“Then say them.”Fenwrapped the ribbon tight round their joined wrists—awkward, and notin the intricate pattern Danan had begun, but it was tight and hotand it would do.
“It feels like using up thelast of the magic in it.”
“If it’s so, then you canonly use it once.Not like Danan’s ribbon—not just for a year and aday.”
“I would never take yourfreedom, Fen.”
“Youaremy freedom.Bind us.Bind thewolf.”
Cai swallowed.“Solstice to solstice,hand to hand, from blood-mother earth to the heart of man…” Hecouldn’t go on.Instead he hung on to his end of the strand, andFen grasped the other, tighter and tighter until their veins achedand pounded with the force of pent-up pulse.
Then Fen released them both, gasping.“Can I love you?Can I have you without hurting you?”
“I don’t care if it bloodykills me.Find a way.”
Fen undid Cai’s shirt.He knelt overhim, unthreading its leather fastening one loop at a time.With thesame deliberation he pulled out its hem from Cai’s belt, andlifted, exposing his belly.Cai hadn’t looked at his own flesh indaylight in months.He didn’t look down now—kept his gaze fixed onFen’s, reading there all the changes in himself, the message of thewound that hadn’t healed.Fen caressed the scar.Cai arched hisback in response, his skin sending wild mixed signals of pleasureand pain to swirl around in his head, raising waves of goose bumps,suddenly lifting his cock.“God.I wasn’t sure I couldanymore.”
“That’ll be the last thingto go, if I know my Caius.”Fen’s grin was too bright, and heswiped the heel of one hand across his eyes before returning hisattention to his task.“Sit up a little way.I want this shirt offyou.”
Cai shivered in the wind, until Fendrew the cloak round him tighter and leaned over him, shieldinghim, kissing his shoulders.He brushed the flat of his palm overCai’s groin, teasing and promising before he tore his belt buckleopen and pushed his hand down inside.
His grip was perfect.He had learnedCai’s body in the waves of Addy’s island, in the summer hayfields,in these dunes.He knew the tender dip between his balls where alight touch was unbearable but an outright grasp, a squeeze of onefinger into the sensitive gap, would wring out cries of pleasure,call up climax even from exhausted flesh.
Cai writhed and clutched at him.“Yes.Like that.No.”
Fen gave a muffled grunt of laughter.“Yes?No?”
“It wasn’t just your hand Imissed on all those nights.It was all of you.”
“I want you comfortable ona bunk somewhere before you get…all of me.”
“Not like that.I mean Iwant you in my arms.”
“I don’t want to put weighton you.”
“Beside me, then.I’m stillgood for that.Oh, God, Fen, please.”
Fen stretched out at his side.Caidrew him in so that they were sharing the warmth of the beautifulcloak.He undid the wolf’s-head belt, and Fen’s fingers tangledwith his in the urgent undoing of his leggings.He gasped withimpatience—his Viking was girded for battle, another of thosecunningly worked bronze cock-pieces shielding his manhood, stitchedinto his subligaculum.“That can’t help you now.”
“Help me?It’s stranglingme.Help me get it off.”
Between them they unwound him.Caisobbed in relief as at last the garment was out of the way and Fenshoved his hips forwards, his hand on Cai’s backside holding himstill to receive the long, shuddering stroke.Held and braced likethis, Cai could push back.He groaned beneath the next thrust andthe next, an anvil where the white-hot fetters of the wolf werebeing forged, and then he hurled himself into the fire, all painand injury and shadowing death forgotten.
Fen clutched him close.Their mouthsmet roughly, muffling howls of climax.Sand shifted under them,receiving their struggle, cushioning its aftermath as Cai rolled upand onto his lover’s body, hammering out the last of his strength.He fell and Fen caught him, easing him into the endless embrace ofthe dunes.
“Cai, when did Addy comehome?”
Cai stopped brushing sand out of hisclothes.There was little point to it anyway—he’d be washing it outof his crevices for weeks.He thought of the weeks, and the washes,perhaps down in the sapphire pools, Fen splashing and complainingof the cold beside him.How many days might be left to him?Itdidn’t matter, he decided.His lung was tight and aching now.Thenext fit of coughing might tear him apart and finish it, and he’dnever think himself short-changed, not after…
He looked up at Fen, who was standingon the crest that overlooked the plain, holding the two horses.Hehad just retrieved them.They had wandered off placidly together,united in their good opinion of the turf at the foot of the dunes.The plain was now deserted.Had Broc and Sigurd too found peace forthe sake of good land?
His passion-fogged brain cleared alittle.“Addy?He didn’t—not that I know.”
“Look.”
Cai stumbled up to join him.Fen’s armclosed tight round his waist.He pointed off into the dusk.“There.Down by the islets, the place where you said the first monks fromHibernia settled.Near the green mounds.”
Cai leaned on him to look.The nightwas falling fast, the light shifting before his eyes could adjust.He’d never really noticed that the ancient beehive cells weresurrounded by mounds, but they were.In the spring they werecovered with every scented and dancing shoreline flower you couldimagine—celandine, harebells and yarrow, sea pinks and thyme, snowydrifts of scurvy grass.It must always have been such a beautifulplace, its sanctity held, deep and potent, in its very rocks.Andyes—down by the worn wooden cross, a frail but vigorous figure in aplain brown cassock.“I can see him.I didn’t hear anything abouthim coming home—he’s still the bishop of Hexham.”
