagged breath hissed between his clenched teeth and, hypnotized, he watched her slid down his body until she kneeled before him, hands splayed across his arse. Her dark hair, still braided, teased his inner thigh as her tongue traced a leisurely path around his navel.
And lower.
He speared his fingers into her hair and gripped her skull. She looked up at him, and in the glow from the lanterns he saw her smile.
“Do you want me to stop now?” Her voice was uneven, throaty, and stoked the flames licking inside his skin.
He didn’t want her to stop but warning pounded in the back of his mind, a throbbing counterpoint to the lust thundering through his blood. For the last three years he’d controlled his sexual encounters with the same degree with which he controlled his military persona.
With detached efficiency.
Except from the moment he’d met her, Morwyn had managed to shake his world sideways, caused him to question the essentiality of remaining silent, and nothing about their frenzied couplings was remotely detached.
His head jerked in denial, overriding his brain, and again she smiled. Pure decadence in the face of salvation. He screwed his eyes shut, fingers still tangled in her hair, and her hand trailed over his hips, between his thighs, and cradled his aching balls.
Her other hand slid around his shaft and he dragged open his heavy eyelids and fixed his gaze on her. The tip of her tongue peeked between her lips and then she leaned into him, breath scorching his sensitized flesh, mouth opening, sucking him inside. Slow, deliberate, but inexorable, her lips stretching around him, her tongue flattening beneath him, her teeth scraping against him as she took him deeper than he’d ever been before.
An agonized groan filled the room and echoed in his ears, but he hardly cared. Pulses hammering, he stared, mesmerized by the sight of Morwyn on her knees between his spread legs, his cock buried inside her wet mouth.
Fingernails scraped his sac, trailed along the insides of his thigh and probed between his arse cheeks. Her fingers were everywhere, exploring and teasing, gentle, then demanding. Driving need and desire and blinding wild lust thundering through his arteries, boiling in his gut, pounding the length of his rock-hard erection.
“Gods, Morwyn.” His voice rasped and fingers dug into her scalp. He locked the muscles of his thighs, tried to prevent the inevitable, but as if anticipating his strangled thoughts, she increased the suction around his cock and clamped one hand over his backside.
He thrust into her mouth, hard and violent, unable to prevent the primal need to possess and conquer. She didn’t pull back, even though such escape was futile, but met his thrusts, savored them, swallowing his length farther into her welcoming throat.
Harsh pants rent the air and he couldn’t take his eyes from her. A sliver of sanity wanted to pull her from him, toss her across the bed and plunge into her, feel her come around him as he pumped himself into her. But even as the thought formed she slid a finger between his buttocks, probed the sensitive flesh, and reason splintered into infinity.
Nothing existed but Morwyn and this moment and the primeval urge for completion. Silky tendrils of her hair spilled over his fingers, and while one hand played with his arse her other captured his balls, caressing and tweaking and cupping his weight.
Too much. Need flooded, pumped through his shaft, hammered into her mouth. Hot and brutal and demanding, every thrust jerking her head back, and he could feel her glorious suction, a cocoon of sheer sensation; the mind-blowing ecstasy as she swallowed and milked him and swallowed again.
The sweetest oblivion beckoned. And he fell.
Chapter 23
In the silent moments before dawn, Morwyn stirred in her lover’s arms. It was the first time she’d thought of him as such, and yet it felt so right. In her heart, she had always called him so.
Her head on his shoulder, his arm cradling her in a possessive embrace, she traced his innumerable scars with gentle fingers. They disfigured, but she didn’t find them unsightly. In truth, she had seen worse, although rarely had the victim survived. The only reason her insides clenched with horror when he had first undressed was because of the agony such injuries would have caused him.
She knew it wasn’t their physical presence that tortured his soul. It was his entrenched belief that he was responsible for his wife’s death. The scars were merely a visible outlet for his misguided convictions.
If only there were a potion she could concoct to ease his mind. But that wasn’t her specialty. Gawain, Druid of truth and judgment, was trained to soothe such intricacies of the mind. Gawain, whom she would never see again.
A ragged sigh slipped free. Regret for Gawain’s untimely death, regret for her Gaul’s shattered peace of mind. And regret for herself, at the knowledge there was nothing she could do to change any of it.
“Why the sigh?” Her Gaul’s husky whisper drifted across her cheek and she instinctively melded closer to his naked body, as if by so doing she could somehow alleviate his sorrow.
“Just recalling the past.” She pressed her lips against his shoulder, savoring the flavor of sweat and sex and man. But not just any man. Her man.
For now.
She thrust the harsh reminder aside. Her Gaul was here with her now and she wouldn’t spoil the moment by thinking of the future.
“A man you loved?” His breath caressed the top of her head and his fingers stroked the heated skin of her arm.
Silence lingered. Did he really want to know? Or was it merely an idle question?
She didn’t have to respond. But something tugged deep in her breast, a strange compulsion to share something of herself with him. The way he had with her.
A bond, of sorts.
“There was a man.” Her fingers played with the hair on her Gaul’s chest as the first glimpse of dawn illuminated his outline next to her. “I loved him for years . . . blindly.”
He continued to caress her arm. But remained silent.
A jagged sigh escaped. She’d not spoken of Aeron since that night. At least, she hadn’t spoken of her shattered feelings for him. He had murdered their queen, destroyed her faith and left a legacy of hatred and incomprehension amongst her fellow Druids.
None of them could mention Aeron’s name without cursing him to eternal isolation. She’d had to mend her battered heart alone, unable to grieve for the loss of a man
who had never existed outside her own mind.
“But in the end he betrayed me. All of us.”
Still he didn’t speak, but he rubbed his jaw across the top of her head in silent sympathy. As he had once before.
Warmth spiraled from her breast to her womb, but it wasn’t fueled by the need for sex. It was a strange sensation. His silence said more than words ever could.
She frowned, idly teasing his erect nipple with one finger. How odd, yet how fitting, that her Gaul could comfort her without the need of flowery speeches.
“He didn’t return my love.” She waited for the once-familiar stab of pain to accompany her confession, but her heart remained steady. Untouched. Had the last remnant of Aeron’s poison finally leaked from her soul?
The realization she was at last free of his hypnotic grip sent shivers of strange delight through her mind. Pressing even closer to her Gaul, she hesitated for scarcely a heartbeat.
He had confided in her. She would confide in him.
Lifting her head, she whispered into his ear. “He was a Druid.”
Her Gaul didn’t physically recoil. But his entire body stilled beneath her fingers, as if his muscles and bone and blood repelled her words. A chill shivered through her. Had she made a terrible mistake by telling him? Would he now leap to the conclusion that she, also, was a Druid?
The chill invaded her mind as a barely registered memory surfaced. When she had tried to comfort him earlier, she’d unthinkingly whispered the ancient Druidic incantation of healing. Without appropriate rituals and sacrifice it was meaningless, yet still the words had slid free. Because her need to offer a modicum of comfort to this man had overcome her sense of self-preservation.
Had he noticed her slip into the tongue of the ancients? Would he betray her to his Roman officers?
She pushed up onto her elbow and gazed down at him. The light was muted but she could see the outline of his face, the gleam of his eyes. There was no reason for him to come to such a conclusion. And even if he did, he wouldn’t hand her over to the enemy.
Her enemy. The reminder dripped like poison across her mind, but she ignored it. Because somehow she knew. He would not betray her trust.
“You loved a Druid.” His tone was devoid of emotion, as if it meant nothing to him. Perhaps it didn’t. She trailed her fingers across his jaw, fascinated by the rough texture of his night-grown beard.
“It was long ago.” And here, sharing her bed with the Gaul, it did seem long ago that she’d loved Aeron. Another lifetime. “Before the Romans invaded Cymru.”
He didn’t answer and she continued to caress his face, tracing his temples, his cheekbones and his mouth, her fingertips committing every plane and angle to memory. Meshed against his chest, she felt his heart rate increase, his breathing become ragged, and he speared his fingers through her tangled hair, pulling her toward him.
Openmouthed, she claimed his kiss, and closed her mind to the whispers that reminded her how ephemeral such pleasures could be.
* * *
After breaking their fast the Gaul hauled her into a bone-tingling hug before setting off to do . . . whatever it was he intended to do for the day. Unable to wipe the satisfied smile from her face, Morwyn watched him stride down the dirt path. Unlike Camulodunon, this settlement didn’t groan beneath the weight of numerous Roman-constructed roads.
With a sigh of contentment she turned in the other direction. It was too early to go to Deheune’s and meet with the hidden Elder. Perhaps, to distract her mind, she’d mend the gown her Gaul had torn from her the other night.
The contentment segued into nervous excitement at the thought of meeting with another of her kind. But another part quavered. Suppose he saw into her innermost core, saw how she scorned the Morrigan and all their gods? Suppose he cursed her for her blasphemy?
A furtive movement in the dingy alley next to the lodgings caught her eye. She frowned, and discerned a tiny shape crouching in the shadows.
“Come here.” She accompanied her words with a quick flick of her hand. With evident caution the tiny beggar from last night edged into the light. Morwyn half stepped forward, then paused. She could almost feel the lice crawling over the child’s hair and skin and had no desire to pick up any bloodsucking creatures if she could avoid it.
Pity slashed through her breast, sharp and acidic. Pity that a child had to live such a life, and pity that so little could be done about it. “Do you want something to eat?”
The child chewed its lip, clearly unsure whether to take the question at face value.
Of course it did. She raised her finger to indicate the child should remain where it was and went back inside and haggled with the innkeeper for some leftover stew from the previous eve. Then she watched the child devour the entire bowlful, scarcely taking time to draw breath.
She returned the bowl, and the child still waited for Morwyn, eyes wide and dark and unblinking as if it were a puppy.
Suddenly at a loss as to what she should do next, Morwyn stared at the child. She didn’t know why she had fed it, except she hadn’t been able to ignore the pitiful creature. But what would happen on the morrow? Or the day after that? What would happen when Morwyn was no longer here to feed the child?
But she was here now. And she was still too early for the Elder. She might as well spend her time usefully. “Can you lead me to the river?” There had to be a river locally, and while she had no doubt she’d be able to find it, she might as well allow this child to show her the way.
And without a word, it did.
* * *
By the time they found a secluded spot at the river, Morwyn had decided the child was female. She pointed to the ground by the riverbank and waited until the child sat.
“What’s your name?” Morwyn pulled her medicine bag from her shoulder and began to hunt through it for the ingredients she required. Frowning, she ran her fingers over her dwindling supply of willow bark. She’d have to replenish, and soon. It was a vital component of the contraceptive tea she drank throughout the day. She quickly checked another pouch, shaking the berries onto her palm. Not many, but they would have to do. They could be collected only when the berries turned black and the leaves fell from the trees, and that wouldn’t happen for another three moons.
She retied the pouch, found what she was looking for and glanced up, to see the child watching her avidly. “Name?” Morwyn prompted.
“Gwyn.”
“I’m Morwyn. Where’s your mother?”
Gwyn pushed greasy hair back from her face. “Dead.” A tremor belied her apparent calm. “Babe got stuck. I couldn’t . . . pull it out.”
Morwyn’s fingers stilled on her preparations as a troubling scenario whispered through her mind. “Were you alone?”
The girl gave one brief nod.
It was inconceivable that a woman could go into childbirth with only a small child in attendance, and yet so much had changed since the invasion. Kin were splintered across the land and the familial support system she had grown up with and taken for granted could no longer be counted upon.
“Don’t you have any living kin here?”
The scrawny shoulders shrugged. “Don’t know.”
“What of your father?” And if Morwyn got hold of him, she would soon knock some sense of responsibility into him. Allowing his daughter to roam the streets where anything could happen.
“Don’t know.” Gwyn wiggled her bare toes in the grass. “Never seen him.”
“What about the babe’s father?” Even if the man wasn’t Gwyn’s blood father, how could he allow her to degenerate into such an appalling state?
Gwyn began to dig a hole in the earth with the heel of her foot. “Ma never knew who the father was.” She shot Morwyn a furtive glance. “She said they were all the same to her.”
“I see.” The child was alone, in occupied and hostile territory. She smothered her inclination to gather the girl to her breast for comfort because what comfort would she derive from a stranger?
Besides, the child was riddled with lice.
“You,” she said, deciding the best way to help was with action and not sympathy, “need to clean up.”
Gwyn didn’t move. “Why?”
Morwyn watched a louse crawl languidly across the child’s forehead and resisted the urge to scratch her own head. “Because you’re filthy.”
Gwyn shrugged as if such an insult didn’t worry her. “Stops men wanting to fuck me.”
Again acidic pain slashed through Morwyn’s heart. The child looked scarcely eight summers old. “No man will dare touch you while you’re under my protection.”
Gods! What had she just said? How had she given her protection to this pitiful creature when she didn’t plan on staying for more than a few days—a moon at most?
But how could she not protect her, when it was obvious no one else would?
Gwyn blinked and began to scratch her neck, where red weals marked the passage of countless fleas. “All right, then.” She didn’t appear overwhelmed by Morwyn’s declaration. But she proved adept at obeying her instructions, and as the sun climbed in the heavens Morwyn pulled out the small blanket she carried in her bag. It wasn’t entirely clean but would do for her purposes. As Gwyn knelt by the river, her naked body scrubbed red raw and grease-smeared hair hanging over her face as she combed out the lice, Morwyn deftly turned the blanket into a serviceable gown.
It wasn’t much, but better than the rags she’d told Gwyn to throw into the bushes.
“Let me look at you.” She studied Gwyn’s appearance. The child’s hair, now rinsed, fell to her shoulders and was no longer crawling alive. Morwyn would ensure the child treated her hair again in the morn, explain how the cycle could not afford to be broken. It was, after all, a basic hygiene necessity.
She handed Gwyn the gown and repacked her bag. If she didn’t hurry, she’d be late for the Elder.
* * *
Deheune greeted her with the same deference she’d extended the previous day, and was happy for Gwyn to stay.
The Druid Chronicles: Four Book Collection Page 50