The Irish Warrior

by Kris Kennedy

  The wrist trapped in his grip was delicate—he could snap it with a twist—but she was staring at him with ferocity, and she seemed, as she always seemed to him, magnificent as the sun.

  With a muted curse, he dropped her wrist and threaded his fingers violently through her long, damp tresses. His hands caught on knots, but he simply fisted them into handfuls and dragged them up, beside her jaw. He did not want to talk to her, answer her questions, feel anything at all. Senna’s every fiber quivered for connection, and he did not want it. He was going to war. All he could manage of Senna de Valery right now was her body.

  But that—that he suddenly needed with a desperation he’d never known before.

  Before she could utter another maddening word, he plowed her mouth open beneath a kiss and backed her up to the low bedstead. She sat down hard on the mattress. Standing before her, he pushed her legs apart with a knee and stood between them, shoving aside the robe covering her damp body. She already had one hand on his head, pulling him down to her. He bent his hips, but remained standing. She scraped her other hand up his chest, her tongue hot in his mouth as soon as he was close enough. They were like mad things, touching each other, each feel of skin wanted and insufficient, left behind as they reached for the next.

  He clamped her hips and dragged her to the edge of the bed, sliding her naked body over the furs, stretched out like a gift—a river of damp hair across the furs, her slightly rounded abdomen, long, muscular legs, and the tangle of reddish blond curls between her legs. He dragged a single callused fingertip between her breasts, down her belly, to the curls, raising throaty whimpers.

  She flung herself up and impatiently fumbled with the folds of his léine, fingers trembling. He watched, motionless, letting her fumble with the unfamiliar layers, then he loosed the belt and stepped between her thighs. He cupped her cheek and pushed her back to lie flat on the bed, while he stood before her.

  “Raise yer knees,” he ordered.

  She lifted one, but before she could get it fully bent, he had his palm under it, pulling up. Her chest fluttered in unsteady panting as she tried to reach around to the curve of his buttocks to pull him forward. He bent enough to plant his free hand onto the mattress beside her head. Eyes locked, he entered her in one slow, relentless thrust. Her lips parted in a low keen.

  No more questions, no more wondering on the future or the meaning of things. There was only this one perfect moment, where she would mouth his name and let him rule her. He rocked his hips forward in long, relentless thrusts. She met each one with furious abandon, her mouth open, her eyes locked on his, every shadow of her lit for him.

  Her surrender came on every level, and a wave of respect corded with guilt rose inside him. She had given herself over completely to this thing with him. It felt as if he were being drowned in her; there was no breath that was not Senna-filled. She was his, to do with as he would.

  He plunged again, feeling her hot, throbbing passage constrict around him. “’Tis good,” he muttered against her swollen lips. His.

  He straightened and reached for her other knee, holding it as he did the first. Standing between her thighs, her knees dangling from his upturned palms, he threw back his head and closed his eyes, centering on the feeling of being deep inside her, of loving her without words. His penetrations became rocking, furious, powerful thrusts, and she stopped even trying to meet him at the crest. She took each one with a deep-throated moan of pleasure, eyes pressed shut, neck arched, arms stretched on the bed above her head, twisting through the furs.

  The muscles of his neck and arms strained, each sinewy fiber outlined and bulging as he pounded fiercely into her wet heat, hips against hips, a groan for each mewling cry, as he drove her riotously into a savage, unbridled climax.

  It came quickly. She staggered over the edge and fell headlong into her shuddering orgasm, crying his name. Finian roared as he found his own cliff and tipped over it, into her, kissing her, losing himself in this brave, unexpected woman.

  There was nothing he was more afraid of. Weakness followed directly from this sort of thing.

  They disentangled their sweaty bodies far enough for him to fall on the mattress beside her. She smiled tiredly, but the look in her eyes closed his. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the smoke-blackened beams bisecting the ceiling.

  Senna wielded some warped, shining notion about him as a man, what he was capable of, and she believed in it the way others believed in God or the power of rain. That would never do. He was built to lead his people, then self-destruct.

  There was still time to make her understand there was nothing else inside him, nothing at all.

  He pushed away the furs and propped himself on an elbow, then ran the back of his knuckles down her cheek in one gentle stroke.

  “Ye oughn’t to ever have let me touch ye, Senna,” he said quietly. “I’ll ruin ye.”

  She rolled toward his soft, warning words. “No.”

  “There’s naught to be done, lass,” he said and, pressing a kiss to her forehead, rolled off the bed and threw on his léine.

  “Finian—!”

  “No more, Senna. I haven’t any more.” She’d begun to rise, but stilled at his words. Her face looked shocked. Not even to sadness yet. He turned away. “Stay here in the room.”

  He turned, grabbed his weapons, and swung out of the room.

  Loud shouts erupted in the bailey. Finian paused, then clattered down the stairs and flung open the door just as a page appeared at the bottom of the tower, looking up, hands cupping his mouth, his face flushed red with exertion.

  “A runner,” he shouted. “A runner has come! The king wants his council. Now!”

  The cry was echoed through every corner of the bailey. Boots thumped and buckles clanged as men everywhere swung away from whatever task they were engaged in and made for the keep. Finian stood frozen for half a second, then swung inside and launched himself up the stairs, four at a time. He flung the chamber door open.

  Senna, half-draped in furs at the window, spun, her eyes wide, her face washed white.

  “Do as I said, lass,” he ordered swiftly. “Stay in the room, lock the door. And keep yer blade to hand.”

  Then he was gone, striding out of the chamber without looking back. Something cold folded over Senna’s collarbone and shoulders like a frozen cape.

  Two things warred for her attention. The realization that Finian might have just admitted he would fail her. And the certainty that he was afraid. For her.

  Balffe drew rein. The line of soldiers beside him halted in unison. It had been hours since the sun had set, but Balffe had pressed on despite the darkness and cold. A hunter in these regions for nigh on thirty years, Balffe knew the Irish well. Knew O’Melaghlin well.

  Of course O’Melaghlin would come here, dragging the de Valery whore behind. Straight to The O’Fáil, the man who’d first dragged O’Melaghlin out of the muck years ago, when his whore of a mother killed herself.

  Which is why he wasn’t entirely at ease, riding ever closer to the Irish keep. Finian O’Melaghlin was in there, but he would come out, too, and when he did, it would be at the head of an army. An army that might be poorly equipped, but would be outfitted with a commander who possessed the keenest leadership abilities and the most impressive warrior skills known in the Irish marches.

  Balffe was all too aware of these particulars. He had come out on the losing side of too many encounters over the years to underestimate either the Irishman’s intentions or his abilities.

  Aye, O’Melaghlin would come out, he decided with a quick righting of his codpiece. And Balffe would be waiting.

  No one escaped a castle of which he was guard, at least not without sacrificing a few vital body parts as payment. Certainly not the Irish dog who had debased Balffe’s very own sister some ten years earlier with his contaminated charm. My, yes, their history went back some, and O’Melaghlin would die with a slow twist of a knife plunged in his chest.

  Balffe would
see to it himself.

  But first, he would take Senna de Valery, more witch than woman, back to Rardove with a malicious pleasure.

  And if she caused him any trouble, any at all, she would be pitifully sorry. As would anyone close enough to hear him extract her useless screams for mercy.

  Chapter 46

  The men stood in the king’s chamber just as the runner stumbled in, sweaty and harried. It was half a minute before they could get the news out of her. During that time the men stood, the silence dense. She clutched her side, doubled in half and panting.

  “The king’s governor of all Ireland is marching north with a massive hosting.” She gasped for another breath.

  “Wogan?” The shocked murmur swept through the room. The justiciar? The governor of all of Ireland? The hand-picked servant of Edward, Hammer of the Scots and bleeder of the Irish, was marching north?

  “They must be over four thousand strong.”

  Someone cursed. It seemed to come from far away. Finian said hoarsely, “How long until they get here?”

  “Two days, mayhap half of another.”

  Two days to muster as many divergent, loosely allied Irish and any loyal English they could to their cause. A cause which was looking more bleak as news of the English arrayed against them grew. Not only Rardove and his vassals. Now ’twas the governor of the isle, King Edward’s lieutenant, John Wogan.

  And that about does it, thought Finian.

  “There’s more,” panted the messenger, folding to her knees. “The Saxon king is coming, too. His muster is in Wales, waiting for a good wind. When they get it, Edward Longshanks will march on Ireland.”

  The room dropped into shocked silence. Everyone turned to Finian, who was staring at the far wall. He could feel every ponderous beat of his heart as it slowed, as his body closed in on itself, as everything went cold.

  “Leave us,” he heard The O’Fáil say.

  The room cleared of men until it was only Finian and the king, who stood staring at him with sad eyes.

  A clamor outside the window made Senna start, drew her out of her simmering reverie. The hem of the dark blue undertunic Lassar had given her picked up stray bits of rushes as she walked to the slitted window and leaned her elbows on the knobbly ledge.

  People were laughing and exchanging friendly insults as they darted across the bailey from one doorway to another, dashing to and fro, readying themselves for the evening entertainment. New people meant new ideas, new conversations, new stories, new dalliances, most of all. And that the fine-looking, charismatic Finian O’Melaghlin was one of them was almost too thrilling to imagine.

  Better than stories, Finian himself, in all his glorious flesh, was to be there, to flirt and entertain.

  My, how did they bear it? she thought acidly.

  Down in the bailey, someone pulled open the door to the main keep. Yellow light and laughter spilled out into the chilled blue twilight.

  “Come see Finian!” someone shouted, laughing. “He’s already here!”

  People scurried in and the door slammed shut.

  Come see Finian, indeed.

  He’d come to see her, when the mood had moved him. But Senna was simply not capable of sitting like a rocking horse in the room, for Finian to come and ride when the mood spurred him. And this I’ll ruin you notion of his, that was madness. He was simply not capable of ruining her, nor, for that matter, protecting her. These things had already been done, by Senna herself.

  This matter between them had nothing to do with ruination or fortifications. It concerned something else entirely. And ’twas time for him to acknowledge it, before he left her behind, lying to himself as he broke her heart.

  Then, by the window, she heard the others. Small groups of men, talking, murmuring among themselves, like the buzzing of bees. Or a stampede from far away. She tipped her head out the window and listened hard. They were talking about war.

  They were talking about her.

  She pulled her head back inside, threw on a yellow overtunic, flung a cape over her shoulders and marched down to the hall.

  She did, though, do one thing Finian had bid. She kept her blade close.

  “I’ll not return her,” Finian kept repeating, after the other men had left. Each time he repeated it, his heart sank further. Until finally the king nodded grimly.

  “So you love her.”

  Finian threw up his hands. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

  The king lifted his shaggy brows. “Because you’re willing to take us to war for her.”

  Finian stared, unwilling to repeat, yet again, that this war had been coming for some long time. He said only, “She saved my life. I’m not sending her back.”

  “She’s distracting you. Weakening you.”

  Like your father.

  Which was exactly his deepest fear. The O’Fáil didn’t say the words, but he didn’t need to. They reverberated in the air between them, like waves of heat.

  “I’ve never been distracted before,” he replied in a low voice, packed with fury.

  “You’ve never run out on us before, either.”

  “I’m not running out on ye!” But he didn’t meet his foster father’s eye. “I’m right here.”

  The O’Fáil looked at him for a long time. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Finian took a deep breath. The king waited, he waited, and they stared at each other through the ensuing silence. Yes, Finian realized. Disappointment could pass into the territory of regret. At this very moment, his foster father was crossing the border.

  “The reason ye cannot send her back,” Finian said, hearing his own voice coming in from far away, “is because she’s a dye-witch.”

  The king didn’t say anything for a very long while. It gave time for the wrenching pain to twist around Finian’s heart like a steel wire. Och, if this was loyalty, it was a hurtful thing.

  The king ran his hand across his beard a few times, then over his knee. “I thought she looked familiar.”

  Finian looked up sharply. “My lord?”

  “I suppose you were wise to not mention it earlier,” The O’Fáil went on in a musing tone.

  Finian felt the bite of impatience. Enough of intrigue. “And why was such a thing wise?”

  “Because men have a way of going mad when dye-witches come around.”

  Finian nodded curtly. He hadn’t held his tongue out of wisdom, seeking only a private moment with his king. He’d done it for very different reasons indeed. Ones he barely understood. If he’d been protecting something vulnerable, a creature weaker than himself, he could grasp the meaning of his silence, an action of near treason, certainly disloyal. But what he felt was nothing like that. Nothing at all. Protection, aye. But of an entirely different sort. And he had never felt it before.

  He did not like it. It made him…weak. Just as his king had said.

  The O’Fáil studied him, lips pursed. Then he ran his palm across the smooth tabletop. “Did you know Rardove had himself another dye-witch, decades ago? I saw her once.”

  Finian felt cold. “I did not know that.”

  “Aye, he did.” The king stopped making palm circles on the table. “She looked an awful lot like the lass you brought to me.”

  The coldness went deep, into his bones. He hadn’t brought Senna to the king. But she was his now.

  And yet, just now, another matter wanted his attention…Senna’s mother had been a dye-witch for Rardove? How much worse was this going to get?

  “She died,” the king went on, “trying to escape. Nineteen years ago.”

  Finian nodded silently as he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He stared at the rushes on the ground. He could hear the people in the hall below, the loud buzz of their conversations coming up the stairs. Someone said something about Rardove, and there was a chorus of male shouts. He heard someone say “the Englishwoman.”

  “Bring her to me,” the king said quietly.

  A low fire was all th
at burned in the trough at the center of the hall at this late hour, but Senna’s eyes were well adjusted to the dim light. She’d been waiting for a long time. Seen the men tromp through the hall to a guarded office chamber. Seen them come out again. Waited while some came in to make their beds on the floor.

  Now the hall was a huddled mass of sleeping male bodies, snoring and farting, scattered across the benches and rush-covered floor. A few men sat on a far bench beside the fire, talking in low tones, but otherwise the castle seemed to sleep. She couldn’t stand in this corner all night, and was finally ready to admit defeat and leave, when the masculine voices by the fire rose in slightly slurred tones, just enough to be heard.

  Light from the dying flames did not shine far, and while the fireside conversants were cast in flickering shadows, the rest of the hall was drenched in darkness.

  Senna paused, her cheek by the wall.

  “Och, and ’tis only the whole English army he’s bringing down on us, it is.”

  “Ye’re right. But I’ll be glad of a reason to wield a sword well enough, whatever the cause.”

  “And this thing with Rardove has been going on a fine long time. O’Melaghlin says the Englishwoman has nothing to do with it.”

  “Naught to do with it, and naught to do with him, that’s what he says all right,” complained a younger, higher-pitched voice. “But still, we’ve an army marching for us sure as anything, and ’tis because she’s here.”

  “Ye’re right,” agreed an older voice. “Maybe she t’ain’t the reason, but she’s sure enow the cause.”

  “Naught to worry on,” said another voice. “O’Melaghlin loves the ladies, but he’ll not endanger our lives and lands over one. They’re for bedding, not politickin’, and he knows that as well as anyone.”

  “Better.”

  “Still,” said the young one, his voice a dark, drunken snarl. “We should go teach her what we think of women who start wars.”

  He rose unsteadily and tripped over his feet. The small group broke into predatory snickers and yanked him to his feet.