by Cara Colter
They arrived at the small unmarked pullout, the trail-head for what Meredith considered one of the greatest treasures of the Isle of Chatam, Chatam Hot Springs.
Meredith opened the boot of her small car, and loaded “Andy” down with bags and baskets to carry up the steep trail that wound through the sweetly scented giant cedar woods. She was enjoying this charade already. She would have never asked a prince to carry her bags!
Meredith was relieved to see, as they came around the final twist in the trail, there was not a single soul at Chatam Hot Springs. The natural springs were a favorite local haunt, but not this early in the day and not midweek. She had taken a chance that the hot springs would be empty, and they were.
Kiernan set down his cargo and gazed around. “What a remarkable place.”
Puffs of mist rose above the turquoise waters that filled a pool edged by slabs of flat black slate rocks. Freshwater falls cascaded down a mossy outcropping at the far end of the pool. Lush ferns, and bunches of grass, sown with tiny purple and blue wildflowers, surrounded the rocks and the pool.
“You’ve never been here?”
“I’ve heard of it, and seen photographs of it many times. But to come here? When the royal entourage arrives, security would necessitate closing it to the people who enjoy it most. I have so many other pleasures at my disposal that it would seem unduly selfish to want this one, also.”
She was already vulnerable to him because somehow the way he had reacted to her history had been so quietly right. Now she saw that despite the fact he lived in a position that could have easily bred arrogance, it had not. Kiernan clearly saw his position not as one of absolute power, but one of absolute service.
Still, the time for being too serious today was over.
“Oh, Andy,” she chided him. “You’re talking as if you think you’re royalty!”
Still, she was delighted he had never been here before, pleased that she was the one who had brought him to something new, beautiful and unexpected.
“Oh, Molly,” he said contritely. “You know me. Delusions of grandeur.”
“I have a plan for bringing you down a few notches, Andy.”
“I can barely wait.”
And it actually sounded as if he meant that, as if he was embracing this experience with an unexpected eagerness.
“Well, then, kick off your shoes, and roll up your pants,” Meredith suggested. “This is what I want to show you.”
He didn’t even argue with her.
Hidden in a tiny glade beside the hot springs, separated from the main pool by a dripping curtain of thick foliage, was a dip in the ground, approximately a quarter the size of the ballroom, that was filled with oozing, gray mud.
Meredith waded in. “Careful, it’s—” just as she tried to warn him, one of her feet slipped. But before she even fully registered she was falling, Kiernan was beside her. He wrapped his arm around her waist, took her arm, and steadied her.
“Oh, Molly, you’re a clumsy one. I’d give up those dreams of being a dancer if I were you.”
She felt as if she could not get enough of the playful tone in his voice.
“I’ll give up my dancer dreams if you’ll give up yours of being a prince.”
“Done,” he said, with such genuine relief they both laughed.
“It’s warm,” he said, astounded, apparently unaware that even though he had let go of her waist, he still held her arm. “I’ve never felt anything quite like this.”
And neither had she. Oh, the mud was exquisite; warm and thick, it oozed up through her toes, and then around her feet, and ankles, up her calves, but it was his hand, still steadying her arm, which she had never felt anything like.
They had been touching each other for days now.
But, except for that magical moment when the music had spilled over the courtyard, their dancing together had been basically all business. Their barriers had both been so firmly up. But that kiss she had planted on his cheek had taken the first chink out of those barriers, and now there were more chinks falling.
And so this outing and this experience wasn’t all business even if she had cloaked her motivation in accomplishing a goal.
Meredith looked at Kiernan’s face, dappled with sunshine coming through the feathery cedars that surrounded the pool, and something sighed within her. His face was exquisite, handsome and perfect, but she had never seen the expression she saw on it now.
Prince Kiernan’s eyes were closed. He looked completely relaxed, and something like contentment had crept into the normally guarded lines of his face. He tilted his chin to the sun, and took a deep breath, sighed it out.
It was good.
But it wasn’t enough. She wanted, needed to see with a desperation not totally motivated by her end goal, the prince lose his inhibitions, that restraint, that was like an ever-present palace guard, surrounding him. Keeping others away from him. But also keeping him away from others.
She let go of his hand. She stooped, and buried her own hand in the mud, closed her fist around an oozing gob of goo. For a moment she hesitated.
It was true. Kiernan was just way too restrained. He could never reach his potential as a dancer while he carried that shield around him.
But this was probably still just about the worst idea she had ever had. She lived in a land still ruled by a very traditional monarchy. Schoolchildren and soldiers started their day by swearing their allegiance and obedience to this man’s mother, Queen Aleda. But in time it would be him they stood and pledged their hearts to.
He had already shouldered much of the mantle of responsibility. Meredith knew, partly from the newspapers, and confirmed by the phone calls he sometimes had to take during dance practice, his interest in the economic health of the island was keen, that he had sharp business acumen, and that some of his initiatives had improved the standard of living for many people who lived here.
He promoted Chatam tirelessly abroad. He headed charities. He sat on hospital boards. He was the commander-in-chief of the military.
This man who stood with her, his pants rolled up to his knees, had influence over the lives of every single person in Chatam.
Really, it was no wonder he had trouble relaxing! So, this was probably one of the worst ideas Meredith had ever had. She was too cheeky. You did not, after all, in a land ruled by a monarchy, pick up a handful of oozing soft mud and hurl it at your liege!
But Meredith was committed to her course. Knowing somehow, in her heart, not her head, this was, absurdly, wonderfully, the right thing, she let fly with a handful of mud.
It caught him in the chest, and he staggered back a step, startled. He opened his eyes and stared down at the mud bullet that had exploded on his shirt.
His reaction would tell her a great deal about this man.
Furious anger?
Remote silence?
Complete retreat?
But, no, a smile tickled his lips, and when he looked up at her, she felt she might weep for what she had unmasked in his eyes.
“Disrespectful wench,” he said. “I’d swear you are looking for a few nights in the dungeon.”
There was a delightful playfulness in his tone.
“Andy! Are you in your prince delusion again? Dungeons, for pity sake! I suppose you’ll be telling me about bread and water and rats next. Poor you. Tut-tut.”
“Prince delusion? Oh, no, not at all. I’m in my warrior delusion, and you have just called me to battle. But I’m going to warn you, all prisoners go to the dungeon. If you please me, I might spare you the rats.”
She giggled, a trifle nervously, because something smoked in his eyes when he talked of making her his prisoner.
What had she started? And could she really handle it?
Kiernan stooped and came up with his big hand full of mud. He squinted at her thoughtfully, drew back his arm and took aim.
She began to run an awkward zigzag pattern through the sucking mud. The dark sludge he hurled whisked by her head.
Their mud balls crossed paths with each other, midair. His hit her solidly on the arm, with a warm, soft splat. It was like being hit with a dollop of just-out-of-the-oven pudding. Her missile wobbled through the air and went straight for his head.
Despite the fact he raised his arm in defense against the slow-flying projectile, it exploded against his raised bicep, and particles of it landed on his cheek, blossoming there like the petals of a mud flower. She drew her breath, shocked by her own unintentional audacity.
“I’m so sorry!” she called.
“Not nearly as sorry as you’re going to be,” he warned her.
He stopped, carefully wiped the muck off his cheekbone, and glared at her with mock fierceness. But Meredith saw there was nothing mock about the fact he did now look like a warrior! Of the barbaric variety that painted their faces before they went to battle.
He let out a cry worthy of that warrior and came after her, stooping and hucking mud as fast as he could fill his hands with it.
In moments the glade rang with his shouts and her playful shrieking. They threw mud back and forth until they were both covered in dark blotches, until their hair was lost under ropy dreadlocks of sludge, their hands were like mud mitts at their sides, and their clothes had disappeared under layers of smelly black goo. Finally, only his teeth and the whites of his eyes still looked white. Andy’s shirt was probably beyond repair.
The glade filled with the sounds of their laughter and playful insults, the sounds of them gasping for breath as they struggled to run through the sucking mud to escape each other’s attacks.
“Take that, Molly!”
“You missed! Andy, you throw like a girl.”
“You missed. You throw like a girl.”
“But I am a girl!”
“A girl? A mud monster, risen from the deep! Take that!”
They were laughing so hard they were choking on it. It rang off the rocks around them, rode on the mist.
Despite the noise, the chaos, the hilarity, something quiet blossomed in Meredith. Something she had felt, ever so briefly on that horse yesterday, but other than that not for a long, long time.
Joy.
The quiet awareness of it knocked her off balance. With Kiernan hot on her heels, his raised hand full of mud rockets, she slipped. She went down in slow motion, somehow managing to twist so she wouldn’t go into the muck face first. The mud cushioned her fall, and she fell on her back with a sucking splat.
She watched as Kiernan, too close, tried desperately to stop, but his arms windmilled, and he fell right on top of her, saving her from the worst of his weight by bracing his arms around her.
She stared up into the face of her warrior prince. His eyes were alight with laughter, looking bluer than she had ever seen them look. His smile, against the backdrop of his muddy face, was brilliant, white as snow against a stone.
She had never felt anything quite so exquisite. She rested in a bed of warm mud, her skin slippery and sensuous with it. And Kiernan, equally as slippery, held himself off of her, but there were places their bodies met. His hard lines were pressed into the soft curves of her legs and her hips.
She touched him every day. But his guard had always been up.
Hers had been, too.
Only something, delicate and subtle, had shifted between them.
The laughter died in the air around them, and was replaced with a silence so profound that it vibrated with a growing tension, a deep awareness of each other.
He stared down at her, and some unguarded tenderness crept into his muddy, warrior’s face.
Still holding most of his weight off her with one arm, he touched her lip with the hand he had just freed, scraped gently with his thumb.
Her joy escalated into exhilaration at the exquisite sense of being touched in such an intimate place, in such an intimate way.
“You have mud right here,” he whispered, by way of excuse, but his voice hoarse.
For a splendid moment it felt as if every barrier was down between them. Every one. As if her world was as wide open as it had ever been.
Everything became remarkable: the song of a bird nearby, the feel of the mud cushioning her, the smells that tickled her nostrils, the green of the fern plumes behind him.
Where his legs were sprawled across hers, the slide of their skin together where it made slight contact at their hips, the amazing light in his sapphire eyes, the scrape of his thumb against her lip, the slick muddiness of his hair, the sensual curve of his lips.
He was so close to her she could see the dark beginning of stubble on his cheeks, and his chin. He was so close to her his breath stirred across her cheek, featherlight, as intimate as his thumb which remained on her lips. He was so close to her she could smell the scent of him, wild and clean as the forest, over the scent of the minerals in the mud that covered them.
She closed her eyes against the delicious agony of wanting a moment to last forever.
To escalate.
“I warned you there would be consequences if I took you prisoner,” he said, the words playful, while his tone was anything but.
Was he going to kiss her? Even as a rational part of her knew they could never pull back from that again, a less rational part of her wanted the taste of his lips on hers, wanted to feel them.
She took her hand, as if it didn’t matter it was mud-covered, and traced a possessive line down the hard plane of his jaw. She touched it to the fullness of his lip.
As if it didn’t matter to him that it was mud-covered, he teased her finger gently, nibbled it with his teeth.
She felt the featherlight touch of his lip against the skin of her finger. Was it possible to die of sensation?
If this—the merest touch of his lips to something as inconsequential as her finger—could cause this unbelievable rise of sensation within her, what would it be like if he took her lips with his own?
She felt as if it would be a death of sorts.
The death of all she had been before, the rising up of something new, the rising up within her of a spirit that was stronger and more resilient than she had ever imagined, similar to that spirit that rose in her when she danced.
A place that was without thought, and without history.
Heaven.
Brazen with wanting, she slipped her muddy hands around the column of his neck, and pulled him down to her.
His weight settled on her more fully, chest to the soft curve of breast, hard stomach to delicate swell, muscled legs to slender ones, fused.
A whisper of sanity called her back from the brink.
And then called louder, stop.
It reminded her of the price of such a heated moment, lives changed forever.
But in that moment, she didn’t care if there was a price.
And apparently neither did he.
Because his lips touched hers. The fact they were both mud-slicked only increased the danger, the sensuality, the delicious sense of being swept away, of not caring about what happened next, of being pulled by forces greater than themselves.
His very essence was in the way he kissed her. Kiernan tasted, not of mud, but of rain in a storm, pure, clean, elemental. His kiss was tender, welcoming, and yet the strength and leashed passion were sizzling just below the surface.
It had been so long since Meredith had allowed anything or anyone to touch her, emotionally or physically.
She had not even known the hunger grew in her, waiting for something, someone to touch it off, to show her she was ravenous.
She was ravenous, and Kiernan was a feast of sensation.
Everything about him swirled around her—the light in his sapphire eyes, the line of his hard body against hers, the taste of his lips, the hollow of his mouth—all those broken places within her were being touched by sensation that was fulfilling and healing and exhilara
ting.
It was madness. Exquisite, delicious, compelling mad ness.
And she had to stop it. She had to.
Except that she was powerless, in the grip of something so amazing and wondrous she could not have stopped it if her very life depended on it. She was just not that strong.
But he was.
He pulled back from her, she saw strength and temptation war in his eyes, and she was astounded—and saddened—when his strength won. He pulled himself away from her, hesitated, dropped back down and placed one more tiny kiss on the corner of her lip, and then pulled his weight completely off her and stood gazing down at her.
Meredith saw control replace the heat in his eyes.
She watched awareness dawn in his eyes, saw his reluctant acquiescence to the guard he always surrounded himself with.
She knew, with a desperate sadness, this moment was over.
CHAPTER SIX
KIERNAN COMPOSED HIMSELF, held his hand to her. She took it, and her body made an unattractive slurping sound as he tugged, and then yanked hard to free her from the mud.
If he said he was sorry, she felt she would die.
But he did not say that, and she felt a strange sense of relief that she could tell he was not sorry. Not even a little bit.
And neither was she, even though the consequences of what had just happened hung over her.
Neither of them spoke, looking at each other, aware with an awareness that could not be denied once it had been acknowledged.
He dropped her hand, but not her gaze.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
She knew exactly what he meant. That moment of being so alive, so incredibly vibrantly alive had been a gift to both of them.
She had not even been aware how much she lived in a state of numbness until she had experienced this wonderful hour with him. It had been carefree, and laughter-filled, wondrous. Meredith felt as if she had been exquisitely and fully alive in a way she had not been for a long, long time.
If she ever had been that alive, that fully engaged, that spontaneous, that filled with wonder for the simple, unexpected miracle of life.
Still, leaving the utter and absolute magic of the moment, Meredith felt as if she was going to cry.
