Bride for a Knight (30 page)

She shivered at the deliciousness of that possibility, but before she could encourage him, he stopped flashing his wicked-eyed smile and frowned.

“You are cold,” he said, clearly misinterpreting her shiver.

“Nay, I am fine.” She lifted her chin, trying to appear as
un
-cold as possible.

Looking unconvinced, he dropped down beside her and slid an arm around her, drawing her close against him. “I won’t have you uncomfortable,” he said, stroking her hair. “We can ride on to Baldreagan now, going straight to Kendrick’s chamber when we return. Though . . .”

He let the words tail off and glanced over at the well and its tumbled outcropping, the stones gleaming white against the black pine wood rising so darkly behind them.

Even the ancient pagan altar stone, cracked, slanting, and half-covered with moss, shimmered bright in the moon glow.

“Though?” She followed his gaze, for one fleeting moment looking as if she, too, were not seeing just the stones and the well, but peering into a distant past.

A long ago time when the old Celtic gods would have called this glade their own.

At the thought, gooseflesh rose on Jamie’s arms and the tiny hairs on his nape lifted. His senses alert, he raised a hand to rub the back of his neck, his gaze scanning the dark edge of the encircling trees.

Trees he could well imagine dressed in Druid mist—or bearing silent witness to the mysterious rites of the ancients.

Truth was, he almost believed they still held sway here.

That they’d only slipped away for a few hours and would soon return, their fair voices in the music of the wind, their cautious, watching presence hidden in the soft blue haze that e’er cloaked the hills.

“Though you would rather stay here?” Aveline persisted, watching him closely, almost as if she felt it, too.

“To be sure, I meant to stay here . . . a while,” Jamie admitted, reaching to touch her hair again. “But I’ll no’ risk you catching a chill. See you, I—” He broke off again, shaking his head to clear it of nonsense.

But even after a few good head shakes and manly denial, the damp grass beneath the plaid still felt warmer than it possibly could and he’d wager all his meals for a year if he honestly couldn’t detect a distinct humming deep in the ground beneath them.

He frowned.

His faery was smiling.

“Ach, lass,” he blurted, rushing the words, “there is something strange here. A warmth and shimmering in the ground that canna be, but is. I’d hope whate’er it is would warm you as well, that it would keep us from noticing the night’s cold if we—” He paused and blew out a frustrated breath. “But I saw you shiver—”

“I shivered because I want those things, too,” she said, leaning into him, lighting kisses along his jaw, down his neck. “And I do feel the warmth. As a Highlander, ’tis only natural that you noticed it, too.”

She pulled back then, looking over at the well. “’Tis Bride’s blessing, see you. Hers and the sun’s.”

“The sun’s?” Jamie’s brows arched.

She nodded and a vague memory stirred. Some fireside tale he’d heard as a lad, sung by Hughie Mac or maybe even Morag, he couldn’t recall.

“You’ve heard the tradition but have forgotten,” she said, glancing at him. “Shall I retell it for you?”

Jamie shrugged, interested indeed but not wishing to appear overeager to hear what he was sure could only be blether and nonsense.

Clearly thinking otherwise, she nodded solemnly and began. “Far back in time, some might even say farther back than forever, the Old Ones believed the sun disappeared beneath the waters of a night,” she said, her voice softening as she settled against him. “They thought the sun needed its rest, you see. But while the sun slept, the waters absorbed the sun’s healing power and strength, its warmth and beneficence.”

Jamie angled his head and narrowed one eye at her, skeptical. “Are you saying the sun slipped down into St. Bride’s well this e’en and is sleeping in its waters? Even now as we sit here?”

She smiled and kissed his nose. “I am saying that the ancient ones believed it, aye. Were they here, they would tell you that it is the underground sun’s power throbbing in the earth beneath us, its warmth taking the chill out of the ground we are sitting upon.”

“Because we are sitting so near to the well? The well where the sun is now sleeping?”

She nodded again.

Jamie did his best not to snort.

“And you think we feel this warmth and
earth-shimmying
because Bride is blessing us?”

“To be sure,” she said, her eyes lighting with a warmth even a thousand suns couldn’t match.

Sleeping or otherwise.

“Bride is pleased by our union and showing us.”

Jamie
humphed
. “’Tis you I’d wished to please this night.”

She smoothed her hand down his arm, then laced her fingers with his, squeezing lightly. “Are you still hungry?”

Jamie hardened at once, his entire body tightening.

“Och, aye, I have a ravenous hunger,” he admitted, putting Bride and her sleeping sun from his mind. “And I think you know what it is I’m craving.”

Her lashes fluttered and a quick flush swept into her cheeks, telling him she knew indeed. The sudden catching of her breath and the flash of excitement in her eyes giving him the permission he needed to indulge.

“Aye, I know—I think,” she said, banishing any lingering doubt.

Jamie grinned.

“Sweet lass, you willna be sorry.” He grabbed her face between his hands and kissed her deeply, a hard and hot tongue-tangling kiss, slaking and furious, sizzling in its intensity.

She returned the kiss with equal fervor, winding her arms around his neck and pressing close, so close he could feel her tightened nipples rubbing against his chest, a sweet torment that only increased his hunger for her.

Breaking the kiss at last, he pulled back to look at her, his breath coming hard and fast. He was fairly certain the whole of his heart must be standing in his eyes, staring right at her.

Trumpeting how much he wanted and adored her.

How deeply he’d fallen in love with her.

And he had.

Truth was, he’d barter his soul to know her safe, make her happy and see her rise each morn wearing naught but a smile and ne’er even a single care.

He drew a deep breath, certain
cares
of his own throbbing too insistently for him to wax romantic. That could come later, after he’d slaked his need to taste and savor her woman’s wetness. And after he’d done so often enough to leave her sleeping the whole morn through. Just the time he figured he needed to return to Hughie’s and also take a good look at the Garbh Uisge.

But first he’d look his fill on her.

“This, sapphire eyes, is what I meant by other ways for us to pleasure each other,” he said, doing just that as he pushed up her skirt. He slid his hands behind her knees, caressing the tender flesh there, then exploring higher, his breath catching when his fingers skimmed across dampness on the smooth, hot skin of her inner thighs.

“O-o-oh, that is sweet,” she breathed, lying back and arching her body for him. She even parted her legs, instinctively giving him greater access. “Don’t stop touching me.”

“Och, lass, I haven’t begun to touch you yet—no’ the way I mean to.” He looked down at her, deliberately letting a fold of her skirt dip down to shield her nakedness.

And she
was
naked beneath the modesty of that one wee skirt fold.

Her rich musky arousal drifted up between them and he could feel the melting heat of her. Even just kneeling on the plaid, gazing at her.

Och, aye, without doubt Aveline Matheson wore nothing but her own tender flesh and woman’s curls beneath her gown and he wasn’t quite ready to look fully on such sweetness.

He’d spill when he did. Leastways he suspected he would. Especially when he touched his mouth to her. So he kept her covered for the now and simply savored the sleek, smooth feel of her naked thighs, relishing how each time he slid his hands up and down them, they fell open just a wee bit more.

He wanted her opened as wide as possible when he settled himself between her legs and licked and nibbled his way from her knees up to the soft, fragrant center of her.

A center suddenly freed completely to his view when a particularly soft and warm-feeling wind swept across the glade. Sweet and fragrant as spring sunshine, but brisk enough to lift a certain skirt fold until the moon shone fully on the silky-curled triangle between her legs.

“O-o-oh, lass.” Jamie stared at her, incredible heat surging into his loins. “You leave me breathless!”

Not taking his gaze off of her, he reached to touch her, tracing a wondering finger down the very center of her, finding her sleek, slippery, and moist as sun-warmed honey.

Certain she’d taste as delectable, he urged her to lie back on the plaid, then bent her knees, spreading them until she was even more fully exposed to him. The whole of her female sweetness completely open, hot, wet, and glistening.

Her beauty stilled his heart and for several long-seeming moments, he could only sit and look at her. Everything else in the night lost importance. Nothing existed but the lure of her silver-shimmering female curls and the strange warm wind swirling over and around them. A fey wind, it riffled their hair and tugged at their clothes until, somehow, they were both quite naked and the gently swaying grass and the dark ring of trees sheltering the glade sighed in approval.

“Keep touching me,” she pleaded then, arching against him when he withdrew his hand, thinking only to cup and knead her breasts for a moment, perhaps tease a bit at her nipples.

She looked at him, her eyes passion-glazed.
Needy
. “Keep touching me there, where you have been,” she urged again. “I can’t bear it if you do not.”

And so he did, returning his hand to her sweetest heat, stroking, probing, and swirling his fingers, teasing caresses across her wet and eager flesh, rubbing and circling until even his most skilled touches weren’t enough and she lifted her hips off the plaid, her body begging in a silent, urgent cry as elemental as the sacred ground beneath them.

But when her writhing and gasps of pleasure began growing frantic, he did lift away his hand, quickly positioning himself there where he’d burned to be all night.

“Ach, dia!” she cried when he opened his mouth over her, sucking gently. Then his large hands slipped beneath her, his fingers splaying across her bottom, cupping and lifting her, drawing her even deeper into his seeking mouth.

White-hot pleasure shot through her, the intensity of it almost too glorious to bear.

Especially when he looked up, locking gazes with her as he began doing just what she’d hoped he’d do.

And so wondrously, his eyes never leaving hers as he dragged his tongue over her, again and again, each sweet, slow lick enflaming her, making her twist and wind on the plaid, certain she would soon splinter into so many bright-sparkling pieces she’d ne’er be able to gather them.

His tongue plunged into her then, and the shattering began. A slow, free-falling glide into blinding bliss as his tongue dipped in and out, mirroring the most intimate of acts, then withdrawing to swirl over her again, each luxurious, sweeping glide of his tongue making the earth beneath her tremble and sigh, the very hills around them quivering, crying out with the darkness of her need.

Until his laving tongue found
that place
and she realized the tremors and cries were her own, each hot, fluttery flick and swirl of his tongue on her most pulsing, sensitive spot, hurtling her deeper into the glittering madness, the silent little glade and the whole of the cold, moon-washed night spinning wildly around her.

And still he ravished her. Now grazing his teeth ever so lightly on that tiny, hot-throbbing place, nipping gently. Then drawing back to blow softly on her trembling flesh, cooling her before he lowered his head again, burying his face deeper into her sweetness, losing himself in the heady, saturating taste of her.

He feasted on her, some lone, still-thinking corner of his mind certain he’d ne’er get enough of her. That she was a
Sithe
maid indeed and had ensorcelled him, making him crave her scent and taste. The intoxication of her hot, wet, and slippery femaleness.

“Lass, I canna stop,” he groaned, licking her harder, his hunger for her only intensifying.

He looked up at her again and saw answering passion heating her eyes. Her hair spilled all around her, her rosebud nipples were thrusting at him through the silvery blond strands. She looked so beautiful that his edge raced closer, a wild, tumultuous release almost breaking when she reached for him, pulling him up on top of her.

Crying out, she arched her hips and clamped her legs around him, rubbing against him in a way he couldn’t refuse. Already her body trembled, shuddering and tensing, her pleasure seizing her, sweeping over him, too, as he plunged inside her, sliding deep.

So deep into her sleek, drenching heat, it was as if the earth split beneath him, revealing the sleeping sun and he’d slid right into its fire, the licking flames consuming him, the glory of her almost bursting his heart.

His passion
did
burst, the hot seed streaming into her even as the first spasms of her own release rocked through her and she clung to him, thrusting her fingers into his hair and pulling him close for a deep, open-mouthed kiss.

A rough and savage kiss so wild and uninhibited, he jerked inside her, the endless-seeming flood of his release still pouring into her. The hot-blazing sunfire licked at them, its heat turning the cold, silent glade into brightest summer.

And only later, when he collapsed against her, full-sated and his breath ragged, did Jamie begin to notice the night’s chill. They hadn’t been transported to some long-past pagan fire festival, Beltane, or the even greater Midsummer revels, but still lay hotly entwined on their plaid, St. Bride’s enchanted glade quiet now. The earth no longer warm and humming, but cold and damp with the wetness of the grass beginning to seep through the plaid’s wool.

The prickles at the back of Jamie’s nape returned as well. The unnerving sense that they weren’t alone, and that whoe’er or whate’er lurked near, their purpose was not to wish them well.