They moved together like one person, a beautiful being, a song. Sweet and effortless. Blinding. When at the last instant he would have withdrawn from her, she locked her heels at his back and held him fast.
I want all of you. She did not say it aloud, not in any language. Did not have to.
He gave to her. All of him.
After, she lay with his weight clutched to her, eyes tight shut. She could hear the rain striking the floor at the other end of the hut, but it might have been happening anywhere, and any-when. She did not know who he was, or who she was. Only that they were together.
Love. She spoke in his ear. She had to struggle for it in his language. “I have forgotten how to speak to you.”
“No need to speak.” He lay sprawled atop her, his hips cradled between her thighs. Now he rose to his elbows and peered into her eyes. “Are ye weepin’?”
Was she? It could not still be rain that wet her cheeks.
“Ja.”
“The grand warrior-maiden, Hulda Elvarsdottir, shedding tears?” A smile warmed his voice. Hearing it gave her such pleasure, it curled her toes.
In ordinary life, she might seek to command her feelings, to hide her emotions, to appear harder than she was. With him, there could be only honesty. “It was so beautiful.”
“It was,” he agreed. “But I would no’ ha’ ye weep.”
“Good tears. Lie here. Hold me. Talk to me, Quarrie MacMurtray. I love the sound of your voice.”
“Do ye?”
“It is like music. Like singing.”
He murmured softly, his lips a mere breath from her ear, and told her of his childhood and his life here. What came through was his deep attachment to this place, belonging that stretched back many generations in blood, his value for his ancestors. His love.
He loved hard and completely, did this man of hers.
That he was her man, she had no doubt. She did not quite understand how, out of a world of men, she had found him. Yet she had, and she did not intend to leave go of him, not ever again.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Quarrie would neverhave believed that lying in a filthy, ruined hut in the pouring rain could feel so comfortable or so right. Yet it did. The comfort reached deep and stemmed from something other than his physical location.
It came from the woman in his arms.
He’d known even before she shed her clothing and they lay down here together, she was perfection. Perfect for him. The taste of her. The feel.
The feel.
Byfeelhe did not mean only the slide of her skin beneath his hands or even the heat of her mouth, but her spirit entwining with his. Enfolding him. Welcoming him like one long lost and returning home.
And when he entered her—naught else had existed.
Sanity returned to him slowly and very much against his will. Theydidlie in a filthy hut, he and this woman who should be his enemy.
Who belonged with him as did no one else.
Theydidhave a world of difficulty and conflict before them.
He closed his eyes. Mayhap he could keep that world at bay a few moments longer.
“What does it mean,” he breathed at her, “that word ye spoke to me?”
“Word?”
