Chapter 27 #2
A Highland summer pressed against them, the night heavy with the heat of the day.
Somewhere, a bird called to its mate in a low and forlorn summons.
The wind, once mischievous and playful, had matured.
Now gusts echoed through the arches of the lone abbey wall, stirring the tall grasses with invisible fingers.
Above them, a full moon was suddenly trapped in a filmy gauze of clouds.
He’d never known a night as enchanted.
“I can’t hear anything.”
“Then listen.” A moment later he spoke again. “What do you hear?”
“The villagers are singing,” she said, smiling.
He lowered his head, kissed her lightly in reward.
Her smile broadened as if she had reasoned out his game.
“I hear the last of the bonfire. The wood is nearly gone, but it still makes a sputtering sound.”
Another kiss.
“The waterfall,” she said, amazed. “I can hear the falls from here.”
He reached down and began to unwind the plait of her hair. Only when her braids were loosened, and her hair tumbling over her shoulders, did he speak again.
“I visited the falls the other day,” he said. “A place to reflect. I know now why it’s your favorite place at Tyemorn.”
“Did you hear the voice of God?” she asked softly.
He shook his head. “If He spoke, I wasn’t listening. But are you? What else do you hear?”
She tilted her head, a smile curving her lips. “Your breathing. I can hear you breathe.” She placed her hand flat on his chest. “You sound as if you’ve been running, James.”
He smiled.
The silence between them was complete, not awkward as much as aware.
He bent and lowered his head, kissing her between her breasts. His thumbs gently pressed against each impudent nipple, his mouth against her warm skin. She seemed to taste of the night itself, of fertile fields and hedges, flowers blooming in secret places.
“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, his command of the language departing him. In its place was a cavernous space filled with longing. How did he convey that to her? How did he tell her how much this moment meant to him? How much she meant to him?
She was a goddess of the moon, a silvery-blue washed creature that he had conjured up from imagination, lust, and desperate desire.
“You are so beautiful,” he repeated, impatient with himself. The words were not the ones he’d wished to use. They were lacking, falling short of all he felt. But nothing rushed in to take their place, and in the end, he lost the ability to speak at all.
He wanted her breath against his lips and his name in her mouth.
As she stood there, chin tilted up at him, James realized that she was the essence of all that he wanted in a woman. Not because of her beauty or even because she was articulate, witty, and intelligent.
All his life he’d been surrounded by love, from his parents and his brothers. He’d explored the world, becoming used to those patches of solitary time, yet never becoming accustomed to solitude. Something had been missing from his life, and until now he hadn’t known what it was.
A peace that he knew only she could give, answers to his curiosity, an end to the loneliness he’d felt during the past years.
This was the woman his spirit craved, who lived in his mind when she was apart from him. Who expanded his heart when she joined him. This was the woman who completed him in ways that he had never imagined. But then, he had never thought himself lacking.
He stroked one finger across a gently curving breast to a nipple. She closed her eyes slowly, then opened them again when he feared she would hide her reaction from him. Where once her gray eyes had been stormy, in the moonlight they were deeply mysterious and enchanting.
Bending his head, he took a nipple into his mouth, then breathed upon it, giving her the sensation of both chill and warmth. She shivered beneath his ministrations, encouraging him to continue.
He touched her breasts, and they puckered and tightened as if accustomed to the sensation he offered. He placed a kiss on her stomach and the muscles there fluttered, as if anticipating more to come.
Slowly, he lowered her to the ground, not far from where they’d lain before.
His fingers seemed to know her, retaining memory in their callused tips of intimate touches.
The underside of her breasts, the front of her ankle, the arch of her foot, the back of her neck.
Soft, swollen folds that ached when he kissed her and throbbed now at the silken stroke of one delicate finger.
His kisses were candies dropped upon her tongue, one by one. She grew to anticipate their delight and then simply became part of them, her breath and body growing heated.
How many hours did he touch her? How many enchanting minutes did he spend tasting her skin and brushing his warm lips across her breasts? How many times did he kiss her? Too many to count and not enough.
He moved over her, all warmth and strength. Gently, he widened her thighs.
“Are you very experienced, James?”
He drew back and framed her face with his hands as he stared at her wordlessly. Finally, he spoke. “Why would you ask that, Riona? Why now?”
She closed her eyes against his gentle inspection.
“I wish I knew more,” she said, opening her eyes. “I wish I could please you.”
He looked at her quizzically as if he heard more than the words she spoke, discerned the near desperate love she felt for him.
“I don’t want you to be anything more than who you are, Riona,” he said tenderly. “Just to be you. That is pleasure enough.”
He entered her then and she was overpowered by the sensation. Wordlessly, he slid from her, then returned, the slow undulation of her hips beginning as if by magic or sorcery.
Her hands were on his shoulders, her fingers curving to grip him with her nails.
Her lips were clamped over a soft moan, but when he kissed her, she heatedly returned it.
The feeling grew within her until it was more powerful than reason or reputation, graying her vision and flooding her body with light.
A siren’s call to bliss that she couldn’t help but obey.
Hours, or minutes, later, they dressed again, neither speaking amid the tasks of tucking, lacing, braiding. Yet the mood between them had changed subtly. Neither joyful nor condemnatory, rather it had become solemn, as if the darkness around them had colored their thoughts.
But Riona didn’t speak and neither did James, for which she was profoundly grateful. What could she have said to him?
Stay with me and be my lover. This shall be our trysting place. Ours alone.
Not a role a man like James would accept. Not a road she should travel.
“It’s late,” she finally said.
He nodded, agreeing wordlessly.
He retrieved his horse, and they descended the path to the Witch’s Well and beyond, to Tyemorn Manor.
“We never blessed your land.”
“Yes, we did,” he said, and they exchanged a look. She was the first to glance away.
The rest of the journey was made in silence, both of them walking with his horse trailing behind. From time to time their hands would brush, and cling, then part. Once, he pushed a tendril of hair back from her face and she brushed at his jacket sleeve to remove a blade of grass.
Back at the house she waited until he’d removed the saddle from his horse and settled it for the night before walking in companionable silence to the rear of the house.
They entered by the kitchen door to find that Abigail and Polly had returned before them. Both women were still dressed in their finery, and each of them was staring down into a deep bowl of wine where two blocks of charred wood rested.
“I didn’t think you would believe in that custom, Polly,” Riona teased. “I thought you said that it would take a rare man to coax you into matrimony again.”
“It would at that,” Polly agreed, retrieving her block from the wine and placing it on a stack of old toweling to drain. “But I see no reason not to be prepared just in case it happens.”
At James’s look, Riona explained. “The wood comes from one of the bonfires,” she said.
“In the morning,” Polly added, “we’ll break the wood open and the color inside will be the shade of our true love’s hair.”
Abigail fished out her block and stood staring at it, smiling.
“Would you like to try, Riona?”
She shook her head. What was the use? The shade of her true love’s hair would be black, his eyes would be blue, and he would be the most handsome man she’d ever seen.
But he wouldn’t be the man she’d marry.