Hard. Taut and as small as a raspberry. He sucked on it, and the wool over it, wetting the fibers hot. He held her tight while he feasted, sucking and licking and all but nibbling a hole in the wool.
Aileen.
His cock throbbed. He pressed her thighs against him but the pressure only thickened. Her hair tumbled down from whatever held it up. Soft, soft, all that curling mass she could never control, swirling fragrant around them. He yanked her neckline down to taste her skin, to finally find that bud of a nipple so he could suck it deep into his mouth.
She shuddered and gasped. He held her tighter.
No, woman, you’ll not get away, not yet. You think I don’t know the fear roiling within you now? I’ve seen it in a hundred thousand faces since that Christmastide when I recognized it for what it was. You should have known better than to enter the sanctuary of a beast, should have known better than to tease him, to touch a man starved for the feel of another’s flesh. Now you shall pay the consequences.
He scraped his hands across her buttocks to crush her closer. She was all give and suppleness, her spine bending beneath his grip. He struggled out of the fog of sensation to realize that she made no resistance to his embrace. She didn’t struggle—no, more than that, she pressed against him. Her fingers raked over his head, through his hair from forehead to nape, then trailed down flat against the center of his back.
What was this?
For one brief, shining moment he stilled in the awareness of her desire. He drank in the shimmering moment, sucked it down to a place parched and cracked from lack of it, and felt the sustenance through his body like a white light pushing back the darkness. He knew this was more than the carnal need for a woman, knew that she was feeding a different hunger, a more basic one, a more necessary one—knew, too, that she knew how much he needed this.
That, in the end, was what gave him the strength to drag his hands back to her hips and thrust her body away from his. That, in the end, was what doused the heat in his blood as effectively as if someone had changed it for icy mountain water. Yes, he could have her. He was lord of this place, she was his captive, and she stood bared to the waist before him. He’d taken women for lesser reasons.
But he hadn’t fallen so low that he would take a woman who felt no more for him than pity.
The taste of her turned bitter in his mouth. With a grunt he thrust her away. The bench rocked as he stood up. She knew of Elyned. She must have heard the story. For what other reason would this woman come to him after all this time? A woman who’d snarled and snapped at him at every turn?
“Are you the kind,” he said, his voice as hard as gravel, “who likes rutting in the dark with satyrs?”
“R–Rhys?”
“I don’t want your pity–kisses, woman.”
She rustled frantically, arranging her clothing, knocking a stick of tinder across the paving stones.
“Tomorrow, when your senses are restored, you’ll thank me for not planting a demon seed in your belly.”
Light poured into the room as she swung open the door and stumbled out. He dug the butts of his palms into his eyes, squeezing them shut against the illusion he’d held, for one fleeting moment, of something he would never have: A woman in his arms wanting him for him alone.
Chapter Ten
“A wise woman,” Dafydd said, “would have stayed in the kitchens today.”
Aileen trailed a scowling Dafydd across the yard. A herd of cattle poured through the narrow gateway of the palisade, lowing and bumping. Dafydd barked orders to a young man herding the cattle toward a pen, then stopped to turn upon her. With a scowl marring his features, he had the look of Rhys upon him.
Color flooded Aileen’s cheeks, a common enough occurrence this past night. “In the kitchens I have nothing to do but suffer Marged’s silence,” she insisted. “Is there to be no forgiveness for me from either of you? All I did was try to make the hall festive—I was ignorant of all the rest.”
She would not soon forget the look in Rhys’s eyes when he’d first seen it, or the tale Marged had told her afterward. But at least now, finally, she knew the real wound she should have been trying to heal all along.
She would set things to right. “Dafydd, I need your help.”
Dafydd sank to his haunches as he probed the cow’s underbelly. “Not today, Aileen.”
“I need but a moment with him.”
“A man doesn’t want company,” he said, as he thrust his head beneath the beast’s belly for a better look, “when he rides off alone.”
“I’m not after keeping him company. There are things I have to tell him—”
“Say it when he returns.”
“When he returns, you’ll be bending his ear about these cows,” she argued, waving to the milling chaos in the yard, “and the slaughter to come and the salting of the meat, or whatever you two chatter about in the evenings.”
“You had plenty of time to say your piece last night when you were alone with him in his room.” Dafydd glanced up from his crouch and elbowed his mantle over his shoulder. “What in God’s name did you do to him in there?”
This time the warmth seeped clear to her scalp. She knew that the walls between Rhys’s room and the rest of the hall were thin, nothing but wattle and daub. But no one could really know what mischief went on behind that closed door. Surely they speculated about coming upon the cold wicks of the tallow candles, the dry tinder of the fire, and the closing of the door during each of their healing sessions, going back to the kitchens to weave wild stories from the thinnest thread of truth. But no one—no one—could have witnessed the blinding lightning that had crackled through that room last night. No one else could have heard the roar of her blood.
That had all been in her head.
But Dafydd was staring, waiting for an answer. She shrugged and hoped it looked careless. “Rhys was of no mind to listen to me last night.” And she was barely capable of speech after the way he’d touched her. “But what I have to say can’t wait any longer.”
Nay, not a moment more. She couldn’t live in this place with the shame creeping up on her. She wanted to be done with him. She wanted to run home to Inishmaan where the men didn’t thrash and fight and growl when they set to kissing—and where there were no men at all willing to be kissed by her.
Dafydd slapped the rump of the cow and sent the creature bolting toward the pens. “The Irish never know when to keep quiet, do they? Or is it just the women?” Dafydd shook his head. “Leave the man in peace, Aileen.”
“Is this your mouth I hear these words coming from?” She trailed after him as he waded deeper into the herd. “You yourself once asked me to set things to right.”
“And there was a time, Aileen, when I believed you could do just that.”
She met those hazel eyes, bright with frustration and angry thwarted hope. She wondered if Rhys knew the depth of this man’s loyalty, or if he waited for Dafydd to show the same blackness of heart as his other brothers.
What did it matter? She could not open a mind so twisted with bitterness. She could not ease a heart encased in stone, no matter how rightly so. Her hands did not work on his face. And when she dared to touch his heart, the healing muddled with something else, something fierce and reckless that rebounded upon her and turned her into a creature she did not recognize, aching for things she had no right to feel, yearning for something she’d never expected to have.
Dafydd brushed by her and skirted a cow patty steaming in the frosty air. “I won’t be doing the man any more wrong today.”
“You won’t take me to him?”
He gave her no answer, and she knew the set of those shoulders well.
She swiveled a heel into the mud. “Very well. I’ll go myself, then.”
She told herself that the walk through the frosted valley would do her good. She needed the slap of cold air on her face. She needed the weave of the icy wind through her hair. Maybe the journey would help her forget what she’d nearly done la
st night. Maybe she could figure out what it was in the darkness that urged her to throw herself upon a wealthy Welsh lord—a thief, a killer, an unbeliever—when in the brightness of day she could not even find a civil word for the man.
“There’s no end to a woman’s wiles, is there?” Dafydd’s voice rose above the lowing of the cattle. She didn’t have to glance over her shoulder to know he was striding after her. He snapped an order to a boy who raced off to the stables. “Do you think I’m going to let you wander these hills like a stray calf, while Rhys’s enemies roam the woods?”
Her pace slackened. She’d forgotten about that. Rhys’s brothers had ravaged the borders these past weeks, stealing cattle, setting fires. It would be folly to set out on foot.
He seized her arm and dragged her toward the stables. “You won’t give me any peace until I take you, I see that. But I won’t have your death laying more woman’s blood on my brother’s hands.”
It was a silent and uncomfortable ride across the frosted valley to King Arthur’s grave. Dafydd rode the palfrey with a vengeance. She clenched the pommel of the high saddle praying for safety with each clatter of pebbles beneath the horse’s hooves.
She saw the falcon soaring high above the tree tops long before they broke through the woods. Under the gray sky, virgin frost gleamed on the heather, its sheen broken by one set of hoof prints. Rhys stood alone by the banks of a stream, his red leather glove the only spot of color in the landscape.
Dafydd yanked the horse to a stop on the height. He slid off the horse and hefted her down with little gentleness, then remounted while she found her footing. “You go alone. Do what you’ve come for, and have done with it.”
The frozen grass crackled beneath her shoes as she crossed the distance. Once she slipped and cracked the butt of her palm against a tree trunk. She picked her way more carefully until she reached level ground.
Rhys swung the lure in a wide circle as the falcon hovered overhead. With a spread of its wings, the bird swooped down and seized the food in its claws, then landed to tear at it with its beak. Rhys’s cloak billowed as he sank to one knee and swept the falcon onto his thick leather glove.
Her steps faltered. His powerful thighs flexed as he straightened with the bird upon his arm. Rhys’s long hair, unbound and the bluest of black, flew in the wind. She squeezed her frozen hands tight, remembering the slipping of that hair through her fingers, as soft as the swan’s down she’d gathered one day off an abandoned nest in the caves of Inishmaan. All the words she’d mustered to throw at him in the bright of morning now clogged in her throat.
“She’s a fine hunter,” Rhys said, without catching her gaze as he held the falcon aloft. “I’ve seen her take down geese twice her size, but there’s no challenge for her here today.” He toed a pile of fur on the ground. “Nothing but rabbits.”
She wondered what he was blathering on about, when she could think of nothing but the feel of his hot mouth upon her breast.
“She was raised on Ramsey Island. She learned to fly in winter gales and to hunt on sea–birds. There isn’t a better falcon in all of Wales.” An odd half–smile twitched on his face as he brushed the bird’s breast with a knuckle. “She was a wedding present, Aileen. From my dead wife.”
Shock jolted her. She wasn’t sure whether it was from the talk of his wife or the sound of her own name rolling off his lips.
“My wife’s dower lands, her riches, her cattle—I returned everything to my father–in–law, everything but this.” He reached inside his cloak and palmed out a bit of feathered leather. “You must think it appropriate that she would gift me with a falcon—a bird who hunts and kills his own kind.”
He stared into the falcon’s unblinking gaze as he stroked the bird’s breast, with the bit of leather hugged in his palm. With a movement so swift that the bird didn’t flinch, Rhys slipped the leather over the falcon’s head to blind him.
“And look,” he said, tugging the leather tight with his teeth, “she even wears a mask.”
He was mocking himself again, and somehow that made this easier. She tightened her grip on her skirts and made her way across the frozen earth. He was just a man, she told herself. She could be as calm and cold–blooded as he, if she willed it so.
“She smells you on the wind, Irish,” Rhys murmured, as the bird bristled her wings. “Always approach a wild thing with caution.”
If only she’d thought of that last night, when this man standing with his profile to her had worked a sort of magic upon her senses. The fumblings of Sean the fisher’s son seemed childish and laughable now. She’d spent the morning telling herself she’d finally felt the natural yearnings of a woman who had lived too long like a bride of Christ. Was it any wonder that a strong man with so much skill could make her lose her senses? She’d lost them so thoroughly she’d forgotten that he’d found her lacking once before.
Now twice.
He said, “You have a way with my brother.” He tugged the rope of the lure from under the hawk’s talons and slipped it in a bag hanging from his belt. His gaze slipped briefly to the silhouette of horse and rider upon the outcropping. “When Dafydd chose to join me in my exile, he discovered that some of my tenants were cheating me on the yearly tribute. From that day on, he made it his personal responsibility to count the cattle himself. I know the cattle–counting is today. “ Rhys absently stroked the bird’s breast. “Yet you get him to agree to drag you all the way out here.”
“I gave him no choice.” What was Rhys babbling on about, standing there with his masked side to her, talking to his falcon and not paying her a bit of heed? “I told him I needed to talk to you today.”
“I’m not sending you back to Ireland.”
Her mouth opened but no words came out, for he’d spoken her heart as if he could hear it himself. By God, was she so simple, then? Clearly she floundered in these tangled matters between men and women. It was as if she’d swum out too far past the ledges. But he must have been involved in such affairs whilst she was still cutting teeth on wood–blocks.
“I didn’t come up here to ask for that,” she said. What a good liar she could be, when Rhys wasn’t staring her in the eye. “I’m a woman who sticks to her bargains.”
“Good.”
“Not that I’m doing you any good here, mind,” she added, trailing behind him as he swept up the rabbits and strode to his horse, tethered amid the brambles. “Despite all the weeks I’ve tried.”
“You have until spring to do your work.”
“If I had until midsummer I’d do no better. I’ve tended to your affliction long enough to know it is not within my power to cure it.”
The moment the words left her lips she wanted to bite them back, chew them up and rearrange them so they wouldn’t fall as hard as hail. Fine healer’s manner you have, Aileen, blurting out such a thing. Why not tell him he’ll die within the week, and strip him of all his hope?
“It’s been barely a season.”
“I suspected the very first day.”
“Yet you made the bargain with me.”
“I’m not a woman to give up hope so easily. Besides, you gave me little choice.”
“I suppose I did.”
She blinked at him. So easy an admission, after all this time.
“Nonetheless,” he said, “you shall continue trying. You will keep to your side of the bargain.”
She pivoted and took two steps toward him. “If I cured your face, what do you think would happen?”
“I could take off the damned mask.”
“Aye, and what else? Do you think it will bring your brothers back to you?” Do you think it will bring back your wife? She dug her teeth into her lip to stop herself from slinging that stone. She turned away from him and her gaze followed the path up to where Dafydd waited. “You should thank that curse on your face. It has shown you who your true friends are. Dafydd is the only real brother you’ve ever had. You haven’t lost anything that you hadn’t owned in the first place.�
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“It’s not the past I want back—it’s the future.” The falcon cawed as Rhys swung around too swiftly. “This conversation is finished.”
“You’re no doctor. For all I know, I’m doing you more harm than good.”
“If there’s any harm here, it’s to your vanity.”
The shock of humiliation froze her to the spot.
“Don’t curse me for pushing you away last night, Aileen.” His lips curled in a mocking smile. “I was saving you the horror of waking up next to a monster.”
Her breath gelled in her lungs. “You think …”
“Easy, Irish. If your face gets any redder, you’ll hurt yourself, and I’m no healer, as you are so fond of telling me.”
“It’s you who’s full of vanity to think…to think I came here because…because…” Because he thrust you away as if disgusted. As if you weren’t enough of a mouthful. As if you smelled of fish and common hay pallets. And you can’t bear the thought of seeing the mockery in his eyes every single day for all the months to come … still hearing in your head the whispered words of the girls of Inishmaan spoken loud enough for you to overhear. Poor Aileen the Red, mother to all—but of children she’ll have none.
“That must be why you came here,” he said. “Why else would you lie?”
“Lie?” Her breath felt shallow in her lungs. “I don’t lie.”
“You told me your healing doesn’t work.”
“It hasn’t.”
“It has.” He wound the reins of his horse over his wrist and led it toward her, holding the goshawk to the wind. “The affliction has stopped spreading.”
She met his clear blue gaze and felt the jolt of it all the way to her toes. That couldn’t be. The salves couldn’t be doing him any good, he’d admitted that himself a hundred times before. She’d only felt her hands working on him twice, and then on his heart and not his head. But even as her thoughts tumbled over one another, they faded under the rise of a stronger sentiment, the piercing awareness of his strong, warm body so close to hers in the crisp morning, the oddly boyish tumble of a black hair over his brow, and strangest of all, most unnerving of all, the gentlest twitch of a smile upon his lips.
The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) Page 13