“I’ll finish your pyre,” he said, marching to the scattered bundles of wood, “and we’ll be done with it.”
“I won’t waste my win on a pyre,” she called after him, rising to her feet. “I have another task that’ll take every bit of your strength.”
“What, then?” He wrestled the bundles of wood into the shape of a pyre even as he spoke, “Would you set me to the thatching? Or better, the same trials as the sons of Tureen?”
“No.”
She paused on the edge of the shadows, the grass warm beneath her shoes. He stood stretched to his full height, his hands tense at his sides. Recklessness seized her and flooded her with courage.
Then she closed her hand over her captured king.
“The price, Conor . . . is a kiss.”
Chapter Seventeen
Once, in his early wanderings, Conor had stumbled upon a Scottish village destroyed by sea raiders, the skeletons of the thatched ruins still smoldering. Whilst he searched for survivors among the dead, he stumbled upon a Norseman’s abandoned weapon. It was a twisting spear. Its shaft was coiled about with cord so that when thrown it spiraled and skewered the iron point deep into its victim. Such a weapon as this would bolt through the air with a hiss and a whirr, audible only when it was too late.
“Is that all you want, woman?” The words passed through his throat like gravel. “Just a kiss?”
A breeze riffled her hair off her shoulder. “A man of your age should know the way of it, I’m thinking.”
Oh, he knew the way of it. He couldn’t thrust the thought of it from his mind or his memory. Both assaulted him now as he stood with the sun beating upon his head, whilst the woman he’d lain with more times than a man could count stood in the cool shadows with a beckoning shine in her eyes.
He’d seen that gleam a hundred thousand times across the space of a room, behind the sweep of lashes, above the curve of a knowing smile, amidst the scent of sleep and sex beneath a hot cocoon of furs. His blood rushed to his loins. The gates he’d kept so long closed in his mind burst open under the flood of memories. He remembered the flash of a naked limb, the tumble of her blazing hair upon the green grass, the softening of her spine in surrender, the sweet grimace of her features as he joined his hot flesh to hers—tight, deep—the cries in her throat, the throb of her pulse against his tongue. And her laughter, her sweet, throaty laughter when it was all done and over, when he lay upon her heaving and her soft arms slipped around him and held him close, and the dampness of their bodies merged them into one flesh again. He remembered the playful teasing, the touching of nose to cheek, the nip of teeth on shoulder, soon dimming to the soft talk of the day, to the sharing of their worlds.
He jerked where he stood, for deep within keened the loon-cry of his soul, silent to all but his ears. For though over the years he’d slaked his human lust between a maid’s legs when the hunger was upon him, never again had he shared with any creature the soft talk of the day.
“Will you not pay your wager, Conor?” A tremor of shame shook her words. “Is Doctor MacSídh not a man of honor?”
It was not his will that set his feet upon the sunny path between them. It was something stronger, something more powerful. He saw the little king in her hand fall to the ground, but she made no effort to retrieve it. He stopped before her. He felt the pull and suck of her gaze, the roaring in his ears.
Why had he not noticed the faintest spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose? Or the glints of red in her golden hair? And what was that which lay upon her throat? A tiny mole, dark and distinct against the cream of her young skin. That was new, and yet like all else, it was hers. He laid his finger upon it. His knuckles grazed the line of her throat. He heard her sharp intake of breath. Her breasts rose and fell as she struggled for air grown suddenly thin between them.
From the distance came the sound of lyres. It was the same music which had vexed him throughout the chess game. Fairy music mingled with tiny voices raised in shouts and laughter, the stamping of dancing feet and the slosh of liquid as the Sídh sipped honeysuckle nectar from cups made of foxglove blossoms.
He ignored it—just as he ignored the furtive breeze which swirled around his ankles. The rush of his blood blocked his attention from all else but the woman before him. He rubbed the back of his hand up her throat and rested it in the warm nook of jaw and chin. She turned her face into his knuckles like a kitten.
The sunlight pouring through the leaves dimmed, bathing her skin in a pale luminescence. How dewy her skin, how unmarked by the passage of time, how unscarred by worry and work and pain. How baldly her hope cried out in her eyes. So innocent and eager. He turned his hand over and engulfed her cheek. He resisted the siren’s call of those lips, full and pillowy. The fragrance of her made him teeter on the edge of drunkenness—it was all too much. A feast lay before him. He wanted to count the hairs upon her head, bury his face in her throat and breathe the scent of her rising from every hollow until he knew the full of her with his eyes closed, as he already did, as he already did.
A strange shadow fell across the hilltop. The leaves above them rustled. Conor worked his hand beyond her cheek, into the temptation of her hair, behind the curve of her ear. A strangled noise came from her throat and her heavy lids dipped over her eyes, as she swayed into him, her hands flat upon his chest.
So it was a kiss you wanted, lass, a simple kiss. Nothing but a trifle of an embrace on a summer’s day.
How innocent she was not to understand the power of a kiss. He curled his fingers deep in her hair, remembering a day upon Inishmaan when a gale roared outside the clochán, and they’d made love by the glowing heat of a peat fire, her hair wrapped around his wrists in playful silken bondage. He remembered another time when he’d run through her hair a comb made from the antlers of a king stag, when her hair was still long but as white as snow. She didn’t have the strength to plait it as she pleased, and he not the skill, and so he’d combed it for long hours while she dozed upon the furs.
Now his wife of old blinked her eyes open, a soft confusion lurking within the depths, a wordless question. He could not answer for the dryness of his throat. So they stood for a timeless moment, staring at one another across the chasm of two worlds, knowing it could be closed with a simple kiss.
Then something in the shifting of the dappled light caught her attention. Her eyes widened as she looked around to the hazy gray veil closing in on them, to the living greenery melting away to a ghastly leaden hue, and then up to the pewter cloudless sky. In the trees nearby, a flock of birds burst into squawking, and with a flutter of wings took sudden flight.
Her fingers curled into his chest as she moved closer. He drew her body within the circle of his protection.
“Conor . . ..” She shivered with more than the embrace. “Something . . . something is happening.”
Aye, something was happening. Something he knew was folly, yet something he didn’t have the strength of will to escape from. He thought he could fight it all—the gods, his fate, the power of the love of this woman. Now she stood in the circle of his embrace, her head beneath his chin, with the wind tangling their tunics. The rage of a passion long-suppressed surged against the bonds of reason until a webbing of a hundred thousand fissures spread through his resolve.
“Look at the sky.” She tugged on his cloak. “What is this that happens around us?”
It’s the world turning over again, wife, and here we stand in the sweetest part, and me, fool that I am, knowing better... and still standing powerless.
“It’s the passing of the moon across the face of the sun,” he heard himself murmur. He did not tell her there was nothing to fear. For what followed hard upon the sweetness of their kiss was betrayal, exile, death.
Eternal loneliness.
The thought tore apart and fluttered to the four winds.
She traced something upon his chest. Narrow crescents of sunlight peppered his cloak. Then she blinked up at the sky, at the sliver of s
un, which hung now like a two-day-old moon in a spangled purple sky.
She said, “I’ve dreamed of this very day.”
“I’ve dreamed of it too.” He sensed the shifting of the veils, the rush of the Otherworldly breeze between the thinning doors, the sparkling of the Sídh as they raced about, set free to roam. “I dreamt of it a long, long time ago.”
“Kiss me, Conor.”
High in the sky pinpricks of light flickered around the black disk of the moon-sun, poised, as if time were momentarily arrested. They extinguished, one by one, until the last stubborn bead winked and died. In that moment of darkness, streams of pearly white light furled out from the black sun like fairy’s wings, their phosphorescent trailing across the indigo sky.
He looked down upon this woman in the time between the times, and he saw the face of Brigid.
Seven hundred years of waiting.
His head dipped toward hers. He felt the rush of her breath against his lips.
Even an immortal could not struggle forever.
***
She waited forever, studying the inscrutable emotions fluxing across his face, wishing she could plunge into his heart and ease away all the anguish. Now as he lowered his head, all the impressions jumbled atop of one another. He raked his hand through her hair, dragging her head back and tilting her lips up to meet his. His hot, ragged breath billowed against her cheek. He gripped her back and rasped his bristled chin against her cheek—
oh
The dream had prepared her for the hot, metallic moon burning in the twilight sky, for the ghostly silence and the eerie blue-green light swirling around them, but no wisp of a vision could prepare her for the first touch of his lips against her mouth.
The languor penetrated her bones like a hot stream of honey. His lips were firm and sure, but they moved with the ease of possession, suckling each ridge, nipping deep into the corners of her mouth. She did not know how to shape her mouth beneath his. She angled her lips to his, but he drew back, away, to suckle on another curve, to draw between his own lips the fullness of one of hers. Then his lips slid beyond, to the hollow of her cheek, then higher, over the tilt of her cheekbone, and she felt an urge to cry out with the frustration of ignorance—to cry out for more.
The vision had been but a pale mockery of this. The memory of the dream drifted away from her, like the softening of the sharp, midsummer shadows in the moments before the moon had eclipsed the sun. By some reflex she balled Conor’s tunic in her fists. This time, she vowed, his face would not melt into the darkness. This time, the fog would not come between them and separate them again.
Rising from the softly rolling countryside, church bells suddenly tolled, a dim clangor ringing through the silence. They seemed to peal like tiny chimes all around her—like the bells she’d once heard on a Christmas carriage, jingling with joy into the night. She tried to speak her heart—she loved him, she’d waited for this moment forever, she’d missed him—nay, there was no sense to that, for how could she miss a man she’d only begun to know? Her mind was all a-muddle and before she could even murmur his name, he hushed her with his own lips.
Then there it was again, the warm, fluid weakness that seeped through the pith of her. She slipped her arms over his shoulders before she melted into a puddle at his feet. Then, just when she thought she couldn’t bear the sweetness any longer, he slanted his face and parted his lips.
She’d not heard of such a thing. She’d not dreamed of it even in her wildest convent dreams. In her surprised stillness he coaxed her into parting her own lips, so their breath mingled between them. He tasted of wine and the lingering tartness of wild berries, and of something else elusive and strong. Eagerness, need. Craving the flavor, she parted her lips further, and found herself welcoming, with a racing heart, the brush of his tongue. At his gentle probing, at the unexpected, unknown intimacy, some primitive sensibility roused within her. His arms hardened around her. I’m safe here, safe with this man. No one could harm her, no one would dare. Here she was wanted, needed, loved.
Happiness flushed through her. She thrust her hands through his hair and cradled his head, drawing him so close that her nose dug deep into his bristled cheek. Their mouths locked. All those years of fervent prayer . . . her anguished pleas had been answered after all. Here stood the man of her dreams, the man who would bring joy into the lonely hollow of her life.
Their lips separated as he hefted her up against him. Her circlet, knocked askew by his loving, tumbled off her brow and chimed to the ground. Blindly she kissed his brow and burrowed her cheek in his hair—how soft, how fragrant—only vaguely aware that he was carrying her somewhere. She sensed only the roll of his gait. The furrowed bark of a tree pressed against her spine as he leaned her down upon its slant. Her head fell back. He took the curve of her chin into his mouth, and then, the arch of her throat.
In the sky above, a sudden explosion of light burst around the black disk of the moon. Sunshine flooded down through a break in the canopy of leaves. Birds chattered in sudden unison and the buzz of insects rose from the earth, as if for the dawning of a new day.
She knew she should be frightened. She should be racing to the churches whose bells pealed in panic, but the thought was distant and wavering. She’d existed too long in darkness insensate. Now passion slipped around the gloom, like the blazing flood of new light pouring upon the Earth.
Her scarlet surcoat slipped easily off her shoulders and pooled over her leather girdle. She shrugged her arms out of it without a thought, as his kisses burned a path over her collarbone and into the hollow of her shoulder. His fingers tugged the cloth between her breasts, loosening the laces of her tunic until the neckline sagged and slipped to her elbow, and one bare shoulder lay exposed to the air.
His cheek rasped against hers as he breathed ragged words into her ear. “Is that enough of a kiss for you, woman?”
He loomed over her. His tunic gaped, and she caught a glimpse of flat, rippling belly. Golden sparks lit his gray eyes, eyes of smoke—hot and dangerous.
His fingers traced a path from her cheek to her throat, and then lower. “If you had any sense you’d be putting up a fight.”
“Och, Conor,” she stuttered as his fingers hesitated at the curve of her breast, “is it true that an Irishman isn’t at peace unless he’s fighting?”
“Did they not warn you of temptation in that convent?”
“They spoke of it.” And here lies the character of the man, she thought, checking his lusts for the sake of her. “But if I were to fight temptation the way you fight me, I’d be a saint.”
With a soft shrug of her shoulder, she let the tunic shimmy to her waist. She kissed him, swiftly, out of boldness and also to hide her flushed face. Never in her life had she bared so much skin to the gaze of a man. Her breasts felt heavy, engorged, aching, and so sensitive that she detected the spotted warmth of dappled sunshine and the lick of a warm breath of wind.
He growled something under his breath, then bent his arms and lowered his weight onto her body, imperceptibly, so first all she felt with a shivering gasp was the rasp of damp linen against the tips of her breasts. He shifted side to side, teasing her with the grate of fine, cloth against her nipples until they puckered into tight little knots of exquisite sensation.
The warm languor which had invaded her limbs began to simmer. She wanted, though she knew not for what. She arched her back, but he pulled away and denied her the contact she craved. Her fingers dug into the balls of his arms and she tried in vain to pull him closer, to stop the maddening gentle rasp, but her nails did nothing but grate his sleeves. He stood so tense and immobile, a hair’s breadth away from her flesh, until, with a strangled sound, he pinned her against the incline of the tree.
The bark bit against her back. She didn’t care. This is what she craved—the heat of his body flush against hers, the ragged sawing of his breath against her ear, an urgency in his kiss—a crack in his control. The rough palm of his hand closed over her
breast.
She broke away from his lips, for the air between them grew thin and rare, and she heaved to take more in, only finding the motion thrust her breast deeper into his hand. He splayed his fingers, filled his grasp.
Sensation blended into sensation. He curled his fingers into her skin. His palm pinched her nipple. He lifted her breast into his grip, then rolled his fingers over the peak. The possession sent her senses reeling into a bright oblivion. She didn’t know herself, or the throes which possessed her body, but this was not the innocent girl straight from the convent, swathed in her wimples and veils, lowering her gaze from all who glanced. She barely knew this creature arching and moaning. She sensed in some deep, instinctive place that this would be called lust, this would be called sin, but it wasn’t—not between her and Conor.
It felt like her wedding day, because he would cleave to her. Only now, as he thrust his thigh between her legs and she felt the hard length of him pressed against her, did she vaguely grasp the meaning of the words. He tugged upon the buckle of her girdle, lost under the drape of her tunic and surcoat. Today, Lughnasa, on this open hilltop under the wonders of the sky, he would take what a wife gives her husband, and all they lacked were a few words spoken over them. Hadn’t she foreseen this? Had her gift, as Conor once called it, finally given her wisdom? This lovemaking under an open sky seemed to be a ritual as ageless as time, as simple as the rain falling, as necessary as air and water.
This was holy ground now.
With a wrench he tossed her girdle to the earth. Her tunic slipped down to drape around her loins, held there only by the press of her hips against the tree. He loomed over her. A shock of hair shaded his brow, but could not dim the sparks in his silver eyes. Impatience thrummed from his body. He had intense eyes, like a lion she’d once seen on fair day, pacing in its cage at the end of its tether.
She wanted to snap that leash. Words trembled on her lips—love me, Conor—but before they were spoken, he pressed his face against her throat and then he slid down her body, rubbing his stubbled chin through the valley between her breasts, and still lower, his lips tracing across the indentation of her belly. His hands gripping her sides, then her hips, then yanked her tunic lower. At his gentle insistence, she parted her thighs and felt the warmth of his breath, and then—
[Celtic Legends 01.0] Twice Upon a Time Page 24