Stormfire

by Christine Monson

  Sean anchored on the spot, not caring that Megan jerked and heeled about in the water like a broken-winged bird. He hauled the sails down as fast as he could, tensely keeping a shoreward eye on the small black head increasingly obscured by the waves. By the time he pushed the dinghy away from the Megan's side, Catherine was fighting rollers among the rocks and his belly was knotted. The waves were breaking over her head and she was weakening, the cold seeping into her limbs, slowing her reactions. Then mercifully, she emerged from the breakers, stumbling and falling as they beat her down, but stubbornly making for shore. She collapsed on the rocky beach; he willed her to stay there, but when he looked again over his heaving shoulder as he rowed, she was gone. The white shirt flashed once among the rocks, then disappeared.

  Kenlo's single, irregular street was overgrown with heather, and scabrous lichens crawled up ruined walls that distorted the sea wind into moaning, keening sighs. Doorways and windows stood dark and empty, framing bloated, sullen thunderheads in a gunmetal sky. Catherine sensed rather than smelled a stink of death; a faint, sweet, clinging perfume. Fiona's warning echoed in the rising wind. Megan is powerful among her own shadows. She'll destroy you. Catherine straightened. She had been coming to Kenlo ever since leaving England.

  Knowing Culhane must be already searching the beach, she moved quickly from house to house, but no cranny proved safe from discovery, and too late, she realized she should have stayed in the ro9ks, away from the cold wind that turned wet garments to clinging ice and sent her hair whipping in sodden tangles. Away from Culhane.

  A ruined chapel stood apart from the huts, its terraced steps broken and weed-bound. Shivering, she crept in, her fingers pressed along walls rough with seashells imbedded in native rock. The altar was open to the sky and streaked with droppings of seabirds, its relics vandalized or stolen. Long slits in the building's seaward side were blocks of angry surf gruigbling against wet rocks. Crudely carved limestone faces of saints in niches about the room had been worn away by the salt wind to noseless, blank-eyed effigies. They resembled less Christian saints than the Old Ones who were even older than the Druids. These were saints returned to pagan primal beginnings. Were they now her allies? Or Megan's?

  A small cell adjoined the nave. Roof still partly intact, it was barren except for a rotting chest with hieratic carvings. A small alcove, unnoticed until she advanced several feet into the room, dented the near corner wall.

  A stone scratched outside and she whirled. Wind whipping about his frame, Culhane was picking his way along the deserted street, examining the interior of each house. Shivering, Catherine pressed into the alcove, trying not to let her teeth chatter. He might not look too closely if he had not seen her come up from the beach. The ruins had drawn her like a magnet. Megan's lure? No, Fiona's suggestion. Megan's dead. Her thoughts swirled. Stay, Kit. Stay where you are. Not breathing, not moving. Kit. His name for her. His will, still commanding her. Don't. Don't think. He'll go away. Please God, make him go away. Tears streamed in icy rivulets down her face and she shook. I'll never be warm again. Never. She closed her eyes. Never again enfolded in arms that held tightly, fiercely defying her, anyone, to break his grip.

  "I thought I might find you here. I used to study in this cell."

  Eyes flaring, she tried to bolt past him but a steel grip closed on her arm and spun her around; his other hand locked in her wet hair. He jerked her to him. "So you'd rather freeze than burn. Stubborn Kit. Almost as stubborn as me." His voice was soft, but taut.

  "Rape me and be damned to you! You'll never have me any other way!"

  "Words, Kit. Just words now. The spitting of a cornered cat. Surrender. You're all out of ammunition. I'm taking you back to the boat. I'm going to make love to you and it won't be rape. Never again." He held her head immobile as his mouth came down on hers, searching softly, then urgently, igniting a slow flame in her belly. Ice and fire. She melted against him, then stiffened and savagely bit his lip. He swore and shook her. "You little bitch! I ought to break your neck, but I've a better way of breaking you."

  He dragged her stumbling to the nave with its distorted saints. With a hand locked in her hair, he jerked her to the front of the altar and clamped her in front of him with an arm under her breasts, her head dragged back against his shoulder. "You know where you are, don't you? That's why you ran. What do you see, Kit? Papa's face above the altar? Damned right you don't!" He shoved her to sprawl on the altar steps. "Those stains under your hands are blood. A priest's blood to be exact. He was murdered on this spot by your father's order. But first he was buggered with his own crucifix by your Papist-hating countrymen. You do know what bugger means, don't you, chérie?"

  Before she had time to react, he dragged her up and after him out into the street. Every foot of its length, she fought him, kicking and scratching, deliberately falling down to tangle his feet. Anything to silence the hard, relentless voice that made Kenlo alive again with slashing cavalry and bayonets. Hacked bodies and flaming, gutted infernos. Mass murder. Finally he half shoved, half threw her into a building apart from the others.

  Instantly she scrambled to her feet, turning at bay, her eyes black and wild, fingers raised like talons to come at him again. He caught her slashing hands easily and pushed her back against a blackened, burned table. "My home, girl—what's left of it!" he snarled. "This is where my mother was raped by one of those bastard's sergeants. I watched while she submitted to give me time to run for my life."

  Catherine bucked against him and he bent her further back as he told her the rest, forgetting that her eyes were hardly lucid, forgetting he was hurting her—everything except the agony of reliving that night. "I heard him and a lieutenant name the author of their orders: a certain aide to the viceroy who figured slaughtering some villages might incite a rebellion so he could confiscate the rebels' property. Your father, you damned bitch!" Sean's face and chest were beaded with sweat, and at that moment, he hated the girl helpless under him more than on the night he had destroyed her innocence.

  With deadly swiftness he drew the boot knife and pressed it against her belly. Catherine's eyes glazed back with terror as the knife dug into her skin. "The sergeant gutted Megan with a bayonet. After the soldiers were gone, I doused the body with oil and set fire to it so nobody would see her mutilated. Then I put what was left into a bag and threw it into the sea.

  "When I was seventeen, I found that sergeant in a tavern. He almost killed me, but I left him gutted, like my mother!"

  Catherine saw murder flare in the green eyes slanting hellishly down at her.

  Later, Sean could not remember what had stopped him in time. He remembered Catherine's screaming; the walls seemed to ricochet the sound of her helpless terror. He put a hand over her mouth, and above it her eyes, utterly lost, tore into his soul. Then they fixed on nothing and she went limp. At first he thought he had driven the knife home. As swift fear flooded away the killing daze, he slowly took his hand away from her mouth. "Kit?" Mind barely functioning, he started to lift her and her head dropped back against his arm. "Kit?" His fingers sought the pulse of her throat; it fluttered weakly. She was unconscious, lashes jagged against a bloodless face. He touched her everywhere and found no blood. With a cry, he flung the knife away. Almost, he had killed her. As he looked around distractedly for something to cover her, his stomach rebelled and he retched, falling on hands and knees in the rubble. His body heaved until nothing more was in his belly, and yet he convulsed.

  Naked beneath Sean's blankets and her own, Catherine regained consciousness in her bunk. Despite the covering, she was cold, her mind and spirit were as an arctic waste. No tears were left now. Nothing except a terrible alienation. Even being alive meant nothing. Culhane had been ready to kill her. Why hadn't he? Was it for the same reason her thoughts had reached his, like a child seeking a reassuring hand, even when she hid from him? Reached for a hand that held a dagger. Papa . . . don't. Don't think. Thinking hurts.

  Holding her head, she sat up and
huddled against the bulkhead. The cabin was dim, the twilight murky with promise of a storm. Land was nowhere in sight and wind whined nastily in the rigging. Thunderheads mounted in a squall line on the southern horizon and the Megan's bow dipped clumsily into troughs, spray blowing high over her deck. On the horizon was an approaching sail, one of the few they had encountered this far north. Tiredly brushing away clinging cobwebs of thought, she dully watched it through the porthole.

  The sail became a mass of sails, tall and commanding. A merchantman? A cruiser. The Irish had no cruisers. Catherine fought to clear her head. She had to gain the vessel's attention. The lantern thumped against the bulkhead. A light. But there would be no chance to use it long enough to be spotted unless . . . A small hatchet was mounted on the wall below Culhane's bunk. Silently she unhooked the lantern, then shook it; a healthy slosh answered. At the helm, visible through the partly open doorway, Culhane was watching the cruiser and beginning to veer subtly away, knowing Megan would be unnoticed once the squall line struck.

  Barefoot, Catherine moved soundlessly about the cabin. She laid the hatchet on Culhane's bunk, then fished in the food bag for the flintbox. Using a blanket to shield the glow, she waited until the cruiser loomed closer, then lit the lantern and took a firm grip on the hatchet.

  Intent on the warship, Culhane did not see his hostage until she was already through the forward hatch; then it was too late. In one stroke of the hatchet she severed the main halyard, burying the blade deep in the mast. With an ominous ruffle, the mainsail dropped in a leaden tangle of canvas and rigging, slamming him to the deck and sending the boom slashing out of control. Catherine swung the lantern in a high, wide arc and tried not to think of the man who might be injured. Tried not to think of what a British tribunal would do to him.

  Stunned at first, Sean lay tangled under the sail, then began desperately to fight clear as he heard the muffled lash of raindrops against the cloth. Swearing, he pulled a knife and split the sail. Catherine, still signaling, saw him emerge from his trap much sooner than anticipated. She wrenched at the imbedded hatchet. He warily closed on her. "Douse that light!" She jerked at the hatchet; it stuck solid. No longer trying to wave the light, just trying to keep a footing on the slippery, lurching deck, she backed toward the bow. Sean watched tensely. A wild-eyed, beautiful siren bent on destroying him, she was desperate, trembling with cold and fear. At any moment she might lose her balance, even jump. "Want me dead that badly, little one? Here, catch!" Knowing she would snatch at it and poised to hurl himself forward to pin her down, he sent the knife skittering across the deck.

  She grabbed fast enough, almost losing her grip on the lantern, but he was forced to freeze in midlunge just out of reach of the glittering blade poised all too professionally at his belly. She had learned more in captivity than he realized. "Kit, you're going to have to use that knife if you bring in that cruiser. I'll not swing from a British yard-arm."

  "Take the dinghy but don't come any closer." Her tone was flat, although her teeth were clenched from cold and rain that lashed her dripping body. "I've nothing to lose."

  "Nor have I," he said softly. "Only you."

  "You were going to kill me," she spat.

  "Yes."

  "You should have. It would have been over for both of us."

  "Is that what you want? Then use the knife." His advice was quiet, almost brotherly, and she watched him with wary uncertainty. "Shall I help you make up your mind? I'll never let you go, girl. Not while I breathe. If you don't kill me, I'm going to take you and go on taking you. I may even give you a child. And if you run away from me, I'll bring you back. If you want to be rid of me, it's now or never."

  Her heart raced sickeningly as her desperation grew. The cruiser loomed closer.

  "Don't be afraid. I won't stop you. Take your revenge and be free. It's only the matter of a moment." Clutching a shroud line above his head, he leaned toward her, rain- soaked shirt flapping about his bare chest as lightning snapped across the sky. His voice was seductively soft. "We're close as an embrace. Kiss me with the knife."

  The weapon slowly backed for the lunge, its point glinting with a razor's wicked edge.

  "Now, Catherine. Strike now, or yield."

  She thrust the knife forward, but at the last moment looked into eyes that reflected the storm. This strange, brooding man had become part of her. Frighteningly, he needed her now, though she had denied him in rage and pride as he had her. Even if she died by his hand, she could deny him no longer.

  As the knife clattered to the deck, a fleck of crimson over the Irishman's heart smeared against her breast as he swept her into his arms and crushed his mouth down upon her cold lips, kissing her as if the tempest raging about them were centered in his soul. He paused to kick the lantern overboard, then picking her up, moved quickly across the careening deck to the cabin's shelter. He laid her down, then swiftly tore free of his sodden clothing. Lightning illuminated the cabin. Their hair dripping in points, they looked long at one another while off the starboard bow a British man-o'-war labored north through the storm. As her stern light disappeared, Sean's mouth plummeted down on Catherine's and she answered his raging desire with equal hunger as she drew him down onto the tumbled blankets. Their wet, slippery bodies met and moved in wanton heat that raged like the storm howling about their battered craft. Passion rose in fiery waves pouring over the edge of the world, a descent into the inferno, bodies locked in a fusion of molten desire. Ice and fire. He possessed her with a tender savagery that not only claimed victory but wreaked annihilation.

  For a long time they lay still joined, Sean's dark head resting on Catherine's breast. As the storm slowly abated outside their drifting sanctuary, she touched his damp, curling hair, reveling in its thick softness. Lifting his head, he gazed into her lambent eyes with a wonder his shadowing.lashes could not veil. A slow, boyish smile softened the hard lines of his mouth. "Shivering sea witch," he murmured, brushing her lips with his. Gently he explored her face with his fingers as a blind man might, as if he had never seen it before and might never again. "Yea, thou art fair," he breathed. "I fear I'm caught in some siren's spell, for your starry eyes are not of this world, sweet witch, and I shall ever see them, dazzled, dreaming."

  She smoothed the damp hair from his temples. "And what of my Sea Beast? When I look into his eyes, I see no wolfish gleam, no fiendish glare, but a man, and such a man as I've never known. I. . ." She fell silent, a shadow crossing her face.

  "You wonder when the reprieve ends," he supplied with a trace of his old bitterness.

  She stopped his lips with a quick, clinging kiss that scattered his troubled thoughts like dead ashes. "We've gone beyond promises. Everything but this moment."

  She drew his head down and his hard body reclaimed hers with a fierce yearning that aroused her own longing to a dizzy pitch, then slowly fulfilled it with piercing, welling intensity until her cry was swept away with the wind.

  As Catherine buried her face in. his neck and drifted peacefully into dreamless sleep, Sean, staring into the dark, watched fitful lightning play over the still-angry waves.

  When dawn rose over the quick-running, sullen seas, he left her sleeping and, naked as an ancient mariner, went up on deck. Wet teak slapped under his bare feet as he surveyed the debris of sail and rigging choking the cockpit. With the severed halyard clamped in his teeth, he climbed up into the swaying rigging. Though he worked quickly at the damage, he grew chilled almost immediately. Perversely, he wanted the discomfort, the astringent of spray and wind on his skin. Least of all did he want to look down and see Catherine staring up at him like a brazen pirate wench with black hair whipping about her naked body. She eyed his nudity with a glance that made his blood run hot. Half angrily he growled, "Put on your clothes, girl. You'll catch a chill."

  "You're evidently in no danger," she teased, a dimple appearing in her cheek as she surveyed his long, supple limbs and bronzed, lean frame with the appreciation of a woman proud of her lo
ver.

  He flushed and swore under his breath. One night of pleasure and the bold little baggage was as coolly appraising as a Paris madam.

  He swung in midair from a ratline to a stay and slid down to land with a scowl at her feet. She swirled a playful finger in the black, curling fur of his chest. "I'm so glad you didn't persuade me to kill you. If I'd been brought to trial before my feminine peers, I should have been hanged outright as a traitor to my sex."

  "God help us all if women ever sit in court!" he snorted derisively to distract her from his all-too-eager response to her touch. Damnation! There was no justice in the world when a man could not disguise his interests while a woman could toy until kingdom come without turning a hair.

  Catherine looked up impishly, trailing her fingers along the fine line of fur that traced down his belly. "Sir, do you suggest that justice in capable hands might be too equally dispensed, or that women aren't sensible? Only an insensible woman could deny the upright evidence of your appeal." Her lifts curved mischievously.

  He firmly plucked her fingers out of his pelt. "If you don't want to be pitched overboard for a water sprite, keep your itchy little fingers to yourself." He moved to the halyards, and a cool, teasing voice came from behind him. "Actually, I had thought of perfecting my backstroke in a more pleasant fashion."

  "Damned if your mouth doesn't need another soaping!" Angrily he turned, and somehow she was all soft in his arms, the boat's rocking under his feet only part of the dizzying effect on his runaway senses. Swearing softly, he pulled her upward, hard against his nakedness, and kissed her roughly until she was breathless. Lowering her to the shining mirror of the deck, he took her under the sky, swiftly, urgently, until a shuddering, sweet, swelling agony seized them both and left them clinging tightly, spent and trembling.