Mystic Rider (38 page)

Setting her back down again, Ian smiled in response to the
gasps drifting up from their audience. Even Chantal glanced warily at the
fronds now waving in a gentle breeze.

“Perhaps chaos is simply not knowing what to expect,” he
said cheerfully as he guided her into the shaded, flower-lined shrubbery. “We
need new thoughts and ideas and people like you and your father to challenge us
with them. I can see you now, raining plaster on the Council’s heads when they
defy us. Or perhaps you could just crack their eardrums occasionally. Or better
yet, make them dance jigs upon their chairs!”

“
You
are the one
hallucinating, not me,” she muttered.

“Fine, then, don’t believe me. But next time my family
begins sniping like that — and they will look for an excuse to do just that — I
want you to think of Anton and Marie, or maybe Trystan’s twins. Hum prettily,
or play a happy tune on your flute. Humor me and try, please?”

“May I think of them dancing jigs in their chairs?” she
asked spitefully, although a smile tugged at her lips.

“That might be asking too much for a first try, but if it
makes my lovely bride happy…” Unreasonably cheerful, Ian caught her shoulders
and pointed out the temple of the gods in an oleander-lined clearing. “Tonight,
at that altar, we will formalize the vows we’ve made, I will give you my family
ring, and we will conceive our first child. All else is irrelevant for now.”

Chantal stared at him. “I’m not in the habit of marrying mad
princes.”

His smile never dimmed as he stroked her dainty nose. “You
already have, my lady. Until eternity, if you’ll recall.”

* * *

Those
had been
marriage vows? But there had been no priest —

Later, the steam and incense of the grotto brought it all
back — Ian’s seduction, the bath, the giddy promises they had both uttered as he
taught her body to climb to heights she’d never previously explored.

Marriage vows. She’d uttered them without a qualm….

And would do so again. The realization brought a kind of
peace, as if all the mislaid bits of her world had fallen into place. They were
promised to each other, if only in their hearts.

Standing on the edge of the dark pool, Ian slid Chantal’s
bodice off her shoulders just as he had that first night. “You may argue until
you turn blue, my love.” He kissed her bare shoulder, and she shivered with the
passion already building between them. “But this
obsession
we share is the result of those vows.”

He shoved bodice and skirt to her feet and pressed both his
thumbs to her midsection. “You feel me here, just as I feel you here.” He
lifted her hands and flattened them against the shirt covering the hard muscle
of his waist. “It is a physical connection as well as a spiritual one, and can
be severed only with death. And that is only an assumption, since we cannot
know how the dead feel. Amacara bonds are quite rare, and I know none who share
them again after a spouse is lost, so it may last into eternity as the vow
promises. We are blessed with such a bond.”

They were blessed with a passion for lovemaking that
transcended all reasonable bounds, but Chantal did not think he meant that. Her
hands trembled as she pushed up his shirt to stroke his flesh. “
Blessed
is not the word I would use,”
she said with an edge of hysteria. “We made no choices, no decisions based on
logic and what is right. You have reason to regret that vow.”

He shrugged and unhooked her corset. “I am learning that
sometimes our hearts understand more clearly than our heads. I have faith that
the gods would not choose unwisely.”

Untying her chemise, he lifted her from her feet to suckle
at the nipple he’d bared, and Chantal moaned in hunger, catching his wide
shoulders for balance.

“Ian!” His mother’s voice echoed from the cave’s entrance, but
she was barred from entering by the barrier Ian had said he drew from the
earth. “You cannot exchange vows unless I initiate her.”

Chantal stiffened and tried to push away. As if prepared for
this intrusion, Ian refused to release her. “Chantal is a widow and no virgin,”
he called back. “She has no need of your rites any more than I do. I can anoint
her as required.”

Without waiting for his mother’s reply, he lowered Chantal
into the grotto’s steaming water, where the only sounds she heard were the
bubbling of the spring and the happy humming of her heart. As Ian began to
strip off his clothes, the protests inside and out silenced without a whimper.

She might despise arrogant princes, be terrified of
dangerous queens and the mother-in-law from hell, regret losing her home and
her family, and have no rational reason to marry this man, but he was right
about one thing. The bond between them required no thought.

And she trusted him, as she had from the very first.

She opened her arms as he stepped into the water beside her,
pressed her wet breasts to his chest, and let nature take its course.

Tomorrow, chaos might reign, but today, she could pretend
they were the only two people on the planet and all was well.

“My head spins,” Chantal whispered later that evening as
Ian lifted her from the bliss of the grotto’s mineral-infused water into the
cloud of herb-laden incense.

“Do you see the stars?” Ian asked, needing to know how deep
the connection was between them. They’d made love with their hands and their
mouths, but he’d resisted planting his seed in her womb until the stars were in
their proper place and the gods were ready.

“I do,” she said in wonder. Closing her eyes, she rested her
head on his shoulder, and he relished this moment of her vulnerability. She was
strong, as she had to be, but he loved that she trusted him enough to lower her
defenses with him. “They seem to be talking to me,” she murmured.

Ian hugged her tighter. “As they do to me. Our bond
tightens. I must warn you that what we do tonight can be dangerous since
neither of us can predict your gifts or know which ones we will share between
us. But if you are already seeing the stars as I do, there is no turning back.”

“You see stars? Do you understand them?”

“I do. They led me to you. I cannot always understand
clearly, but sometimes there is no denying their meaning.”

They’d fasted since breakfast, but together they’d consumed
the traditional potion he’d mixed. It contained mildly hallucinatory herbs and
aphrodisiacs and made Ian’s head spin. The mixture was useful for virgins and
reluctant mates, and expected as part of the amacara ceremony. In this
instance, he thought it could be useful for tempering the merging of their
gifts so as not to frighten his intended. He’d foregone all other traditions so
as to keep Chantal and her revealing mark to himself, but he saw no reason to
neglect the incense and potion if they might lead to greater insight and
safety.

“Do you understand what the stars are saying now?” she asked
dreamily as he carried her down the shell-strewn path to the altar.

She was naked in his arms. Although the rising wind of a
storm cooled their overheated flesh, he’d seen no necessity in dressing for a
ceremony that only the two of them would attend. The same barriers he used to
block the grotto could be used to block any who came this way and to provide
barriers of privacy at the temple. Perhaps in ancient times, public beddings
were common, but no longer.

Despite all they’d done together, he burned with the desire
to touch and taste her all over. “I am not listening to anything except the
rush of blood as it flees my head,” he admitted.

“I feel as if a river of fire flows through me,” she agreed.
“And the river’s mouth is between my legs. Hurry.”

He did. If the task of the aphrodisiac was to draw his blood
and all other sensation downward, it was succeeding. His erection strained to
bursting and preceded him like a tree trunk. At last he knew the torment he’d
put countless other couples through at the gods’ behest when he’d performed the
rituals preparing them for their vows. He struggled to remember that this was
an act of faith and procreation, but reason was rapidly diminishing to a feeble
thread.

“Hurry,” she whispered again, or perhaps it was the wind
rustling in the trees.

A night bird called, and another answered. Heavy clouds
swirled around Aelynn’s peak, and the air was sharp with the welcome scent of
rain. The woman in his arms was all ripe breasts, rounded hips, and graceful
legs, and smelled of vanilla and honey. His sex throbbed and rose still higher
when she wiggled in his arms to press her nipples into his chest.

He thought he might burst before they reached the altar. He
didn’t remember the temple being so far away. He might have to stop right here
on the path and —

As he finally stumbled into the clearing, he saw that torches
had been discreetly lit in the shrubbery. Lissandra would have seen to that, if
only out of her duty as temple priestess. The altar gleamed soft and welcoming
in the dancing light. Created of some sponge-like matter by the gods, the bed
on which Aelynn’s spirits waited looked firm yet gave easily. He laid Chantal
upon it, and she immediately tightened her grip around his neck and tugged him
down.

“Now, please,” she said urgently, spreading her legs so the
flower of her sex beckoned. He climbed upon the bed and kneeled between her
thighs, his organ of reproduction straining to penetrate the blossom in a
ceremony as old as time.

“The vows first,” he retained sufficient willpower to say.

Although he had no approval from the Council, he did not hesitate
over which vows to finalize, those of wife or amacara. He’d had a lifetime of
isolation to recognize that he could never share a cold, rational marriage with
a Council-chosen woman after the passion Chantal had showed him. And he’d had
enough nights without her in his bed to understand that sending her away would
destroy him.

He did not need the heavens to tell him that he would
sacrifice his life to keep her.

“By Aelynn’s will,” he intoned before his gods and hers, “I
take thee for amacara, keeper of my children, and as wife, keeper of my soul. Hear
me, Aelynn, for I am yours to do with as you will.”

The cloud-hidden stars seemed to chime their approval as he
leaned forward to caress Chantal’s breasts. It would make sense that the
heavens would play music for his amacara. He waited with his heart in his
throat for her to repeat the words he’d taught her.

“I take thee for husband, keeper of my body and soul,” she
said carefully, staring up at him with eyes glazed in rapture and expectation.
“And amacara, father of my children, from now until the gods decree.”

Overhead, thunder rolled, echoing the approval of the stars.

In relief and joy, Ian slipped his family’s ring over her
heart finger, and kissed her thoroughly, claiming her as an Aelynner and his own.
The delicate music of the stars filled his ears, underscored by the deep bass
of heavy drums. Her father’s approval, apparently. All on the island would know
that the Orateurs had returned.

This was it, the moment Ian had been waiting for his entire
life, the binding of heart and soul and body into one and the resulting
creation of new life. He didn’t need the aphrodisiac racing through his blood
to complete this joining. The song on Chantal’s lips sang in his heart. Cupping
her buttocks, he angled her hips to meet his, and thrust high and deep until
she cried out with her surprise and pleasure.

With none but the gods and the spirits watching them, they
mated beneath the whirling clouds, to the beat of drums and the roll of distant
thunder. Their cries mixed with those of the night birds as the potion worked
through their blood and poured from their skin, forced out by the binding
strength of their promises and the desire to be as one.

As the moment of completion rose within them, Ian lowered
Chantal’s hips and covered her completely with his weight. With the power of
the gods overtaking him, he held her arms pinned to the giving bed until she
writhed and arched and clawed. He drove his teeth into her shoulder like the
panther he’d been called, then licked the wound he’d made bleed.

She moaned and shuddered and arched higher, still possessing
him so deeply he thought they could never come asunder. He held himself taut,
letting her thrust and circle and plead until he could bear no more.

Giving himself to the elements, Ian threw back his head and
let lightning enter his body.

* * *

Chantal screamed a long and haunting cry as Ian’s sex
plunged a path to her heart, thunder boomed, and a bolt of lightning
illuminated the clearing like daylight. Electricity raised the hair on her arms
and traveled through Ian into her, burning through blocked passages into her
womb, making her whole.

Ian howled his release, pounding into her repeatedly until
she jerked and shuddered and saw stars where there were none. As every muscle
in her body convulsed, his seed spilled deep inside her.

But the hot flood of moisture was as nothing compared to the
melding of her mind and body with Ian’s. She felt him inside her in ways that
she could never express, saw his stars, felt his heart beat inside her chest,
recognized the strangeness of his male member jutting between her legs. She
felt his wonder, and oddly, his disappointment.

Perhaps sex made one insane. She couldn’t explain what was
happening in any other way. The distant drumming entwined with the thunder,
surging through her veins like a heated elixir. And still, she held him.

Chiming notes of harmony and accord rang through the
clearing, mating with the loud bongs of deeper instruments in an inexplicable
chorus as she absorbed Ian’s life force joining with hers in a manner that made
her whole again.

“Have I hurt you?” he asked worriedly as the first drops of
rain pattered the stones.