Darkest Desire

by Darkest Desire(Lit)

  "I hardly think our Hunter’s in that category. Anyway, what do you mean ‘like Gus’?

  Don’t tell me that old nervous nellie has been telling you to get a life. I thought he’d be only too happy to let you chain yourself to the museum twenty-two hours a day."

  "Well, this morning he seemed to think it was in the interests of the museum for me to get it on with Hunter," blurted Morgan.

  "Seriously? The old fossil said that?" Mary sounded amused rather than angry on Morgan’s behalf, which only increased Morgan’s frustration.

  "Well, he didn’t quite put it like that, but he certainly couldn’t resist dropping a few hints about how it would be to my advantage if Hunter took a shine to me. And this is the guy who constantly yaps about standards and professionalism to our junior staff." Morgan’s voice was tart.

  "Well, I don’t want to railroad you into anything, but most people would consider Hunter a darned good catch."

  "Well, I’ve never been interested in fishing," replied Morgan dryly. "All I want is for the exhibition to be a success and still to have a job at the end of it all."

  "OK, OK," Mary said, laughing. "I won’t nag anymore. I just always have your interests at heart, as you know. Now, when are we going to catch up? It’s ages since I saw you and I want to hear all about hunky Hunter first hand."

  "Sure...."

  "There’s a lecture at the Library on Saturday about Ancient Greek mythology. Wanna go?"

  They made arrangements to meet at Morgan’s home before ringing off. Morgan realized how much she missed talking to her friend on a daily basis.

  Shaking her head, she returned her attention to her computer monitor. She was actively pursuing her dream of doing interesting work for a prestigious, if relatively small, museum and she was prepared to do whatever it took to make a success of it.

  * * * *

  Morgan peered into the protective case that held the torque. The heavy antique silver gleamed dully from inside, the twisted strands marked with the dark deposits of time and wear. The masculine necklet was no delicate piece of jewelry--the metal had been worked to form a silver rope, melded to a bulbous end, and the piece was far weightier than other torques of its era. This was the symbol of a warrior and a nobleman who had walked the earth before even the Roman Empire had reached the peak of its power.

  She closed her eyes. She could imagine the torque around the man-beast’s neck, the weight nothing to the proud, strong warrior. His dark hair flowed to his powerful shoulders, his jaw covered by a short beard, face marked with the blood and grime of battle. As he raised heavily muscled arms to plunge his short sword into the unfortunate victim before him, he opened his mouth in a cry that raised the delicate hairs on the back of her neck.

  "It’s exquisite," she murmured to herself. She instinctively reached out a hand, wanting to touch the metal but then quickly withdrew it. The torque had yet to be inspected, cleaned and dated. Only authorized personnel were allowed to handle it and she wasn’t one of them.

  It was late afternoon and she had escaped to the storage room to take another look at the torque after interminable hours spent with Andrea’s curious eyes upon her. Every time Morgan lifted her head from her work, Andrea was looking at her, a question on her lips about what she thought she might have seen last week between Morgan and Hunter Riley. At first it had been amusing, and Morgan had batted aside her queries and suggestive comments with glib responses. But after six days--and most particularly after her conversation with Mary yesterday--it was irritating in the extreme particularly when there was so much work to complete in the final weeks before the exhibition opened. Eventually she had snapped at her assistant and her verbal missile had ensured a cool atmosphere in the office ever since.

  Morgan knew her short temper was in part due to her own frustration. She had no idea what exactly had happened between her and Hunter and it was driving her crazy. At times she thought she must have imagined the electrical current that seemed to pass between them when their fingers touched in a handshake, imagined the intensity of his whisky-colored eyes, even her own attraction to him. It had been so long since she had been seriously interested in a man that she distrusted her own judgment, although Andrea’s reaction to what she had seen or sensed gave her a little confidence that she wasn’t confusing fantasy with reality.

  She wondered whether Hunter had received the email she had sent him yesterday. In an effort to maintain a professional façade, she had phoned his office this morning to ensure he had received the display captions for approval. When she found him away from his desk, relief warred with disappointment inside her as she had spoken with his assistant Suzie, who confirmed that he had the captions and would get back to her within the next few days. Perhaps it was meant to be. Speaking to Hunter would only have her in turmoil again, so things were better handled electronically. It was more efficient and allowed no opportunity for things to get personal.

  "I was told I would find you here…."

  Morgan drew a startled breath and turned around to find Hunter Riley looking at her oddly. He wore jeans and the same tweed jacket he had worn before over a dark shirt. Five o’clock stubble grew on his chin and made Morgan want to reach out and run her palm across it.

  "Stop it!" she muttered to herself.

  Hunter frowned. "Are you ok?"

  "Yes, sorry. You startled me is all." Morgan felt her hand shaking slightly. His melting drawl sent liquid heat curling through her body and she tightened her muscles as though to resist it.

  "Do you mind me turning up like this?"

  "Of course not. I just … wasn’t expecting you. I was anticipating an email from you about the captions within the next day or so."

  "I know," said Hunter. "Suzie said you’d called for me. I was on my way back from a late lunch and I thought I’d drop in."

  Morgan didn’t know what to say. One thing she had learned during her six months in the city was that virtual strangers didn’t just drop in on one another.

  Hunter looked at the torque in the case. "Hard to believe it may have lain untouched for thousands of years, isn’t it?

  "How did you come to find it?" Morgan had read everything she could about the find but was eager to hear the real story first-hand.

  "Funny really," he shrugged "We weren’t even looking for Celtic items. The dig was in an area that had previously turned up Roman artifacts, and I wanted to see what else could be uncovered. We did find a few Roman coins and jewelry, some ceramics, bits and pieces. And this." He nodded at the torque.

  "It was wrapped in a cloth that had mostly disintegrated, tucked behind rocks in a cave on the coast. The kind of place someone would hide something, planning to retrieve it later. Perhaps a Roman. Who knows?" He shrugged. "Maybe someone in Roman times recognized its importance just as we do, and they hid it carefully meaning to come back, but for whatever reason they never retrieved it. That’s just a theory, though.

  "When I saw the design and felt the weight of it I was pretty excited, but I didn’t really know its significance until it was cleaned up and a French lab did prelim dating tests."

  "It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen," said Morgan. She looked away from the torque to Hunter.

  "Yes," he said but he was looking at her.

  God, she wished he wouldn’t do that. His intense glances had a way of turning her into a trembling fool when she needed to maintain a business-like façade. She squared her shoulders and tried to maintain a professional focus.

  "Are you trying to evade the issue?" he asked softly, his head lowered towards hers. Morgan swallowed and her hands gripped the seams of her skirt. She felt suddenly hot. Very hot. And flustered.

  "Um, no, of course not," she stammered, deliberately misunderstanding his words. "Ah, thanks for coming in today but you didn’t need to. Have you had a chance to look at the text I sent? I’d like to get the captions finalized but I know how busy you must be."

  Hunter backed off a little, frowning as he
looked intently at her, trying to gauge her body language. Finally he nodded. "It’s excellent … enthusiastic, colorful. I imagine you had a bit of work to do to get it past Gus and the board."

  Morgan sighed. "Our curator seemed ok with it, but Gus didn’t say a lot and the board weren’t exactly bowled over. It’s a problem I encounter a lot. People see history as something that belongs on the page of a book or behind glass in a museum. They want it to be clean and neat, and nicely packaged but it’s not like that. It’s full of blood and sweat, and love and tears…

  "And sex.…" said Hunter. "Especially when it comes to the Celts."

  "Um, that too," she said, wishing he hadn’t mentioned sex. But I think Gus and the board would love to believe that all deities were completely sexless. They weren’t of course and Celtic mythology is particularly carnal. I’ve carried out considerable research on Cernunnos over the past few weeks, both popular material and the more academic sources. As you know, there’s quite a disparity of views, but my feeling is that Cernunnos was a very earthy creature. Extremely sexual. The horns are incredibly revealing. In fact, I think they are symbolic of his lascivious nature."

  Morgan blushed. Oh Lord, she didn’t really want to be talking about the sex life of a centuries-old divinity with this man. But she couldn’t think of how to climb out of the pit she had dug for herself so she did what she always did when she was nervous--talked more.

  "I see him as a very potent force. Invariably he is depicted with the antlers of a stag, and that’s very significant in terms of the information it gives us." She lifted a slightly unsteady hand to bat away a loose strand of hair.

  "The horns?" asked Hunter.

  "Yes. I mean, I know opinion varies here and that some see him as more of a passive, earth-father icon, but I believe the antlers are intended as the outward sign of his stag-nature. Cernunnos is a wild, virile creation. To me, he symbolizes male sexual prowess and fertility, and that’s the way we would like to present him in the exhibition. Well, the way I would, anyway."

  Morgan’s rush of words stopped abruptly as she realized that Hunter’s gaze was fixed on her mouth. She suddenly found it hard to breathe, and looked down at the floor.

  Hunter laughed. "What you’re saying is he was a horny little devil."

  "Sorry," she muttered. "I didn’t mean to sound as though I was lecturing a bunch of history students. You must know all this as well as I do."

  "Your enthusiasm for your subject is infectious. Don’t apologize for it," said Hunter, smiling.

  Morgan blushed. "Well, I do think that the presence of the horns is intended to represent the carnal appetites of men … their baser desires, if you like. There are also the serpents that he holds. You could draw an analogy with the serpent in the Garden of Eden--a symbol of temptation, and of sexual power. In fact, some sources draw parallels between Cernunnos and the devil, his links with the underworld."

  Morgan looked anywhere but at Hunter as she spoke. Talking about carnal desires, even those of a mythical figure, wasn’t a good idea with a man you fancied the pants off and who had a habit of looking at you as though he hadn’t had sex in a million years.

  She felt a sudden heat between her legs and tightened her thighs, which just made it worse.

  "Um, anyway, as you’ve seen from the script I emailed to you, the copy for the display will speculate on the origins of Cernunnos and his various guises, one of those being the noble warrior with an element of raw sexuality."

  Her words conjured an image of the warrior god pursuing her through her nightly dreams, hunting her down with his pack of wild animals, and then falling on her. Her breath shortened, her heart began to thump wildly and her legs felt shaky.

  Hunter didn’t move for long moments, and Morgan finally dared to look up at him hoping her arousal wasn’t as obvious to him as she felt it must be. He took off his spectacles and put them down on the table before putting out a warm, callused hand, circling it around her neck and pulling her gently toward him. His amber eyes locked on hers.

  "Apparently the Celts believed Cernunnos appears whenever a person acts with wild abandon…."

  Morgan gulped. "I read that somewhere, too," she said.

  "D’you think it’s true?" His warm breath rushed across her face, stirring the hair at her temple. A large callused hand pulled out the butterfly clip that held her hair up, and black waving strands spilled across the neckline of her white striped shirt. Then he undid her top button, his knuckles rough against the skin of her neck, and dipped his head to press a delicate kiss to the hollow in her throat. Morgan knew in part of her brain that she should stop him, but she seemed to be stupefied, awaiting his next move.

  "I’ve wanted to do that forever," he breathed. Morgan’s legs felt weak and wobbly and she put her hands on Hunter’s shoulders to steady herself. Her eyes drifted shut as his head lowered again, this time to her forehead, and then her eyelashes, working his way down her face until his mouth hovered over hers. So close.

  At the last moment, Morgan turned her head away and took a step back. She wasn’t ready for this. He was too overwhelming. Too damn sexy. And she had an exhibition to prepare. Any distractions would be her undoing. But she didn’t want to piss him off, either. That wouldn’t make Gus happy.

  "Morgan?" His voice sounded hesitant but the underlying yearning in his question almost brought her undone. Oh how she wanted to be incautious, irresponsible, but she just couldn’t shake the habits of a lifetime.

  "Um, I have work to do," she said, turning towards the door. "If you would confirm in writing that you have approved the text, I’d appreciate it."

  "Did I get it wrong?" Hunter asked quietly.

  "I’m sorry if I misled you." She smiled faintly, trying to ease the situation and cause the least embarrassment for both of them, but he continued to frown at her. "Perhaps you confused my passion for my work with something else."

  "I don’t think so," he said, straightening, his eyes cooler than she had ever seen them. "I didn’t imagine the way you looked at me a moment ago, did I?"

  "I … no. I’m sorry. It was a mistake." Morgan met his stern gaze. "I was carried away and it was wrong. I don’t want to compromise the exhibition by introducing a conflict of interest. It’s so important to us. To Gus. To the museum, I mean."

  Hunter’s normally open face was now full of angles and planes, shadowed as the last of the evening light was lost. Finally, he released the tension in his shoulders.

  "I’m sorry, too. I probably came on too strong but I’ve been thinking about you since … you know."

  Morgan smiled at him gratefully. "Thank you," she said, relieved. She didn’t want any tension between them.

  "Don’t thank me yet," said Hunter, replacing his glasses. "I didn’t say I was giving up. I’m just giving you a bit of space to breathe and myself some time to think." He stalked to the door and looked over his shoulder, his look intense. "And myself some time to think. I’ll be back."

  The door shut softly behind him, leaving Morgan alone and stunned by the way she had come so close to falling into his arms.

  What on earth was happening to her?

  * * * *

  The door of his office slammed and Hunter Riley was alone. That wasn’t unusual for him. In fact, it seemed like his natural state. Perhaps it was something to do with his background.

  Orphaned at fourteen, he’d spent most of his adolescent years split between boarding school and the houses of kindly friends and responsible relatives. Today, he appreciated their generosity in putting a roof over the head of a dorky kid who’d rather spend his days in the museum poring over dinosaur bones than play basketball or chat up girls. He’d been a pretty handy football player, which had saved him from excessive geekiness, but still he’d always been aware of being slightly different from other kids his age.

  As soon as he’d begun archaeology studies at university, he’d signed up for as many field trips and digs as he could, happiest when he was covered in dust from
his hat to his boots. Financial freedom--thanks to his parents’ considerable estate – meant that even as a young man he’d been able to join several overseas digs. He was still a novice when he had scored his first significant find--a bronze Roman coin. He knew at that moment that he belonged in the field, rather than poring over thick tomes in a library somewhere or preparing lectures for half-interested students.

  It wasn’t until he’d been in his early thirties that he’d begun to pay much attention to his personal life. He hadn’t been a monk but the casual free-spirited love affairs that he witnessed on digs weren’t for him. Nor was he interested in the groupies who occasionally hung around dig sites, lured there by the press attention and glamorous aura that sometimes followed the team.

  Being away from home for months at a time put major brakes on a relationship--not that he’d recognized how much until Erica Fallows. Because Hunter had no problems sustaining a long-distance relationship, he had assumed that his fiancée felt the same way. But at that stage he’d thought she loved him and not just his profile as an archaeologist with a growing international reputation.

  When her real motives had emerged from the disastrous collapse of their engagement, Hunter had buried himself in his work. In truth, it had been his pride that took more of a battering than his heart. Secretly he felt he’d had a lucky escape but he’d also been bitter that Erica had so casually trampled his trust and loyalty into the mud. For a couple of years he hadn’t gone near another woman but time heals all wounds and recently he’d had the occasional date or casual sexual encounter.

  On an increasingly rare trip home, he’d been visiting one of his favorite old university lecturers. Sitting in her secretary’s office waiting for her to finish a student tutorial, he’d been idly flicking through an archaeology magazine when an item on the news-in-brief page had caught his eye. Or rather a picture.

  The photo was of two women; one of them, Mary Wilsden, he knew vaguely from various luncheons and lectures, but it was the other that struck him a blow somewhere about the solar plexus. The impact had been so sudden, so immediate that he’d nearly gasped out loud.