Stealing Midnight

by Tracy MacNish

She must have read too many fairy tales and fables while ensconced in the rooms of her youth, high up in the crumbling turret. Page after page of princes rescuing maidens, with right and wrong clearly delineated, and good always triumphing over evil. If only real life were that simple.

  “The hour grows so late ’tis now early. Is it night or is it morning?” Aidan asked quietly.

  “The hour is darkest before dawn, my lord. Perhaps ’tis both.”

  “Come to bed. You’re tired.”

  She was tired. Tired of worrying, of being afraid, and most of all, of being alone. “Come with me, Lóchrann. Shelter me from the world.”

  His breath was a hiss between his teeth. “I can’t touch you tonight. I can scarcely withstand looking at you, Olwyn. The scent of your incense is on your hair. I can smell it on you, and it makes my blood boil in my veins. You say you love me, and my heart nearly collapses. You promise to stay, and my knees grow weak with the desire I feel for you. I tell you this: ’tis not a wise thing to lie with me this night. My control has never been less controlled.”

  “To hell with wisdom,” she said succinctly. “Hold me, Lóchrann of the darkness, and soothe this yearning of my spirit that you have gone to such pains to awaken. As my worries are now yours, so is my heart, and so I am sorry, my lord, but you have decided to make it your own. Now you must tend to it.”

  “Olwyn,” he said on a breath. “I am not a cad to take you before vows are spoken.”

  Tension radiated from him, taut with restraint, hot with desire, so potent it made Olwyn feel at once powerful and shy.

  But shyness had little influence over her yearning to be with him. Once she’d surrendered, details such as before or after the vows made little difference to a woman of Olwyn’s practicality. “Take me to bed, Lóchrann, and let me fret about my own virtue. I think you’ll find I’m quite good at it.”

  He laughed. It came out as a low, wolfish sound, but it was a laugh nonetheless. “Is that so?”

  “Quite,” she said, moving toward the bed. “Now, which side do you prefer?”

  “Whichever side you’re on.”

  “Well, rather than choose poorly, I think I’ll place myself directly in the middle,” she said, and heard the shaking of her shyness in her own voice. She climbed onto the softness of the mattress, and lay down before she could change her mind. She’d been right—the sheets and pillows smelled of Aidan’s skin.

  Her skin slid against the fabric, silky and smooth, cool from the air, and smelling of spice and musk, a man’s scent. Aidan’s scent.

  Her Lóchrann of the darkness loomed above her, his sheet still twisted around his hips. He faced the low burn of the fire, the mattress against his thighs. The reddish light bathed him and cast shadows in the hollows of his eyes and cheeks, the square line of his collarbones, the defined strength of his chest, the narrow plane of his belly and navel. He looked like a man of legend and lore, tall and brawny and fair, bathed in firelight, drenched in desire.

  She could feel his conflict, his tautness. He held himself from her because of his honor, he lusted her because of his love, and he warred with both because of the drug.

  Inside the privacy of Olwyn’s mind she’d always enjoyed the freedom of her thoughts. They were brashly daring, boldly fearless. She’d learned to keep them to herself, had been taught that such talk was not appreciated.

  Aidan, however, seemed to like knowing what she thought, what she wanted, and what truths existed in her mind and heart. And so, lying in Aidan’s bed, Olwyn boldly gave her truest self its voice. “Show me what you were doing when I interrupted you.”

  She saw his belly flex, his fist that held the sheet grow tighter.

  “How long?” His voice was deeper and darker than a moonless night.

  And she knew exactly what he meant.

  “Not long enough,” she admitted in a husky whisper. “Had I thought about it, I would have kept to the shadows and watched for a bit.”

  She heard him suck his breath through his teeth, a harsh sound of need and control that was rapidly crumbling.

  “Witch,” he said thickly.

  It was the very first time she’d been called that word without a stinging in her heart. He said it like a caress, like a compliment. He said it like a man thoroughly enthralled, ensnared, and enraptured by love’s spell.

  Aidan Mullen, it seemed, could take her all hurts and heal them.

  Olwyn smiled and raised her brow. “Aye, I’m a witch. Come set me afire and make me burn.”

  Aidan dropped the sheet.

  And Olwyn’s eyes widened at the sight. She’d thought him an Adonis of a man, and she now knew why sculptors paid homage to the male form. He was strength and virile power, all male flesh and muscle and masculine power. His manhood thrust away from his body like a sword, long and straight and thick, and far too large for the place Olwyn knew he longed to put it.

  She reflexively held her thighs together. As beautiful as he was to look upon, she couldn’t quite reconcile herself to the act she’d initiated. Indeed, she’d invited it. And though no touch of Aidan’s had ever been anything but pleasurable, Olwyn could not discount the disparity of their size.

  “My Lord,” she breathed, and she watched with hypnotic attention as his penis moved with a slow, muscular flex as if it had a pulse all its own. “My Lord.”

  He wrapped his hand around his shaft once more, moving it slowly as he did, back and forth the way the ocean rolled and receded across the shore. “This is what you saw.”

  She managed to strangle out, “Aye.”

  “What you saw, Olwyn, was a man drawn on the rack of need and desire, lying in his bed, alone, lonely, with his heart aching for you, his mind consumed with your beauty, and only his hand to sate the hunger he could not control.”

  Olwyn’s breath went short.

  “Do you want to know what I was thinking about?” he asked softly, his hand still moving in that same rhythm.

  Olwyn nodded, once.

  “You in the inn, with the firelight silhouetting the shape of you through your thin gown. Your skin on mine, your hair falling over my face, your lips. You, Olwyn, you. Only you, always you. Your honest tongue, your earthy fire. From the moment I woke, I’ve wanted you.”

  Olwyn couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. She lay before him like a sacrificial virgin, clothed in white, trembling with apprehension, mesmerized by his masculinity.

  She watched as he stroked himself in long, slow, sure caresses, from tip to base and back again.

  Looking up to his face, she saw the shimmer of his eyes as they caught the firelight, and the lines of his face, harsh and drawn as if with pain.

  Their eyes locked.

  “Lóchrann,” she whispered.

  “I won’t take you tonight, no matter how much I want you. I won’t take you until you’re mine forever, and I most certainly won’t take you when there’s a drug in my body.”

  Aidan climbed onto the bed and stretched out beside her. Olwyn could feel the heat from his body, hotter than fire. He pulled her to him, and she felt his hard erection against her belly as his arms went tight around her. He buried his face in her hair, and she heard him breathe deeply.

  “There is a war in me, Olwyn.”

  His body was once again her shelter, big and thick with muscle and heat and strength. She curled around him, put her face in the hollow of where his arm met his shoulder, inhaled his scent. He smelled of darkness and passion, unequivocally male.

  How could she ever have thought of leaving him?

  Olwyn reached down and touched the center of his heat. All that hardness leapt in her hand, the skin so hot and velvety, the length and strength of him so hard. He groaned at her touch, his body jerking as if a lash had been lain against his skin, and Olwyn felt a surge of feminine power so great her lips curved in a smile.

  She stroked him as he’d stroked himself. “Let me ease your pain,” she whispered. “Let me discover you. Let me heal you.”

  He
shuddered, and as she felt the lust and pleasure rip through him, another rush of her own desire sent shivers of heat through her blood.

  “You are magnificent, my lord. You are as potent in me as any drug.”

  “Olwyn. You are killing me.”

  “Shall I stop?”

  He made a sound that was a throttled noise of pure sensual need and his nearly surrendered restraint. He would not ask her to continue, but could not tell her to stop.

  “I’ll answer for you, Lóchrann, as you did for me. No, Olwyn. Don’t stop.”

  Aidan’s body jolted again, and another low sound was dragged from his throat. Olwyn moved her hand faster, learning how to please him, gripping tighter, then looser, moving slower before increasing her tempo. His body was her guide, his noises the siren sound leading her.

  Aidan’s body tightened like a bow, his muscles bunched and flexed, and he groaned low and deep as his penis throbbed his release. She felt the warm wet spurts of his seed spill over her hand and onto his belly, the earthy, clean scent of it like nothing else.

  Olwyn leaned down, inhaled the complexity of his essence, and licked a drop of it from his skin. The flavor was just as the scent, sensual and mysterious and dangerously addictive.

  She looked up to his face. He watched her with eyes that glittered in the firelight.

  “You taste like midnight, Lóchrann,” she whispered.

  Aidan pulled her up into a fiercely passionate kiss. He breathed her breath. He licked and nibbled her lips. He sucked her tongue.

  And then he rolled over so that he was above her.

  “Let’s see what you taste like,” he said softly.

  And as his head dipped down over her belly, Olwyn understood his meaning.

  She could not move, was galvanized by the thought of what he was doing. Her nightdress slid up her thighs, and her breath got lost in her throat. His fingers stroked the soft skin of her legs, and she felt her knees falling apart beyond her control. He touched her at the center, where no one else ever had, and she heard a sound echo in her mind, like a moan, and she realized she’d made it aloud.

  Aidan stroked her gently, and shivers coursed through her as heat gathered at her center. He touched her where she was incredibly sensitive, and her body jerked as his had, sensual lashes of pure pleasure ravishing her as if with a velvet feather-tipped whip.

  His fingertip moved in circles, and Olwyn became dizzy.

  And then he blew gently on her, a steady stream of warm, humid air, and Olwyn whimpered, “Please.” But it was a nonsensical request; she did not know what she asked for.

  Inside her was a burgeoning, a blossoming. She opened, she grew ripe.

  “You are magic,” Aidan murmured.

  His tongue flicked over her, a soft, wet flame, and she cried out.

  “You are beauty,” he said, and he did it again. Olwyn opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

  “You are fire.” This time, he found a rhythm that made Olwyn lose her mind.

  Stars burst behind her eyes, and her body became something new, something different. She clutched at Aidan, unable to do anything but cry as pleasure took her up and over, and cast her adrift on waves of pure release.

  When it was over, he held her in his arms as she wept against his shoulder. He kissed her forehead, her nose, her eyelids. He stole each tear with the tip of his tongue, that magical tongue, and in a hushed whisper against her ear said, “Like paradise. You taste exactly like paradise.”

  Then he wrapped her in the safety of his arms and petted her as little aftershocks from the earthquake shook her. Olwyn held her eyes tightly shut, savoring the miracle of the moment, better than any fable she’d ever wished to disappear into.

  She couldn’t help but remember the long, lonely nights in her father’s house, dreaming of fairy tales and happy endings that could never happen. She’d been so certain of her ugliness, so convinced no man would ever want her. The village pariah, a piebald beast, an obedient servant to her father, and a daughter abandoned by her mother.

  She’d been nothing more than a shadow moving through the darkness of her existence.

  And it had all been worth it. Every last miserable moment had been worth it, for in its own way, it had put her in Aidan Mullen’s arms.

  They lay curled together once again, two pieces of the same puzzle completing the other, all soft curves and hard edges fused and fitted just so.

  Olwyn lay still and listened to his slow, even breathing with a sense of happiness so deep it was as fathomless as the sea.

  She was careful not to move or make a sound, for Aidan Patrick Mullen, her Lóchrann of the darkness, finally slept.

  Thunder woke Olwyn. She came to slowly, aware of Aidan’s skin against hers, his arms around her, his breath stirring her hair. The thunder rumbled again, and she realized it for what it was—the harsh knocking on the doors to Aidan’s sitting area.

  She sat up abruptly, her hand on her throat.

  Soft laughter came from behind her, and strong, warm hands ran down the length of her spine. “’Tis not the English army coming for you, Olwyn.”

  “I shouldn’t be in your bed.”

  “I’ll go see who it is. Stay here. No one will see you.”

  She watched as he slid his breeches over his rounded, muscular bottom, and as he fastened them she whispered, “You are quite the specimen of your species.”

  He laughed again, and bent down to give her a quick kiss while stealing a caress over her shoulder and down her back. “So are you. I wonder what our children will look like.”

  The thought tied her tongue. He spoke so easily of the future, a man who’d never had cause to doubt that only good things lay in store for him.

  She shimmied back into her borrowed nightdress as the pounding on the door came again, and this time whoever it was came bursting inside, the doors opening with a violent crash of splintering wood and groaning metal.

  Padraig rushed into the sleeping chamber, nearly colliding with Aidan, who’d gone running toward the noise.

  “What in the hell, Pad! Have you lost your mind?”

  Olwyn wanted to die as Padraig’s bright green eyes took in the scene: she, sleep-rumpled in Aidan’s bed, and Aidan with scarcely a stitch on. His face, so like Aidan’s and yet so different, displayed no surprise as he looked from her to his twin. And Olwyn saw something pass between them that she knew she could not define, and would never understand.

  “What’s happened?” Aidan demanded, and his voice had taken on a terrible tone that Olwyn had never heard before. She desperately hoped to never hear it again.

  “’Tis terrible news, Aidan,” Padraig said gravely. “You have to come with me.”

  Aidan dressed swiftly, and as he did, Padraig once again turned his attention to Olwyn. His eyes were hard, his mouth was grim, and Olwyn felt waves of terror gripping her before he even spoke.

  “I think you should come, too,” Padraig said. “I’ve a suspicion this is something to do with you.”

  Olwyn scrambled from the bed. Padraig grabbed his brother’s dressing gown and thrust it at her. She slid the thick cashmere garment on in a hurry, wrapped it around her, and belted it tightly. Aidan’s robe hung to her feet, the arms trailing well past her fingertips. She didn’t enjoy the feel of his garment around her, however, for she knew it branded her as his lover, a woman who’d lain with a man who had, until the night before, been betrothed to another.

  Aidan jammed his shirttail into his breeches and pulled on his shoes. “Tell me, Pad.”

  Padraig didn’t respond. He turned and strode from the room, clearly expecting them to follow. Olwyn and Aidan rushed behind him, and Aidan snarled, “Damn it, Padraig. Tell me what’s happened!”

  Padraig didn’t look at either of them, but kept walking down the long corridor. His long legs carried him quickly to the stairs, and he descended them at a pace so fast Olwyn had to run to keep up.

  Selfishly she wished she could hide, or at the very least, dress h
erself. For a reason she couldn’t quite name, she longed for the security of her old, ragged gowns, her tattered belt, her dagger, and her pistol.

  Aidan clapped Padraig on the shoulder as they reached the landing, spun him around to face him. “Padraig,” he said, and Olwyn’s heart hurt for him, for his voice was full of worry. “Is it Grandmum or Grandda?”

  “No,” Padraig answered. His face betrayed his own pain, and a shadow passed through his eyes that chilled Olwyn’s heart. He opened his mouth to speak, but a woman’s scream filled the air.

  Padraig simply said, “Prepare yourself, brother.”

  And they all took off at a dead run, heading toward the screaming.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Another scream tore through the air, raising the hair on the back of Olwyn’s neck. Terror stabbed her with icy daggers, and though her skin felt very cold, her face burned.

  I’ve a suspicion this is something to do with you.

  Olwyn could do nothing but follow the men, hurrying through the elegant mansion with the feeling that she was somehow rushing toward her own demise.

  A cluster of servants clogged the corridor near one of the rear exits. Their whispers buzzed in the air like the humming of a beehive. One of the younger women cried into a handkerchief, and Olwyn saw that an older woman, pale and visibly upset, patted the weeping girl’s back as she spoke softly with one of the stable hands. When they spied Padraig, Aidan, and Olwyn coming, they fell silent and parted, moving well out of their way.

  Olwyn walked past the servants of the manse to whom she was a stranger and a person of common birth, an equal to whom they must show deference as she was a guest of the family. She was all those things, and was also wearing the master of the house’s robe. She clutched the sagging fabric closed with her fist, lowered her head so that her hair fell forward in a curtain, and did not make eye contact with any of them.

  They passed through a large area that Olwyn took to be the servants’ hall where they would eat together. It held a long trestle table surrounded by benches and chairs, a few round tables tucked in the corners, and long windows that faced the rear of the property. A fireplace burned merrily at one end, chasing a bit of the chill, and breakfast plates lined the tabletop. They hadn’t eaten yet, for she saw that all the plates were still clean, the napkins folded and untouched.