by Nora Roberts
It occurred to her that this was the first time they'd loved each other with a roof overhead and a bed beneath them. She might have missed the stars and the smell of grass if it hadn't been for the sweetness he offered her in its place.
He'd brought flowers into the room. Imagining her here, he'd wanted there to be flowers. He caught the fragile scent of them as he dipped his head to trail his lips down her throat.
There were candles, for later, to replace the starlight. There were soft linen sheets, a substitute for woolen blankets and grass. He spread her hair over his pillow, knowing her scent would cling there.
She smiled as he began to undress her. She'd bought a few other things in Dublin and knew, when he'd uncovered the first hint of rose silk, she'd chosen well.
With quiet concentration, he peeled aside jacket, blouse, slacks, then drew a fingertip across the ivory lace that flirted between her breasts.
"Why do such things weaken a man?" he wondered.
Her smile spread. "I saw it in the window, then I saw you. Touching me."
His gaze lifted to hers. Very slowly he skimmed his fingertip down, over the curve of her breast, under it, then up again to graze her nipple. "Like this?"
"Yes." Her eyes fluttered closed. "Just like this."
Experimentally he followed the silk down to were it ended in an edge of that same lace just below the waist. Beneath that was a tiny swatch of matching silk. He laid his hand over the triangle and watched her arch.
When he replaced his hand with his mouth, she writhed.
To please himself, he explored every inch of the silks before moving on to the flesh beneath. He knew she was lost to reason when he'd finished. Even as she bucked beneath him, clawed, he held on to his own. He wanted one last gift.
"Tell me now, Shannon." The breath was searing his lungs, and his fists were bone white. "Tell me now that you love me, when you're burning for me, when you're desperate for me to come inside you, to fill you. To ride you."
She was gasping for air, frantic for him to drive her over that last thin edge. "I love you." Tears sprang to her eyes as emotion mixed, equal to need. "I love you, Murphy."
He thrust into her, making them both groan. Each plunge was a demand and a glory. "Tell me again." His voice was fierce as they both teetered on the brink. "Tell me again."
"I love you." Almost weeping, she buried her face in his throat and let him shatter her.
Later, after he'd lighted the candles, he pulled her down the hall to the bath where they played like children in water too hot in a tub too full.
Instead of dinner, they gorged on Brianna's cake, washed it down with beer in a combination Shannon knew should be disgusting. It tasted like ambrosia.
While she was licking her fingers, she caught the gleam in his eye. In a heartbeat they were lunging for each other, and made love like mindless animals on the kitchen floor.
She might have slept there, exhausted, but he pulled her to her feet. No steadier than drunks, they staggered out, down the hall. Then he pulled her into the parlor, and they had each other again on the rug.
When she managed to sit up, her hair was tangled, her eyes glazed, and her body aching. "How many rooms are there in this house?"
He laughed and nipped her shoulder. "You're going to find out."
"Murphy, we'll kill each other." When his hand snaked up the ladder of her ribs to cup her breast, she let out a shuddering sigh. "I'm willing to risk it if you are."
"That's a lass."
There were fifteen, Shannon thought when she collapsed onto the tangled sheets somewhere near dawn. Fifteen rooms in the sprawling stone farmhouse, and it wasn't through lack of wanting that they hadn't managed to christen all of them. Somewhere along the line their bodies had simply betrayed them. They'd tumbled back into bed with no thought of anything but sleep.
As she drifted toward it, under the weight of Murphy's arm, she reminded herself they would have to talk seriously and talk soon. She had to explain things to him. Make him see why the future was so much more complex then the present.
Even as she tried to formulate the words in her mind, she drifted deeper.
And she saw the man, her warrior, her lover, on the white horse. There was the glint of armor, the swirl of his cape in the wind.
But this time, he wasn't riding toward her across the fields. He was riding away.
Chapter Twenty-One
Murphy figured it was love that made a man so energetic after an hour's sleep. He dealt with the milking, the feeding of stock, the pasturing, all with a song on his lips and a spring in his step that had the young Feeney boy grinning at him.
As usual, there were a dozen chores to see to before breakfast. Grateful it was his neighbor's turn to haul the milk away, Murphy gathered up the morning's eggs, eyed one of the older ladies who would need to do her turn in the pot shortly, and headed back toward the house.
He was having a change of heart about his earlier idea of letting Shannon sleep while he grabbed a quick cup of tea and a biscuit, then set out to turn his turf.
It seemed much more inviting to take her up that tea and biscuit and make love with her while she was warm from sleep and soft from dreaming.
He never expected to find her in his kitchen, standing at the stove with the apron his mother used when visiting wrapped around her waist.
"I thought you'd be sleeping."
She glanced over, smiling at the way he took off his cap when he came in the house. "I heard you outside, laughing with the boy who helps you milk."
"I didn't mean to wake you." The kitchen smelled gloriously of mornings from his childhood. "What are you doing there?"
"I found some bacon, and the sausages." She prodded the latter with a kitchen fork. "It's cholesterol city, but after last night, I thought you deserved it."
The foolish grin broke over his face. "You're cooking me breakfast."
"I figured you'd be hungry after doing whatever you do at dawn, so-Murphy!" She squealed, dropping the fork with a clatter as he grabbed her and swung her around. "Watch what you're doing."
He set her down, but couldn't do anything about the grin as she muttered at him and washed off the fork. "I didn't even know you could cook."
"Of course I can cook. I may not be the artist in the kitchen Brie is, but I'm more than adequate. What's this?" She poked into the bucket he'd set down when he'd come in. "There must be three dozen eggs in here. What do you do with so many?"
"I use what I need, trade away or sell the rest."
She wrinkled her nose. "They're filthy. How did they get so dirty?"
He stared at her a moment, then roared with laughter. "Oh, you're a darling woman, Shannon Bodine."
"I can see that was a stupid question. Well, clean them up. I'm not touching them."
He hauled the bucket to the sink, began to oblige when it suddenly dawned on her just where eggs came from. "Oh." She winced and flipped bacon. "It's enough to put you off omelettes. How do you know if they're just eggs and not going to be little chickies?"
He slid her a look, wanting to make sure she wasn't joking this time. Poking his tongue in his cheek, he washed off another shell. "If they don't peep, you're safe."
"Very funny." She decided she was better off in ignorance. She really preferred thinking of eggs as something you took out of nice cartons stacked in the market. "How do you want them cooked?"
"However you like, I'm not fussy. You made tea!" He wanted to kneel at her feet.
"I couldn't find any coffee."
"I'll get some next I'm in the village. It smells grand, Shannon."
The table was already set, he noted, for two. He poured them both tea, wishing he'd thought to pick her some of the wildflowers that grew alongside the barn. He sat when she carried a platter to the table.
"Thank you."
There was a humbleness in his voice that made her feel twin edges of guilt and pleasure. "You're welcome. I never eat sausage," she commented as she took her seat. "But t
his looks so good."
"It should. Mrs. Feeney made it fresh only a few days ago."
"Made it?"
"Aye." He offered her the platter first. "They butchered the hog they'd been fattening." His brow drew together in concern when she paled. "Is something wrong?"
"No." With hurried movement, she waved the platter away. "There are just certain things I don't care to visualize."
"Ah." He gave her an apologetic smile. "I wasn't thinking."
"I should be getting used to it. The other day I walked in on a discussion Brie was having with some guy about the spring lambs." She shuddered, knowing now just what happened to cute little lambs in the spring.
"It seems harsh to you, I know. But it's just the cycle of things. It was one of Tom's problems."
Deciding the toast she'd made was safe, Shannon glanced over. "Oh?"
"He couldn't stand to raise something for the table- for his own or someone else's. When he had chickens, he gathered the eggs well enough, but his hens died of old age more often than not. He was a tender-hearted man."
"He let the rabbits go," Shannon murmured.
"Ah, you heard about the rabbits." Murphy smiled at the memory. "Going to make a fortune off them, he was -until it came down to the sticking point. He was always after making a fortune."
"You really loved him."
"I did. He wasn't a substitute for my father, nor did he try to be one. It wasn't the male figure they say a boy needs in his life. He was as much my father from my fifteenth year as the one who made me was before. He was always there for me. When I was grieving, he'd pop up, take me for a ride to the cliffs, or a trip into Galway with the girls. He held my head the first time I sicked up whiskey I'd had no business drinking. And when I'd had my first woman, I-"
He broke off and developed a keen interest in his meal.
Shannon lifted a brow. "Oh, don't stop now. What happened, when you'd had your first woman?"
"What usually happens, I'd suppose. This is a fine breakfast, Shannon."
"Don't change the subject. How old were you?"
He gave her a pained look. " Tisn't seemly to discuss such matters with the woman you're currently sharing breakfast with."
"Coward."
"Aye," he agreed heartily and filled his flapping mouth with eggs.
"You're safe, Murphy." Her laughter faded. "I'd really like to know what he said to you."
Because it was important to her, he crawled over his embarrassment. "I was... I'd been..."
"You don't have to tell me that part." She smiled to soothe him. "Now, anyway."
"After," he said, relieved to have gotten past that first leap. "I was feeling proud-manly I'd guess you could say. And as confused as a monkey with three tails. Guilty, terrified I might have gotten the girl pregnant because I'd been too hot-young and stupid," he corrected, "to think of that before the matter. So I was sitting out on the wall, a part of me wondering when I might get back and do the whole thing again, and the other part waiting for God to strike me dead for doing it in the first place. Or for Ma to find out and do the job quicker and with less mercy than God ever would."
"Murphy." She forgot herself and bit into a slice of bacon. "You're so sweet."
"It's as much a moment in a man's life as it is a woman's I'd say. Anyway, I was sitting there thinking of what you might imagine, and Tom comes along. He sits next to me and says nothing for a time. Just sits and looks out over the fields. It must have been all over my face. He puts his arm around my shoulders. 'Made a man of yourself,' he says, 'and you're proud of it. But it takes more than sliding into a willing lass to make a man. Takes responsibility.' "
Murphy shook his head and picked up his tea. "Now I'm sick thinking I might have to marry her, and me barely seventeen and no more in love with her than she with me. And I say so. He just nods, not lecturing or scolding. He tells me if God and fate are looking kindly, he knows I'll remember it, and have more of a care next time out. 'There'll be a next time,' he says, 'because a man doesn't stop going down such a lovely path once he's begun it. And a woman is a glorious thing to hold and to have. The right woman, when you find her, is more than sunlight. You watch for her, Murphy, and while you're sniffing those sweet flowers along the way, treat them with care and affection, and don't bruise their petals. If you love with kindness, even when you can't love with permanence, you'll deserve the one who's waiting along that path for you.' "
It took Shannon a moment to find her voice. "Everyone says he wanted to be a poet, but didn't have the words." She pressed her lips together. "It sounds as though he did to me."
"He had them when it counted," Murphy said quietly. "He often lacked them for