by Nora Roberts
“There always was.”
She felt like a child with hundreds and hundreds of brightly wrapped presents waiting to be opened and explored. “You can teach me more.”
“Aye.” Understanding something of what was racing through her, he flicked a finger down her cheek. “I can. I will. But not just now. We’ve been here more than an hour, and I want my breakfast.”
“An hour.” She blinked as he rose and hauled her to her feet. “It seems like just a few minutes.”
“It took you a while to get down to things. It won’t take you so long the next time.” With a thought, he put out the fire. “We’ll see if we can find where your talents lie once I’ve had my meal.”
“Liam.” She turned to him for a moment, pressed her lips to his throat. “Thank you.”
* * *
She learned fast. Liam had never considered himself a good teacher, but he supposed it had something to do with the student.
This one was open and eager and quick.
It didn’t take long to determine that her talents channeled into magic, as Morgana’s did. Within a day or two, they determined she had no real gift for seeing. She could give him her thoughts, but could read his clearly only if he put them into her head.
And while she couldn’t, even after more than an hour of sweaty concentration, transform herself, she turned a footstool into a rosebush with laughing delight.
Show her the joy, Ana had told him. But he understood that she was showing him as she danced around the clearing, turning the early-summer flowers into a maze of color and shape. Rocks became jewel-colored crystals; infant blooms exploded into huge fireworks of brilliant hues. The little stream rose into an elegant waterfall of luminous blue.
He didn’t rein her in. She deserved to ride on the wonder of it. Responsibilities, choices, he knew, would come soon enough.
She was creating her own fairy tale. It was so easy all at once to see it perfectly in her mind. And, in seeing it, to make it real. Here was her little cottage in the forest, with the stunning witch garden spread out, the sweep of water rising, the whip of the wind blowing free.
And the man.
She turned, unaware how devastating she looked just then with her hair streaming, glossy and wild, her arms flung out and the light of young power in her eyes.
“Just for today. I know it can’t stay like this, but just for today. I used to dream of being in a place just like this, with water and wind rushing, and flowers so huge and bright they dazzled your eyes. And the scent of them …”
She trailed off, realizing she had dreamed of this, exactly this. And of him, of Liam Donovan stepping off the porch of a pretty cottage and moving to her, walking under an arbor of flowers that rained pretty pink petals onto the ground.
He would pluck a rose, white as a snowflake, from a bush as tall as he. And offer it to her.
“I dreamed,” she said again. “When I was a little girl.”
He plucked a rose, white as a snowflake from a bush as tall as he. And offered it to her. “What did you dream, Rowan Murray?”
“Of this.” Of you. So often of you.
“Just for today, you can have your dream.”
She sighed as she traced the rose down her cheek. Just for today, she thought, would be enough. “I was wearing a long blue dress. A robe, really. And yours was black, with gold edgings.” She laughed, enchanted, as she felt the thin silk caress her skin. “Did I do that, or did you?”
“Does it matter? It’s your dream, Rowan, but I’m hoping I kissed you in it.”
“Yes.” She sighed again as she moved into his arms. “The kind of kiss dreams are made on.”
He touched his lips to hers, softly at first. Warming them, softening them, until they parted on a quiet breath. Then deeper, slowly deeper, while her arms came up to circle him, while her fingers slipped lazily into his hair.
As he did, something trembled in his memory as well. Something once seen or once wished for. When he gave himself to it, he began to float in dreams with her. And so drew her closer.
Together they circled, a graceful dance with hearts keeping the beat.
Her feet no longer touched the ground as they spun. The dreams of a romantic young girl shimmered and shaped into the needs of a woman. Warmth skimmed over her skin as she held him tighter, drew him into her heart. As she offered him more. Offered him everything.
There were candles in her dream. Dozens of them, fragrant and white and burning in tall silver stands with gilded leaves winding around them. And a bed, lit by them, draped in white and gold.
When he carried her to it, she was dizzy with love, washed in wonder.
“How could I have known?” She drew him down to her. “How could I have forgotten?”
He wondered the same of himself, but couldn’t question it now, not now when she was so soft, so giving, when her lips were parting for his and her sigh of pleasure slipped into him like wine from a golden cup.
The sun dipped down behind the trees, edging them with fire, shooting color into the deepening sky. In the trees, the birds sang to those last lights.
“You’re beautiful.”
She wouldn’t have believed it. But here, now, she felt beautiful. She felt powerful. She felt loved. Just for today, she thought, and met his mouth with hers.
He drank from her, with thirst but without greed. Held her close but without desperation. Here, they both knew, time could spin out. Time could be taken.
Tongues met and tangled in a slow, intimate dance. Breath mixed. Murmurs melded.
She stroked her hands along the silk of his robe, then beneath to flesh. So warm. So smooth. His mouth on her throat, urging her to tip her head to give him more, and the light nip of teeth where her pulse beat. The erratic bump of it tempted him to slick his tongue over her skin, to fill himself with the flavor that was only her.
He parted her robe, lightly as air. When his hands, his mouth took possession of her, she arched gently.
Enjoy me, she seemed to say. Enchant me.
She sighed with him, moved with him, while the air swam with scent and the warm, soft wind caressed her naked skin. Sensations glimmered, tangled with delights both bright and dark. Lost in them, steeped in them, she rolled with him, rose languidly over him.
Her body was wand slim, white as marble in the delicate light. Her hair was lifted by the wind, her eyes full of secrets. Captivated, he ran his hands up her thighs, over her hips, her torso, closed them over her breasts.
And there her heart beat in the same hammer blows as his own.
“Rowan,” he murmured, as those secrets, as that power, glinted in her eyes. “You are all manner of witch.”
Her laugh was quick and triumphant. She leaned down, took his mouth hungrily with hers. Heat, sudden and brutal, slammed into him, leaped into his blood like the fire she’d made only hours before.
She felt it, too, the quick change, and that she had made it. That, she thought wildly, that was power. Riding on it, she took him into her, bowing back to revel in the shock of it, watching stars wheel in the black sky overhead.
His hands gripped her hips, his breath exploded from his lungs. Instinctively he struggled for control, but his already slippery grasp broke as she took him.
She took. Her hips moved like lightning, her body soared with a wild whip of energy that pushed him, raced ahead, dragged him with her.
She rocked herself to madness, then beyond, and still she drove him on. He said her name. She heard the sound break from him as his body plunged with hers. And she saw as they flew up, how his eyes flashed, then went dark and blind.
She all but wept with triumph as she grabbed hold and fell over with him.
* * *
He’d never allowed a woman to take control. Now, as Rowan lay sprawled over him, he realized he hadn’t been able to stop it. Not with her. There were a great many things he hadn’t been able to stop with her.
He turned his face into her hair and wondered what would come nex
t. Only seconds later, when she spoke, he knew.
“I love you, Liam.” She said it quietly, with her lips over his heart. “I love you.”
He called the panic that sprang up inside him sense, responsibility. “Rowan—”
“You don’t have to love me back. I just can’t stand not telling you anymore. I was afraid to tell you before.” She shifted, looked at him. “I don’t think I’ll be afraid of anything ever again. So I love you, Liam.”
He sat up beside her. “You don’t know all there is to know, so you can’t know what you think or what you feel. Or what you’ll want,” he added on a huff of breath. “I have things to explain, things to show you. We’ll do better at my cabin.”
“All right.” She made her smile easy, even as a dread filled her heart that the magic of that day was over.
Chapter 12
What else could he tell her that would shock or surprise? Rowan asked herself. He’d told her he was a witch, then proved it and somehow made her accept it. He’d wiped out twenty-seven years of her simple beliefs about herself by telling her she was a witch as well. Had proved it. She had not only accepted it, but had embraced it.
How much more could there be?
She wished he would speak. But he said nothing as they walked through moonlight from her cabin to his. She’d known him long enough to understand that when he fell into this kind of silence he would tell her nothing until he was ready.
By the time they reached his cabin and stepped inside, her nerves were strung tight.
What she didn’t think about, refused to consider, was the fact that he’d withdrawn into that silence after she’d told him she loved him.
“Is it so serious?” She tried for a light tone, but the words came out uneven, and very close to a plea.
“For me, yes. You’ll decide what it means to you.”
He moved into the bedroom and, running his fingers over the wall beside the fireplace, opened a door she hadn’t known was there into a room she’d have sworn didn’t exist.
A soft light glowed from it, as pale and cool as the moonlight.
“A secret room?”
“Not secret,” he corrected. “Private. Come in, Rowan.”
It was a measure of her trust in him that she stepped forward into that light. The floor was stone, smooth as a mirror, the walls and ceiling of wood, highly polished. Light and the shadow she cast reflected back off those surfaces and shimmered like water.
There was a table, richly carved and inlaid, and on it a bowl of thick blue glass, a stemmed cup of pewter, a small mirror with a silver back ornately scrolled and a slim, smooth handle of amethyst. Another bowl held small, colorful crystals. A round globe of smoky quartz stood on the silver backs of a trio of winged dragons.
What did he see when he looked into it? she wondered. What would she see?
But she turned and watched Liam light candles, watched their flames rise into air already perfumed with fragrant smoke.
She saw another table then, a small round surface on a simple pedestal. Liam opened the box resting there, took out a silver amulet on a chain. He held it a moment, as if testing its weight, then set it down with a quiet jingle of metal on wood.
“Is this … a ceremony?”
He glanced over, those tawny eyes distracted as if he’d forgotten she was there. But he hadn’t forgotten her. He’d forgotten nothing.
“No. You’ve had a lot to deal with, haven’t you, Rowan? You’ve asked me not to touch your thoughts, so I can’t know what’s in your mind, how you’re thinking of all this.”
He hadn’t meant to touch her, but found his fingers grazing her cheek. “A lot of it I can read in your eyes.”
“I’ve told you what I think and what I feel.”
“So you have.”
But you haven’t told me, she thought, and because it hurt her, she turned away. “Will you explain to me what everything is for?” she asked, and traced a fingertip over the scrolling on the little mirror.
“Tools. Just pretty tools,” he told her. “You’ll need some of your own.”
“Do you see things in the glass?”
“Aye.”
“Are you ever afraid to look?” She smiled a little and looked back at him. “I think I might be.”
“What’s seen is … possibility.”
She wandered, avoiding him. There was change coming. Whether it was her woman’s instincts or her newly discovered gifts that told her, she was sure of it. In a glass case were more stones, stunning clusters with spears rising, smooth towers, jewel-tone globes.
He waited her out, not with patience but because for once he didn’t know how to begin. When she turned back to him, her hands linked nervously, her eyes full of doubts, he had no choice but to choose.
“I knew you were coming here.”
He didn’t mean here, to this room, tonight. He saw her acknowledge this. “Did you know … what would happen?”
“Possibilities. There are always choices. We each made ours, and have more to make yet. You know something of your heritage and of mine, but not all. In my country, in my family, there is a tradition. It’s simplest, I suppose, to compare it to rank, though it’s not precisely that. But one takes a place as head of the family. To guide, and counsel. To help in settling disputes should they arise.”
Once again he picked up the silver amulet, once again he set it down.
“Your father wears one of those in gold.”
“Aye, he does.”
“Because he’s head of the family?”
She was quick, Liam thought. Foolish of him to have forgotten that. “He is, until he chooses to pass on the duty.”
“To you.”
“It’s traditional for the amulet to be passed down to the oldest child. But there are choices, on both sides, and there are … stipulations. To inherit, one must be worthy of it.”
“Of course you are.”
“One must want it.”
Her smile faded into a look of puzzlement. “Don’t you?”
“I haven’t decided.” He slipped his hands into his pockets before he could pick up the amulet again. “I came here to take time, to think and consider. It must be my choice. I won’t be bullied by fate.”
The regal tone of his voice made her smile again. “No, you wouldn’t be. That’s another reason you’d be good at it.” She started to go to him, but he held up a hand.
“There are other requirements. If there is marriage, it must be to a mate with elfin blood, and the marriage must be for love, not for duty. Both must enter into it freely.”
“That seems only right,” she began, then stopped. As Liam had said, she was quick. “I have elfin blood, and I’ve just told you I’m in love with you.”
“And if I take you, my choices diminish.”
This time it took her a moment. It had been said so coolly it was like an iced sword to the heart. “Your choices. I see.” She nodded slowly while inside she fought to save the scattered pieces of her heart, the pitiful tatters of her pride. “And your choices include accepting this aspect of your heritage or abjuring it. You’d take that very, very seriously, wouldn’t you, Liam?”
“How could I not?”
“And I’m more or less like a weight for the scale. You just have to decide which bowl to set me in. How … awkward for you.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” he shot back, knocked off balance by her sudden sharp tones. “It’s my life.”
“And mine,” she added. “You said you knew I was coming here, but I didn’t know about you. So I had no choice there. I fell in love with you the minute I saw you, but you were prepared and you had your own agenda. You knew I would love you.”
It was hurled at him, a bitter accusation that had him staring at her. “You’re mistaken.”
“Oh, really? How many times did you slip into my mind to see? Or come into my house as a wolf and listen to me babble? Without giving me the choice you’re so damn fond of. You knew I met the requiremen
ts, so you studied and measured and considered.”
“I didn’t know!” He shouted it at her, furious to have his actions tilted toward deceit. “I didn’t know until you told me about your great-grandmother.”
“I see. So up to that point you were either playing with me or deciding if you could use me as your out should you decide to refuse your position.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Then suddenly you’ve got a witch on your hands. You wanted her—I don’t doubt you wanted me, and I was pathetically easy. I took whatever you chose to give me, and was grateful.”
It humiliated her to think of it now, to remember how she had rushed into his arms, trusting her heart. Trusting him.
“I cared for you, Rowan. I care for you.”
Her cheeks were ghost pale in the flickering light, her eyes dark and deep. “Do you know how insulting that is? Do you know how humiliating it is to understand that you knew I was in love with you while you figured the angles and made your choices? What choice did I have? What choice did you give me?”
“All I could.”
She shook her head fiercely. “No, all you would,” she tossed back. “You knew exactly how vulnerable I was when I came here, how lost.”
“I did, yes. That’s why I—”
“So you offer me a chance to work with you,” she interrupted. “Knowing I was already dazzled by you, knowing how desperately I needed something. Then, in your own good time, you told me who you were, who I was. At your pace, Liam, always at your pace. And each time I moved exactly as you expected I would. It’s all been just another game.”
“That’s not true.” Incensed, he took her arms. “I thought of you, too damn much of you. And did what I thought was right, what was best.”
The jolt shot through his fingertips, up his arms, with such heat and power, it knocked him back two full steps. This time he could only gape at her, shocked to the core that she’d caught him so completely unaware.
“Damn it, Rowan.” His hands still stung from the slap of her will.
“I won’t be bullied, either.” Her knees were jellied at the realization she’d had not only the ability but the fury to shove him back with her mind. “This isn’t what you expected. This isn’t one of your possibilities. I was supposed to come in here with you tonight, listen to you, then fold my hands, bow my head like the quiet little mouse I am, and leave it all up to you.”
Her eyes were vividly blue, her face was no longer pale but flushed with anger and, to his annoyance, was outrageously beautiful. “Not precisely,” he said with dignity. “But it is up to me.
“The hell it is. You have to decide what you want, true enough, but don’t expect me to sit meekly while you choose or discard me. Always, always, people have made decisions for me, chosen the way my life should go. What have you done but the same?”
“I’m not your parents,” he shot back. “Or your Alan. These were different circumstances entirely.”
“Whatever the circumstances, you held the controls and guided me along. I won’t tolerate that. I’ve been ordinary.” The words ripped out of her, straight from the belly. “You wouldn’t understand that—you’ve never been ordinary. But I have, all my life. I won’t be ordinary again.”
“Rowan.” He would try calm, he told himself. He would try reason. “All I wanted for you was what you wanted for yourself.”
“And what I wanted most was for you to love me. Just me, Liam, whatever and
