by Ann Vremont
“Crom.” His voice was rough when he corrected her and his hands stopped the delicious rub against her labial lips.
“Crom,” she agreed, breathless in her desire for him to continue his caresses. She could see caution darkening his gaze and she turned on the mattress until they were face to face. Her lips whispered a kiss across his mouth as she voiced her apology.
“Perhaps you should tell me, witch, what you are called and how you came to know my true name.”
“I am Aideen,” she answered too quickly. Fear pricked along her skin at the mention of her name. She tried to shake the feeling, told herself it was silly to think someone could hold power over a person through a name. Still something coiled around her, wrapped her in a cold embrace. Cenn’s eyes casually flicked over her and the sensation disappeared as immediately as it had arisen.
“And how is that you know my name?” His voice bordered on disinterest but Aideen saw the slow, rhythmic tensing at the corner of his jaw.
Her hand moved to her hip until she remembered how he had cut the hip bag from her body. An erotic thrill passed over her at the memory of the heated look his eyes had held as he slowly pulled the blade against the bag’s belt. The motion was joined by his cock, swollen with his desire, sliding into her. Thrusting until he was fully embedded in her clenching cunt, Cenn cut the last of the belt with a rough flick of his wrist. Visions of the night just shared brought a flush to Aideen’s breasts, hardened her nipples to sharp points that ached for his mouth. But although his gaze caressed her body, his hands remained at his sides.
“My name?” he inquired again. Menace tinged his words and Aideen’s breathing hitched uncertainly as she scanned the room for her pouch. When Aideen’s gaze fell on the velvet hip pack, Cenn bounded from the mattress. He scooped the pouch up, his hand reaching for the scian that rested on a table next to him. The finesse that had marked his earlier use of the dagger was gone as he inserted the blade and ripped through the fabric.
The contents spilled onto the table and his hand immediately wrapped around the age-worn diary. His dark gaze jumped from the book to Aideen. He flipped through the pages, looked at the characters drawn by his own hand. He crossed the room to stand in front of her. He was still naked, but the erection was gone. The observation produced a wistful hunger in Aideen and she reached out to stroke his thigh. She saw the slightest contraction of the muscle along his perineum. Otherwise, she might as well have been stroking steel, he held himself so tightly in defiance of the pleasure her touch offered him.
“Where did you get this?” he demanded.
“I bought it.” The words came out in a stutter and she pulled back, only to have him grab her upper arm and force her forward.
“What thief—what spy sold this to you!” He tightened his grip on Aideen’s arm. Her small squeak of alarm shamed both of them and he released her, stepped back from the bed and demanded again. “From whom did you buy it, witch? Tell me.”
“From a dead man!” Her voice grew strained as she answered him and the last restraints holding her temper in check began to snap.
The dark arch of his brow rose higher. “By your hand?”
Aideen searched his tone and stance for some suggestion that the question was meant to mock her. Cenn appeared serious, terribly so, and she stumbled over her response. “I cannot imagine killing someone for a book and an unknown stone.”
At the mention of the Bloodstone, Cenn’s gaze became hooded and darted to the heavy wooden chest in which he had locked the magical stone after their first round of lovemaking. “I can.”
The words were cold enough to freeze Aideen’s blood and she edged away from him until her back pressed against an icy stone wall. A greater chill spread across her body and she wrapped the blanket around her while she watched Cenn walk to the room’s small fireplace. He pulled the screen from the hearth and began feeding the pages of his diary to the greedy flames. The crackle of the fire danced along with the sharp rip of the pages. Aideen pulled her knees to her chest and hugged her legs. When the leather covering touched the fire, she buried her nose beneath the blanket.
With the last of the diary reduced to smoke and ashes, Cenn returned to the table. The long, firm fingers that had teased her body to unimaginable heights quickly sorted through the rest of the hip pack’s contents. Pouring the ceremonial stones onto the table, he cast her a guarded look but said nothing until he picked up the small vinyl-covered memo book that contained her father’s spells and rituals.
“What is this?” he asked and held it forward for Aideen to see. “These scratches—do they have meaning?”
Aideen nodded and wrapped her arms more tightly around her legs. “Notes made by my father.”
“On magic?” He eyed her again as if assessing anew the threat she presented to him.
“Yes.”
“So, you are the daughter of a sorcerer, if not a sorceress, yourself,” Cenn said and turned back to the table to sweep the gemstones into their cheap velveteen bag.
Aideen suppressed a laugh at the idea of anyone calling her father a sorcerer. She pictured Gerald as he had been before his death—dry as the herbs that hung in his garage. He was nothing like the smoldering, dark mage before her. Aideen’s body shuddered with another chill and she wondered what Cenn had planned for her now that she had answered his summons and brought the Bloodstone with her. As if reading her thoughts, he spun around, his cock slowly bobbing to life as his long stride brought him back to the bed. His fingers curled protectively around the velveteen pouch and its semiprecious contents while he reached with his other hand to stroke her cheek.
“You are pledged to me, witch,” he said, his voice low and smoky.
“Not if you continue calling me that,” Aideen warned him. Her traitorous cheek flushed at the gentle caress of his finger along her jaw-line but she somehow managed to keep her voice level. “My name is Aideen.”
“You cannot go by that name beyond these doors,” Cenn advised her softly. He caught the withdrawal in her eyes and cupped the back of her head, tilting it until she was forced to look into his eyes. “You are light and delicate, Aideen…like a butterfly floating on a warm breeze. I will call you Etain.”
Aideen nodded her consent. She closed her eyes against the desire to rest her face against his flat stomach, to breathe in the strong masculine scent that hid just beyond her senses.
Cenn had no desire to rest. He raised his hand, drew her attention to the small bag. “As you are pledged to me, Etain, I will provide for you.” He gave the bag a small shake and she could hear the light clink of the faceted stones. “But these…these are no longer yours.”
His voice caught on the announcement and he turned quickly from her. Speechless, Aideen watched him snatch up a lightweight pair of doeskin pants from the floor and step into them. The dark fabric instantly molded itself to his lean, muscular thighs. He topped the pants with an unbleached linen shirt and a coarse, half-length woolen cloak dyed a dark crimson before pulling on leather boots that rode high on his calves.
“Get some more sleep,” Cenn advised her, his gaze taking in her pale features and the dark circles under her eyes. “I will return with food and clothing.”
Her body still reeling from the light caress along her cheek and the gentle cupping of her head, Aideen watched him leave. Mourning filled her as the last of him vanished from her field of vision and the door swung closed.
The unmistakable slow turn of a key in the lock brought Aideen back to herself. With the blanket wrapped around her, she walked to the door and tried to pry it open with her fingers. She bent down and eyed the lock, expecting and finding it to be of the simplest construction. The keyhole was nearly two centimeters wide and she looked around the room for the scian. The slim-bladed dagger was on the table. Her gaze moved from the table to the bed, then down to her body that still was covered by no more than the blanket.
“Fuck it,” she whispered and returned to the bed to unwillingly heed Cenn’s advi
ce.
Chapter Two
Cenn stood alongside the mattress where Aideen still slept. He carried with him a tray lightly loaded with meat, bread and cheese. He leaned to look at her and the plate slid forward on the tray until he had to catch the plate and its contents before they had a chance to spill on her. Despite his sharp intake of breath at the near accident, her body remained still and he wondered whether she feigned sleep.
Aideen. The word never left his lips but it was enough to make her open her eyes and look at him. A fragment of the dream he had shaken her from lingered in the air, teased its way up from the mattress to his cock. Cenn tightened his grip on the tray and forced himself to turn from her. Each footstep from the bed to the table measured an eternity. His arms ached from the light load and he dropped the tray onto the table with a small thud. He tried to calm his breathing, to count away his desire for her, but the rapid pumping of oxygen through his lungs, like the heavy throb of blood through his cock, was too much and he found himself turning back to her. How am I to control the Bloodstone, he asked himself, if I cannot control my lust for its mistress?
“Eat.” Cenn spat the word out. His attention was not so focused on the soft rise of her breasts that he failed to notice the quick ignition of fury in her mossy green eyes or the angry twist that turned her soft mouth into a kissable challenge. By the gods, even her anger undoes me.
“I do not like being locked in a room,” Aideen said. She had moved into an upright position and her shoulders were pressed against the cold stone of the wall. One hand lightly held the blanket across her breasts. Her gaze swept over his body, saw the solid outline of his erection against the doeskin pants. “Regardless of the jailor,” she added, her tone softening at the edges.
“For your protection, I assure you,” Cenn said and moved back to the bed. The robe he had been wearing when she summoned him in the scrying glass lay on the floor next to the bed and he picked it up, offering it to her. “Now eat while I summon a bath for you.”
He saw her attention flick to the table but she didn’t move from the bed.
“I said—”
“Aideen.” Cenn said her name softly but the effect on her body was visible. She was pinned to the wall as if held by unseen hands. With his voice, Cenn kept her suspended. “You must learn to obey me.”
Aideen’s gaze grew wide and her voice shook from strain as she fought against the invisible force that held her. “Whatever put that ridiculous idea in your head?”
“Again, woman, you are pledged to me.” His voice rose at the end and he pulled the blanket from her. Another swell of desire threatened his body and the mental strength he exerted in holding her to the wall lessened. “After a proper joining ceremony tomorrow, I will accept no disobedience from you,” he finished, the words forced through tight lips that yearned to tease the pink nipples he had just exposed.
“Joining ceremony?” Aideen asked. Her voice grew alarmed and her whole body strained forward. “Are you insane?” She bit out a laugh with her question. “Do you mean marriage? Matrimony?”
“Matrimonium.” His tongue pushed forward, eager to expel the Roman word from his mouth. “Yes, if you would call it that.”
“I am not marrying you, or joining with you, or whatever you want to call it,” Aideen protested.
Cenn’s gaze traveled over her flushed breasts to the small triangle of gold nestled between her legs. “You already have joined with me,” he reminded her.
His cock, swelling to larger proportions, urged him to refresh her memory with more than words, to leave her shuddering in ecstasy beneath him as she had been the evening before. He knelt beside her on one knee. His hands hovered over her skin, a centimeter of air, thick with their heat, parted his flesh from hers.
“Aideen,” he whispered and ran small circles in the air above her skin. “I know a woman of your beauty could do better in wealth and in rank than to join with me.” His thumbs pinched the air and Aideen groaned, her body jerking forward as he teased her nipples without touching them. “But not in power,” he cautioned.
His hands moved to the space above the triangle of hair. The air beneath his palms vibrated and parted the already glistening lips of her pussy. Her hips thrust forward while his mind still sought to keep her ground against the wall. The pink clit, exposed, trembled. His tongue ached to taste it and darted up to lick his own upper lip.
“God, no,” Aideen moaned. She could feel the muscles of her pussy begin to contract as his mind stroked her closer to orgasm. Sweet Jesus, she wondered as the tension throbbed against and inside her, how can it be this good without his touching me?
“Cenn. No.” The words broke from her and she clamped down on the climax that threatened to send her mindlessly wrapping her limbs around him, pledging again that she was his as long as he would not stop touching her.
With the utterance of his name, Aideen slumped from the wall. Her body shook and she weakly reached out to grab the robe he had offered her earlier. As she wrapped it around her shoulders, she raised her chin and looked directly at him. His eyes were wide, disbelieving that she had wanted to or could stop him. Still shaking, her thighs quivering in revolt, Aideen stumbled from the bed and made her way to the table where she managed to slide onto a chair before she slid onto the floor.
Aideen heard the soft slap of his leather boots as he moved to stand behind her. His hands curled around the top of the chair in which she sat. The center of her shoulders ached with the knowledge that his cock was on the other side of the wooden chair, that the thick shaft pulsed with the need to be buried inside her. Again, she had to force down the orgasm that waited to wash over her.
“I do not need magic to make you join with me, Aideen,” he threatened softly. “I am the law here and I will enforce your pledge tomorrow evening.” He moved to her side and gently forced her chin up until their gazes were locked. “My people have had little to joy over, Aideen, and I would give them something to celebrate. Do not engage in a battle you cannot win and deprive both them and yourself.”
Aideen blinked back a tear at the pain she heard in his voice. Pretending to focus on the meal before her, she turned away from him and his depthless blue eyes that were flaked with hard obsidian. She wanted to scream at him, yell obscenities, tell him in a way that left no doubt that there was no way in hell she was going to marry him. But her mouth wouldn’t shape the words. Her hands were unwilling to curl into fists and pound the table. She could not raise her foot to stamp her denial against the floor. Her whole body had betrayed her.
When at last, a tear did slip past her defenses to slide down her cheek, Cenn put his hand on her shoulder. The tip of his finger caressed her neck, lingered over her partial tattoo, as he bent to murmur his assurances to her. “Do not be so sad, little sorceress,” he said. He took the lobe of her ear between his lips in a soft kiss and released it. “I will not let it be without pleasure for you if you will but open yourself to me.”
Chapter Three
Pleasure. The word sounded empty in Aideen’s mind as she smoothed a misshapen bar of soap over her arm. In Dublin, standing over the workbench in the storeroom of her little eclectic antiques store and watching Cenn in her scrying bowl, pleasure at his hands was all that she had wanted.
All that I thought I wanted, she corrected herself. The soap stung her eyes as she wiped more tears away. The chill of the room corrupted the bathwater and Aideen quickly finished scrubbing herself clean. A coarse towel was draped over the back of a nearby chair and she dried herself and put on Cenn’s robe. Its owner had gone in search of clothing.
Aideen was pulling the chair over to the fireplace when she heard a tentative knock at the door. Irritation at the false formality stung her cheeks and she ignored the sound. When the second knock went unanswered, she heard the scrape of a key inside the door’s lock followed by the brush of the wood against the stone floor.
“Still pouting, I see,” Cenn said and sat at her feet. “A waste of such a pretty mou
th.”
Aideen glared at him and he let his gaze drop to the stack of folded clothing on his lap. He lifted them up, his hands hovering above her knees and she couldn’t tell whether it was with genuine or mock reverence he made the offering. She took the pile and pulled out a long shift made of lightweight wool that had been dyed an earthy brown. An unbleached linen under-tunic was folded beneath it. Her father had dragged Aideen to a sufficient number of historical society meetings for her to know that the under-tunic should be worn with the chiton. But looking at the two garments, she wasn’t sure how they should be fastened together.
“There are no women in the cashel of your rank, Aideen,” Cenn began hesitantly. “There is a cloth merchant who comes by occasionally and a fair in a month if things do not…”
His voice trailed off and she looked at him. The realization that there was a certain thinness to everything around her struck Aideen for the first time. Even Cenn, with his larger-than-life physique, appeared worn. She looked at the fireplace and noted that, stacked among the small logs and branches, were bits of recycled wood.
“These are fine,” she assured him and her hand darted out to thumb his shoulder in a brief caress. “I just do not know how they go together.”
Cenn looked at Aideen, saw that she was telling the truth and rose from the hearth, pulling her up with him as he stood. His mouth twisted into a wicked grin and he ordered her to disrobe. She hesitated and he took the chiton and tunic from her. Casually tossing the garments on the chair, he reached to remove the robe. His hands each held an inside edge of the robe in a manner that threatened to sweep the fabric back over her shoulders. She put her hands over his to stop him.
“Just tell me how they go together,” Aideen protested.
“Just where do you come from, sorceress?” he asked and tightened his grip on the robe until Aideen was standing on the tip of her toes, her body pressed against his.
