Chapter 10 #4
showed in the southern sky, “what would you choose?”
“Hmmm. I’d like to own land with good, arable
acreage to farm, grazing land for sheep, cattle, and horses, and to
have a glassmaking shop that would specialize in spyglass lenses
and roof panes for greenhouses, and a trading ship or three to
trade our wares all over the world.”
“Our wares?”
He tucked her into his shoulder and kissed
the top of her head. “Our wares. Our glass. Our land. Our keep. Our
stable full of horses, cats, and goats. Our bairns.”
Alina, who’d always assumed she’d marry and
have children someday without feeling the burning desire so many
other girls had, laid a hand over her belly where Roark’s seed may
have already taken hold. “I like your dream,” she said.
“What would you choose?”
“You.” She ran her fingers through his beard
and turned his face to hers. “I love you, Roark. I would choose to
be with you all of my days and nights.”
He smiled, slow and easy, and more than a
little sad. “I would choose the same, Ali love,” he said. “While we
may not have all our days and nights to be together, we have
tonight, and we have now.” He nodded toward the pot of stew
simmering over the fire. “How much time do we have right now?”
She gave the stew a stir and grinned back at
him. “Long enough,” she said.
Up to two nights ago, Alina would have said
the spyglass was her favorite appendage of Roark’s. But that had
changed when she’d touched his cock and felt it grow and pulse in
her hand. When she’d held it as he shuddered and spilt his hot
seed. When she’d licked and nipped, and sucked and swallowed his
yeasty essence. When she’d taken his engorged cock deep inside of
her and he’d filled her with a need she’d never known she had.
She ran a finger along the inside of his
waistband, licking her lips with anticipation as her new favorite
appendage rose to meet her fingertip, her laughter low and sultry
as he pulled her tunic up and over her head and then doffed his
own. They both stood and shucked their boots and breeches and then
fell onto the bedrolls together.
“What do you want, my lady owl?” he whispered
roughly as he lay on top of her, his thick erection pressing
against her belly.
Alina spread her legs beneath him. “You, sir
stag. All of you, inside me.”
After… They lay together on the bedrolls
staring up at the stars in the clearing sky, the stew eaten and the
campfire burned to embers. Roark pointed north and west to the Lady
in the Chair. “If anything happens to me before we find you a
ship,” he said, “I want you to go to the MacLeods’ at Silver Water
Keep.”
“Why?”
Roark chuckled at her why. “You’re Oona the
Swan’s great-granddaughter. They’re kin. They’ll help you.”
Alina knew her great-grandmother had come
from the Green Isles, but she’d never heard the name of her home,
or where in the Green Isles it was. Other than knowing Oona’s
story, her family had never had any contact with their Green Isles
kin from four generations back.
“What if they don't believe me?” she said. “I
have no proof she’s my great-grandmother.”
“The tales all tell of her big, beautiful,
emerald green eyes,” he said, holding her gaze. “One look into
those green eyes of yours and they’ll know.”
“I suppose.” The women in Alina’s family were
known for the unusual color of their eyes, and though uncommon,
green eyes weren’t unheard of here in the Green Isles.
“If your eyes don’t convince them, sing
‘Somebody’ for them. There’s not a man in this world who could deny
you anything if you sang that song to them.”
“Perhaps.” Roark was the only man she’d ever
sung “Somebody” to, the only man she could ever imagine singing it
to. “Perhaps I could sing ‘The Sailors Tale’ if it comes to
that.”
He sat up and stared down at her, his eyes
shining silver in the low glow of the fire’s embers. “Promise me,”
he said, somber, serious. “I want you to promise me that you’ll
sing whatever song it takes, that you’ll do and say whatever you
must to survive and get back to your family.”
“I promise.”
He pulled the vial of White Milk from his
pocket and held it out to her. “Take this,” he said. “Take it,” he
repeated, placing the vial in her hand and closing her fingers
around it. “You know how to use it, for yourself or anybody else,
should the need arise.”
Alina nodded, knowing he meant if they were
captured and about to be tortured or executed, or in her case,
raped, she could take it herself to numb the horror and the pain.
Or to escape forever into oblivion.
“Why are you giving this to me, now?” she
asked him.
“They would’ve buried Leif two days ago,” he
said. “Burying his son was the only thing keeping Roger from
sending everything, everyone after us. Or coming after us himself.”
He stared hard into her eyes. “I know Roger. He spent the past
twenty years nursing his grudge and planning his revenge against
your parents. He’s never going to stop looking for us, for you,
until he or we are dead. I wanted to tell you this now to make you
understand before something happened. Before it’s too late.”