Ye should have…
Arran, unrelenting, grabbed her hand in a possessive hold, commandeering it so she had no escape. “Never.”
Her belly fluttered in time to the erratic beat of her heart.
“I was caught on your mark, Lucy.”
Her mark?
Ahh.
“My hinnie-drop,” she explained, holding her hand up for his examination.
He continued to stare at Lucy in the most bizarre way.
“Ah, forget yer not all Scot but English gentleman too.” Setting her cider down, she pointed to that still sugary spot. “Honey drop,” she clarified. “Me da used to say I wear the Fair Folk’s dr—”
“Nyneve’s Mark,” Arran quietly interjected. “It is a drop of the lochs and rivers and from where the very essence of life springs.”
Lucy held still. Afraid to move, or speak, and end whatever trance kept him—and her—under its spell.
Her yearning proved too great. “Who?” she breathed.
Arran’s hand came to rest over hers, enveloping her in the soft hush of his warmth. “The Lady of the Lake.” He rubbed his thumb around that small discoloration of her skin. “Do you know of her, Lucy?”
His liquifying touch, his deep rolling voice, cast a spell greater than the deities. Lucy’s lashes fluttered and grew tooheavy to lift. Did she know her? Och, she barely recalled her own name.
Somehow, she managed an uneven nod-shake. “A wee bit.” Her answer emerged on a soft exhale.
“In Arthurian legend, Nimue was Merlin’s great love,” he murmured. “An enchantress; a mythical symbol of the magic and mystery of water.” Arran brushed another caress over that teardrop-shaped mark.
“The rose is fairest when ’t is budding new,
And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears;”
His husky rumbling drew her deeper and deeper under his spell.
“The rose is sweetest washed with morning dew”
To a point from which there was no coming back…
“And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.”
To a place Lucy never wished to return from.
From the past tale crafted by a proud papa sprung anew from this heart-stoppingly handsome man’s lips, lore for a woman grown, desirable, otherworldly. Siren-like.
All things and ways Lucy had never once felt about herself—until this breathless moment here and now with Arran McQuoid.
“My hope,” he continued to speak in that low, rumbling manner, “my heaven, my trust must be, My gentle guide, in following thee…”
When she picked her head up, Lucy found Arran’s focus, searing hot and indescribable from any look to ever be directed her way.
When she’d been a lass of thirteen or fourteen years, a ship’s captain took lodging at The Spotted Elk. He’d set down uponthe table a water-filled glass sphere. When he’d caught Lucy’s round-eyed gaze, he beckoned her over to view the curiosity. It’d been a gift for his young brother. The sphere had been filled with a pair of red-headed children, a lad in black and a lass in plaid skirts, their arms outstretched. Lucy watched in wonderment as he turned the novelty globe over and gave it a shake. When he’d set it down on the oak table, wax flakes had floated and fallen about the miniature statue like snow.
Being here alone with Arran, in this moment, Lucy felt as upside down as the wee bairns in the glass globe.
His very nearness, his gaze alone, left her upside down.
