by Nora Roberts
He set her on her feet. “I won’t hurt you, that I can promise. I’ll give you only pleasure.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“Then be with me.” He cupped her face in his hands, laid his lips on hers.
In dreams there had been longing, and echoes of sensations. Here and now, with those mists parted, there was so much more.
Gently, so gently, his mouth took from hers. Warmth and wanting. With tenderness and patience, his hands moved over her. Soft and seductive. When she trembled, he soothed, murmuring her name, and promises. He slid the gown off her shoulders, trailed kisses over that curve of flesh. And thrilled to the flavor and the fragrance.
“Let me see you now, lovely Kayleen.” He skimmed his lips along her throat as he eased the gown down her body. When it pooled at her feet, he stepped back and looked his fill.
There was no shyness in her. The heat that rose up to bloom on her skin was anticipation. The tremble that danced through her was delight when his gaze finished its journey and his eyes locked on hers.
He reached out, caressed the curve of her breast, let them both absorb the sensation. When his fingertips trailed down, he felt her quiver under his touch.
She reached for him, her hands not quite steady as she unbuttoned his shirt. And when she touched him, it was like freedom.
“A ghra.” He pulled her against him, crushed her mouth with his, lost himself in the needs that stormed through him. His hands raced over her, took, sought more, until she gasped out his name.
Too fast, too much. God help him. He fought back through the pounding in his blood, gentled his movements, chained the raw need. When he lifted her again, laid her on the bed, his kiss was long and slow and gentle.
This, she thought, was what the poets wrote of. This was why a man or a woman would reject reason for even the chance of love.
This warmth, this pleasure of another’s body against your own. This gift of heart, and all the sighs and secrets it offered.
He gave her pleasure, as he had promised, drowning floods of it that washed through her in slow waves. She could have lain steeped in it forever.
She gave to him a taste, a touch, so that sensation pillowed the aches. He savored, and lingered, and held fast to the beauty she offered.
When flames licked at the edges of warmth, she welcomed them. The pretty clouds that had cushioned her began to thin. Falling through them, she cried out. A sound of triumph as her heart burst inside her.
And heard him moan, heard the quick whispers, a kind of incantation as he rose over her. Through the candlelight and the shimmer of her own vision she saw his face, his eyes. So green now they were like dark jewels. Swamped with love, she laid a hand on his cheek, murmured his name.
“Look at me. Aye, at me.” His breath wanted to tear out of his lungs. His body begged to plunge. “Only pleasure.”
He took her innocence, filled her, and gave her the joy. She opened for him, rose with him, her eyes swimming with shocked delight. And with the love he craved like breath.
And this time, when she fell, he gathered himself and plunged after her.
Her body shimmered. She was certain that if she looked in the mirror she would see it was golden. And his, she thought, trailing a hand lazily up and down his back. His was so beautiful. Strong and hard and smooth.
His heart was thundering against hers still. What a fantastic sensation that was, to be under the weight of the man you loved and feel his heart race for you.
Perhaps that was why her mother kept searching, kept risking. For this one moment of bliss. Love, Kayleen thought, changes everything.
And she loved.
Was loved. She repeated that over and over in her head. She was loved. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t said it, in those precise words. He couldn’t look at her as he did, couldn’t touch her as he did and not love her.
A woman didn’t change her life, believe in spells and fairy tales after years of denial, and not be given the happy ending.
Flynn loved her. That was all she needed to know.
“Why do you worry?”
She blinked herself back. “What?”
“I feel it. Inside you.” He lifted his head and studied her face. “The worry.”
“No. It’s only that everything’s different now. So much is happening to me in so little time.” She brushed her fingers through his hair and smiled. “But it’s not worry.”
“I want your happiness, Kayleen.”
“I know.” And wasn’t that love, after all? “I know.” And laughing, she threw her arms around him. “And you have it. You make me ridiculously happy.”
“There’s often not enough ridiculous in a life.” He pulled her up with him so they were sitting tangled together on silk roses. “So let’s have a bit.”
The stone in his pendant glowed brighter as he grinned. He fisted his hands, shot them open.
In a wink the bed around them was covered with platters of food and bottles of wine. It made her jolt. She wondered if such things always would. Angling her head, she lifted a glass.
“I’d rather champagne, if you please.”
“Well, then.”
She watched the glass fill, bottom to top, with the frothy wine. And laughing, she toasted him and drank it down.
6
ALL OF HER life Kayleen had done the sensible thing. As a child, she’d tidied her room without being reminded, studied hard in school and turned in all assignments in a timely fashion. She had grown into a woman who was never late for an appointment, spent her money wisely, and ran the family business with a cool, clear head.
Looking back through the veil of what had been, Kayleen decided she had certainly been one of the most tedious people on the face of the planet.
How could she have known there was such freedom in doing the ridiculous or the impulsive or the foolish?
She said as much to Flynn as she lay sprawled over him on the bed of velvety flowers.
“You couldn’t be tedious.”
“Oh, but I could.” She lifted her head from his chest. She wore nothing but her smile, with its dimple, and flowers in her hair. “I was the queen of tedium. I set my alarm for six o’clock every morning, even when I didn’t have to get up for work. I even set alarms when I was on vacation.”
“Because you didn’t want to miss anything.”
“No. Because one must maintain discipline. I walked to work every day, rain or shine, along the exact same route. This was after making my bed and eating a balanced breakfast, of course.”
She slithered down so that she could punctuate her words with little kisses over his shoulders and chest. “I arrived at the shop precisely thirty minutes before opening, in order to see to the morning paperwork and check any displays that might require updating. Thirty minutes for a proper lunch, fifteen minutes, exactly, at four for a cup of tea, then close shop and walk home by that same route.”
She worked her way up his throat. “Mmmm. Watched the news during dinner—must keep up with current affairs. Read a chapter of a good book before bed. Except for Wednesdays. Wednesdays I went wild and took in an interesting film. And on my half day, I would go over to my mother’s to lecture her.”
Though her pretty mouth was quite a distraction, he paid attention to her words, and the tone of them. “You lectured your mother?”
“Oh, yes.” She nibbled at his ear. “My beautiful, frivolous, delightful mother. How I must have irritated her. She’s been married three times, engaged double that, at least. It never works out, and she’s heartbroken about it for, oh, about an hour and a half.”
With a laugh, Kayleen lifted her head again. “That’s not fair, of course, but she manages to shake it all off and never lose her optimism about love. She forgets to pay her bills, misses appointments, never knows the correct time, and has never been known to be able to find her keys. She’s wonderful.”
“You love her very much.”
“Yes, very much.” Sighing now, Kayleen pillow
ed her head on Flynn’s shoulder. “I decided when I was very young that it was my job to take care of her. That was after her husband number two.”
He combed his fingers through her flower-bedecked hair. “Did you lose your father?”
“No, but you could say he lost us. He left us when I was six. I suppose you could call him frivolous, too, which was yet another motivation for me to be anything but. He never settled into the family business well. Or into marriage, or into fatherhood. I hardly remember him.”
He stroked her hair, said nothing. But he was beginning to worry. “Were you happy, in that life?”
“I wasn’t unhappy. Brennan’s was important to me, maybe all the more so because it wasn’t important to my father. He shrugged off the tradition of it, the responsibility of it, as carelessly as he shrugged off his wife and his daughter.”
“And hurt you.”
“At first. Then I stopped letting it hurt me.”
Did you? Flynn wondered. Or is that just one more pretense?
“I thought everything had to be done a certain way to be done right. If you do things right, people don’t leave,” she said softly. “And you’ll know exactly what’s going to happen next. My uncle and grandfather gradually let me take over the business because I had a knack for it, and they were proud of that. My mother let me handle things at home because, well, she’s just too good-natured not to.”
She sighed again, snuggled into him. “She’s going to get married again next month, and she’s thrilled. One of the reasons I took this trip now is because I wanted to get away from it, from those endless plans for yet another of her happy endings. I suppose I hurt her feelings, leaving the way I did. But I’d have hurt them more if I’d stayed and spoke my mind.”
“You don’t like the man she’ll marry?”
“No, he’s perfectly nice. My mother’s fiancés are always perfectly nice. Funny, since I’ve been here I haven’t worried about her at all. And I imagine, somehow, she’s managing just fine without me picking at her. The shop’s undoubtedly running like clockwork, and the world continues to spin. Odd to realize I wasn’t indispensable after all.”
“To me you are.” He wrapped his arms around her, rolled over so he could look down at her. “You’re vital to me.”
“That’s the most wonderful thing anyone’s ever said to me.” It was better, wasn’t it? she asked herself. Even better than “I love you.” “I don’t know what time it is, or even what day. I don’t need to know. I’ve never eaten supper in bed unless I was ill. Never danced in a forest in the moonlight, never made love in a bed of flowers. I’ve never known what it was like to be so free.”
“Happy, Kayleen.” He took her mouth, a little desperately. “You’re happy.”
“I love you, Flynn. How could I be happier?”
He wanted to keep her loving him. Keep her happy. He wanted to keep her beautifully naked and steeped in pleasures.
More than anything, he wanted to keep her.
The hours were whizzing by so quickly, tumbling into days so that he was losing track of time himself. What did time matter now, to either of them?
He could give her anything she wanted here. Anything and everything. What would she miss of the life she had outside? It was ordinary and tedious. Hadn’t she said so herself? He would see that she never missed what had been. Before long she wouldn’t even think of it. The life before would be the dream.
He taught her to ride, and she was fearless. When he thought of how she’d clung to him in terror when he’d pulled her up onto Dilis the first time, he rationalized the change by saying she was simply quick to learn. He hadn’t changed her basic nature, or forced her will.
That was beyond his powers and the most essential rule of magic.
When she galloped off into the forest, her laughter streaming behind her, he told himself he let his mind follow her only to keep her from harm.
Yet he knew, deep inside himself, that if she traveled near the edge of his world, he would pull her back.
He had that right, Flynn thought, as his hands fisted at his sides. He had claimed her. What he claimed during his imprisonment was his to keep.
“That is the law.” He threw his head back, scowling up at the heavens. “It is your law. She came to me. By rights of magic, by the law of this place, she is mine. No power can take her from me.”
When the sky darkened, when lightning darted at the black edges of clouds, Flynn stood in the whistling wind, feet planted in challenge. His hair blew wild around his face, his eyes went emerald-bright. And the power that was his, that could not be taken from him, shimmered around him like silver.
In his mind he saw Kayleen astride the white horse. She glanced uneasily at the gathering storm, shivered in the fresh chill of the wind. And turned her mount to ride back to him.
She was laughing again as she raced out of the trees. “That was wonderful!” She threw her arms recklessly in the air so that Flynn gripped the halter to keep Dilis steady. “I want to ride every day. I can’t believe the feeling.”
Feeling, he thought with a vicious tug of guilt, was the one thing he wouldn’t be able to offer her much longer.
“Come, darling.” He lifted his arms up to her. “We’ll put Dilis down for the night. A storm’s coming.”
She welcomed it too. The wind, the rain, the thunder. It stirred something in her, some whippy thrill that made her feel reckless and bold. When Flynn set the fire to blaze with a twist of his hand, her eyes danced.
“I don’t suppose you could teach me to do that?”
He glanced back at her, the faintest of smiles, the slightest lift of brow. “I can’t, no. But you’ve your own magic, Kayleen.”
“Have I?”
“It binds me to you, as I’ve been bound to no other. I will give you a boon. Any that you ask that is in my power to give.”
“Any?” A smile played around her mouth now as she looked up at him from under her lashes. The blatantly flirtatious move came to her much more naturally than she’d anticipated. “Well, that’s quite an offer. I’ll have to consider very carefully before making any decision.”
She wandered the room, trailing a fingertip over the back of the sofa, over the polished gleam of a table. “Would that offer include, say, the sun and the moon?”
Look at her, he thought. She grows more beautiful by the hour. “Such as these?” He held out his hands. From them dripped a string of luminous white pearls with a clasp of diamonds.
She laughed, even as her breath caught. “Those aren’t bad, as an example. They’re magnificent, Flynn. But I didn’t ask for diamonds or pearls.”
“Then I give them freely.” He crossed to her, laid the necklace over her head. “For the pleasure of seeing you wear them.”
“I’ve never worn pearls.” Surprised by the delight they brought her, she lifted them, let them run like moonbeams through her fingers. “They make me feel regal.”
Holding them out, she turned a circle while the diamond clasp exploded with light. “Where do they come from? Do you just picture them in your mind and…poof?”
“Poof?” He decided she hadn’t meant that as an insult. “More or less, I suppose. They exist, and I move them from one place to another. From there, to here. Whatever is, that has no will, I can bring here, and keep. Nothing with heart or soul can be taken. But the rest…It’s sapphires, I’m thinking, that suit you best.”
As Kayleen blinked, a string of rich black pearls clasped with brilliant sapphires appeared around her neck. “Oh! I’ll never get used to…Move them?” She looked back at him. “You mean take them?”
“Mmm.” He turned to pour glasses of wine.
“But…” Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she looked around the room. The gorgeous antiques, the modern electronics—which she’d noticed ran without electricity, the glamour of Ming vases, the foolishness of pop art.
Almost nothing in the room would have existed when he’d been banished here.
“Flynn, where do all these things come from? Your television set, your piano, the furniture and rugs and art. The food and wine?”
“All manner of places.”
“How does it work?” She took the wine from him. “I mean, is it like replicating? Do you copy a thing?”
“Perhaps, if I’ve a mind to. It takes a bit more time and trouble for that process. You have to know the innards, so to speak, and the composition and all matter of scientific business to make it come right. Easier by far just to transport it.”
“But if you just transport it, if you just take it from one place and bring it here, that’s stealing.”
“I’m not a thief.” The idea! “I’m a magician. The laws aren’t the same for us.”
Patience was one of her most fundamental virtues. “Weren’t you punished initially because you took something from someone?”
“That was entirely different. I changed a life for another’s gain. And I was perhaps a bit…rash. Not that it deserved such a harsh sentence.”
“How do you know what lives you’ve changed by bringing these here?” She held up the pearls. “Or any of the other things? If you take someone’s property, it causes change, doesn’t it? And at the core of it, it’s just stealing.” Not without regret, she lifted the jewels over her head. “Now, you have to put these back where you got them.”
“I won’t.” Fully insulted now, he slammed his glass down. “You would reject a gift from me?”
“Yes. If it belongs to someone else. Flynn, I’m a merchant myself. How would I feel to open my shop one morning and find my property gone? It would be devastating. A violation. And beyond that, which is difficult enough, the inconvenience. I’d have to file a police report, an insurance claim. There’d be an investigation, and—”
“Those are problems that don’t exist here,” he interrupted. “You can’t apply your ordinary logic to magic. Magic is.”
“Right is, Flynn, and even magic can’t negate what’s right. These may be heirlooms. They may mean a great deal to someone even beyond their monetary value. I can’t accept them.”
