“What do I do now?”
He showed her, rocking his hips slowly back and forth until Sophia found her body meeting his of its own accord. This was the pace she’d wanted earlier, she realized; this, with his member filling her and his body rubbing against hers with every thrust, building desire in a steady rhythm that got faster and faster as she jerked her hips upward, clutching him to her with arms and legs and sex alike. The desperation she’d felt before came back doubly strong, and she gave herself to it, crying out into his shoulder as she sought more and more sensation, more urgency, and then reached a point where every particle of wanting joined and crested in one moment of unthinking delight.
Above her, Cathal groaned and cursed, the tone of his voice holding pleasure that made a sharp contrast to two languages of blasphemy. He arched his back, driving himself even further inside her, and his whole body went still for a moment; then, with a flood of warmth, he sank down on top of her.
Even then, he kept his full weight off her, and his size was actually rather comforting, an anchor in the midst of storms and after new experiences. Sophia traced her fingers upward along his spine, into the hair at the back of his head and back down, only to repeat the process again, idle and, she realized, content. For the first time in a long time, she felt perfectly happy to stay right where she was.
Thirty-six
Afterward, sated and stretched out on a modest inn bed that felt like the peak of luxury just then, Cathal fought off the urge to fall asleep. It wasn’t easy. He’d rolled onto his back and pulled Sophia against him, and the steady rhythm of her breathing could easily have lulled him into slumber, had circumstances been different.
They weren’t.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Oh.” Her voice was as drowsy as his at first, but sharpened to awareness quickly. She opened her eyes and sat up slightly. “I have his name,” Sophia said with a small smile: triumph, tempered by wariness. She wasn’t overconfident, his lady; she knew to call no man lucky until he died, or however the Norsemen had it. “That’s the sum of the work before his men began to suspect me, but that much made itself obvious, yes?”
“Slightly.” Gently, and with no small amount of reluctance, Cathal left her embrace and stood up, then crossed the room to the nightstand with its basin of water and the cloths lying nearby. “What’s the long version?”
She told him while they cleaned themselves, blushing when it came her turn but not looking away from him the entire time. When she reached her escape, she spread her hands. “…and so you found me, fortune being with us both.”
“Just enough of it,” Cathal said, and shook his head. He’d seen how close her pursuit had been, but had not known how narrow her original escape—nor how certain her doom would have been had he not overheard the soldiers and acted. In that moment, he wished he knew less—or less of war, less of Valerius himself.
Sophia shrugged, and the movement of her naked breasts was a small distraction from Cathal’s more troubling thoughts. “Fortune’s not in such great supply, you know. If we had just enough, it’s more than most people ever get.” She smiled and reached out, the tips of her fingers touching his cheek. “To have had the flight out here, and this night? I would change my luck for no one’s.”
Cathal caught her hand in his. “Marry me.”
The words came without thought, and yet, once he said them, he felt he’d been considering them for days, even weeks—like the time in a battle when years of practice let the body know what was right before the mind could even frame the question.
The smile left Sophia’s face, and she stared at him accusingly. “Don’t. That’s a cruel sort of jest, and you know I’d never demand—”
“No.” His hand tightened around hers. “I speak in earnest.”
“You can’t possibly,” she said, staring at him with even more surprise and much more doubt than she’d had when he’d stood before her naked and rampant. “It’s…generous of you, truly, to offer, but you know you couldn’t. You’re… Well, for one thing, you’re the son of a lord.”
“Aye,” Cathal said, seeing the swing and the means of blocking it. “The younger son, and the youngest of four children. Agnes wed to my father’s advantage, and Douglas doubtless will. Moiread still might. It’s been many lifetimes since any of them thought to direct my life in that manner. For all they knew, I could have brought home a Saracen bride when I came back.”
Mentioning the Holy Land brought Sophia’s next objection to the fore. “We don’t share a faith, nor a people, nor yet a homeland. And I would go home, if I succeed and survive. I…” She sighed. “Everyone’s been most kind, truly, most welcoming, but I’ve no wish to stay here. It’s not my home.”
“No,” he said, and forced himself to patience. If he spoke too quickly, let impulse dictate his words, Sophia would think him insincere or at least foolish. “But it’s not truly mine either. I stayed away for longer than you’ve been alive, and I’d never meant to come back for good. If I miss the place after I leave this time, in faith, I travel with a great deal of ease.” He smiled. “You could too, for that matter.”
“True.”
She sounded intrigued. She sounded uncertain. Her face was all thoughtfulness and grave concentration, and Cathal wasn’t sure whether he was more tempted to disrupt her thoughts or to have her turn such attention on him. He held himself back to putting his arm around her shoulders.
“As for faith,” he went on, and shrugged, “mayhap I should care, but I don’t. More than half the Church holds me damned already, or would if it knew what I am. I’ll not promise to convert—I’d rather not have the, ah, physical ceremony, for one—but I’d not ask it of you.”
“Oh,” said Sophia, her mouth round and her eyes wide. “I… Well…” She shook her head, not in denial but with an attempt to bring herself back into reason, and her hair rippled over Cathal’s arm. “Itwouldbe a scandal, still…but then I was never entirely respectable, and my family might not mind very much, so long as any children…but then there wouldn’t be children, would there?”
“It’s harder with us,” he said. “There’s a rite to breed with humans, and a risk to the woman.”
“So I heard. That was one of the factors in…” She gestured to the bed around them. “Not that my family would know that, of course, but I’m old for childbearing, so they might think it unlikely, and they too have other children to carry on the name. My mother, I think, would be only glad to see me return safely, and I don’t believe my father would disown me, though I don’t know that he would be very happy either.”
He waited, knowing that she spoke only half to him. Patience was difficult, particularly with her skin warm and smooth beneath his hand and her full lips only a few inches away. Repletion was beginning to fade into renewed desire. Yet he kept himself still, giving her time.
“But you wouldn’t age,” she said, “or you’d age slowly. I wouldn’t know how to explain that without giving your nature away, although I suppose I could claim it was an accident of alchemy.”
“That could be. Or I could just be well preserved.”
