His voice sounded choked when he returned her words. “Do ye still want to be wi’ me?”
“Aye. Och, aye, Finlay. We are fast running out o’ chances. If no’ this night, tomorrow, or the next, then mayhap never at all in thisworld.”
She still planned on going, leaving here. Leaving him. His heart sank again and then bounded. O’Hanlon had not been able to persuade her. “Katrin.”Alanna.“I would ha’ ye be certain this is wha’ ye want. That I am wha’ ye want.”
“My heart wants,” she told him gravely. “And somewhat even more fundamental to my being than my heart. My spirit, mayhap.” She smiled tremulously. “Parts o’ me I never knew existed seem to want ye.”
“Well, then.” It was not remembering. Not quite. Or mayhap it was as close as he would get, in this life.
“Ye will no’ tell me nay?”
“I will no’.” He had never been able to deny her.
“Then let us ha’ what time we may together—here, now, on this turn o’ the wheel, as my ancestors might ha’ said. To begin, let me see ye. My imagination has been running riot. Is that too bold a request?”
“Naught ye can say or do this night is too bold.” He shed his clothing for her as he had—how many times in the past? Remembered how she had looked at him then. With desire, with longing, with lazy possessiveness. He wondered what she would see now and if she would be disappointed. He was what he was and who he was, but as a man he wanted very badly for her to desire what she saw.
“No warrior,” he told her when he stood bared. “As ye see.”
Thoughts moved in her eyes. She examined him from the length of his limbs to the tattoos he bore, and must have found nothing lacking, for she came forward into his arms and kissed him, unleashing a tumult of sensation. Fully clothed still, she clung to him, parted his lips with her tongue, and tasted him. Moaned deep in her throat.
“Ye be as perfect, Finlay, as I imagined ye. I find naught wanting.”
He laughed unsteadily. “No’ fair for ye to stand clothed while I—”
“Stand unclothed? Aye, ye are upstanding, so I see.” She breathed it into his mouth. “So I feel.”
Aye, so he was.
She backed off from him but a half step. Removed her garments with deliberation, all the while letting her gaze caress him.
She was bonny, as ever she had been. Long, long legs and flared hips. Breasts high and proud, rosy-tipped to his gaze. Strong, aye, and graceful. Everything she had ever been and would ever be. All, to him.
“Come,” he bade her. “To the bed.”
“No’ yet.”
She dropped to her knees, reached up, and ran her hands through the swirl of hair on his chest before sweeping them downward, ever downward. Across his stomach, which flexed to her touch. Up and down his thighs before she wrapped her fingers around him.
“I just ha’ to know how ye taste. It has been a thing much on my mind. Since the boat, when we kissed.”
Had it?By holy, sweet heaven—
He stood trembling violently while she leaned into him. Parted her lips, took him in, and indulged herself, for indulge herself she did. He buried his hands in her half-tumbled hair—for she’d neglected to take the bulk of it down—and gave himself up to her, as ever. To sensation, and the sheer rightness of it.
Fate, he decided, was a strange and wonderful thing. That they should be together here this way, as so often they had been in the past. That it should be so wondrously new, and yet so much the same.
She slid up his body, skin against skin, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Now, ye may come to the bed.”
*
Finlay tasted justthe way she knew he would, like every desire she’d ever had, all her dreams rolled into one. The taste of pure man. He possessed a whipcord-strong body beneath the bard’s robes, not a spare bit of fat on him, but no lack of muscle either. A body in itsprime, honed by years spent traveling over hill and stream.
Not that Katrin would have cared, had he been far less beautiful. It was Finlay that she wanted. The fire of him and the gentleness. The patience and the wit. The man inside.
The fact that he pleased her so, that he was just as she best liked a man to be, with a trail of hair down his chest leading to what stood so proud for her, with long, graceful limbs, and freckled skin, just added to her heady pleasure.
At her bed, she threw aside the covers, tumbled down, and, with what might have been a breathless laugh, pulled him atop her.
