He sealed the circle with a second stinging drop of wax and she forced herself to meet his gaze.
“My sword, thy guarantee,” he said, and his voice washed over her skin like a rough caress. The need inside her spiraled higher and tighter and suddenly she didn’t care how dangerous this was. How inconvenient or unscheduled. This was love and it was inside her. She couldn’t change it. Wasn’t that what he’d said? She was what she was. Now all that was left was to look it in the eye and decide if she could live with it.
He set aside the black candle and lifted the purple one. He brought it into the charged and vibrating space between their bodies. She gazed past the flame into his steady silver eyes, eyes that held humor and heat and that terrible, beautiful honesty that made him what he was.
And she thought to herself,
Okay, yeah. I can live with this
.
Then he hooked one finger into the loose neckline of her robe and she realized it was less a question of living with it, and more a question of dying without it. Her nipples beaded, begging shamelessly as he allowed a single drop of purple wax to slip from the candle into the valley between her breasts. She lifted her arms as he passed the candle around her rib cage, completing a third circle. A final drop of wax joined the first drying on her damp, unsteady chest.
“My courage be thy safeguard,” he said, and the words ran into her bloodstream like warm honey.
“Our Lady will it,” Lila sang out. Maria jumped. She’d forgotten Lila was even standing there. A flush rose in her already overheated cheeks as she imagined the sharp-eyed Lila watching the whole byplay between her and Rush from six inches out. No wonder there were no secrets on Mishkwa.
“So mote it be,” Rush murmured.
He set aside the purple candle and held out his hands. Maria laid hers into them with a sigh of near relief. She ached for him with a dizzying need, a physical hunger that unstrung her. She had the rest of her life to worry about what loving him meant. Right now she needed his touch. His skin. His palms against hers.
She needed
him
.
He bent his head and, without warning, laid his lips against the white drops of wax on her left shoulder. Her heart nearly exploded in her chest and a desire geysered up inside her that made what she’d experienced during the circling part of the ceremony look tepid.
“My shield is thine,” he said, then kissed the black wax on her other shoulder. “My sword is thine.” He dropped to his knees and pressed his lips to the purple droplets between her breasts. She nearly went to her own knees. “My courage I pledge to thee. Circles to keep thee, charms times three.”
“An’ the goddess will it,” Lila said.
“So mote it be,” Rush murmured against her skin.
“Blessed be this woman,” Lila said, authority ringing in her tone as she turned her face up to the flowing moonlight. “May the goddess protect and strengthen her against all forces that would impose their will on her, whose appetites would sate themselves at her expense, who value their ambitions more highly than her life.”
Lila knelt to the earth and scooped up a handful of snow. “Blessed be this man, who dedicates himself to that most sacred duty—protecting the source of all life, all love, all compassion and forgiveness.”
She lifted the snow up to the moonlight, and droplets of meltwater fell from her fingers as she said, “Blessed be this pair, this man and this woman together. Invest in them the strength to turn aside attack, the vision to see themselves and their enemies clearly, and the wisdom to lay down crippling burdens. Grant them compassion enough for mercy, strength enough for might and the insight to know which is which.”
She dropped her arms. “An’ the goddess will it.”
Rush said, “So mote it be.” And this time Maria joined him.
Chapter 29
IT WAS well after midnight by the time Maria and Rush made it back to the Ranger Station. Maria hung up her jacket on its wooden peg while Rush brought the embers in the stove back to a blazing crackle. The little stove pumped off heat like a blast furnace, but Maria’s fingers ached with the cold as she combed them through the wild thicket of her hair.
Nerves
, she told herself. She tucked her frozen fingers into her elbows, then thought,
Oh, shit. Honesty
. She couldn’t lie anymore, not even in her internal monologue. Rush could sense a lie at twenty paces. Her big confession of love wasn’t the time to test him.
So, fine. She wasn’t nervous. She was terrified. The kind of terrified that came in one color (flat black), one size (extra large) and sucked the light and hope out of everything it touched like a Harry Potter Dementor. Because what she felt for Rush made her crush on Ridge Calloway look like a kiddie ride, and if those feelings had cost her a sister, what might loving Rush cost her?
Not that it mattered. Not loving Rush would cost more. Infinitely more. The prettily painted, perfectly composed Goose was nothing but a shell. Safe, attractive but ultimately empty. And Maria wasn’t content with emptiness anymore. Rush had shown her more and she was addicted. Now she not only wanted more, she needed it. Required it.
But asking for it—for him—would take courage. A lot more than she had, unfortunately. Still, she scraped up what she could find, hid her trembling fists in her elbows and said, “Hey, Rush?”
“Yeah?” He closed the stove door and threw her a look over his shoulder. She started to smile at him, big and reassuring, but caught herself and killed it. No smiling unless she was actually happy, and since she thought she might die any minute from pure fear, she probably shouldn’t smile.
He blinked. “Yikes. That bad, huh?”
She swallowed. “What’s that bad?”
“Whatever has you doing
that
”—he circled a finger in the air—“with your face.”
“I’m trying to be honest here.” The trembling in her hands threatened to escalate into full-body shivers, so she banded her arms tighter across her chest. “Isn’t that the deal? Honesty?”
“Well, sure.” He rose, slapped at the sawdust on his jeans and studied her carefully. “But that looked more like nausea than honesty.”
She wasn’t nauseated, she was nervous.
Liar
. Okay, fine. Terrified. She was trying to confess her damn love and doing such a good job he was worried she might boot her lunch. Wonderful.
Temper swooped to the rescue and she said, “Okay, let me make sure I understand. According to the Honesty Only policy, I can smile if and when I feel happy, but in all other situations smiling is prohibited and you get to mock me?” She glared at him. “Because if that’s the case, I think honesty sucks. I think
you
suck. Because I’m trying here. I’m trying really hard and you’re sitting over there taking potshots at my face.”
“It wasn’t a potshot. And I like your face. But it was all—” He broke off, clearly aware he maybe shouldn’t take that conversational ball any farther down the field. Good for him. “So your stomach is okay?”
She closed her eyes. “My stomach is fine.”
“Are you sure? Because you look a little pale.” He came across the room to her, concern in his eyes. “A lot pale, actually.” He took her chin in one hand, turned her face up to the light and inspected her pupils. “Nausea is one of the first symptoms of advanced dehydration. I wonder if Lila’s little sweat fest didn’t—”
“Rush. Stop.”
She wrapped one hand around his wrist and forced herself to look straight into his eyes. Eyes that held concern, yes, but also . . . nerves? And not over her health, either. Hope sparked to life inside her, feeble but undeniable, and propped up her faltering courage.
“I do
not
have indigestion,” she told him firmly. “My gastrointestinal system is fine. My bowels are in good working order, too, if it matters. I suppose I could be a little dehydrated after the sauna earlier, but it’s nothing a bottle of water won’t cure. Otherwise I’m in perfect health.”
He frowned down at her, clearly unconvinced. “Then why do you look like you want to throw up?”
“Because I’m in love with you.”
His hand fell away from her chin. “You’re
what
?”
“In love,” she said grimly. “With you.”
“Which makes you want to throw up.” He shook his head. “Wow. That’s . . . not flattering.”
“I know, right?” She laughed, though she didn’t really find the situation very funny. “I was surprised, too. I mean, never having experienced the real deal, I kind of expected hearts and flowers, you know? But love sort of sucks. It’s inconvenient and painful and I’m not really enjoying it, if you want the truth, which, of course, being Rush, you do. But I’m definitely in love.” She patted his shoulder, stone-like under the soft flannel of his shirt, and tried desperately to stem++ the torrent of horrifying words pouring out of her. “With, um, you.” She closed her eyes against a wave of intense embarrassment. “So, that’s it.” Oh God, it wouldn’t stop. It was like a hiccup, involuntary and spasmodic. “I’m in love with you.” Jesus, another one? “Sorry.”
She pressed bloodless fingers to numb lips and prayed.
Please let it be over now. Please let that have been the last one.
“Maria?”
She forced herself to meet his eyes. “Yeah?”
“Are you done?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Because I have something to say now.”
“Oh, goody. Will it be as fun as mine was?”
“I don’t know,” he said seriously. “Yours was pretty fun. Especially the part about your bowels being in good working order.”
She closed her eyes again.
“Hey, don’t do that. Don’t check out.” He reached out, drew one gentle finger down the edge of her face. Her heart shuddered inside her chest and she opened her eyes cautiously. “Not when I’m about to pledge my troth.”
She stared at him in openmouthed astonishment. “Pledge your
what
?”
“My troth. My fidelity. My loyalty.” He hooked a hand around the back of his neck and squinted down at her. “My undying love? I was planning to break it to you later, but after you said . . . what you said—”
“That I’m stupid in love with you?”
Hic
.
“Yeah, that.” He smiled. Beautifully. “It seemed like I should say something. Sooner rather than, you know, later.”
“You should. Definitely.” The first tiny bubbles of joy started rising, sliding up through her panic and fear. “I’m listening.”
“Okay.” He paused. “I’m crap at this kind of thing.”
She gave him a narrow stare. “Yeah, well, after what I just did, you owe me this, so start talking.”
“Right. Okay. I’ll try.”
“You could maybe start with ‘I love you,’ ” she said helpfully. “See where it goes from there.”
“I love you,” he said obediently. Baldly. Uncomfortably. And utterly, completely sincerely. She’d never heard three more beautiful words in her entire life. “It happened during the ceremony tonight—”
A bolt of dismay shot through her. “Wait, you’re in love with me because of a pagan ceremony?”
He lifted a brow. “Do you want to hear this or not?”
She shut her mouth. “Go on.”
“Give me a little credit, will you? I know better than to think there’s some deity up there with a master plan and puppet strings. I haven’t believed in anything like that for a long time, if ever. But Lila needed reassuring and you needed Lila’s trust, so I figured I’d just do the ceremony. What the hell, right? Everybody gets what they need in one quick, if chilly, half hour. It wasn’t until I was actually saying the words, until they were tumbling from my memory to my mouth, that I realized I meant every one of them. By the time I understood that I wasn’t reciting an old prayer so much as making some deadly-serious promises, it was too late. I’d already given my word.” He lifted his shoulders, a curiously helpless gesture from such a strong man. “I’d already pledged my damn troth.”
“And a troth is what, exactly?”
“Hell if I know. But whatever it was, it totally moved us beyond let’s-just-jump-each-other-and-see-where-thisgoes territory. I’m yours now. You’re mine. No matter who you are.” He gave her a hard look. “Or who you choose to be. I’m in love with you. With all of you, including the odd pocket of crazy here or there.”
“Hey.”
He held up a hand. “Not that I’m complaining. I have a few pockets of crazy on board myself.”
“Amen.”
“Look, I don’t know why or how this happened, Maria, so I can’t give you that. I’m sorry. I only know that I
feel
it. I feel
you
. And that’s a fucking miracle because the days when I just
knew
things, just
felt
what was right and true and good? I buried those days in the sand with all the bodies. But then you came along and lit me up like the Fourth of July. One look at you and everything inside me sat right up and said
mine
.” He gave her a crooked smile. “You’re beautiful and smart and terrifying and so damn complicated, but I waited a long time for the voices in my head to start talking again. Now that they have, I’m not about to argue with them.”
He took her hand, threaded his fingers through hers. “So that’s it. There’s my troth, pledged to you.” He looked gravely down at her. “So . . . are you supposed to accept it? Or thank me? Or, shit, am I supposed to wrap this up with flowers or something?”
“I have no idea. Nobody’s ever pledged their troth to me before.” She touched the sharp edge of his cheekbone with her thumb as joy and fear tumbled around inside her like a couple of puppies. “I never wanted anybody to. I didn’t let myself want anything. Then you came along.”
“And you wanted.” A grin spread across his face, smug and self-satisfied. He dropped onto the couch and tugged her down beside him. “Yeah, I get that sometimes. Sorry.”
She sighed theatrically. “So I tried sex. I thought maybe one wild night of hoopty and you’d be out of my system.”
“Not my hoopty, babe.” He tipped his head back, spread his arms across the back of the couch and closed his eyes. “Women get hooked on my hoopty.”