by Tara Janzen
Nemeton’s skin had not been marked, and he had breached the wormhole more than once in her memory. The Druids were ever ones with a potion, and mayhaps he had prepared himself before going into the weir. Madron would know. She had always been at her father’s side, conjuring with nature’s bounty. But ’twas unlikely that Madron would tell Llynya any secrets, especially any concerning the wormhole. The Weir Gate was the Druid’s bailiwick in Madron’s estimation. Like the first Prydion Magi to discover its special properties, the Druids had sent travelers through. They watched the gate for such travelers to return, and on one night per year, Calan Gaef, they watched a priestess of Merioneth open the doors between the worlds and look into the depths of the temporal flux. ’Twas because their lives were so briefly mortal that they hungered after time, Rhuddlan had explained.
The priestesses were all gone from Merioneth now. Ceridwen had been the last, and by most accounts she’d not had near the power of the priestesses of old. That there had been no one to train her was part of the problem. That she’d shared the womb with a twin brother was considered by both Moira and Naas to be the greater cause of her lack of skills.
Mychael—the wheel ever turned and came back to him.
“If the braid dismays you, you’re welcome to unplait it,” he said, reclaiming her attention, his voice concerned.
She looked up and realized she’d given herself away with her gloomy musings, changing his mood as well as hers. “Nay,” she said. “ ’Tis not the plait.”
“Then what?”
In answer, she took his hand and turned it over, revealing the scar along his inner wrist and palm. She slid her fingers up the pinkened skin and was surprised to find it the same temperature as the rest of his arm.
“ ’Tis cool,” she said, glancing up. “The fire is gone.”
“Bala Bredd has a magic of sorts. ’Tis why I come.”
“Aye, there is more healing in the waters of Bala Bredd than in others. Still the pool must need one of Moira’s rejuvenating infusions, if you must swim for hours on end to find relief.”
“A good soaking usually suffices,” he admitted, absently tossing a twig into the flames. “The swimming was for your benefit.”
“Mine?” She didn’t understand.
His eyes held hers for a moment, before he tossed another stick on the fire. “I looked for you everywhere today.”
“I know,” she said. “I watched you search Carn Merioneth from hither to yon and back again from morn to night, pretty much following my trail.”
“Jesu,” he swore softly under his breath, glancing up. “Were you so afraid I would find you?”
“Not afraid, just unsure of what to say, or do after... after you... we...” Her voice trailed off in confusion. Her gaze faltered. Picking up the hem of her tunic, she smoothed a meadowsweet petal so that it would better reflect the firelight.
“I only wanted to apologize,” he said, “and explain... if I needed to.” There was a question in his voice, a question she couldn’t bring herself to answer. When she said naught, he sighed and went doggedly on. “Not that I’ve had much luck explaining it to myself. You can be certain I never meant to embarrass you.”
“Nor I you,” she assured him in all earnestness, looking up.
“And I would never hurt you,” he vowed. “I swear this on all the gods that ever were, or will ever be.”
“I was not hurt.” She hesitated slightly before asking, “Were you?”
“Me? Hurt?” His look of surprise lasted briefly before transforming into chagrin. He swore again and covered his face with his hand. “Nay, sprite, I was not hurt.”
“I know ’twas not the normal course of things,” she hurried on. “I feared when I touched you that I might have hurt... you, when you... you—” Words failed her again. She had witnessed all manner of couplings each Beltaine, but she’d never heard a name put to any of them, and she—silly chit—had not thought to ask. Nor, she now realized, had she really seen too many of the particulars. She’d thought there was plenty of time still before mating became of any importance.
Time had run out, though, for she was alone with Rhiannon’s son in the soft, dark night, with the wind and the starlight wrapping around them, the moon shining down, awaiting a kiss she feared she might not get.
“ ’Twas foolishness, nothing more,” he said, breaking the awkward silence and making to rise. “Come, let’s get you home, before Aedyth sends out scouts.”
She stopped him with her hand on his wrist, holding him. “I’m no child to do as Aedyth wishes.”
“Nor are you yet a woman for me to do with as I wish,” he said gently, tousling her hair.
She could have hit him for that bit of condescension, but only out of her own frustration. When he rose to his feet, she scrambled up beside him, unwilling to let him walk away while the scent of desire was in the air. For all his misplaced gallantry, he still wanted to kiss her, and aye, she could smell it, her malaise fading.
“ ’Twas my fault, wasn’t it,” she said, “that things went so awry in the tower.”
“Nay,” he said. “The fault was all mine.” He turned to leave, but she reached for him again, her hand light on his arm. His gaze came back to her, indulgent and faintly curious.
“I ran when I should have stayed... when I wanted to stay. You taste truly wondrous, Mychael ab Arawn,” she said, “like forests, and rain, and dark, thundering clouds. Like salt water from a faraway sea, like honey warmed by the sun, and I... I had hoped for another kiss.” She was treading onto perilous ground. To put words to desire was a binding spell, an incantation of seduction well known in artes magicae. She did not want a spell to be what held him, yet she would have him know the truth of why she’d followed him. “One kiss, no more. I swear.”
As she spoke, his countenance changed from curiosity to an expression she couldn’t interpret beyond the tension bracketing his mouth. His eyes were dark, unreadable without the firelight to illuminate their depths. Slowly, he brought his hand up to cup the curve of her jaw. His fingers spread across her cheek.
“You ask for a kiss, one kiss and no more?” The question was laced with resignation. “One kiss, when I would give you a thousand.”
He was so close, she could scarce find her breath, while his breath—sweet draft—warmed the air between them. If she’d asked for too little, if that was what had put the sadness in his voice, she would gladly take more.
Daring all, she rose up on tiptoe, bringing her mouth near to his. “Even a thousand kisses must needs begin with one,” she murmured, then brushed his lips with her own, a gossamer kiss. As if moved by her touch, his other hand came to rest on her waist. On her second kiss, he met her partway, and his hand slid to the small of her back. The third kiss was his to take.
Mychael opened his mouth over hers, his arm tightening around her, inexorably drawing her closer and closer. Christe. He was going to drown in her. He could tell, could see it coming, yet naught could have kept him from accepting what she offered. Kisses. A thousand of them. Taking her home would have been the right thing to do, considering her innocence, but he didn’t have the strength to take her home when her hand was tunneling through his hair. And God’s truth, when her body pressed against him and her mouth clung to his, she didn’t feel innocent.
Nay, he didn’t have the strength to take her home. He only prayed he had the strength to take her slow.
To that end, he did naught but kiss her, and kiss her again, losing himself in the wet warmth of her mouth and the taste of lavender. Her tongue played with his and a hot-edged sweetness poured through him, leaving fire in its wake. Her teeth grazed his lips and nipped at his chin in soft, teasing bites, and he wanted to devour her with the same, to put his mouth on her everywhere, to taste and discover. She was the river nymph of his woodland idylls, the enchantress of his waking dreams, the one he’d conjured so many times with a stroke of his hand and an aching need to be loved. In all his dreams, though, the nymph had not been a
s beautiful as the woman he held in his arms. No fantasy had ever been so delicately formed. No man had ever imagined the wild tumble of braids and leaves and loose strands of hair that framed her face in such silky disarray.
He ran his mouth over her cheeks and brows and lashes, wanting to infuse himself with her, with the fragrance of flowers rising from her skin. She was every green living thing, winding around him, tying him to her with tendrils of desire, binding him with pleasure. And ’twas then, within the heated tenderness of her kisses, that the first truth of what she’d done with the braiding of his hair came to him. She’d bound him to the trees, aye, and in return the trees were binding him to her.
As the sweet sap of lust rose in him, so did the sap rise in the pines and birches and oaks. No metaphor, but a true rising. He could smell it, though autumn was upon them, and he could smell the same happening to Llynya, could smell the intensifying scents of roses and sweet woodruff on her skin, the scents of meadowsweet, violets, and peonies, flowers long out of bloom, but redolent in the late September night—because she was aroused.
Kisses alone would not suffice for the sprite. Innocent or nay, she wanted him with the same degree of longing he felt for her, and he wanted to have her lying beside him, taking him in, her arms wrapped around him, her mouth kissing him, dampening his skin, her hands touching him, inciting him with pleasure. He wanted to know what it was to have a woman, and she was the woman he would have. No half measures would do. He wanted no more to be alone—and neither did she.
Thus it was empathy, not boldness, that brought his hand to her belt and loosened the buckle; the desire to soothe and not just desire that guided him as he loosened her hose from en coulisse and let them slide down around her ankles. With a single tug, her braies unwound from around her hips and drifted into a soft pile at their feet. He broke his kiss to slip her baldric over her head, then reclaimed her lips and began unlacing her tunic. She could have stopped him at any time, but she did not. In truth, her own hands were not idle, and as she was half undressed, so was he. He felt the chill of the wind on his legs when she loosed his chausses. She had his tunic unlaced before he’d finished with hers. He shrugged out of it and tossed it aside.
When her tunic slipped, verily of its own accord, off her shoulder, revealing the rise or her breast, he put his mouth on her and took his first taste. Sweet heaven. His groin tightened, and his hands slid around her hips to the warm, bared curves of her buttocks. He held her thus, within the circle of his arms and mouth, and felt as if he’d taken her inside himself.
Her hands tangled in his hair, holding him. “Mychael.” His name was a benediction, a sigh, not a call for restraint. He’d come to Bala Bredd to heal, and she’d come for love, and between the cool night air and the thick clouds of warming mist rising off the pool, the two were proving to be the same.
He cupped her face with his palms and kissed the corners of her lips.
“I would lay with you, Llynya,” he said, speaking his heart’s truth. After the debacle of the morning, he would not have her mistake what he wanted, and regardless of what he felt, he’d not push her further without hearing the same from her.
“Oh, aye,” she breathed against his lips with another gossamer kiss, and a warm flush of anticipation coursed through him.
Taking him by the hand, she pulled him down with her onto the soft pile of their cloaks and discarded clothing. He went willingly, readily, and with a silent warning to himself not to overwhelm her. He was considerably bigger than she and unschooled in the ways of love, and a definite streak of nerves ran through his excitement—a receipt for disaster, if he did not take care.
Yet when he looked at her, he wondered if ’twas possible to touch her and not be moved to take the greatest care. Moonlight shimmered on her bare skin and wound through her tattoo, silvering the blue leaves on her shoulder as she worked off her boots and hose. When she finished, she shrugged out of the rest of her tunic, letting it slide into her lap, and the pale light ran like quicksilver down her arm, limning the runes and ogham marking her as Liosalfar.
’Twas a sobering sight. He knew what she was, yet the full display of her tattoo seemed at odds with the rest of her, with the fineness of her bones, with the softness of her breasts and the slender curves of her legs. Battle was coming, and given a choice, he would not have her fight.
He ran his finger down the full length of the tattoo, following the path of leaves and vines to her wrist.
“A warrior,” he said, failing to keep a rueful note out of his voice. “I wish it were not so.”
“Would you have another then?” she asked. He glanced up, startled by her question. Then he saw the flash of anger in her eyes and realized his mistake. “A harvest maid, mayhaps?”
A warrior, aright, he thought, not daring to release the grin he felt twitching at his lips.
“Nay, sprite. I would have no other than you, ever,” ’Twas true. He knew it the moment he spoke the words, and he didn’t understand it any more than she appeared to believe it, considering the look she was giving him.
“Edmee told me Massalet followed you like a dog all summer long.” Her eyes were definitely green, and not just in color, and that amazed him almost as much as having her sit across from him naked, arguing.
“For certes she happened to be in the same place much of the time,” he admitted.
“And?” she prompted, looking more the Liosalfar and less the doe-eyed nymph with every passing moment.
He quickly checked on the whereabouts of her dagger, thinking he should never have stopped kissing her long enough for a conversation to begin. The dagger was safe, a good foot and a half closer to him than her.
“And I never noticed her enough to make her anything but snippish with me. You ken ‘snippish,’ don’t you, sprite?” His grin slipped free, and she was on him in a trice, pushing him over with a soft “oomph” of effort.
Fast she may have been, but she was no match for his strength. He caught her in his arms and rolled her over into the cloaks in one easy motion, pinning her with a soft laugh and a leg thrown across hers—and as simply and quickly as that, Massalet was forgotten.
Every fiber of his being was suddenly and totally focused on Llynya and the rush of arousal pulsing through his body. She’d said she would lay with him, and the time had come. Separated from her only by his braies, he rubbed against her and watched as her eyes darkened.
With the slightest move, her legs parted, allowing him to nest closer, and a groan escaped from deep in his chest. “Aye, you ken,” he murmured.
“Aye, Druid boy. I ken what you’re about.” A mischievously sensual smile curved her mouth. She teased him with another small move, and his own smile met hers. They would manage, he thought. Aye, they would manage.
Snowflakes drifted down from the sky to land on her lashes, and he kissed them off. They cooled her cheeks, and he warmed the fair skin with his mouth, cradling her head in his hands.
Her kisses were no less ardent, roaming at will across his face and down his throat to his shoulders, each one touching him someplace far deeper than the surface of his skin. When her hand caressed the lower part of his chest and drifted tantalizingly across his abdomen, he stilled, his muscles instinctively contracting in invitation, creating a space for her hand to delve lower.
When she didn’t, he brushed her cheek with his mouth. “Please.”
She shook her head.
He thought he knew what stayed her, a thought she confirmed with her next words.
“Nay. I would not have this end, not just yet.”
A pained grin crossed his face. ’Twas a fair enough, if rather faithless conclusion. Yet they were far from any ending, and he would have her know it.
He lifted himself a bare degree to meet her gaze, and realized with an odd sense of fascination that their hair had become entwined, his pale yellow strands winding down around one dark braid, her rich sable locks twisting upward into gold. Even as he watched, a slight breeze lift
ed another dark curl and started it twisting around the riband she’d worked into his braid.
Swearing silently to himself, he tore his gaze away from the enchantment only to meet another when he looked into her eyes. Forest green and lit deep with reflected starlight, the dreamy desire in them was his final undoing. She was open before him, soft and giving beneath him, and all his thoughts tumbled into one that had naught to do with “slow.”
Filled with a sense of urgency, he tugged off his braies, and fully naked, fully aroused, he lay back down, half over her. He was a carnal beast; he knew it, and she incited his lust with damnable ease. The only surprise was how much tenderness there could be in lust, for she incited that in equal measure.
Her breath caught as his fingers slid through the soft hair at the apex of her thighs and into that most mysterious of all the female regions, the source of endless speculation among the less pious novitiates, known to him only by the Latin, vulva.
“You’re so soft,” was his first awestruck discovery, followed quickly by a harshly groaned, “you’re wet.”
The realization washed through him with a force far greater than any he could control. In a single move, he covered her, pressing against her damp nest of curls. He was awkward, she was kind, and when he finally pushed up inside her, he feared her pleasure was forgotten in the exquisite intensity of his own. He came all too quickly, but to save his life could not have conjured a regret. ’Twas God’s plan, he was sure, for the second time she was already halfway to completion before he’d hardly started. When her climax came and he was suspended for those few glorious moments in the flow of her release, he knew he’d been changed forever. By the third time, his confidence was high, the rhythms were his, and his goals were clear in his mind.
Llynya had no such goals. Passively replete, sated with wonder, she was amazed when he came to her again—and her amazement did naught but increase. Stamina, she realized some time later, was a gift and a pleasure all its own. There were pinnacles to be reached and fallen off beyond where she’d already been, and one by one, he took her to them, always holding himself back, always pushing her a little higher, until whatever barrier she may have held between a man of Men and a Yr Is-ddwfn aetheling disappeared. He became one with her, a part of her. She felt the exchange taking place, powered by the primal thrusting of his body. His life’s seed, the damp moisture of his kisses, his sweat, all of it seeped into her, inside and out. She melted with the infusion, turning wanton in her need.