Chapter 10 #3
together was preordained by our circumstances in life. Yet here we
are. And I’m glad I’m holed up with you, because no matter what
happens, I’ve loved and been loved by you.”
“Damnation.” Roark pulled her onto his lap
and kissed her with everything he felt, everything he had in him.
“It’s been the privilege of my life to have met you and loved you,
and been loved by you, my lady owl.”
Her gaze was as deep and fathomless as the
sea they’d crossed together. She straddled his hips and untied her
stays then lay back and pulled off her breeches as Roark did the
same with his. When he was sitting again, she climbed onto his lap,
her hot, wet flesh nuzzling his cock.
“Make love to me, sir stag,” she murmured.
“Let me feel the full measure of you.”
“Ali girl…”
She rubbed herself up and down against him.
“Did you know,” she said, smiling sensually, “that ever since my
great-grandmother, Oona the Swan, proposed marriage to Asad the
Lion the first night they met, that one or the other of my
grandparents and parents proposed to the other the first times they
met too?”
“No,” Roark said, finding it hard to
concentrate. “I didn’t know that.”
“It’s true,” she said, rubbing any semblance
of sense out of him. “You asked me the first time we met in person,
on Spring’s Eve, by the lake.”
“You started to say yes,” he rasped.
“I’m saying yes now,” she said, her voice low
and throaty. “Here, in our own little world, where only we matter,
I’m saying yes. Make me your wife. Be my husband.”
Roark blew out his breath and held Alina by
the shoulders, locking gazes with her, trying to think rationally.
To make them both see reason. “What about when we walk out of this
cave and into the real world full of consequences and
repercussions?”
Ali, sweet, sensible, rational, reasonable
Ali, shook her head. “I don’t care,” she told him. “I don’t care
about anything outside of these walls right now. All I care about
is you and me, and I want you stones deep inside me. All of you.
Now.”
She lifted onto her knees and held herself
over his straining cock, and then she touched her wet, warm flesh
to his and Roark gripped her shoulders. She smiled, slow, sure, and
sensuous, as she lowered herself onto him bit by sleek, hot,
welcoming bit, until he was fully sheathed inside her, her intimate
muscles contracting around him.
Roark groaned and clasped her to him. “Ach,
Ali love,” he rumbled. “You have undone me.”
***
Alina woke to birdsong and sunlight streaming
through the cave’s entrance, but the fire was out and Roark was
gone. The storm had calmed to a light drizzle sometime after
midnight, while inside the cave their personal storm had built and
spent many times over. She yawned, stretched, and ran her hands
down her naked body, sighing and grinning with the newfound
knowledge of the pleasures her body was capable of giving and
receiving.
She stood and dressed in her tunic and
breeches and stepped out into the new day, ready for anything,
until she saw Roark’s face as he was saddling the horses.
“You should have woken me,” she said as he
laid Etain’s saddle over the mare’s back. “I could have helped with
the horses.” She cinched the strap around the mare’s belly and then
stepped over to Artur as Roark heaved the saddle onto the stallion.
“Roark?” He put his forehead into Artur’s side and cinched the
saddle strap. “Roark” she said again, waiting for him to look at
her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said, looking away from her
while sheathing his short sword at the saddle. She stepped around
Artur and laid a hand over his. “Everything.” He pulled his hand
out from under hers and ran it back through his hair. “Last night
should never have happened.”
Alina’s heart dropped to her feet. Last night
had been the most wonderful, amazing night of her life. She’d
thought he’d felt the same. He’d certainly acted like it at the
time. He’d even called her his love. “What do you mean?” she asked,
her voice cracking almost as badly as her heart.
“I never should’ve let things go as far as
they did,” he said. “I knew better. I knew how hard it would be to
stop once I let myself start with you.”
“Are you saying you regret last night?”
“Yes.”
Her body went cold and her mind went numb.
She stood rooted, her vision unfocused, trying to suck air into her
lungs.
“Ali.”
“Why?” she cried. “Why would you say that to
me?”
He reached for her hand and she slapped his
away.
“Ali, love.”
“No.” She shook her head and glared at him.
“You cannot tell me you regret making love to me and then call me
love.”
“Ali, lass,” he said, his voice soft, his
eyes pouring into hers. “I could never regret making love to you.
What I regret was losing control, going against my word and my oath
to not take your maidenhead. Spilling my seed inside you and
chancing getting you pregnant with a child. My child.” He pulled
her to him, holding her tight, and whispered in her ear, “I love
you, Ali. I have since the moment I first saw you. I love you so
much it pains me because I know I have to let you go. I have to
send you away from me and back to your family.”
Alina sniffed. “What if I do end up pregnant
with your child?”
“Will your family accept it, accept you,
without a husband?”
Alina didn’t even have to think. “Yes,” she
said without hesitation. She held his worried gaze, her own
pleading. “Come with me,” she begged. “Marry me. Raise our child,
our children, together in the Northlands.”
“I cannot.”
“Cannot or will not?”
“I cannot come with you, love, because I will
not leave my family to suffer the consequences of my actions. I
have to stay and make things right.”
“Roger will kill you.”
“It’s verra likely.”
Alina clasped him tight and made her own
silent oath. She didn’t know how she would accomplish it, but she
knew she wasn’t going to let Roark die for her. She damned sure
wasn't going to let him die for Leif.
***
Alina pulled her otter-skin cloak closer
around her shoulders as they rode up the mountain's southern slope.
The wind was raw and the air chilled, but they wouldn’t suffer from
lack of food or water as the high woods of birch and pine were
filled with small game and birdsong, and the hillsides crisscrossed
with rills and streams overflowing with rainwater. Etain, carrying
the lighter Alina, was having an easier time traversing the
slogging wet, muddy terrain than the heavier Artur carrying Roark.
But like his master, the stallion was strong, sturdy, and
sure-footed.
They stopped by a small lake at noon, and
Roark set a snare while Alina watered the horses and staked them to
graze. They ate the last of the cooked field beans and Alina
scoured the mountainside with the spyglass while Roark checked his
snare and came back with a hare.
“I’ll set another snare when we camp for the
night,” he said, tying the hare to his saddle.
“The roots your mother gave us will make a
good rabbit stew,” Alina said. “And there’s plenty of fresh greens
along the waterways.”
They’d lost a day and a half of travel time
because of the storm, and almost half of today because of their
late start this morning, part of which was them waking up late and
the other part their argument, which had ended with Roark declaring
his love.
A declaration she would hold close and dear
until her dying day, which hopefully would be many years from now.
He’d said he regretted consummating their love, but he hadn’t said
it couldn’t happen again. She was determined to make sure it did.
If she was going to have to spend the rest of her life without him,
then she wanted to get as much of him as she could for as long as
she could.
She mounted Etain and resumed their trek up
the mountain, keeping an eye out for other riders and dreaming of
the night to come. Memories of their lovemaking warming her from
the inside out.
They topped the mountain pass as the sun was
dipping below the western horizon and rode on until dark, following
a stream and making camp in a copse of oak. Alina filled the pot
with water, roots, and sorrel leaves she’d picked along the stream
while Roark dressed the hare, and then she put the pot over the
fire to cook and snuggled up against him on the bedrolls, staring
up at the few stars peeking out amongst the clouds.
“If you could do or be anything in our world
of no consequences or repercussions,” she asked him as the Hunter