by Nora Roberts
"Be right back. Don't move. Stay right there."
She huffed out a breath at the ceiling. Then her face softened again and she stretched her arms high. Oh, she felt well loved. Like a cat thoroughly stroked.
Chuckling, she glanced over at Hecate, curled in front of the hearth and watching her.
"Aye, you know the feeling, don't you? Well, I like it." The cat only stared, unblinking. Ten seconds. Twenty. Bryna closed her eyes. "I need the time. Damn it, we need it. A few hours after so many years. Why should we be denied it? Why must there be a price for every joy? Go then, leave me be. If the fare comes due, I'll pay it freely."
With a swish of her tail, the cat rose and padded out of the room. Calin's footsteps sounded on the steps seconds later. Prepared to smile, Bryna widened her eyes instead. He'd snapped two quick pictures before she could push herself up and cross her arms over her breast.
"What do you think you're about? Taking photographs of me without my clothes.
Put it away. You won't be hanging me on some art gallery wall."
"You're beautiful." He circled the bed, changing angles. "A masterpiece. Drop your left shoulder just a little."
"I'll do no such thing. It's outrageous." Shocked to the core, she tugged at the rumpled spread, pulled it up—and to Cal's mind succeeded only in looking more alluring and rumpled.
But he lowered the camera. "I thought witches were supposed to like to dance naked under the full moon."
"Going skyclad isn't an exhibition. And there's a time and place for such things. No one snaps pictures of private matters nor of rituals."
"Bryna." Using all his charm, he stepped closer, tugged gently at the sheet she'd pulled over her breasts. "You have a beautiful body, your coloring is exquisite, and the light in here is perfect. Unbelievable." He skimmed the back of his fingers over her nipple, felt her tremble. "I'll show them to you first."
She barely felt the sheet slip to her waist. "I know what I look like."
"You don't know how I see you. But I'll show you. Lie back for me. Relax."
Murmuring, he spread her hair over the pillows as he wanted it. "No, don't cover yourself. Just look at me." He shot straight down, then moved back. "Turn your head, just a little. I'm touching you. Imagine my hands on you, moving over you.
There. And there." He braced a knee on the foot of the bed, working quickly. "If
I had a darkroom handy, I'd develop these tonight and you'd see what I see."
"I have one." Her voice was breathless, aroused.
"What?"
"I had one put in for you, off the kitchen." Her smile was hesitant when he lowered the camera and stared at her. "I knew you would come, and I wanted you to have what you needed, what would make you comfortable."
So you would stay with me, she thought, but didn't say it.
"You put in a darkroom? Here?"
"Aye, I did."
With a laugh, he shook his head. "Amazing. Absolutely amazing." Rising, he set the camera down on the bureau. "I think you need to be a little more… mussed before I shoot the rest of that roll." He climbed onto the bed. "The things I do for my art," he murmured and covered her laughing mouth with his.
Chapter 6
Later, in the breezy evening when the sun gilded the sky and polished the air, he walked with her toward the cliffs. Both his mind and his body were relaxed, limber.
Logically he knew he should be racing to the nearest psychiatric ward for a full workup. But a lonely cliffside, a ruined castle, a beautiful woman who claimed to be a witch—visions and sex and legends. It was a time and place to set logic aside, at least for a while.
"It's a beautiful country," he commented. "I'm still trying to adjust that I've only been here since this morning. Barely twelve hours."
"Your heart's been here longer." It was so simple to walk with him, fingers linked. So simple. So ordinary. So miraculous. "Tell me about New York. All the movies, the pictures I've seen have only made me wonder more. Is it like that, really? So fast and crowded and exciting?"
"It can be." And at that moment it seemed a world away. A thousand years away.
"And your house?"
"It's an apartment. It looks out over the park. I wanted a big space so I could have my studio right there. It's got good light."
"You like to stand on the balcony," she began, then rolled her eyes when he shot her a quick look. "I've peeked now and then."
''Peeked." He caught her chin in his hand before she could turn away. "At what?
Exactly?"
"I wanted to see how you lived, how you worked."
She eased away and walked along the rocks, where the water spewed up, showered like diamonds in the sunlight. Then she turned her head, tilting it in an eerily feline movement.
"You've had a lot of women, Calin Farrell—coming and going at all hours in all manner of dress. And undress."
He hunched his shoulders as if he had an itch he couldn't scratch. "You watched me with other women?"
"I peeked," she corrected primly. "And never watched for long in any case. But it seemed to me that you often chose women who were lacking in the area of intelligence."
He ran his tongue around his teeth. "Did it?"
"Well…" A shrug, dismissing. "Well, so it seemed." Bending, she plucked a wildflower that had forced its way through a split in the rock. Twirled it gaily under her nose. "Is it worrying you that I know of them?"
He hooked his thumbs in his pockets. "Not particularly."
"That's fine, then. Now, if I were the vindictive sort, I might turn you into an ass. Just for a short time."
"An ass?"
"Just for a short time."
"Can you do that sort of thing?" He realized when he asked it that he was ready to believe anything.
She laughed, the sound carrying rich music over wind and sea. "If I were the vindictive sort." She walked to him, handed him the flower, then smiled when he tucked it into her hair. "But I think you'd look darling with long ears and a tail."
"I'd just as soon keep my anatomy as it is. What else did you… peek at?"
"Oh, this and that, here and there." She linked her fingers with his and walked again. "I watched you work in your darkroom—the little one in the house where you grew up. Your parents were so proud of you. Startled by your talent, but very proud. I saw your first exhibition, at that odd wee gallery where everyone wore black—like at a wake."
"SoHo," he murmured. "Christ, that was nearly ten years ago."
"You've done brilliant things since. I could look through your eyes when I looked at your pictures. And felt close to you."
The thought came abruptly, stunning him. He turned her quickly to face him, stared hard into her eyes. "You didn't have anything to do with… you haven't made what I can do?"
"Oh, Calin, no." She lifted her hands to cover the ones on her shoulders. "No, I promise you. It's yours. From you. You mustn't doubt it," she said, sensing that he did. "I can tell you nothing that isn't true. I'm bound by that. On my oath, everything you've accomplished is yours alone."
"All right." He rubbed his hands up and down her arms absently. "You're shivering. Are you cold?"
"I was for a moment." Bone-deep, harrowing. Alasdair. She cast it out, gripped his hand tightly and led him over the gentle slope of the hill. "Even as a child
I would come here and stand and look out." Content again, she leaned her head against his shoulder, scanning hill and valley, the bright flash of river, the dark shadows cast by twisted trees. "To Ireland spread out before me, green and gold. A dreaming place."
"Ireland, or this spot?"
"Both. We're proud of our dreamers here. I would show you Ireland, Calin. The bank where the columbine grows, the pub where a story is always waiting to be told, the narrow lane flanked close with hedges that bloom with red fuchsia. The simple Ireland."
Tossing her hair back, she turned to him. "And more. I would show you more. The circle of stones where power sleeps, the quiet hillock wh
ere the faeries dance of an evening, the high cliff where a wizard once ruled. I would give it to you, if you'd take it."
"And what would you take in return, Bryna?"
"That's for you to say." She felt the chill again. The warning. "Now I have something else to show you, Calin." She glanced uneasily over her shoulder, toward the ruins. Shivered. "He's close," she whispered. "And watching. Come into the house."
He held her back. He was beginning to see that he had run from a good many things in his life. Too many things. "Isn't it better to face him now, be done with it?"
"You can't choose the time. It's already set." She gripped his hand, pulled.
"Please. Into the house."
Reluctantly, Cal went with her. "Look, Bryna, it seems to me that a bully's a bully whatever else he might be. The longer you duck a bully, the worse he gets.
Believe me, I've dealt with my share."
"Oh, aye, and had a fine bloody nose, as I remember, from one. The two of you, pounding on each other on the street corner. Like hoodlums."
"Hey, he started it. He tried to shake me down once too often, so I…" Cal trailed off, blew out a long breath. "Whoa. Too weird. I haven't thought about
Henry Belinski in twenty years. Anyway, he may have bloodied my nose, but I broke his."
"Oh, and you're proud of that, are you now? Breaking the nose of an eight-year-old boy."
"I was eight too." He realized that she had maneuvered him neatly into the house, turned the subject, and gotten her own way. "Very clever, Bryna. I don't see that you need magic when you can twist a conversation around like that."
"Just a small talent." She smiled and touched his cheek. "I was glad you broke his nose. I wanted to turn him into a toad—I had already started the charm when you dealt with it yourself."