Flame

by May McGoldrick

  She almost came off the bed.

  “Now, you will have to lie still if you want me truly to suffer.”

  She lay back against the sheets, struggling to do as he’d ordered.

  Gavin’s head dipped again, his tongue stroking the sensitive spot. Joanna moaned with pleasure.

  “Lift your hips,” he encouraged. “Tell me you want more from me, my love.”

  She arched her back and lifted her hips, grinding her soft mound against his devouring mouth. Teetering on the edge of the sheer madness of release, she whispered, “More.”

  He moved his hands beneath her, cupping her buttocks and delving even more deeply with his tongue, and she felt the physical world unravel.

  Joanna cried out, and as violent shudders rolled through her, she let the waves of pleasure carry her with their power.

  When she opened her eyes, he had moved up on her body and was looking at her in a way she had never seen. There was a pleased smile on his full lips, but there was also an expression of tenderness and love in those black eyes.

  “So I’m forgiven?” he asked with a note of arrogance, placing slow, tantalizing kisses on her eyelids, her cheeks, her throat.

  Joanna didn’t answer, but instead lifted her hand and framed the hard lines of his chiseled face. She was his, and he was hers, forever. Finally, she could dare herself to dream. Finally, all of her preparations of the past months undone, she could set her mind to live and to let live.

  Slowly raising her head off the bed, she kissed his lips and placed her hands firmly against his shoulders as he moved between her legs, readying himself to enter her.

  “Not yet. I am not done punishing you.”

  With a slow and devilish smile, he eyed her breasts, but before he could do anything more, she forced him onto his back.

  “As a sinner, lass, I may be too far gone to withstand any lengthy penance you have in mind,” he whispered.

  She ignored his complaint and moved over him, letting her breasts brush sensuously against the hair on his chest. With excruciating slowness, she kissed his lips and explored his mouth with her tongue. His body was tense, every muscle knotted and taut. When his hands began to slide over her back and buttocks, pulling her against his throbbing manhood, she pushed him away and moved down his body.

  “Nay, Joanna, this is...I...I cannot take much more of this.”

  She smiled and peeked up at him, letting her tongue circle his navel before moving still lower. She felt his whole body tense under her touch, and listened with pleasure as he gasped when she ran her tongue slowly over the entire length of his fully aroused shaft.

  “Now spread your knees, my love,” she whispered.

  A deep rumble of laughter in his chest brought a smile to her lips. Delighted, she dipped her head and took him into her mouth.

  “Joanna!”

  She raised her head and glanced up at him. “Now lift your hips!” she ordered, again bringing another surge of laughter to his rigid body.

  Taking him again into her mouth, she suckled hard on his manhood.

  He sat up so fast that she didn’t have a chance to move. Taking her face and hair in his hands, Gavin drew her to him and crushed his mouth to hers. Too consumed in the demanding thrusts of his tongue, she could hardly complain as he lay back down with her atop him, his engorged member pressing against her so intimately.

  “Wait!” he growled, tearing his mouth away. “Am I forgiven?”

  She lifted herself slightly and slowly took him into her body. “You are, my love. But you have a lifetime of penance ahead of you.”

  Their eyes met and the humor dissolved into the air, as something gentle and deep passed between them.

  “I love you, Gavin.”

  “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You never will. I am yours, forever.”

  “But you should know, I have ghosts from my past. They haunt me.”

  “We’ll drive them away,” she whispered, moving with deliberate slowness. “The same way that we’ve driven out mine.”

  He gripped her buttocks tightly, and she knew he had to be pressing the limits of his control.

  “Have we slain yours?” he growled through clenched teeth.

  “We have,” she answered. “You helped me to open my eyes.”

  “I want you, Joanna.”

  “You have me. I am yours.”

  “Forever.”

  “I’ll always be with you.”

  “But I am afraid,” he said huskily. “I am afraid of losing you.”

  “There is no need to fear,” she answered. “Open your eyes, Gavin, and see me. Open you heart, and you will keep me always.”

  “I need you, Joanna.”

  She tried to blink away the tears in her eyes. “Say it again, Gavin.”

  “I want you...” He started to thrust slowly into her. “I need you.”

  “Say it, Gavin,” she commanded, feeling him deep within her.

  “I love you.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Curled in each other’s arms in Joanna’s bed, Gavin had spoken first, telling her of the ancient priest, so close to death, his flesh and his eyesight destroyed by leprosy, and yet still so proud and disdainful of the Lowlanders. Gavin told her that if Athol had not been present, he doubted the priest would have deigned to relate the horrible origins of the Ironcross curse. And when he was finished, Joanna told him what she’d learned from Mater about the abbess’s terrifying experience with Duncan.

  “Aye, the old priest knew of Duncan’s rape of Mater. But I don’t think he knew that she’d been with child.” He pushed a strand of hair off Joanna’s brow and thought back over the old man’s words. “The first time that Mater disappeared, everyone thought that she’d just decided to leave and join the women of the abbey. But when she came back a while later, the whole castle witnessed her misery. They all heard her cries of anguish when she was raped and thrown into the courtyard.”

  “Holy Mother,” she whispered, rolling onto her back and staring at the canopy above them. “Cleanse this blood that runs in my veins.”

  “Stop it, Joanna,” he ordered, turning her to face him. “Duncan took his foul nature with him into his grave. The old priest swore that, for all their flaws, Duncan’s sons were always kind to the people of Ironcross Castle.”

  He tipped her chin up until he could meet her gaze. “And there was something else that the priest said about Mater. Something she apparently did not tell you.”

  Joanna looked steadily into his eyes.

  “When Mater came back to Ironcross the last time, Margaret and Allan were with her in the kitchens.”

  “You cannot mean those two witnessed their sister’s rape?”

  “Aye. They did,” he answered quietly. “Allan was just a lad. Margaret, the youngest of the three, was barely more than a bairn, perhaps three or four.”

  “How could he do such a thing? How could he be such a monster?”

  Gavin gathered her tightly to him. “The priest said that Margaret never spoke a word again after that night.”

  “You mean, she could speak before?”

  “The priest says that she did, that she was no different than any of the other children running about the castle. But after that day, after they found her huddled and crying against the wall in the kitchens, they never heard her speak again.”

  “This explains a great deal,” Joanna murmured.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The day I overheard the two of them in the vault, Mater asked Margaret why it was that she had been able to walk away from her suffering, when Margaret must still be tormented after so many years.” Joanna looked up into Gavin's eyes. “This was what she meant. She was referring to Margaret’s witnessing of Duncan’s cruelty!”

  Gavin nodded. “Aye. That makes sense.”

  “And what about Allan?” she asked. “How could he grow up and become the steward to Duncan and to his sons? To see such a crime must have crushed him!”

>   “The priest told us that the boy vanished the very same night. Some thought that perhaps Mater had taken him with her and left Margaret behind. But then, about a fortnight later the lad came back, noticeably thinner but seemingly resigned to what he’d witnessed.”

  Joanna placed her chin on Gavin's chest and looked thoughtfully in the direction of the panel. “Did the priest mention where Allan had gone?”

  “Nay. Why?”

  “Down in the caverns, by the underground loch.” Her eyes returned to his. “There are drawings on the walls. They could have been done by a child. I just wondered...”

  “And you think Allan took refuge in the caverns?”

  “He surely knew the way,” she argued. “If he had escaped to the abbey and to Mater, she never would have allowed him to return.”

  Gavin nodded. “Would you take me there?”

  “To the loch?”

  “Aye.” He nodded, throwing off the covers and climbing from the bed. He picked up his kilt and wrapped it around him.

  “Now? In the middle of the night?”

  “Why not, love?” He turned and offered her a hand out of bed. “You think I have forgotten? I know this is your customary hour for prowling about and stealing things!”

  ***

  The damp smell of the earth filled Gavin’s senses as Joanna led him into the large cavern beside the underground loch. He followed her gaze to a small pile of bedding half hidden beneath a low overhang, and his brow immediately furrowed.

  “You lived like this? on this wet and cold ground for so many months? You could have died, and no one would have...”

  “I did not die,” she interrupted, taking him by the hand and drawing him toward the walls on the opposite side of the cavern. “And for most of the time since the fire, I lived in relative comfort high in the tower, in the south wing. If it hadn’t been for you driving me out of there, and...”

  “Hold, lass. Now you’re making me feel guilty.”

  “As you should,” she quipped, holding her torch above her head as they reached the farthest wall. “Here are the marks,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.

  Raising his own torch high, Gavin stared at the rough images. Judging from their simplicity and their height on the wall, one could easily think they had been done by a child. And they were exactly as Joanna had described them. A cross and, beneath it, the prone stick-like figure of a woman. And not far away, another stick figure clutching a head by the hair and, in the other hand, a large knife or sword. Gavin brought the torch closer and leaned down to take a better look. At the swordbearer’s feet there was another image--something that seemed to be faded with the passage of time.

  “‘Tis a cup,” Joanna said quietly.

  “It seems to be catching the blood,” he responded.

  Gavin noticed Joanna’s shiver as she moved closer to his side. “From the severed head,” she finished. Suddenly she pointed to the cup. “Look!”

  Gavin turned. From the cup a thin line of marks stretched along the wall of the cavern, as if someone had struck the wall at intervals as he had walked. The marks disappeared into the darkness at the very back of the cavern. Taking Joanna by the hand, he began to move along the markings.

  “I never noticed these before. But then, I never looked this closely.”

  “They had to be there all along,” he told her over his shoulder. “They are as faded as the rest of the marks.”

  The cavern roof sloped downward quickly, and in a moment Gavin was walking with his head ducked. A narrow fissure in the side wall came into view, and as they stepped into the tunnel, the laird turned to Joanna.

  “Is this another way of getting back to the keep?”

  “I don’t know.” She hesitated. “Nay. We’re going in the direction of the vault.”

  The passage was higher here, and Gavin straightened up. As they continued, he could feel the growing reluctance in Joanna as he pulled her along by the hand.

  They broke around another bend and she came to a stop. “We cannot go on.”

  “Why, Joanna? This is no different than any other time you have roamed these caverns by yourself.”

  “But ‘tis,” she pleaded. “You’re with me, and I have a terrible feeling that something will go wrong.”

  “I’ll take you up to...”

  “Don’t!” she ordered. “‘Tis your life that I am worrying about. ‘Tis you whom I want away from that vault.”

  “Joanna, we have come this far, and I am not going to turn around and forget about this--unless you’re too afraid to continue.” He knew he was baiting her. “If you would prefer, I’ll take you back up to the keep. I am certain I can make my way back down here and find where this tunnel leads.”

  “You are not taking me back to the keep,” she said stubbornly, her eyes flashing as she marched past him.

  Loosening his dirk in its sheath, Gavin smiled wryly and quickly caught up to her, once again taking hold of her hand.

  “I want you to know that I have already been to the crypt.”

  Her surprise was evident in the way she pulled back and tried to stop. But he tugged on her hand and continued. “I found my way back there.” He turned and smiled into her face. “And nay, despite what everyone says, I did not vanish nor die a horrible death the moment I stepped into that sacred chamber.”

  “You...” She cleared her throat. “Was there...anything...”

  “I discovered your work, Joanna. Or what I thought must have been your doing. The rushes? The trenches on the floor covered with straw? Do you think Mater would not have seen that?”

  “Is that why you were so brutal with me on the day we went to the abbey?”

  Gavin stopped and, grabbing her tightly around the waist, he drew her slender body to his. “I don’t think making love on the side of a mountain is...”

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said quickly. “I...before that...You are a rogue, Gavin Kerr.”

  “And are you still considering going through with it?”

  She shook her head. “Nay, I cannot! I have already undone all of that. After hearing the truth of Mater and my grandsire, I just cannot imagine bringing any more harm to her. Guilty or not guilty, I just could not go through it.”

  He stopped and kissed her mouth with a passion so fierce it left her breathless.

  “I love you, Joanna,” he whispered. “But I must tell you now that if we find that Mater is the murderer, we will bring her to justice, no matter what she has suffered.”

  Joanna stared back at him. “Then I’ll pray that she is not guilty.”

  CHAPTER 34

  When Gavin pulled open the heavy oak door, the stench that greeted them brought bile to Joanna’s throat.

  Revolted, she stood at the entrance as he stepped into the chamber. The room smelled of dead and rotted flesh. Not far from her foot lay the headless corpse of a sheep. Staying where she was, Joanna shot a glance at Gavin.

  He looked back at her. “To think you spent the winter in the tower room when, all the time, you could have been here!”

  “Stay where you are, Gavin,” she said shakily, staring past him.

  The floor at the far end of the room seemed to be moving. Gavin turned and raised his torch high in the air, and she saw him flinch and back up a step at the sight.

  Joanna moved beside him, and looked up into his face. He was as pale as the full moon. “What is it?”

  “Rats,” he whispered through clenched teeth. She watched him draw out his dagger. “I hate rats!”

  “You walk happily into a slaughterhouse, but you are afraid of a wee bit of a thing like a rat?”

  “‘Tis not one wee bit of a thing. Look, there must be hundreds of them! And I am not afraid,” he said threateningly. “I hate them!”

  “Same thing,” she murmured teasingly, lowering her torch and waving it, sending the vermin skittering into cracks and along the walls.

  He growled at her.

  Joanna surveyed with disgust the pile
s of rotting animal corpses. Chickens, sheep, dogs, what looked like a cow. “What...what is this place?”

  “A butchery, I should think. But from all the old meat rotting on these bones, I do not believe this killing was done to feed any hungry mouths.”

  “I’ve no desire to stay here, Gavin,” she said, panic prickling down her back.

  “Nay,” he agreed. “Nor do I.”

  Joanna turned back toward the heavy oak door. “But why someone would use a room like this so far beneath the ground for butchering? Why...?” The words withered on her lips.

  “What is it, Joanna?”

  “The cup!” She pointed at the ornate cup sitting on a small wooden table. “This is the cup!”

  “What cup?” he asked taking a step at her direction but then pausing as a rat ran across the floor in front of him.

  “This is the cup that I have seen Mater use every full moon.”

  He reached down and picked up the ornate piece, looking at it in the light of his torch.

  “During their ceremony, Mater pours some liquid from this cup into the fire.”

  Gavin turned and gazed inside the empty cup. “Blood.”

  “They use this chamber for killing.” She stepped back and glanced down the tunnel into the darkness before turning back to him. “We are not too far from the crypt. All the times I have passed this way, I never knew of this room. I never smelled these rotting animals.”

  “Well, I, for one, am happy that they use only animals,” Gavin said, looking with curiosity at the bones and huge pile of assorted cadavers. “I have heard stories of some of the old religions that used other sacrifices as part of their ritual.”

  A cold breeze suddenly sent a chill down Joanna’s back. She shivered uncomfortably and glanced back over her shoulder.

  “Please, Gavin, put the cup back,” she pleaded. “Let us leave this horrible place.”

  “Afraid?”

  “I am not letting you taunt me,” she whispered urgently taking him by the arm. “We’ve seen too much already for one night. Let’s be on our way, tomorrow is soon enough!”