by Dawn Madigan
They left the castle through one of its impressive gates, ambling towards the river again. After a while Dara shucked off her sandals, borrowed from the ever-generous Aislinn. She’d been craving a barefoot walk within the green pastures. Rowan strolled a bit ahead, whistling softly. A gentle breeze fingered strands of his copper hair, and the sun set them afire.
He pointed across the river. “The Bantiarna’s estate,” he said.
“So you brought me all the way down here just for the view, Mackey?” Dara shaded her squinted eyes. “And I thought you did it just so you could have your way with me.” She had no idea what had made her say that. Could be the mild sun had over-baked what was left of her brains.
Rowan flung his head back, his laughter roaring across the meadow.
“Guess I was wrong, then,” she teased, unrelenting.
He grabbed her, tackling her to the ground.
Dara screamed.
The grinning Irishman carefully straddled her hips with his weight. He captured her wrists with both his hands and forced them against the grass, high above her head. Then he bent low and silenced both her laughter and her screams with a thorough kiss that stole the breath from her lungs. Her leather rig was chafing her flesh, but she hardly noticed. Slowly Rowan lifted his mouth from hers, and she opened misty eyes, drawing in a deep, quivering breath.
“You just kept blathering on about sex,” Rowan said roughly, now holding both her slim wrists with one hand. “There’s only so much a man can take.”
With a devilish smile he slid his free hand up one thigh, beneath the light summer dress. One red eyebrow quirked with surprise.
“How come you’re wearing panties again?” he demanded with some disappointment, shifting above her.
Dara’s heart fluttered madly as his hand teased her through the cloth, but she managed a smile. “How come you’re always on top?” she retorted, her voice breathy.
“You want it the other way around, lass?”
Meanwhile his fingers dug beneath the scanty barrier, stroking over damp, curly hair. Dara struggled to hold back a moan, but her treacherous body yielded, as always, to Rowan’s touch. Her thighs slackened, parting a bit more. When his finger pressed deeper into her slit, commencing a gentle search, she couldn’t curb the half-sob that slipped from her mouth. Rowan let go of her wrists completely, shifting further between her legs. The stretching panties now made a tight band against her upper thighs.
“I should have a word with my sister about lending you needless undergarments.” He grinned, but his breathing came out labored. He snapped her panties with ease, and she gave a tiny yell.
“Do you have any idea how many of my panties you’ve ruined by now?”
“Maybe some sheep might like them better than I do,” he smiled as he chucked her ripped undies.
Forcing one hand beneath Dara’s ass, he kept kneading her slick clit with the other. She was moaning and moving beneath him, intent on his touch, slowly rocking herself against his hand.
By Danu, he needed to taste her…
He dipped his head between her thighs, his wild mop of hair teasing her already-sensitized flesh.
“Rowan,” she gasped.
He manipulated both of Dara’s feet over his shoulders, then grabbed her ass and forced her tighter against his face. She yelped and arched sharply against the grass as his mouth pressed against her wet entrance. His tongue drove through her thick, velvety heat, exploring her cunt with a probing kiss. He shifted one of his hands back to tend her clit and she jerked against him, crying out. His growl vibrated through her cunt. He lapped at her pouring honey and swirled his ravenous tongue inside her, tasting her flesh with abandon. She was both sharp and sweet, like delicious dark licorice. Both his hands dimpled her ass again, hauling her up roughly against his face. His mouth slid wetly to the soft, fleshy nub of her clit.
Her hips bucked.
“Yes, Rowan. Yessss…”
He sucked and nibbled her until she shuddered and tightened, tearing up fistfuls of grass. Only then did Rowan ease his assault, rubbing his soaked face against her feverish inner thighs. His fingers were drenched with the tantalizing mix of his mate’s juices.
“Let me up,” she whispered in between quick gasps. Redness tinted her face, a combination of both sex and a mild sunburn.
He eased his arm beneath her back and lifted her into his arms.
“What’re you doing?” she demanded.
“Quit making those eyes at me.” He smiled as he waded with her through the grass, her arms laced around his neck. “I’m moving us to a wee bit of shade.”
Closer to the river, beneath a squat, dark tree, Rowan knelt and placed Dara down again, her back touching the tree’s rough bark. She turned her face to his. Her hand slid down from his shoulder, hesitant, and lingered over the dark sweat stain decorating the front of his shirt.
Rowan’s eyes were hot on her face.
He didn’t budge.
She turned to him fully and placed another tentative hand over his chest. Her splayed fingers began a fine trembling. Swaying, she touched her lips to his, tasting herself on him, feeling his breath falter. Slipping both her hands beneath his shirt, she pushed it up his rib cage as far as it went. Her eyes fell to Rowan’s sweat-glazed skin. Her mouth sank to his smooth, hard pecs, to those masculine, coin-flat nipples.
It was time her tongue got the treat it had craved for so damn long.
Rowan groaned as Dara’s lips finally touched him, searing his skin with a flood of small, burning kisses. He shivered as she gathered the nerve to take one tautening nipple between her lips, to suck his flesh into her mouth. He spread his thighs to welcome her closer. His fingers dug into her wild hair, stroking her as she moved her mouth lower. A guttural sound climbed up his throat as she kissed a long line down his abdominal wall, ending beneath the edge of his jeans. His abdominal muscles tightened in heated response, his erection throbbing painfully against the rough fabric. He felt Dara’s light fingers tampering with his top button.
“Dara, you don’t have to—” he began hoarsely, not knowing his own voice.
“Shhh…I want to,” she hushed him, unzipping him with a cautious hand. “I want to.”
Rowan sank back to his elbows, breathing hard. He hissed out a sigh as his erection sprang free from his jeans. He watched Dara’s fascinated face as she studied his erect cock. She moved between his spread thighs, drawn closer to his raging masculinity, as her gentle fingers stroked his shaft up, down and around. Her heated breath skimmed over the velvety skin sheathing his cock.
Rowan groaned, hardly able to stand the tease.
Steadying his girth with both hands, Dara bent low and extended her tongue, teasing a wet, tortuous trail up his vein-corded shaft. She laved once—only bleedin’ once—about his sensitive cock head, and he bucked his hips with a hiss of pleasure, thinking he’d go mad.
Her honeyed tongue honed into a lethal point and skillfully hunted the pearly drop budding at his tip. She gazed up at his face with hooded eyes, rolling his fluid up into her mouth with a moan full of promise.
“Dara—”
Merciless, she slid her moist lips down his satiny cock head, lubing him with the heady combination of her saliva and his pre-cum. She took him into the heat of her mouth and sucked him softly, like she would a sweet, using one hand to hold him against her. Another curious, small hand struggled gently against the gap in his jeans and sneaked inside to tease his heavy balls.
Oh, Sweet Danu! Rowan fisted his hands and thrust up his hips, letting out a savage groan. Sweat beaded on his brow. Dara’s delicate handling was driving him out of his mind.
He sat up and grabbed her hips, heaving her up with ease and impaling her on his erection with one smooth movement.
Dara gasped out a surprised moan as he so suddenly, so deeply, filled her. Her pupils dilated in shock as her thighs clamped on his in an instant.
“Are all Irishmen…this short-tempered?” she demanded, her voice
breathy.
“There’s only so much…a man…can take!” Rowan roared, and with each word he pulled her down hard on him, thrusting up with force at the same time.
Dara whimpered with each stroke, digging her short nails into his flesh.
His bruising hold on her abruptly eased as he let her ride him, briefly granting her control.
She went slow at first, loving each drawn-out second, losing herself along Rowan’s long, hard inches. She then kicked up the pace, bobbing and grinding herself against him until they were both half-gone and bathed in sweat. And then she moved on him devilishly slow yet again, her eyes squeezed shut, lost somewhere deep inside herself.
Rowan again took control of his mate’s damp hips, rocking her up and down his cock with mounting need. He felt her begin to climax, her sweet cunt rippling with tight waves around him. Her scream was stifled by his neck. He followed close behind, clutching her to his chest, her name scorching his lips as he burst deep inside of her. He kept holding her close, still buried within her wet heat, both of them hardly able to breathe for long, sweet minutes.
“Dara,” Rowan at long last mumbled, gently squeezing her precious form in his embrace. “There is something I need to ask of you.”
Dara shut her eyes with a sudden fear. This was what he’d been trying to tell her earlier this afternoon. “Ask away,” she whispered at last, her mouth still buried against his feverish, salty throat.
Rowan nodded, his jaw sinking into the darkness of her hair. “Tomorrow is Beltaine night. You and I are…”
He paused, hesitating. Then, shaking his head and swallowing nervously, he tried again.
“Dara, how do you feel about me?”
“What do you mean?” Dara withdrew a bit and searched Rowan’s face, confused.
“I love you, Dara O’Shea–Neilan.” Rowan’s sea-stormy gaze shackled her eyes to his. “How do you feel about me?”
And suddenly, there was only one right answer.
“I love you, Rowan Mackey,” Dara whispered.
Rowan let out a long-held breath. His taut fingers loosened against her back.
“Then…” He once more hesitated. “Will you consent to forge this bond with me as the ancient Law demands?”
She stared up at him, dumbfounded, as he softly repeated, “Will you join with me at sundown tomorrow, Dara, on the eve of Beltaine, against the Destiny Stone?”
That was the Kanjali equivalent of popping The Question.
Dara dropped her eyes from Rowan’s.
A thing, oppressive and icy, was again swelling within Rowan’s chest, making it hard for him to breathe. Dara knew well what his request meant. If she said yes, then tomorrow she would have to mate with him against the Stone. The Hill of Tara would be crowded with Kanjali folk, some she already knew, but most would be strangers—and in front of the entire crowd she would have to accept him, body and soul, against the Stone of Fal. Making love the night before, after the Speakers had vanished from their Gathering locale, had been different—there had been no audience then. But tomorrow… There was no way she was going to willingly go through with it.
“Yes,” she suddenly whispered.
“What did you just say?” His gaze jerked up.
“Yes,” she repeated a bit louder.
Dara’s answer multiplied to a thousand echoes in Rowan’s mind. He squeezed her with a frenzied hug, almost crushing her slim form against his chest.
“Rowan, you’re nuts! I can’t…damn…breathe!”
She squirmed in his arms, and he eased his embrace, burying his face in her hair. Her heavy tresses were drenched with the sweet aroma of summer meadows, and layered deep down beneath, was all her.
Rowan took Dara’s face in his hands and lowered his mouth to hers, his passionate kiss sealing the bargain.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dara started, pushing up against the soft mattress. The tangled bedclothes held the pooled warmth of shared body heat. The tilted roof window let in the new day’s brightness, along with the promise of a soft breeze. She absently felt around her, sweaty palms sliding against the disheveled sheets. Her hand bumped into a warm body. Slowly she peeled away the white, thin sheet, uncovering a muddle of copper-red hair.
A soft grin curved her lips.
Rowan was sleeping next to her, drowning his soft snores within one clenched, squashy pillow.
Dara tilted her head. He actually looked rather cute like that.
During the night he had reached for her more than once, and each time she had matched his need with an equal passion. The first time he’d lured her away from a light slumber, taking her slowly, working her with endless patience to a shuddering, soft orgasm. The second time he hadn’t been gentle. She hadn’t wanted him to be. He’d crushed her against the sheets, pounding into her with uncurbed want until she’d tightened around him with a violent climax. The third time, he’d turned her on her stomach and taken her from behind, thrusting into her with such force that he’d almost driven both their heads into the headboard. The fourth time… Dara smiled, flushing intensely at the oven-fresh memory. The fourth time he’d taken hold of her waist and impaled her atop his erection, making her ride him to a mutual, sweaty-hot climax.
He’d then smoothed a mass of tangles away from her eyes, coaxing her to try and get some more sleep. And she couldn’t, because the cats had been yowling all night in the gardens, and Rowan had laughed in her ear, low and soft, telling her that the cats were all in Beltaine heat. Finally her body had succumbed to Rowan’s whispered advice, and she’d fallen asleep.
Dara studied Rowan’s red mop of hair and the lump his body made beneath the covers. A body she had come to know as well as her own.
Rowan Mackey. Her Chosen One.
Dara tugged carefully on the sheet and slid to the edge of the bed, trying not to jiggle the mattress too much. She didn’t want to wake Rowan yet, he seemed so innocent and harmless in sleep. She was sore all over, but it was a good kind of sore… A making-rough-love-all-night-long kind.
She padded to the bath naked, quietly shutting the door behind her, then gingerly approached the mirror. She leaned against the sink and studied the face reflected back at her. It had big, dark eyes, shining with the previous night’s adventures, pouting rose lips, puffy with hours of kisses, a slight blush to naturally pale cheeks, and thick, black hair, tugged at by a lover’s hands and tousled against wrinkled sheets. For the first time in many mornings, Dara liked the person staring back at her.
And then it hit her.
She had promised Rowan she would have sex with him tonight against the dick-shaped stone, while the rest of the world watched.
Early summer already breathed its heat over Dara’s skin as she sneaked out of the dormant manor house. She was running barefoot, clutching nothing but a thin dress against her nakedness. Her eyes widened as she moved past the rose garden and into the green fields. The meadows were alive with travelers that hadn’t been there the evening before.
They were trickling into the pastures in singles and pairs, some in larger packs, most with no children accompanying them. The bulk chattered gaily with a clear Irish brogue, or conversed in fluid Gaelic—but other accents were present, and other languages were being spoken, as well. As Dara picked her way among them, it gradually became clear to her who or what they truly were—Kanjali folk, her own people, gathered here for the Beltaine celebrations. Their tents were strewn across the meadows among grazing sheep and occasional cows, painting both banks of the Boyne with all the colors of the rainbow.
Dara trembled as the weight of their gazes suddenly shifted to her, their whispers surging about her as she hurried past. She hugged her thin dress tighter against her flesh, almost breaking into a run. There was something she had to do before she could fulfill the promise she had made Rowan.
* * * * *
“Aislinn, have you seen Dara?”
Rowan’s sister raised her gaze from her lap. She had been sitting in the back gardens, occ
upying the same stone bench she had shared with Dara the evening before yesterday.
“No,” she replied shortly.
“Did she tell you where she was heading, then?”
“Rowan, I don’t know.”
He nodded and turned, driving his hand through his hair.
“By Danu, that bleedin’ woman!” he suddenly roared, kicking over an innocent garden trellis.
Aislinn leaped to her feet in alarm. “Rowan, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t bloody know!” He spun back to her, arms spread wide. “All I know is, this morning I couldn’t find her, and nobody else has seen or heard anything. She might as well have been swallowed up by the bleedin’ earth!”
“What’s all the shouting about?”
“No business of yours, Teague.”
Rowan squinted his eyes past Aislinn, scowling at the couple that had just staggered out of the mansion. When the two of them strolled closer, they appeared more deeply involved with each other than truly drunk. Teague could hold his Guinness pretty well, Rowan could testify to that himself, and as for Brid… Were banshees even capable of getting drunk?
“You’re looking fit to be tied.” Brighid beamed her good-morning at him.
“Aye, what’s wrong?” Teague said. His hand rested on Brighid’s backside, draped in the blazing flood of her long hair.
“Dara’s been missing since this morning,” Aislinn volunteered. She flinched as Rowan speared her with a hot look.
“Right.” Teague scratched his head, bemused.
“I should go look around the airport.” Rowan shook his head.
“This is mad, bud. She could go to Dublin, but there’s the Shannon airport, too…”
“Och, stop it you two, Dara didn’t go to any airport!” Brighid thumped her foot against Teague’s work boot. “Think, Rowan, is there someplace special she might have gone to? Someplace you took her to, maybe?”
“Aye, I can think of several such places,” he softly admitted.
