“Verywell preserved, thirty years on. Although, after thirty years…” Sophia looked down at the bedclothes and sighed. “After thirty years, my parents will have gone to their reward, Rachel and my brothers will have their own concerns, and we could go elsewhere. At that…after thirty years, I’ll be an old woman. You may wish to leave then and only let people believe you’d died.”
“No,” he said again, leaning forward and gripping her hand tighter. “For one…if you bear a child, you’ll age more slowly, live longer.”
That brought her head up again, and sent the now-familiar look of fascination into her eyes. “Truly? How? Why? How long?”
“There are theories,” he said with a laugh, “but I confess I never had reason to study them until now. You’d not have the years we do, but as I’ve more than a century’s head start on you, we’d likely see gray hairs together.”
“Ohh,” she said, drawing out the word, and smiled. “I’d have much more time for reading than I expected, then, even with motherhood. And…if I didn’t have children, even with the rite?”
“Then I’d stay all the same.” He’d not considered watching Sophia age and die, and the prospect dismayed him, but the idea of abandoning her was worse. Morals were only part of it. He found he loathed the idea of no longer having her in his life, whatever form she might inhabit. “I’ll stay until you ask me to leave.”
She stared at him, firelight in her eyes and shadows wavering across her naked body. “That,” she said and smiled at him, so gently that the room felt colder, “is kind, but it may be in the end as much a burden as a gift. I’d not want you lingering out of obligation…and minds do change, whatever you think now.”
“You could saythatmuch of any man.” Cathal pulled back. He couldn’t quite bring himself to stop touching her, but he left his hand only on her near shoulder and studied her face. Had he ever learned much about judging human emotion, it might have served him well. “If what you mean to say is that you don’t wish to marry me, you should say that. I’ll not take it badly.”
Had she taken more time to reply, had her eyes not suddenly lost their darkness and flashed boldly at him, Cathal might still have doubted her answer. They were alone, he was a large man even in human form, and men had spoken falsely for passion before. To his great relief, though, there was nothing in her face or in her sudden motion toward him that seemed the least bit false. “No! Or, yes. I do…and so Ihaveto object, to think of all the obstacles that I can.” She smiled again, wryly, and ran her fingertips up his arm, over his shoulder, and down toward his chest. “If the wish of my heart is so great, then it almost has to blind me, doesn’t it? Unless I’m careful, I’ll miss a vital detail somewhere.”
“I can’t think how to argue with that,” he said. Another time, he might have, a time when her small calloused fingers weren’t sliding through the hair of his chest, their touch changing the direction of his thoughts as though it were the final ingredient in one of her potions. Cathal felt his cock stirring, thickening, and considered how little effort it would take to lean forward and bear Sophia back onto the bed.
He held still. She’d wanted to touch him; this time, he might have enough control to let her. He thought too that he should find words to answer her, even if he could think of no counter to her final argument. “You have time. You don’t have to answer tomorrow. But”—he slid his fingers down her spine, then back up, tracing around the edge of her ear and down the delicate line of her jaw—“when you think of a new problem, bring it to me, aye? Give me a chance to argue my case.”
“That seems only—” She caught her breath as Cathal leaned forward, kissing the base of her neck. His free hand conveniently settled on her thigh, soft and sleek and tense with desire. “—just.”
“Good,” said Cathal. He meant the conclusion. He also meant the taste of her sweat on his lips, the ragged sound of her breathing, the flick of her fingers over one of his nipples. “Good. Yes.”
And then she shifted, turned toward him a little more, and curved her fingers around his cock. Everything in the room blurred around the edges then, and he thought he invoked God in either Latin or Arabic, but he didn’t quite remember which. The ultimate destination of her curiosity hadn’t been a surprise, and the caress was certainly nothing he hadn’t felt before, but just then, from Sophia, the touch was a revelation.
However stunned he might have looked, he seemed to communicategoodwell enough, for she didn’t pull back or ask if she should stop. Instead, as Cathal should have guessed, she experimented: pressure and angle, location and speed, always careful, always intrigued.Morethan intrigued, he realized gradually, for her nipples were hard again, and her face was flushed, and she smelled of arousal. She was enjoying this, and the knowledge made him moan and thrust into her hand.
When she released him, just for a moment, and touched the moist tip of one finger to her mouth, he swore again.
Sophia spoke then, and her voice was throaty. It was a good thing shewasn’ttouching him, or he would probably have been unable to hold himself back. “Can you…can we, er, couple again tonight? If it wouldn’t be… I don’t want to damage you, and I’ve read philosophers who say that men—”
“Not me,” said Cathal. He doubted the theory in general, but didn’t truly care, particularly not then. He thought of lewd stories about virgins, of songs and the occasional joke, and of the need hot and urgent between his legs. Reaching out, he pulled Sophia against him and rolled onto his back, kissing her until she was squirming against him and making little noises in her throat. Her breasts were hard to reach from this angle, he discovered, but fondling her lush backside, or slipping his hand down and cupping her sex, were more than compensatory joys.
In time, she sat up and back, giving Cathal a wonderful view, and, catching her breath, considered the situation. Short as she was, kissing her left only her thighs to rub against his member, and now it stood hard and flushed, thrusting blindly into the air. Sophia gave it a long look, then turned her gaze down the length of her body to her sex, and finally nodded, “I think…like this?” she asked, making the necessary adjustments in position.
“Aye,” he said, barely able to get the words out, fists clenched in the covers. “Slow as you like.”
It was slow at first—agonizingly, amazingly, wonderfully slow—and Cathal thought he stopped breathing at several points. She was very wet—confirming what he’d thought when she was touching him, and that realization nearly drove him to the breaking point—but tight, and there was a moment when she winced, and then another when he was fully inside her and she began to move.
“Wait,” he said and managed to sit up a little, enough that he could urge her forward and take one of her nipples in his mouth. With one hand, he found the spot just above their joining, as hard beneath his fingertips as he was inside her, and felt her internal shudder when he began to caress her there.
This time he couldn’t wait and tease her; this time he found her pace quickly, reading her moans and the motion of her hips, the way her sex relaxed around him even as her fingers tightened on his shoulders. When he brought her over the edge, she was crying out his name, with no attempt to bury her mouth in his shoulder. Her body arched like a bow, like the figurehead of a ship, breasts jutting forward and head back, her hair falling over them like a curtain.
The image branded itself on Cathal’s mind just before his eyes closed with his own climax, the sight and feel of Sophia’s too much for him to stand for even a few more breaths.
He thought, at the very end, that she said a word or two after his name. He even thought he knew what they were, but not certain, he kept, if not silence, at least incoherence. Best not to rely on anything said in passion, particularly when the passion was new, nor to trust his own hearing at such a moment.
He’d give her time. He wouldn’t press the issue.
Thirty-seven
The fire was down to glowing embers. That was all right because the blankets were thick and Cathal was warm and solid against her. Sophia allowed herself a few moments to lie there, contented, and feel her body begin to fall away into sleep. Even knowing what came next, she didn’t have the energy to stay alert for very long.
With a sigh, she lifted her head from Cathal’s chest and said what she’d known was coming, what had in part driven her to proposition him, though she’d not been completely aware of it then. “I’m going to try to use the name now. I’m afraid you may need to keep watch.”
One of his arms was circling her waist. Sophia felt it go rigid, and the steady breathing beneath her hand stilled briefly. But Cathal was ancient and experienced in war as well as love. All he asked was “How?”
