The O'Madden: A Novella (The Celtic Legends Series) (2 page)

To give her body over entirely
.

Though she opened her mouth
, she couldn’t say the words. She couldn’t look into those blue eyes and let the man know that she was willing to lie under him as freely as any laundress at fair-time. The words wouldn’t come— she did not know them. Glenna must be cackling from the shadows now, seeing her as wordless as old Sean who had lost his tongue to English cruelty.

She opened her mou
th to say something, anything, but his lips silenced her.

Shock bolted through her
. He tightened his fingers in her hair to fix her in place under his kiss. The turnip-lantern slipped out of her hand and tumbled to the ground. The stubble of his jaw razed her cheek, her chin—a caress both gentle and rough, like the lick of a cat’s tongue. Every bone in her body softened. She swayed into the wall of a chest so wide and so strong a woman could lay a world full of troubles on it and he’d never feel the weight. He tasted of fresh yeasty ale. His skin smelled of salt-sea breezes and exotic spices. Cinnamon. Ginger.

As soon as it began
, it was over. The world spun as the hot breath of the Samhain fires coursed between them.

“You have lips of milk and honey, little
Maire.” He traced the curve of her lower lip with a callused thumb. “Better to have silence than to curdle the silence with half-truths.”

Her lips swelled as tender as a bruise.
His blue gaze roamed over her face. She felt as translucent as the waters of the Nenagh stream, which gave no cover to the roll and clash of the pebbles on the river-bottom.

He loosened his grip in her hair.
“The tale says I’ve now imprisoned myself with a fairy’s kiss. I’m lost to all my kith and kin.” He nudged her cloak aside, curled his hand around her arm, and then slid his fingers between her own. “They say the Otherworld is full of youthful pleasures. A place where time stops. A place where a man and a woman can live a lifetime in a day. If you’ll have me, lass, I’ll go there with you willingly.”

He waited and watched
. She felt as if she stood waist-deep in a river during spring flood, when the first wave of mountain water gushed down from the hillside, as if her feet had been swept out from under her and she was being buoyed along in a current with no hope of catching a branch or touching the bottom. Her body coursed with a roiling brew of fear and excitement, with the giddy exultation of being pushed along in the strong hands of a greater power.

She never imagined it would
be as simple as this.

She tightened h
er fingers over his and then swept up the turnip-gourd with her free hand. She swiveled away from the light and headed toward the shadows of the thin woods, past Glenna’s silent figure, as still and as solid as an oak.

Away from the blast of the fire,
the forest floor crackled beneath her feet. She tugged the giant in her wake as she wound her way through the trees. His hand, thick-palmed, tough with many a day’s honest labor, lay hot on hers. Soon she’d feel those hands on places no man had ever touched. Muddled thoughts of forbidden bedtime fantasies set her breath hitching in her throat.

Here at last
she could set that secret part of herself free. In these woods redolent of oak-spice she’d know the love-secrets which glowed on the faces of the village girls the morning after Samhain. She’d finally feel the touch of a man who didn’t look up at her and then quickly look down in deference. In this moment in time with this looming hulk of a stranger, she would know a taste of paradise.

Strangely, she had no fear
. It had slipped away the moment she’d looked into his honest face. No shiftless tinker, this one. No foul-breathed laggard. The easy smile on those rugged features spoke of a man with a sense of humor, a man who knew and accepted the frailties of humanity and even admitted a few of his own. God’s gift, he was. Lord knew she’d deserved one for the fate she’d been doomed with.

She l
ed him over the rib of the hill where the voices and the laughter of the Samhain fire dimmed, right to an ancient felled oak. Ivy seeped from the decaying log where lightning had split it open. Here, the lush grass lay like fairy-hair, sheened by the moonlight in silver. When she and Glenna had arrived in this village yesterday, Maeve had spent a good hour before dusk roaming these hills. She’d discovered this isolated, private place, and in the detailed way she’d planned this whole evening, she’d decided that it would happen here. She had wondered if she would actually make it this far, or if her mate would press her down behind the nearest gorse bush and have done with it. She told herself it didn’t matter so long as the deed was done.

Now
it
did
matter. It pleased her that this giant had followed her so silently. It spoke well of the man that he had the patience to wait for his pleasure. She nestled the turnip gourd on a bed of ivy. The flame glowed bright as tallow oozed out. A gust of wind swept across the clearing, setting the flame to flickering.

They had so little time.

And yet he paused. He released her hand and trailed to the edge of the hillside. The moon pearled the slopes and inked the shadows of the valley a deep blue. A stream silvered its way across the darkness like a still bolt of lightning. On a distant hill a spark of orange glowed— another village’s All Hallows’ Eve fire.

He
murmured, “You know these lands well.”

She cast her gaze down,
letting him believe what he would.

“A m
an might think that you’ve led me through the veils to
Tír na nÓg
.”

“A woman,” she whispered, “might think you believe in the illusions of a child’s imagination.”

“This valley is no illusion.” He breathed in the crisp autumn air. “In my life, I’ve never seen such a majestic place.”

She peered past him
to the landscape cast in the moon’s glow. “Are the fairies playing tricks on you, with you seeing castles in common pasturage?”

“You must have
lived here all your life if you don’t know how uncommon such beauty is.”

She gazed over the landscape, thinking aye, the moon cast a veil of silver upon the hills, but surely the sight was as simple as grass. She found herself wondering again what kind of place he came from that he found such beauty in tilled fields and sod huts.
As he turned and looked at her again, he chased the curiosity from her mind.

“We’ve traveled far afield of hearth and bonfire, lass.”

She hoped the sheen of the moon would not reveal the darkening of her cheeks.

“A man might think you don’t fear the creatures of this night,” he continued. “A man might think you’ve bewitched me, only to turn into a swan or a white cow, come morning.”

“I have the lantern to protect us,” she said, thinking h
ow strange it was that this rough-handed giant knew of the gentle side of the old Irish tales, when most men spoke only of the legends of gore and war: The Fenian warriors, the bloody feats of Cu Chulainn, the lost honor of King Cormac.

“That
lantern,” he said, “will long sputter out by the time we’re done.”

“By then
I will have you to keep me safe.”

She couldn’t b
elieve what she’d just said. Yet the words shimmered between them, sparking a gleam in his eye, curling a smile up one side of his mouth. A smile that spoke of intimate knowledge, as if he’d danced this dance a thousand times before and savored each move. She began to tremble, from much, much more than the cold.

“Fairies don’t shiver.” He swept open his cape. “Come. I’ve room enough in this cloak for two.”

He folded the cloak around her like great black wings. She found herself pillowed in a burrow of warmth, her senses swimming with the spiced-cider scent of him.

“No fairy, this,” he muttered, splaying his hands across her back. “I feel the heat of your blood.”

His lips trailed down her temple and over her cheek. She turned her head to meet his mouth, but he teased her by grazing her lips then moving on to kiss her eyes, her brow, and then down the other side of her face. His lips pulled a strand of her hair, damp from his kisses, across her eyes. She turned her face again, seeking those lips. He captured her upper lip in his mouth and then pressed his forehead against hers.

“You’re a rare feast, little fairy.” He brushed a tress off the corner of her lips. “I’ll taste the full of you before the night is through.”

He sucked on her trembling lip as his words drew a world full of pictures in her head. Her body trembled, trembled, she couldn’t seem to stop it—the warmer she became in the cocoon of his cloak, the more she trembled, as if she were shaking off some brittle shell to reveal the creature within, this bold and fearless woman who pressed close to this man’s body as if she knew exactly what she wanted.

He
passed one hand down the length of her hair, beneath the fall of her cloak, into the hollow of her back, which was aching and tender. Everywhere he touched swelled, rising to the merest brush of those callused hands. She flattened her hands against his chest and felt the hammer of his heart beneath the layers of wool. She ran her fingers up, up, over those shoulders while the rest of her body quivered. Still he teased her with kisses along her jaw. Still he teased her until her lips tingled.

When she could bear it no longer, she
dared to put her hands on either side of his face and guide his lips toward hers. She kissed silent his husky, knowing laugh. She kissed him quiet, kissed him until he kissed her back, until a trill of urgency shimmered between them.

He
lifted her from the ground. “We can do it your way, fairy-woman, if that’s your pleasure this night.”

She had only a moment to wonder what she’d unleashed when he strode back toward the fallen log and the flickering spark of the turnip-gourd, with her breasts crushed against his chest and her legs dangling beneath the sweep of his cloak
. Her face was level with his, so she could see his eyes so turbulent and intense with only a shadow of humor remaining.

Then the world tilted. T
he bare boughs of the trees swung into her vision and the grass gave beneath her back. He swooped down upon her and his cloak fluttered down to shroud them in warmth.

He th
rust his thigh between her legs so high that she found herself arching into him. Then came what she’d expected of the night—the swift eager press of hands on her body, the rushed tug of laces, and his hot breath against her face. He’d offered her the tenderness she’d thought she would crave, and now she thanked God and the stars that he’d given her instead this hungry eager mating.

What she hadn’t expected was that
she would want
him
—and what he was going to do to her—like she’d never wanted anything before. She welcomed his tongue into her mouth, drew it in, let her own tongue seek the warmth inside his mouth, too. When he finally thrust his hand beneath her kirtle and scraped his callused palm over her breast, she moaned with thrill of it, and felt her nipple tighten to a peak.

This
is madness, this is
madness
. This must be the same hungry lust that animated all those young people by the fires—but no, it felt like more than that. She sensed even in her madness that when this loving was over it wouldn’t leave dry, dusty ashes.

Crazed, disjointed th
oughts flew through her mind. A man shouldn’t have hair so soft. How sweet the grass smelled crushed beneath them. Oh, what was he doing, scraping his fingers up her leg, over her knee, beyond her thigh? She shifted her weight so she could better feel his hips against hers. Then his fingers splayed over the joint between her leg and hip, and she found herself letting her legs fall open, welcoming whatever he would do with his hand.

What he d
id with his hand made her squeeze her eyes shut. What he kept doing made her arch up against his palm, hungry for more. She dug her fingers into his back and sucked chill air into her lungs only to breathe it out like fire. A sound rumbled in his chest and suddenly he was tearing at his clothes, shifting his weight off her only to shift it back on her again. With one fierce tug he hiked her skirts to her waist. She felt the brush of his hose against her naked thighs, and, as he guided her knees open on either side of his hips, she felt something else. She felt
him,
hard and insistent and nudging the place where she needed him most.

No thoughts of duty kept
her stoic now. No hesitation. All that existed in this silvery clearing was Maeve the woman, the man she’d chosen, and this passion she’d never known herself capable of.

She cried out
in pain at the first thrust of his hips, but the moment passed in an instant. He said something, an exclamation muffled in the sweep of her hair, then buried himself in her again. She squeezed her eyes shut at the unfamiliar tightness that felt so very right. She did what instinct bid her and arched up to meet his next thrust. He gasped and gripped her by the hip and moved his body against hers, sliding himself out and easing himself in, at first slowly, then faster, while her heart thundered against his.