“I have learned I love you above all others, above all else. Do not ask me to live knowing I have brought you harm. Or without having shared with you all a man and woman can share.”
He wanted her. By all the powers of the earth and sky, he did. Yet his heart insisted it could only make things worse for her.
“Please,” she whispered, and kissed him.
Ah, and he was lost, his intentions crumbling so fast it made him tremble. Could they be joined in spirit and not be joined at the root, as well?
But what would it do to him, having her once while knowing they must part?
Her fingers moved on the laces of his tunic. And aye, it felt familiar having her undress him, though they’d not done this before. They shed their clothes without modesty, one for the other, and she took a half step back on her small, naked feet.
“Let me look at you, Deathan MacMurtray.”
He stood and let her look, his lust near overwhelming but his will like iron, for her sake. It gave him a chance to look also.
Perfection, she was, her skin smooth, her waist slim, her breasts high and round. She might have been made to please him in all ways.
She had.
She touched him softly, the movements of her fingers following her eyes—his shoulders, down his chest through the crisp hair she found there and lower still. When she sank toher knees and embraced him, pressing her cheek against his belly with her fingers wrapped around him, he very nearly succumbed.
“Please, Deathan. Love me now.”
“Aye. Come to the bed.”
He lifted her and carried her there, pushing his pack and scattered possessions to the floor. His urgency, nearly overmastering, answered to the rein of love.
This must be fine and memorable for her, as much as he could make it. He would worship her, show to her just what it meant when a man adored his woman.
And that meant kisses. Over every part of her, possibly.
He started with her lips. She met him hungrily, open mouth to open mouth, all heat and welcome. And he knew—he knew they would burn up together this night.
A curse upon the morrow.
He kissed his way down to her breasts, latched on with his tongue because he knew how that pleased her. How could he know it, when they’d never before been together this way?
By all that was holy, he just did.
A single light—the one by which he’d been working—burned in the room. Enough to allow him glimpses. Of the passion in her silvery eyes. The way she spread herself in offering. The abandon with which she invited him in.
A holy act was this mating, a thing as destined as her breath and his. But nonetheless passionate, for that.
When he pushed inside her, her body drew him in, wild as her spirit, and primitive as time. He tried to pull out before he came—the last sort of complication she needed was to arrive at her next destination carrying another man’s child—but she locked her heels behind his back and held him, held him to her.
“Deathan.” She breathed his name. Kissed his face over and over again, desperate little kisses. Held him tight.
He remained inside her and lay marveling at the sensation. Two made one. Never had he known such peace.
Despite what must come.
“My lass. Beautiful lass.” He breathed in the scent of her hair. Of her skin.
“Do not move,” she implored him. “Do not speak. Just be with me.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Time, so Darleidecided during that night and the day that followed, was a strange commodity. It dragged when she waited to be with Deathan. Flew when she knew she had not much more of it with him. Went away entirely when she was in his arms.
