The Wakening Fire [The Dawn of Ireland 2]

by Erin O'Quinn

  He raised his eyes to the intense blue sky. “He told the woman Martha, and through her he told us. ‘I am the resurrection, and the life. He that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.’”

  And then he spread his arms, as if needing to enclose heaven itself in his arms. “Dear Lord, we are come to you with dual purpose this day. To celebrate your resurrection. And to declare ourselves true Christians, receiving the holy waters of baptism, so that we may receive your blessed body and blood.”

  I gaped as I saw a steady procession of would-be converts begin to approach Patrick, and among them were Michael, and Torin and Swallow, and even Sweeney, Mockingbird, and Murdoch. And next to them, his eyes shining and his shoulders proud, was my own Liam, holding the arm of his mother, wife of the king himself.

  Father Patrick dipped his thumb in the basin of water, and he touched it to the forehead of each convert. “O dearly beloved, do you accept Christ as your savior?” And the response came, “I do.”

  After the baptism, each convert, along with those of us already baptized, celebrated the mass, on the very grounds where King Leary would shortly convene a Great Judgment from his high throne.

  I stirred on the soft feather pillow. “Liam, do you think we have ceded Sweeney enough land? His family is not small.”

  Liam laughed softly. “I do, Cat. Sure I think he would ha’ been happy with much less.”

  He and I had stayed very near his father’s throne after the paschal rites. My husband stood with Murdoch, each of them holding an invalid’s cart. Sitting very king-like inside was Sweeney, his great arms and shoulders almost too big for his fine silk léine.

  After the incantations and the reciting of endless generations of the king’s fathers and fathers of fathers, Leary stood, his hands stretched out over the crowd. His posture looked strikingly like Patrick’s own as the priest had spread his arms to enclose the very skies. Again, Torin, his eldest son and royal heir Lugh, stood by his side to make sure that everyone understood his words.

  “It rarely comes about that the endowments of a High King are forfeit. An’ yet today I sit before ye to retract, an’ to add. The retractions are the result of the very eloquent entreaties of the Duchess Caylith herself.

  “Be it hereby known to all in Éire, even unto unborn generations, that the family of me brother Owen, the cenél of Eóghan Mac Néill, are to receive the following. The land on the promontory now to be called ‘Inis-Eóghan,’ Isle of Owen, from the Bay of Trawbreaga to the lands between the Lough Foyle and the Lough Swilly. And from there south to…”

  I cared not which lands were being ceded to Liam’s Uncle Owen. After all, the lands of all his kin were the same as being our own. If and when the bally of Derry needed to expand, we would have untold thousands of miles to ask for, and receive, from our own grateful family.

  After the endowment, when the crowds had thinned, Murdoch sought me out where Liam and I were waiting to greet him and the others. In spite of Liam’s great arm around my shoulders, he tipped my face up to his. I saw a gleam in the back of his dark eyes, and I could read his expression as if he were speaking out boldly.

  “Thank you, O cousin. And you, too, cousin Liam. I hope I will see you on the cold, blue bay. For that is where my heart lies, and where I will return.” He leaned and gave me a brief kiss, almost brotherly except for the lightning-fast dart of his tongue inside my mouth.

  He straightened, and I felt my gut cringe with shame and anger. I was ashamed at myself for not recoiling from him. And I was deeply angry at the lout for breaking his word to me. And yet I managed to keep a grave face. “Your manners are as unpolished as ever, Murdoch. And yet I think that yes, we will one day visit you. I sincerely hope by then you will have at least one overgrown, insolent son in your own image.” That should let him know that my visit will be long in coming.

  He laughed, and then I did, too. After all, he was my friend. I would miss him, and his father, and Mockingbird also. After all, without Sweeney, I had no adversary to fester over, no great adventures to concoct. I will just have to look for more.

  As if reading my thoughts, Liam settled closer to me and toyed with the silk cover I had drawn up over my chest. “What next, Cat? Who…we chase through the woods? What great stones we touch?”

  I put my arms around his neck and put my forehead on his. “I know not, a chuisle mo chroí. We wait, and we rise to the challenge, our batas ready to strike.”

  “I…rise. Me bata ready to strike,” he murmured into my mouth. I took his tongue almost casually and began to gently suck it, feeling the instant stab of heat in my groin. He struggled to speak against my mouth. “Mmm, Cat, talk to me.”

  I talked and licked, talked and sucked. “My body talks to you, Liam. My nipples cry out for love…My nether lips are lonely for your kisses. Oh, oh, my bum is shouting…crying for your tongue, burning for your mouth.” My sucking intensified. “Can you hear it, can you hear it?” I knew that my frank love talk always made him wild with desire. And at that moment it made me burn too, hot and deep.

  We were lying side by side, and I could feel his great bata, ready to strike. To forestall his penetration, I wriggled up until my breasts were almost at his mouth. “Talk to them, tell them how you love them.” He seized first one, then the other in his craving mouth and sucked with provocative, wet, smacking sounds that brought me close to the edge. I pulled them out of his mouth, then pushed them in again, setting my own rhythm.

  “Oh, suck, suck, I love you,” I moaned, moving relentlessly under his mouth.

  “More, Cat, tell me more.” His mouth slid easily from my nipples to my navel, then into the tightly coiled mass of red hairs between my thrashing legs. He sucked and bit and explored, then suddenly stopped as if listening, demanding me to tell him how I wanted him.

  “Never, never stop,” I cried almost angrily, and my buttocks arched high. “Oh, take me, let me feel…scorching, great stones…oh, mighty bata.” I was bucking like any untrained pony, and he rode it out, letting me moan my incoherent desire. “Take me now, Liam. Put it in. Want you now.”

  Then he was inside me so effortlessly that I wondered in some far-off place how he could replace his mouth with his groin without hardly stopping the pulsing rhythm. My legs closed around his hips, and he seized my butt, pushing me up and down on his distended groin. I was slick inside, very wet, and I craved to feel it more, deeper, harder.

  And so I told him. I was climaxing as he shouted his pleasure, coming, too, and we moved together like wild animals until we collapsed back among the softness of swan feathers.

  After a while I heard his voice, very quiet. “Cat, are ye asleep?”

  “No, love. Just thinking about your mighty bata. ’Tis a wonder I am not wounded.” I began to caress his hair, just where his soft auburn curls spilled onto his forehead.

  “A Cháit, tell me. Do ye think Muiredach…loves ye?”

  My fingers did not even pause as I considered his question. “I think he loves…the idea of love. I think he has gone too long without it.”

  “And do ye…return his feelings?”

  “No, Liam, darling.”

  He rolled over and gazed into my eyes, seeking the truth of my words, as though the certainty in my voice were not enough.

  “I return friendship, what I am capable of giving him. I give love to one man only. That is my darling husband. The father of our child, the one waiting to be born.”

  As I said it, I felt that the joy I had been holding inside me would burst. I had been hugging it close ever since the moment Brigid had whispered in my ear that she thought my sickness had all the signs of pregnancy.

  “Child…to be born?”

  Liam’s face was suddenly radiant. I remembered the look—the same one his face held when we first met, when he discovered that the skinny, redheaded girl was making love to him with her eyes.

  “I think so, Liam.” I put my arms around him and drew him into my stomach, as though his large body wou
ld warm the little thing like a great bird hunkered on an egg.

  “A Cháit, a Cháit, tá mé mac.”

  “No, not a son. Surely a daughter. I have already named her Cuileann—or maybe Quillan—after the hollies where I think we made her one day in February.”

  He rolled me over on top of him and kissed my cheeks and nose. “I care not…boy or girl. Name him anything ye please.”

  I laughed, letting all my happiness spill out and surround us. “Is tú mo ghrá, a Liam. I love you very much.”

  THE END

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Erin O’Quinn (pen name) has a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California. This academic background may explain her deep interest in the language, folklore, and mythology of other cultures. It does not explain her sudden urge to write about the dark ages of Éire, the lovely country of Ireland. That urge may well be traced to her husband’s nudging and to her father’s love of all things Irish—especially the lilting and sometimes melancholy songs of a small, surpassingly beautiful island in a large, faraway sea. Erin lives in a central Texas town with her retired USAF husband and two semiliterate cats.

  Please visit her blog site at http://erinsromance.wordpress.com and her Facebook author’s page at facebook.com/ErinOQuinnAuthor

  Also by Erin O’Quinn

  BookStrand Mainstream: The Dawn of Ireland 1: Storm Maker

  Available at

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