Until moonrise, when he could finally have Mariel.
Picturing her as he’d seen her that first day, pinned to the altar, raising her hips in invitation, ripe for the taking, Trystan quit treading water and submerged his own head.
Three more hours as a single man. Three more hours before he planted the seed that would make him a father and burden him forever with duties on two shores.
Picturing Mariel at the prow of his ship, black curls flying like a banner in the wind, Siren song haunting his heart, Trystan realized Iason was right. He was fighting Aelynn’s will and the future assigned to him.
He didn’t want to marry Lissandra.
When the healer arrived with her sleep-inducing potions, Trystan gladly passed out again.
***
When Trystan awoke, it wasn’t to the steam and gloom of the grotto but to a million blinking fairy lights in the night sky, a cool wind on his skin, and a glimpse of the clouds at Aelynn’s peak through a hole in the tree canopy. He lay still, not daring to move while his skull cleared of whatever magic brew had been fed to him.
A rustle through the shrubbery warned of someone’s approach, but he was not yet ready to wake fully. He was home and did not expect treachery, so he relaxed into the moment. The healer had soothed the wounds he’d gained in fighting. His limbs felt supple and strong. The stink of ale had been replaced with the exotic scents of unguents and lotion. He was lying on his back and gazing at the stars and awaiting a beautiful woman. What more could a man want?
A slight feminine gasp drew his gaze back from the leaves to search the surrounding shrubbery. He made several shocking discoveries at once.
He was in the temple—which meant he was lying on the altar.
It was nearly moonrise.
And the altar held his wrists and ankles firmly clasped so he could not move.
Damn Iason was his first enraged thought. And then Mariel appeared at his feet, and he could think no further.
She was beyond lovely, ethereal in gossamer cloth like some moon goddess. He could see the rosy color of her skin through the wispy cloth, but she wore her thick curling hair over her breasts so he could not see their darker aureoles. Still, his flesh rose at the sight of high, rounded curves and slender waist.
“I do not understand,” she whispered, staring unabashedly at his nakedness. She traced his toe with an outstretched finger, as if to test his reality.
Just the touch of her finger caused blood to rush to his groin, and Trystan bit back a groan of desire so as not to frighten her. “It seems I am the one who must be forced into submission,” he ground out through clenched teeth.
He’d anticipated this moment for what seemed like his entire life, but not this way, not helpless to claim his elusive mate. Frustration boiled through his blood. Tied up like this, he was hardly the god and savior she’d once thought of him.
He wanted to be her hero, he realized with a pang.
“Submission?”
She eyed him warily, as well she ought. He was rapidly becoming rock hard and straight as a flagpole. And somehow, he had to persuade a wary almost-maiden to accept him while he lay here like a damned sacrificial virgin.
Rather than explain what little he knew of Aelynn’s archaic ceremonies of submission, Trystan took the more appealing route. “You must choose me as your mate for the ceremony to take effect. I have already chosen you and said my vows the first time we made love. Now, it is your turn to make your promises to me and to Aelynn.”
Mariel’s eyes widened into golden orbs that fed his hunger even more. But she did not seem any closer to climbing up on the altar with him.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said, seemingly unaware that her fingers stroked his foot, his calf, driving him mad. But her touch, and stare of fascination, returned some measure of his self esteem, even if his ability to think still faltered.
“Anything,” he muttered through teeth clenched in lust. “Everything.”
As Mariel continued to hesitate, Iason’s counsel in the grotto slowly penetrated the fog of desire. He was still fighting Aelynn’s will and the future assigned to him, just as Iason said, but not in the manner that he’d thought.
Mariel had trusted and accepted all Trystan had told her, even though this was not her world. She was willingly sacrificing herself and her future, for him. Somehow, he had to show that he deserved her trust. He must meet her half way, as equals in both their worlds.
If he could not… Fear gripped him—fear that she would change her mind. That she would leave him, here, like this. Alone.
He couldn’t bear that. He summoned all the words available to him to woo and win her, words he should have said much sooner. In doing so, he knew he did what was best for both of them, and for the child they would share. Fighting his aggressive need to take and possess, he sought a part of him long buried.
“Push back your hair,” he said more gently than earlier. “If you will not take off your gown, I wish to see as much of your beautiful breasts as you will allow.”
She was still innocent of her effect on him, unaware of her sexuality. She looked puzzled as she shook back her hair, then looked down at the high, firm curves barely covered by the gauzy gown to see what held his interest. Just the naiveté of the gesture nearly raised him off his spongy bed, making him understand just how much she offered.
He needed to touch her, to kiss her, to pull her under him and persuade her back to the intimacy they’d explored in her world. And all he could do was watch and pray. Trystan twisted at the unrelenting straps and refrained from bellowing his frustration to the heavens.
“Lift your breasts higher so I can see them,” he commanded softly.
She did so without self-consciousness, placing a hand beneath each round breast and holding them up for his inspection. Glimpsing her rosy nipples through the gauze, he thought he might expire of lust right then.
“Is there some way I can free you?” she asked in bewilderment.
She still cupped the undersides of her breasts and unconsciously caressed them as he would have done had he been free to do so. Desire throbbed through him just as if his hands stroked her. He had not realized that the bond between them could be used to such good effect.
“What is it I am supposed to do?” she asked.
If he were not already on his back, he would be on his knees begging her to take him. “Climb up here with me,” he requested, for her sake still holding back his cry of need.
“How?” She studied the way his big—naked—body filled the giving softness of the altar. “There is no room for me.”
“Place your legs on either side of mine,” he instructed, trying hard not to imagine further for fear he’d spew his seed just thinking of it.
Intelligent eyes shot him another suspicious look, and he almost had heart failure fearing she would decide to walk off and swim home, and he would have to chase her all over again.
And he would do just that…as often as necessary until she was his.
“Wouldn’t it be easier if I unfastened the…” She studied the manacles on his ankles, apparently not possessing a word to describe the altar’s peculiar tendency to entrap its user.
“You can’t,” he admitted. “The bed is a living thing that reacts only to Aelynn’s will. There is a place by my foot that you can press if you do not wish the ceremony to continue, but that is all.”
He held his breath while his stubbornly independent mate pondered his admission. He was helpless to stop her. And now she knew it. Her eyes grew round with realization.
“This is really my choice?” she whispered.
He nodded again, stricken by panic that she would leave.
She tilted her head in consideration. “I must be the one to…” She gestured to indicate him in all his helplessness.
His patience fractured. “By Aelynn, woman, if you do not climb up here soon, I will expire here, petrified like this for all time. Seduce me or gut me—I care not which,” he roared.
He was in such torment that he truly did not care which she chose. Either would be a relief.
She smiled, and he wondered if he imagined a hint of a smirk in her expression.
With relief, he realized she wasn’t afraid, and she wouldn’t run away.
To his sigh of exaltation, Mariel located the step at the base and climbed up, lifting her hem and placing a rounded knee on either side of his legs. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until he gulped air into his lungs, and she admired the way his chest heaved.
Mariel was choosing him, and the knowledge moved him profoundly. He swelled with pride at her acceptance of their bond. Aelynn had found a magnificent amacara for him.
In the back of his mind, an insistent notion pierced his shield of resistance. Mariel would make an even better wife. But he could not… Duty required…
Distracted as Mariel crawled up his length, Trystan looked down the opening of her gown, but he could not touch the sweet fruit he saw there, not even when her knees pressed into his thighs, and she was within hands’ reach.
“Take off the gown,” he nearly begged as she crawled just short of where he needed her.
His member jutted between them, and she stroked it lightly, sending paroxysms of desire shooting through him until his hips rose of their own accord. She stared admiringly, then stroked his balls rather than obey his command. The damned woman dared toy with him!
Showing him how much power she held over him…in all ways. Any small notion he might have retained that he could live for months without her shattered into bits so tiny that they could never be retrieved. And he didn’t care. Not if he could have Mariel.
Trystan groaned aloud and thrust upward. “Unless you want our first child spilled on the ground, let me ready you as I am ready.”
“You think I am not ready?” she asked in amusement, grasping the hem of her gown and twisting the gossamer over her head, exposing her slim nakedness just as the moon rose into the opening of the foliage to illuminate the fine ivory of her skin.
Trystan devoured the sight of Mariel kneeling above him. Shadows and light played along distinct curves and sculpted limbs. His gaze dropped to her belly, then lower, to the dark moist hairs hiding the pink folds he needed to kiss and caress and make his—forever and always.
“Not ready enough,” he said hungrily. “Come here. Let me kiss you.”
She slid her hands along his chest, teased his nipples, and tugged his hair, until he bucked and sent her sprawling across him. She wiggled upward until his erection stroked the juncture of her thighs, then propped her elbows on his chest so she could kiss him. The she-devil was in his blood, as much a part of him as the shield surrounding Aelynn.
Heat flared as their breaths and tongues mingled. Trystan felt a tugging at his soul, at a desire so deeply rooted that he feared being pulled inside out by the need. He wanted to grab and ravish and possess, and he could do no more than bruise her mouth with demands and strain against his bonds. Helpless…vulnerable. Hers.
As if she heard his thoughts, Mariel lifted herself so her breasts brushed against his lips, and he eagerly licked, then suckled a nipple as brutally as the passion tugging at him. He nibbled at her with his teeth until she cried out and writhed against his hips.
“Mine,” he growled when she pulled back, speaking with his heart and bypassing his mind. “You are mine, for now and into all eternity. Did Dylys give you the vows to say?”
“I worship thee with my body,” she whispered, scooting back down his chest until their sex touched again. “I take thee for father of my child. With this vow, I do promise to take you to my bed, from now until Aelynn calls.”
And with that promise, she kneeled above him, held his gaze, and slowly sank down upon his lust-crazed loins until Trystan howled his joy.
Twenty-nine
Giddy with desire, heated to boiling by Trystan’s amorous commands, and still reeling from the hypnotic effects of Dylys’s ministrations, Mariel surrendered her freedom with relief.
Having Trystan’s body filling her hollowness completed her, and she threw back her head, letting her hair fall past her waist to caress his powerful thighs. The moonlight illuminated her breasts as she exulted in the pressure piercing her womb. Lust bubbled up through the bond between them.
“By Aelynn’s will, I cannot take another,” Trystan gasped, surging upward, attempting to push higher inside her. “I take thee for amacara, keeper of my children, and as wife, keeper of my body and soul. Free me, Aelynn, for I accept your will.”
Astounded, Mariel stared at him. She watched as Trystan grew still and his eyes widened, as if he’d surprised himself as much as he’d stunned her.
Wife. He’d used the vows for wife and not just amacara.
Dylys had drilled a good deal into her head in the hours she’d drifted on the mystical cloud of incense and herbs. She understood Trystan did not just offer a marriage of convenience or a mating for children. He asked for a mating of souls for eternity, a true marriage, and her insides quivered at the enormity of his request. He would give up the Oracle’s daughter and his leadership of the island for her? A Crossbreed?
His smile broadened as the freedom of his decision sank in. Until now, she hadn’t realized how desperately she wanted the right to claim this man as hers. She was afraid to believe him, until he spoke.
“I gave up the wrong dream when I found the right one,” he declared with the urgency of truth. “You are my heart, my soul, my family. I want no other. I’ll do all within my power to see that you never regret it, if you’ll say the same.”
Mariel’s mind reeled at what he’d done, at what he’d given her, and her heart swelled in love.
As if his heartfelt words had appeased the gods, the altar released the manacles.
Mariel gasped when the powerful male under her suddenly grasped her hips and surged upward. She felt him all the way to her heart, and impaled, she could not move.
“Tell me the same,” he asked again. “Take me as husband, under the laws of Aelynn. Make our children true heirs to all I possess.”
Lost in sensation, she only vaguely remembered why he had resisted this final step. In the power of their joining, the reasons no longer seemed relevant. “I take thee for husband, keeper of my body and soul,” she repeated, accepting the possession of his body and the ultimate tie that would bind them. “And amacara, father of my children, from now until the heavens decree.”
The bond between them melded them into one whole, joined in spirit as well as body. Mariel sighed with the rightness of it.
Trystan wrapped her tightly in his arms and nearly crushed her in gratitude. “Thank Aelynn,” he whispered. Softening his grip, he ran his hand along the altar until he’d produced a ring with a sparkling moonstone inset among pearls.
He slid the ring onto her finger. Mariel looked at him in surprise as she felt the ring’s binding inside of her.
Trystan smiled. “You belong to Aelynn now. Your body is mine, as mine is yours. We are one. Did Dylys not explain?”
She had, but not in ways that made sense until now. Instead of just feeling the power of his sex, she felt the foggy shield shrouding the island’s coastline as he must sense it, felt the beating of his heart inside his chest.
“I can feel the pull of the sea,” he whispered, acknowledging her impressions and reciprocating. “The tide is coming in. I can even smell it now.”
“Will you be able to swim with me?” she asked, almost forgetting the joining of their bodies in the wonder of being inside of him.
“I suppose we shall see. I’ve never had a wife before.”
Abruptly, her new husband rolled her over until his broad muscled chest loomed over her, and she was looking up into the golden excitement shining through Trystan’s eyes. His long legs held her pinned against the giving altar. His hair spilled loose over his shoulders, and whiskers darkened his jaw. He was pure male animal, and he was hers. He was inside of her in more ways than the physical.
“Give me your child,” she whispered back, feeling her womb soften and open beneath the approval of his god or hers. She was ready, in both mind and body.
Her hips rose to Trystan’s thrusts, but their gazes never parted. Her breasts ached, her breath came in short pants, and her legs wrapped around him to take him deeper. The tightening in her lower belly threatened to explode as he swelled to fill her. And holding her shoulders pinned to the altar, Trystan thrust with the force and power of a pagan god.
The clouds parted from the mountain, hot sparks shot from Aelynn, and the sky exploded in fiery stars. With wild, shouting abandon, Trystan pumped once more, then released his seed deep inside her.
The sensation stung like sparks inside Mariel’s womb, even as her muscles rolled and spasmed in ecstasy, bringing her hips higher, forcing the seed deeper, until it found its destination in a fertile sea, and she cried out her joy.
Joined and shuddering and overawed by the miracle, Mariel wrapped her arms around her golden god and let tears of happiness seep from the corners of her eyes as they returned to earth.
She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she had just conceived an Aelynn child—and oddly enough, she knew her mother’s promise had come true.
***
“One more time before dawn,” Trystan insisted with a teasing smile, fingering Mariel’s nipples into tight points and releasing the liquid between her thighs that eased his way inside her. “We will make love as man and wife, not as creators of Aelynn’s spawn.”
They’d slept their wedding night away, cradled in the softness of the altar, watched over by the temple and the mountain—giving his heir time to take firm root.
“I can feel the child growing inside me,” Mariel said in wonder. “How is that possible?”
“You feel the spirit who entered you,” he explained, swelling with pride. “The spirits of the Ancient Ones do not leave this island but linger in the temple, waiting for the creation of new life. I suppose spirits may wait elsewhere for the moment of conception, but in the temple, it is a certainty, if Aelynn approves.”
Mystic Guardian Page 26