by Erin O'Quinn
As the story ended, Liam took me under the chin and turned my face up to his. “Ye truly are the butterfly, and I ached to capture ye. But me own craving freed ye from my grasp. I will not let that happen between us.” He kissed me. “Ever again.”
I thought of the twisted jealousy of my former swain, Wynn. Now Liam had seen more in my story than I had intended. “I willingly give myself to you, Liam.”
“I think ye will dance and flutter around me, lass, but ye will always be free.”
“And so will you be free. I would not hold you back from your deepest desires.”
“Then we both be fortunate. For we give ourselves completely while staying free.”
I felt a small movement nearby and knew that Ryan was moving away, giving us a chance to be alone this last night.
Liam kissed me again. This time it was a tasting, a return to the hunger he had betrayed earlier, after our shillelagh match. He sucked my lower lip the same way he sucked my nipples until I was breathless. And then his tongue entered my mouth, very hot and sweet. I suckled it slowly, promising more. He drew me closer and closer until I felt his heart thump against my chest. Then he lay me down on the soft ground.
My pretty, soft-green léine was surprisingly easy for Liam to remove. I wondered idly how he had learned to do that, all the while kissing and embracing me. I drew back a little and looked at him. The firelight showed his large chest and the way his nipples stood up like sentinels. I reached for them, fingering them, marveling at their soft hardness. My mouth sought each one, until I heard his soft moan, “A mo chroí.”
He laid me back again, looking down at my undertunic. Irrationally, I was still embarrassed by the way it revealed my breasts. He put his hands on the shoulders of the tunic and felt the soft material. He fingered the lace that just concealed my thrusting nipples. “Deas. An-deas.” Then inch by inch, he pulled the filmy material down, revealing my breasts. “Very pretty.”
Leaning over me, he pulled one breast up and into his mouth. I had already begun to twist and turn under him, and the moment his mouth found my nipple I arched up hard against him without wanting to. Then, without lifting his mouth at all, he found the other nipple with his fingers as he continued to lick and suck.
He had learned the timing perfectly. And so when his mouth left my breasts, I knew he was after more. I continued to move and twist until he held my hips firmly and lowered his hot mouth to my thighs. The outburst of pleasure seemed to last a very long time, and it took me more than five minutes to breathe normally again. I lay against him, feeling the roughness of his leather breeches and the straining mound that told me he needed me.
I put both my hands on his hips and loosened the leather thong that held his breeches tightly to his body. He rolled a bit, allowing me to pull them down over his supple buttocks. My breath caught in my throat again just looking at his bum. Before I even pulled the breeches further down his long thighs, I leaned and caressed his buttocks with my hands and my mouth at the same time.
He started to move, and I held his hips. “Lie still.” Kneeling, I thrust my tongue between the cheeks of his buttocks and then started to lick and suck. He had begun to rock back and forth. Grasping his hips again, I turned his body toward me.
My mouth was more hungry for him than it had ever been before. And the more I sucked him, the closer I approached another peak of pleasure. I felt it rise and break at the very moment his own desire broke, like a drowning wave. I lay with my head on his flat stomach for long minutes while he stroked my unruly hair.
At last he lifted me up so that our mouths were together again. I could still feel his heart thumping against my chest. He kissed me again with gentle little bites, and that is the way we fell asleep together.
* * * *
Morning came softly, a hint of light penetrating the rustling birch leaves. Liam’s head was on my shoulder, and his hair tickled my throat. I moved almost imperceptibly, but he awoke instantly.
“Dia duit, a chroí.” His voice was husky from sleep, and his eyes were half shut. I traced his lips with my index finger, wanting the moment to last. I looked down at myself and saw that my undertunic was around my waist. When I glanced around the cold camp fire, I saw that Ryan was still sleeping soundly.
I nestled back again. I would let Liam be the first to rise, and then I would pull my tunic back on. But he did not stir. I thought he had drifted off to sleep again, and I gently moved my shoulder to shift his head.
Again he opened his eyes. “Stay …with me,” he said.
I, too, wanted our aloneness to last. From this morning on, the times would be rare when we would be so private. Even considering the nearness of his kinsman, this was a moment with Liam to treasure. I also wished, desperately, that I could pull my undertunic back on. I had not been able to teach Liam to allow me my moments of modesty. It was one thing to be making love naked together, but it was quite another matter to be seen in the cold light of morning with my breasts hanging out like a brood mare.
So I leaned upright suddenly, and in one quick movement I drew my tunic back up to hide myself. Then I lay back down, guiding his head back to where it was. He laughed softly, and his index finger traced the outline of my nipple under the swirls of lace. He really did understand, I thought, but somehow he loved the sight of my breasts more than my own desire to hide them.
“Will ye sleep the day away?” came Ryan’s voice somewhere above us.
Liam rose suddenly, grinning, pulling his breeches up over his hips as he stood. I was grateful for my undertunic as I sat up, combing through my hair with my fingers.
It took us another hour or so to bathe, cook, eat a morning meal, and saddle our horses for the last few hours of riding.
The countryside was becoming more and more green, more undulating and overgrown, as we rode north and west to the River Foyle. Last year’s trip to the holdings of Sweeney had taught me that the grasslands—cattle grazing land—lay north and east of us, and Sweeney’s old grazing lands lay in that direction, too.
My own holdings, the spot I had selected for the pilgrims and me to settle, lay on this near side of the great, swift river. Last year on my trip through Britannia I had discovered first the city of Bath, and then Lindum—both cities built somehow on the very hillsides, their streets making large, meandering loops around the hills. I knew when I beheld those cities that my heart would seek out those same hills no matter where I finally settled. I was fortunate that the land on the River Foyle, next to the lake, was a maze of hills and ravines. That is where I chose to live the rest of my life.
I wanted to settle on the opposite banks also. But the river seemed more swift and full of currents than even the stern Hibernian Sea. There were no bridge builders among us, so I would wait. But the river itself would provide an impenetrable eastern wall, and I was satisfied.
We approached slowly, the horses seeming to pick their way through the dense undergrowth. I heard the river before I saw the swift blue of its currents. And then I saw small wattle-and-daub dwellings here and there, then in clusters, along the shore. And then garden plots, and then people waving and calling to us.
Home. I was home at last.
Ryan turned to us as we approached my own teach, my small home. “I promised ye I would stay a while and be a cattle drover. For now, I need to ride out and find me kinsmen. And then I will be back. A month or two at the most.”
“Can you find a way to get word back to your cousin Michael and his Brigid?”
“Of course, cailín.”
“Please tell them to hurry. I do not want them to miss a double wedding. I also want Michael to build our brugh, so he must come expecting to stay for a while.”
“He will be here.”
I extended my hand to him. “I have told you how I feel. Go raibh maith agat.”
“And I have told ye, I want no thanks for what is me pleasure.” He grasped my hand, then the hand of his cousin, before he pulled his horse around and rode to the northeast, bac
k to the former lands of Owen Sweeney, now my own.
* * * *
Tomorrow, I thought, I would seek out my friends. Today, I intended to be alone with Liam. I led him to the hidden copse of birches and the stand of tall pines where my own little clay-and-wattle house had been constructed. Like Michael’s own home, the color of mine was not the stark white of the usual limed surface but a soft saffron, a secret of Magpie and her sisters.
I had been gone less than a fortnight, but already the grasses outside my door had grown tall. I knew the rest of the teach would need a freshening, just like the cleaning that Liam and I had given to his cousin’s home.
We dismounted and led the horses to the river and then to the nearby haggard that held the fodder. We unsaddled and curried them, not yet speaking.
Then I took his hand and led him to the door. I pulled it open, and we entered together. I had not exaggerated its simplicity to Liam. It consisted of two small tables and two benches, a small cabinet, a fire pit, and a bed.
One of the tables held a washbasin and an ewer. The other held a candle in a rude metal holder. The cabinet housed the few treasures that I had been carrying with me the last two years, along with my few articles of clothing.
Next to the fire pit hung a small assortment of cauldrons and cups. On the grate across the pit were a few trenchers and my eating knife.
My arsenal stood against one wall—a steel-and-silver long knife in its sheath, a gleaming war hammer, and the shillelagh Gristle had fashioned. Slowly, I drew from my belt the shillelagh that Liam had made me and placed it with my other weapons. I turned to Liam and held his eyes, asking a question. Understanding, he drew his own shillelagh and placed it next to mine.
Then we turned to the bed.
It was no more than a pallet, as Michael’s had been, now a collapsed mass of fibers. Wordlessly, we both stooped at the same time to pick up the old grasses and remnants of reeds. Taking our time, we carried out all the old plant matter and started seeking fresh, fragrant materials.
After almost two hours, we had a new bed. A beginner’s bed, a rude bed, but ours. It was twice the size of my former one, and underneath Liam spread the soft pelts he had collected on our trip. He sat weaving a pile of reeds and tall green and golden grasses intertwined with new willow shoots.
Outside, from a small garden plot, I collected the most fragrant herbs I could find—rosemary, thyme, sage. When Liam had finished weaving the pallet, I threw the herbs all around and over the bed.
Then we stood back and surveyed our work. We had not said a word to each other in the almost two hours since we entered the little home. Then we turned to each other. The moment seemed more important than any words we could utter, and so we kissed each other softly, very softly, and we stood in a close embrace for long minutes.
Our frantic lovemaking last night had taken the edge from our physical hunger. But still I felt a yearning to touch him and be touched. He picked me up and laid me on the bed, all the while kissing me tenderly, a promise of gentle love, just as he had done so many months before. That long-ago night, frightened, I had sent him away. Now we both knew the boundaries, and I thought I would never be frightened again by his needs, or my own.
As he had done last night, he removed my pretty léine, so skillfully that I hardly knew he had done it. And then again, so slowly that I did not resist, he kissed my shoulders, where my undertunic separated my breasts from his seeking mouth. Caressing my back and shoulders, Liam licked the places where my breasts had begun to swell from the tunic…all, all, so gently that my body throbbed and hummed, and I did not resist.
Instead of seeking my nipples, he laid me back and turned me over onto my stomach. Now I began to shake, for I knew not what to expect. He brought my short tunic up over my behind and began to stroke my buttocks, again so lightly and tenderly that it was more like the touch of a breeze or a bird wing. I relaxed and started to enjoy the sensation, then suddenly I felt the hot wetness of his tongue, just touching my bum at the top of its cleavage.
“Oh!” I said, and I started to roll over. But he held me—not hard, but insisting that I stay and enjoy his mouth. His tongue continued down the cleavage, more and more hot and bold, until my whole body began to tremble.
My face pressed into the bed, and my cries were muffled as his tongue found every little place that could yield pleasure. I rocked back and forth until the pleasure was too much to hold back. When it was over, he put his arms around me and drew me close again, kissing my mouth and chin and nose while the tears rolled down my cheeks. Tenderly kissing them away, he pressed the back of my head into his chest and just held me.
“A mo chiusle, mo chiusle,” he said, a spoken love song.
We lay holding each other in quiet intimacy, rising only to light a candle when night finally came.
PART II:
Call of the Blood
Chapter 11:
Beneath the Rose
Autumn was fast approaching, and the crisp air felt invigorating as I worked my small garden plot. We had been in Derry almost two months, settling in to a routine, and yet it seemed that every day was full of new promise.
I carefully set out my winter vegetables—kale, lettuce, onions, leafy greens. Liam had made me a gardening tool, a square cultivator attached to the end of a pole, and I used it both to break the ground and to extract weeds and the unruly grass that threatened to choke out any less hardy plants that stood in its wild way.
I paid particular attention to a swatch of creeping deep green where I had started a patch of the little trefoil plant called the “shamrock.” The pilgrims and I had made sure we planted a bit of shamrock everywhere we set foot in our new homeland. I found that its leaves were tasty, whether raw or boiled. Its dried flower heads and seed capsules could even be ground up to use as flour in my pan breads.
Lifting my eyes from the garden bed, I gazed around at the larger surroundings of my little growing baile or bally. The landscape was irregular, dipping into glens and climbing to little hills, rounded like a girl’s young breasts. The more hills, the more I liked it, in spite of the difficulty of constructing buildings and digging defensive trenches.
I had shown Liam where I wanted the boundaries of our new bally, and he spent every day with a crew of workers constructing a stone-lined trench that was to form the perimeter of our new settlement. We would divert part of the swift Foyle into the trench, and in my mind I saw the finished defenses as a pretty little stream running around my homestead. There would be a graceful bridge here and there to afford passage between my holdings and the surrounding homes.
Each day brought a certain number of friends to our door. I knew that they came to see me, of course—but they were also keen to meet Liam. I laughed quietly to myself as I knelt, setting seeds into the crumbly soil, thinking of the various reactions to the announcement of our upcoming marriage.
The next morning after we returned, my mother and Glaedwine had stood outside the door as Liam and I were cleaning the inside of the neglected little teach. “Princess,” she said. “We all missed you.”
I ran to her and embraced her. “Please come in, Mama. And Glaedwine, my friend, it is good to see you.”
They stood hesitantly, for we had removed the benches and table, placing them outside while we cleaned the floor. “Um, on the other hand, why do we not sit outside in the fresh air?”
Mama sank slowly onto one little bench, and the oversized Saxon eyed the other small piece of furniture but decided to stand at her side instead. I hid a smile and went inside to bring Liam for inspection. Taking him by the hand, I led him to the bench where my mother sat, trying to look as much like an enthroned noblewoman as possible under trying conditions.
“Mama, Glaedwine, this is Liam. Perhaps you remember him, Mama, from the day at Tara when the high king proclaimed the endowment of our lands.”
I was hoping she would remember, without my having to be more direct, that Liam had stood for us that day, pleading our suit.
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I was proud of my aristocratic mother, for her eye never deviated from her pursuit of my happiness. “Of course,” she murmured, and she stood in front of Liam and curtsied prettily. “I remember well. You are the son of the high king.”
Liam sought my eye, looking quietly desperate. I had no words to tell him, “Just be yourself, my love.” But I think he caught the expression of amusement in my eyes, for he took her small hand in his and bowed deeply, bringing her hand up to his mouth. It was an occasion fit for the halls of Tara, and I was laughing inside as I watched the two of them.
Liam stood erect then, and he grasped Glaedwine’s immense hand with a firmness that surprised even the Saxon mercenary. Glaed astonished me then by saying something in Gaelic to the clansman, who answered in kind. I remembered then that the men knew each other, for Liam had been training the Glaed Keepers back at Father Patrick’s monastery in Emain Macha before we left for Tara.
I sat on the other bench near my mother and Liam stood next to me, perhaps purposely copying Glaedwine’s possessive stance beside my mother.
“Princess, how was your, ah, trip?”
“Very happy, Mother. For I found Liam on the longship on my way home. We had been apart for several months, and now we are reunited.”
“I see, yes,” she said as she glanced around at our housekeeping efforts. “And what are your plans…Caylith?” “Princess,” her pet name for me, was gone now that my youthful innocence had given way to Liam’s attentions.
“Liam and I will marry soon, Mama. We await the arrival of my friend—his cousin—Michael, for it will be a double wedding.”
She appraised me with her large brown eyes. “So it is time to stop saying ‘stop’?”
“Yes, my darling mother. I am following your good advice.”
At that, she smiled, and then she laughed warmly. “Welcome to our family, Liam,” she said. “And be careful of the thorn beneath the rose.”
