by Lucy Monroe
And none of it had compared to the ragged-edged wound in her soul that bled daily from Caelis’s rejection and absence.
Terrible love had terrible power.
“You love me, but you do not trust me?”
“I cannot,” she replied starkly.
Caelis swallowed convulsively, his hands fisting and releasing at his sides like he wanted to reach for her but would not let himself. “You do not believe I love you.”
“I know you do not and I accept that.” Need was not love, nor was the mating pull.
As he’d pointed out, not all mates loved one another. Uven could not have loved the mate he’d killed; he certainly had not loved the daughter they made together.
“Am I meant to be grateful for that?”
“I do not know.” Was gratitude better than mere duty and lust?
“I am.” He sighed, the expression in his blue eyes unreadable. “Very grateful.”
Tears she did not expect burned at her eyes. She blinked, trying to dispel them, but the moisture continued to build.
He said another one of those Chrechte curses and closed the distance between them. Gently cupping her cheeks with his big warrior’s hands, he brushed at the drops spilling over. “Dinna cry mo toilichte. Please.”
“I do not mean to.”
He bent forward and sipped at the moisture, pressing small, infinitely gentle kisses over her face. “Let me take the pain away.”
“I can’t.” She would not risk another pregnancy and having her choices taken away from her now that she had acknowledged her love for him.
It made her far too vulnerable and he needed no further advantages between them.
He nodded, as if expecting no other response. “There are many ways for me to bring you pleasure to shatter the pain without copulation.”
She did not know what he meant. Her experiences of joy in a man and woman’s joining had all happened with him and other than the night before, she had never known the ultimate pleasure without him ending up inside her. “I…”
“In this, at least, will you trust me?” he asked.
He was giving them both an opportunity to move forward. She didn’t know how to build her trust in him except through time and him showing the willingness to rectify the past as far as he was able.
But he was offering her another opportunity to build trust in him. If she let him do this and he kept his implied promise not to breach her body, that would be more solid rock in the foundation for their relationship. Wouldn’t it?
The instincts that had been screaming at her to keep him out of her room earlier, were now telling her that sharing intimacy with him would help in ways little else could do.
“Please,” he said again.
And she could not deny him. Did not want to deny him. She needed this opportunity to build trust as much as he did.
“Yes.”
His huge body gave a violent shudder and a low growl of approval rumbled in his chest.
Caelis bent and lifted her into his arms, high against his chest, her shift flowing down his near-naked body. “I will overshadow every memory of the touch you did not want with pleasure. I alone will ever again caress your body.”
“Promise?” she demanded though his words had sounded as much like a vow as anything she’d ever heard.
He looked down, a pain in his own gaze matching the wounds in her heart if she could let herself believe it. “I do.”
“Never again.” She would never submit to the unwelcome touch of another.
His mouth set in a grim line. “Only me.”
“Only you.”
“This is my vow to you.”
She nodded, accepting his words as much as her damaged heart would let her.
“Never again will my promise to you be set aside because of my loyalty to another.”
Her breath stilled in her chest. “You do not mean that. Do not say that if you do not mean it.”
From the look on his chiseled features, there could be no mistaking the seriousness with which he took their words.
He laid her on the bed, making no move to remove her shift, and then stepped back. He placed his right fist over his heart. “I vow it.”
“On your honor as a warrior?” she asked, unable to help the frisson of doubt prompting the words.
“On my honor as a Chrechte and conriocht.”
And he had promised her that no other man would ever touch her intimately. Fear that had been such a heavy burden, she hadn’t even acknowledged it anymore, lifted off her, lightening her heart in a way she did not know was possible any longer.
“Percival cannot have me,” she said, joy ebullient in her heart and tone.
Caelis fell to his knees beside the bed, his hands grabbing her own tightly. “No one. I will protect you with my life.”
“Not just your son.”
“I could not have my son or daughter without the gift of their mother. Never doubt it, you are of primary importance to me.”
She wanted to believe his words. So much.
And she realized the choice was hers to make. Just as his had been six years ago.
Was she any less responsible for her own decisions now?
In that moment, she chose to believe.
She believed Caelis would not reject her again, that he would protect her with his life. Not by giving it away on her behalf, but by giving it to her.
“Thank you.”
His face contorted with some great emotion. “You unman me, Shona. Dinna thank me for what I cannot help any more than I can stop my own lungs from breathing.”
She brushed her hand down his face, loving the feel of his masculine stubble against her skin. “I will love you forever.”
That was her vow to him.
And she considered it well worth making when his smile took over his features as he stood. “Thank you.”
“Dinna thank me for what I can no more help than my own breathing,” she said in imitation of his voice.
“I’ll ever be grateful for it all the same.” The smile warmed his voice, reaching out to touch and heal her heart.
“You look like a bride.”
She wanted to be his, more than he could possibly understand. “Tonight I am only a woman in love.”
“You are never only anything.”
“Am I not?” She could not help her own grin at his claim.
He shook his head. “You dinna understand, but one day, you will.”
She put her hand out to him in invitation. “Caelis…”
“You are everything, mate.” He yanked off his kilt and weapons, laying them within easy reach of the bed.
Chapter 20
Intimacy between mates will not always result in babes, but it should always result in a stronger mating bond.
—ANCIENT CELI DI
The wounds from earlier were nothing more than pink lines on Caelis’s flesh.
Shona stared at him in wonder. “You are healed.”
“It is the conriocht. When I shift into or out of that form, my body heals.”
“But not when you shift into your wolf?”
“Nay. ’Tis part of the gifts for the protectors of our people.”
“I am glad.” She worried less, knowing he had this amazing ability to heal from injuries. “Does it work even for grievous damage?”
“I dinna ken.” He prowled toward the bed, his wolf’s grace very much in evidence.
“Eadan said he will be conriocht one day.”
“’Tis a gift to look forward to.”
She nodded, the wonders of his Chrechte life paling in the face of the desire that had been burning between them all this time. Through every emotion laden word of their conversation, the physical need between them had not waned.
“I want you,” she told him with no shame.
“You will have me, now and forever,” he promised.
In light of what he had said, his vow took on deeper significance. And put her own strictures in question.
What had she wanted from him? To be able to trust. Somehow, in the past minutes as he’d made promises she needed to hear but had not asked for, he’d given her that.
Or perhaps it had been that terrible power of an incredible love at work, but she no longer doubted her place in her mate’s life.
He might not love her as she loved him, but he cared and he needed and he would protect her with his very life.
He would put the secrets of his people at risk for her and that was more significant than any mundane quest she assigned him to prove what he had already established.
His attention never straying from her, Caelis grabbed the fur he’d dropped earlier and laid it out on the bed, shifting her so she was on top of it.
Soft against her skin and thick, it gave additional cushion under her, but she got the feeling that his actions were not about comfort. There was special significance to this fur for him.
She did not ask. There were issues of greater import to address.
“I will marry you,” she told him. “I would like Audrey and Vegar’s marriage to receive the priest’s blessing along with ours.”
He stilled in his movements, his expression arrested. “I thought—”
“I did too…that you coming with me to Balmoral Island was necessary. It is not.”
“It isn’t?” Caelis sounded punch-drunk.
She shook her head. “I thought I needed you to prove something to me, to make reparations for the past.”
“But you do not feel that way any longer?”
“No. Your actions may have precipitated my parents’ loss of affection for me, but so did my own. Mostly, though, their actions were their responsibility. We cannot undo the past, nor would I. One thing I have learned is the capacity of my own strength, and that is a good thing.”
“Aye.”
“I love you, Caelis, Chrechte protector. My protector.”
“Mate. Mo toilichte. Mine.” His mouth came down on hers with a hunger that overshadowed anything that had come before.
She returned the kiss, pouring her love into and releasing the pain of the past through it.
Their tongues dueled while lips ate at each other and his naked body pressed against hers, the heat passing between them as if the fine lawn of her shift was not even there.
He pulled back, moving to kiss her all over her face, along her temple and down her neck. The entire time, he whispered words against her skin.
It was only as he caressed the sensitive skin behind her ear with his lips that she understood the words he was saying. “Thank you. Always mine. My gift. Thank you.”
The words and the fervent feeling behind them brought moisture to her eyes and a lump of deep emotion to clog her throat. She blinked away the incipient tears and swallowed her emotion, too happy with his response to let anything mar the moment.
Even her own ecstatic feelings.
* * *
Caelis brushed Shona’s shift up her legs, baring her alabaster skin to his gaze. The curve of her legs invited his touch, and the shadow at the apex of her thighs barely covered by the thin material drew his gaze and his hunger.
Hunger built to rapacious need by her words. She had promised to wed him, given him the gift of her love when he’d been sure that would never be on offer again.
The fact that she was so certain his own feelings did not match hers was not a conclusion he could gainsay. His actions had spoken too loudly for mere words to convince her otherwise.
“You are so beautiful,” he breathed.
She laughed softly, shaking her head in denial. “I am but a woman with all the marks to my body giving birth twice has left behind.”
He knew what she meant. The fine lines where her body had stretched to accommodate her womb swollen with child, the way her heavy breasts hung more like tantalizing pendulums than ripe apples.
No, she no longer had the body of an untouched girl with only eighteen summers, but that did not detract from her beauty to him. In fact, the marks time and circumstance had left behind only intrigued him and reminded him that he made love to a woman, not a girl.
A woman who should be proud of the loveliness gifted her, in all its forms. “They are the scars of battle you should wear with the same pride I wear my own.”
She laughed, the sound dark. “That is a unique take on my imperfections. The baron could not stand to see them.”
“Idiot.” He’d hated the thought of her being happy with someone else, but had discovered that he despised the truth she’d been unhappy even more.
Caelis would help rid her of those memories, starting now.
He laid his hands over her thighs, brushing his thumbs along the inside and upward toward the red curls peeking from where he’d pushed up the hem of her shift.
Shona shivered, goose bumps of pleasure forming on the skin beneath his touch. “How can such a simple touch evoke so deep a pleasure in me?”
“We are meant for each other.”
“The mating bond.”
“’Tis not the only thing between us.” She had to at least believe that.
She might well deny his love, but she must believe he had feelings for her beyond his wolf being inexorably connected to her.
She did not gainsay him and the soft expression in her beautiful emerald eyes gave no indication she wanted to, either.
He would show her that while the bond drew them together, it was only the beginning, not the boundaries of their joining.
He pushed her shift farther up, uncovering glistening silky curls. “So pretty.”
“Pretty is not a word I think of when I see your nakedness,” she teased.
“Naturally not. I am a warrior, not a maid.”
The grin of mischief should have warned him what was coming.
“Now that I think on it, one part of your anatomy is very prettily shaped.” She looked toward the hard sex jutting from his body.
Laughter and the joy only she could bring bubbled up inside him. “You think my cock is pretty?” he asked with a shake of his head.
“Oh, yes.”
He spread his thighs wider so she had an unobstructed view. “It does not feel pretty right now. It aches.”
“Does it?”
“Aye.” And well she knew it, for all her sexy mockery.
“Mayhap I can help with that.”
He wanted her to, but he had plans and they did not include his sex being within touching distance of her small, feminine hands at the moment. “Later.”
“Caelis?”
“Let me have my way with you, Shona. ’Tis what I crave most right now.” And despite his voracious hunger to bury himself inside her, the words were nothing but truth.
And meant he was sure in a different way than she would take them, but she would see.
She leaned up on one arm and tugged her shift all the way off before falling back to her elbows, the pose pressing her generous breasts forward, the invitation unmistakable. “Yes.”
He could feel the smile curving his mouth and made no effort to stop it. “Your beauty is breathtaking.”
She blushed, her embarrassment a spicy scent between them, making him laugh.
“You will reveal your nakedness to me, but you turn berry-red at a compliment?” he mocked gently.
“You are the only one who has ever considered me beautiful.”
“Nay.” He was sure she was wrong. “But I am the one intelligent enough to tell you.”
She shook her head, long red silken strands rippling over her shoulders and against the mating fur he’d tanned and prepared six years ago for a mating ceremony that had never taken place. “Stubborn man.”
Though the ceremony had not happened, they had used the fur. Not that he expected her to remember.
“I have been called worse.” He ruffled the pretty triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs. “Are you blushing in other places, I wonder?”
She let her thighs fall wide with such trust that he wanted to shout hi
s victory. Shona had said she did not trust him, but then she had agreed to marry him. He could infer her trust from that, but the truth of her heart showed in her actions. Whatever reservations she might still hold, she trusted him completely with her body. Six years ago, her doing so had cost her dearly. That she would offer him this gift again made his wolf howl with delight.
He carefully pressed her legs up and apart, to give himself an unhindered view of the flushed and swollen folds of her sex. Slick with moisture, her body begged silently for his possession.
It was a sight unparalled. “You are beautiful, even here.”
“You should not say such things.”
“Why not? If they are true.” He leaned down and pressed a tender kiss to her feminine nether lips.
Soft flesh gave against his own, the scent of her arousal such a strong aphrodisiac to him and his beast that a measure of ejaculate spurted from his aching cock. If he let himself even brush against the fur, he would come like an untried boy. Needing to taste, he flicked his tongue out and lapped at the fragrant juices. Sweet with the pungent flavor of her desire, the taste called to both his man and wolf on a primal level.
He moaned his pleasure against the swollen flesh and continued to taste, licking, laving and sucking with no thought but to share with her the pleasure he received at her submission to him.
She grabbed his hair, her fingers curled tightly around his warrior’s braids. “That is…what are you…you must…Oh, Caelis.”
His name ended on a wail as his tongue flicked her clitoris. Satisfaction burned through him. He would show her that she was safe with him now, in every way.
He knew the importance of his mate.
She writhed on the furs, her body pressing against his mouth, sounds of ecstasy falling from her lips with the steady cadence of spring rain. He drank every one in with the thirst only a man who had gone six years in the desert could feel.
Sliding a single finger inside her, his sense of victory increased as her body clung to the digit, her inner muscles gripping him with surprising strength. She wanted him inside her mayhap even as much as he craved being there.
