by Ann Gimpel
Fionn’s tongue sparred with hers. His spicy scent swirled around them and heated her blood. The jut of his erection prodded her belly. Her throat thickened. Emotion rocketed through her, and she pulled away from their kiss. Tears coursed down her face. “I was so frightened I’d never see you again.” She snuffled.
“I was afraid Perrikus had killed you,” he countered, still holding her against his body and stroking her back tenderly. “I’ve never felt quite so helpless or so desperate. Had I raced to your side, D’Chel and Perrikus would have snared me.”
She gazed into Fionn’s dear face and fought back tears that didn’t want to stop flowing. “He killed our child.” She sucked in a breath. “The one you hadn’t told me about.”
“Och, leannán, I tried, but ye were so—”
She waved him to silence. “I know. I’ve replayed that scene in Marta’s kitchen over and over in my head.” She swallowed, but her throat tissue grated against itself, making things worse. “I need water.”
Fionn took her hand. “I hear a stream. I could do with a rinse afore we make love.”
“So long as I get to drink out of it first.” She tried to joke, but couldn’t latch onto the dry humor that had been a godsend since the dark gods had killed her father and her life had fallen to pieces.
“Afore ye say aught, I owe you an apology.”
They walked through ancient aspens. Fallen branches and leaves crackled beneath their boots. Above it, the sound of rushing water drew her.
“For the baby?”
“Aye. I should have discussed it with you. I wasna thinking. It seemed so natural. We loved one another, were bound through the ancient stricture… Bairns seemed inevitable.”
Thank God he’s saying the right things. She’d worried about him being defensive. She squeezed his hand. “Apology accepted. Hang onto your next thought.” Aislinn threw herself onto her belly and lowered her mouth into the fast-running brook. She drank long and deep. When she lifted her head, water ran down her chin. “I needed that. Should have brought my rucksack along. I had no idea we’d be in the halls of the dead for so long. They’re enormous.”
Fionn gripped her beneath her arms and lifted her to her feet. “We can talk all ye like, but I’ve dreamed of holding you next to me. Mayhap the talk can wait till after?” He furled a brow and winked suggestively. His face was smudged with dirt; it made him look like a latter day pirate.
“What about rinsing off?” Aislinn asked to buy a little time. She wanted to talk, needed to, but Fionn’s sheer magnetism was so compelling, it wasn’t easy to tell him no, or not yet.
He scanned the creek and pointed. “Look yonder to that pool near the far bank. It’s enclosed enough I can warm it. Will ye join me?” He shrugged his pack off his broad shoulders and stripped tattered battle leathers from his body.
Aislinn’s breath hitched. Fionn had the most magnificent build. If she didn’t watch it, the sight of his naked body would drive everything else from her mind. Even bruised and marred by scrapes, the lines of his broad chest and well-muscled arms were heartbreakingly beautiful. Hard planes of muscle disappeared down his sides and into the breeches he was untying. His cock, long, thick, and rigid with wanting her sprang from its mat of golden curls.
“Will ye join me, lass?” he asked again, voice husky with passion.
“I’d love to, but we do need to talk first, at least a little.” She wound her fingers together in her lap. “If I’d known I was pregnant, I would have stayed at Marta’s. To have D’Chel tell me, and then to discover everyone knew about it but me…” She hesitated, choosing her next words. “I felt like a fool and guilty as sin.” She reared her head back and looked at him. “It’s my fault our child—the one I didn’t find out about in time—died. I’m going to have to live with that for a very long time.”
She was babbling, but once she’d started, words stumbled out, gaining momentum. “I want to make love, but I feel like I don’t deserve to be happy, to go on with my life. I haven’t let myself think much about it, but I did a piss poor job protecting our son.” The tears she hadn’t shed when she got back to Marta’s, tears mourning her loss, fell thickly.
Fionn gathered her into his arms and held her against him. “Hush, leannán. ’Tis sorry I am. ’Twas my doing for being cowardly, for not pressing ahead and telling you as soon as I knew. Even further back than that, I should have consulted with you on something so important. Och aye, my love, doona fault yourself.” He cuddled her against him, whispering Gaelic endearments. “If ye’d rather, I can just hold you.”
She sniffled back tears, not knowing exactly what she wanted or needed. Being in Fionn’s arms felt right. She belonged there. Maybe making love to him would carve a little dent in the desolation and the loneliness she’d lived with since returning from the border world. She’d yearned for the feel of his arms and the press of his body while she’d slept alone in the back bedroom at Marta’s house.
He must have been in her mind, because he unzipped her jacket and pushed it off her shoulders, and then tugged her top over her head. “I love you, leannán. We’ll take this slowly. If ye wish me to stop, just say so.” He pressed his lips against her forehead and stood back a little, gazing at her. “No matter how many times I look at you, I never get used to how fetching ye are.” He bent his head and closed his mouth over a nipple.
Love for the man holding her pierced her soul. She closed her hands around his upper arms, and Fionn groaned. Aislinn undid the fastenings on her pants and slid them down her hips before she remembered her boots. She pushed his head away. “We need to get our shoes off.”
He laughed softly. The sound warmed her, and she knew she’d been afraid she’d never hear it again. “Aye, lass. If we doona watch it, our bath willna happen.”
She sank to the ground and untied her boots. He helped pull them off and then sat next to her to work on the lacings of his own. “Brrr,” she murmured. “Ground’s cold. If you could make the water warm, maybe that would be a better spot than here.” She ran a hand down the side of his face and pushed his tangled blond locks aside.
He lay back, drew her against him, and shielded her body from the chill earth. His cock twitched where it was sandwiched between them. He gripped her ass and ran kisses down her neck, breath coming fast. “Och aye, I am not thinking. Ye must be bleeding. Would it be better if—”
“I’m all right. It’s not like I was more than barely pregnant. Most of my wounding is in my heart—and you listened when I tried to talk about it. I’m fine, really I am. It’s not like I miscarried a several months’ pregnancy. I stopped bleeding after I Healed myself, and then Gwydion chucked in more Healing for good measure.”
“If ye’re certain.” He cupped the side of her face with his hand; caring shone in the depths his eyes.
She pushed her hips against him. “I want you, too. Whatever it is that spins its magic between us is a two-way street. Go.” She made shooing motions with both hands. “Warm the water for us.”
He cut her words off with a kiss that burned all the way to her toes. She curled a hand around his erection and buried the other in his hair. More than anything, she wanted to draw him deep within her. Her body yearned for him, ached for the feel of him filling her. Her nipples pebbled against his chest. Somehow, maybe if they made love, it would help make up for all the pain and humiliation in the dark gods’ borderworld.
“Ye are making it verra difficult for me to leave,” he said once he came up for air.
“You don’t have to,” she said breathlessly. Need was so pressing, she could barely talk.
“Aye, the vision of your perfect body presenting itself for loving is too good to resist, but I need to be clean first.” With a sound between a purr and a moan, he rolled into the water and yelped. “Och, but ’tis chilly. Wait till I tell you to join me. Ye’ll still have to cross the cold part to get to me, but at least ’twill be better than this once ye get there.”
She drew up her knees and wrapped
her arms around them. A still, slow heat pounded in her core. She needed Fionn just like she needed food to eat and air to breathe. He was part of survival. When he crooked a finger at her, she made her way through icy, thigh-deep water to where he stood. “Whew! You’re not kidding. It’s so cold, I’m surprised it’s not frozen.” She stamped her feet against the sandy bottom and willed the warmer water to chase her goose bumps away. The pool was deeper than the stream had been. Water lapped around her waist.
He folded her into his arms and ran his hands down her back. “Your skin is like velvet. I tried not to think about you because it got in the way of figuring out how to escape from the dark ones, but ye were always in my mind.” He smoothed her long hair over her shoulders and wove his hands into it. “I had to find my way back. I dinna wish to live without you.”
She tilted her face up, and he slashed his mouth over hers. The kiss was demanding. It echoed everything she felt for him. He loved her beyond reason and wanted her with a ferocity that would shatter them both if he were denied. Fionn drove his swollen cock rhythmically against her belly. “Lass.” He broke their kiss, and his voice was strained. “I must be inside you if ye’ll have me. I canna wait much longer.”
He slipped his hand between their bodies and pushed gentle fingers between her legs. When he rubbed her swollen nub, she pressed into his hand. She couldn’t wait, either. She closed her hands around his ridged flesh, glorying in the size and weight of him, rubbed the sensitive head, and pushed her clit harder into his probing fingers.
Breath rattled in her chest. Fionn placed a hand on either side of her waist and turned her away from him. She half lay across a large, smooth boulder with warm water running over it. “I wish ye could see yourself,” he panted. “Your sex is gleaming. ’Tis such a thing of beauty framed by your red curls.”
“Stop talking and make love to me.”
She felt the head of his cock seat itself at the opening to her body. He kept one hand on her hip and curled the other around to keep rubbing her clit. She was so close to coming, it was all she could do not to shriek at him to bury himself inside her. Her muscles clenched, desperate for the feel of him. Lust was like a live thing, clawing at her. It was hard to talk.
“I need you inside me now,” she ground out. “Damn it, Fionn. Now.”
He sank into her excruciatingly slowly while his hand rubbed her. Before he got all the way inside, she convulsed around him and came.
“Aye, mo croi, my love, my sweet, come for me.” He captured her nub between two fingers and rolled it while he drew out and pushed back inside. After about six strokes, his control crumbled and he drove himself into her.
Between his cock inside and his fingers on the heart of her sex, another climax began deep in her belly. Just before she dissolved into a molten pool of heat, she felt him judder inside her. He came hard, and the spasms just kept on coming.
He didn’t stop moving until the last tremor faded from her body. She lay on the rock, panting. Fionn pulled out of her. He was still hard. She turned and watched him rinse himself in the pool he’d warmed around them.
“That’s a good idea.” She knelt on the sandy bottom and sluiced water beneath her legs.
He helped her back to the bank where they’d left their clothes. She traced the line of his cock. “Making love just now was like an affirmation. They took our child, but they can’t rob us of the love we bear for each other.”
“I couldna have said it better myself.” He smiled, his eyes lit with love and a fierce protectiveness. “We should be getting back. This was an indulgence, but one I couldna do without.”
“Fionn.”
He cocked his head to one side. “Aye?”
“No more bairns until we are both agreed.”
He took her hands in his and looked deep into her eyes. “Ye dinna need to say that.” His mouth curved into a wry grin. “I try to only make mistakes once. Not that the bairn was a mistake, but the way of his making was. It should have been something we discussed aforehand.”
She pulled magic to dry herself and reached for her clothes. Dusk had fallen; the temperature was somewhere south of freezing. “There. I’m ready once we round up the animals. I assume Perrikus and D’Chel trapped you somehow. How’d you get away?”
“We verra nearly didn’t. If it hadn’t been for Arawn and his secret ways into the halls of the dead…” His voice trailed off. “It doesna matter. What is important is we are reunited one with the other. The war for Earth is escalating at a pace none of us expected, but we can discuss all that once we join the others.”
He whistled sharply. After a few moments, Bella’s winged form separated from the darkening sky, and she landed on his shoulder. Rune trotted to Aislinn’s side. A mangled rodent hung from his jaws, and his snout was smeared with blood.
“The hunting was good?” Aislinn patted his head.
He dropped the still-twitching vole. “More than good.”
“Do ye want to come with me?” Fionn asked Aislinn. “I can take us all if ye’d like.”
“Sure.” She moved into the circle of his arms with Rune by her side and felt the familiar tug of magic. She waited for the uncomfortable sensation of being snared in someone else’s working, but it never came. Maybe it’s because he and I are becoming one. Warmth from their lovemaking still glowed in her heart when they emerged in Marta’s yard.
Fionn settled a hand around Aislinn’s waist and drew her toward the fire the others had lit in the middle of the backyard. Nidhogg and Dewi were on one side, the three Celts on the other. Fionn assumed the group sat around a campfire, rather than inside the house, to include the dragons in their discussion. He sucked in a deep breath. “Excuse me a moment, leannán.”
Fionn strode to the Norse dragon and bowed until his head nearly touched the ground. “Ancient one,” he murmured. “’Tis glad I am ye are returned to us.”
Steam rose from the black dragon’s open mouth. “I suppose you thought I was dead right along with everyone but Bran?”
Fionn straightened. “I wasna certain. Dewi searched for you. It was over a hundred years afore she returned. It dinna seem possible to effect a successful rescue after so much time had passed.”
Nidhogg bent forward and placed a foreleg on Fionn’s shoulder. “I will tell you the same as I told the others. We start fresh. Dewi and I are already working on repopulating Earth with dragons, but it will take a bit of time.”
“’Tis a worthy goal that may well be our salvation.” Fionn gripped one of Nidhogg’s long, curved talons.
“In one month’s time, I will have a clutch to warm.” Pride rang in Dewi’s voice.
Happiness for her surged in Fionn. Perhaps more than the others, he understood what the loss of her last brood had meant to her, particularly since she’d come home without Nidhogg. Dewi had gambled and lost. She’d confided in Fionn about her remorse before disappearing into the welter of tunnels beneath Taltos. If the stars aligned and she could finally raise younglings, it would lighten the guilt the dragon had carted with her since abandoning her last batch of eggs.
“The others I rousted from the Old Country never arrived.” Arawn broke into Fionn’s thoughts. “We were just discussing that afore ye and the lass arrived.”
Fionn moved closer to the fire and held his hands toward its warmth. Gwydion, staff balanced over his knees, did the same.
Aislinn settled herself between Gwydion and Bran on an upturned log end as Rune curled into a tight ball at her feet. The light of the fire reflected in her hair, turning it into liquid flame that danced each time she moved her head. Fionn stared at her, mesmerized by her loveliness. Sucking in a breath, he drew his gaze away with difficulty. It was easy to lose himself in her beauty, and possessiveness coiled deep inside his belly. He never wanted to be separated from the MacLochlainn again. No matter what happened, she had to be by his side. It was too risky otherwise.
“Hmph. We should go find out why they dinna show up,” Fionn muttered. “Though
I fear we willna like the answer.”
“We were thinking we needed to move away from this house in any event,” Bran said. “’Tisn’t safe. We can bring a selection of Marta’s journals with us.”
Aislinn turned toward Bran, head cocked to one side. “If you can bring inanimate objects when you jump, I say we need to prioritize food. Where would we go?”
“Ireland,” Bran said. “We all have homes near Inishowen. Doona fash about food. ’Tis far easier to grow things there than here, and we all have foodstuffs stockpiled from past harvests.”
Aislinn drew her brows together and caught her lower lip between her teeth.
Fionn moved close and hunkered between her and the fire. Its warmth seared his back. “Talk to me, lass.”
“It’s nothing. I guess I’m just a provincial hick, but it seems like a long way away is all. Move back from the fire before you get burned.”
Fionn got to his feet and came around behind her. He buried his hands in her hair.
“It won’t take much longer to get there than it took to get where we went today,” Dewi said.
Aislinn shook her head. “It’s not the distance. It sounds silly because there is no more home. I lost that when the Lemurians took Mother. Even so, it feels like I’ll be letting go of the last shards of what’s familiar.”
“Inishowen was your mother’s home,” Gwydion said. “I can show you where she lived. I believe it stands yet.”
“I’d like that.”
“Aye, there’s little enough left of your family here,” Fionn concurred.
“I am her family,” Rune growled from where he lay beside her.
“I hadna forgotten.” Fionn bent and petted the wolf’s rough outer coat and then wrapped his arms around Aislinn from behind.
She leaned against him. “If what you said earlier is right, we may not have much time for me to hunt for my roots once we get to Ireland.”
