by Hazel Hunter
“Thank the Gods,” he murmured as he set her down.
The rushlights had begun to burn low, which helped when he began undressing her. As she did the same for him she thought her hands would fumble with shyness. The more she exposed his huge, tough body, however, the more assured she felt. When her fingers stroked over the plains and hills of his muscles, his chest rumbled with sounds of low, deep pleasure. The slide of her body against his made her go instantly, completely wet. In her belly a huge rose of delight bloomed, caressing her with velvety petals of promised delight and pricking her with sharp thorns of urgent need.
“Dinnae fear me, lass,” Ruadri said when she shivered.
Emeline pressed her bare breasts against his chest, sighing as his smooth flesh caressed the pebbly peaks. “This isn’t fear.”
Ruadri’s feelings grew hotter and darker, filling her like a steaming waterfall of burgundy wine. She’d never once gotten drunk, but she knew this must be what it felt like. As his hands splayed across her lower back her skin turned to silk under his touch, and she poured her delight into him so he could feel her soft, feminine pleasure. He took off his boots before he sat her on the edge of the platform to remove hers, and then they were both naked and stretched out facing each other on the furs.
His closeness, and the cool air against Emeline’s heated skin, made her more aware of her body than she’d ever been. She felt delicate and decadent, and the scent of their bodies blended into an arousing musk. The flickering lights hid as much as they revealed, and she wondered what it would be like to lay naked with Ruadri in a sunlit meadow.
Could I let him see every inch of me like that? Her heart said yes and please and tomorrow, as soon as we’re alone.
She wanted to see all of him, too, Emeline decided, although she sensed that no man in any time had ever looked as magnificent as her shaman. But what he felt for her was remaking her from the inside, already changing her perceptions from that of a lonely spinster to a vibrant woman.
Something other than her charms, however, made heavy ropes of pewter doubt crisscross through his flowing desire. He also wasn’t touching her.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” she assured him. “I know how this happens, at least from medical books. And I’m really not afraid.”
“’Tis me, no’ you. I’ve never put my hands on a lass in passion.” He caressed her shoulder, and then drew his palm down the length of her arm, so gently that she barely felt it. “I dinnae wish to hurt you.”
No wonder he had doubts. As big and powerful as he was, he could probably snap her bones by simply holding her too tight. Her utter lack of experience and the physical reality of her virginity wouldn’t make taking him easy or painless, either. But Ruadri wasn’t a brute, and she refused to be a coward.
“Then you’ve only to do one thing.” She pressed her hand to his cheek, her lips to his mouth, and his hand to her heart. “Take me now.”
Chapter Twelve
KISSING RUADRI WHILE she pushed her breast into his palm had to be the brashest thing Emeline had ever done. Encouraging him to caress her made her feel wild and shameless, and shattered the weighty restraints damming his need. He clasped her mound as he ravished her mouth, sending explosions of aching sweetness through her. His hand draped her thigh over his, and she pressed close until she could feel the hard length of him against her folds. His penis was huge, but she had grown so slick with desire that she was sure she drenched him at the first touch.
“I’m starved for you, lass,” he said against her lips, his massive frame tensing before he shifted down.
The feel of his mouth nuzzling her breasts made her surge against him, stroking the long, hard column between her legs with her eager, slick folds. But rocking against him wasn’t enough, not when he began sucking her nipples. He licked and tugged until she thought she would shake herself to pieces. At last she hitched her thigh higher and reached between them, boldly curling her fingers around his pulsing shaft.
As she notched his satiny cockhead into the aching opening of her pussy, Ruadri shuddered. “Ah, Gods. I should wait…”
“Not another moment,” she whispered, pressing him in. “Come inside me, please.”
He rolled over her, pinning her down under his weight, his hands dragging her thighs around his hips. He stayed lodged just inside her, his whole body tightening as he looked into her eyes. He looked like a warrior about to conquer, and a boy receiving his most secret wish. Those two sides of him both came into her, hunger and longing like armies marching under the banner of love.
“Always you’ll be mine, Emeline.” He pushed into her, his girth stretching her slowly as he penetrated and claimed her.
The pain she had expected flared with every inch of him she took, but the delicious cascade of his fervent emotions soon washed it away. Ruadri might have drowned her in his need, but she poured into him her own yearning, and together they merged in a dark, wild sea of emotion. All around him her body softened and clenched at the same time, until he groaned and pushed one hand under her bottom, gripping her tightly. She arched up, engulfing him to his root, and her breath mingled with his as they both let out a heartfelt sigh.
Moving from innocence to womanhood infused Emeline with an insatiable delight. She had taken all of him, and they fit together as if made for each other. Her own strong frame braced him without the slightest difficulty, and for the first time in her life she felt right in her own body.
“Ruadri.” She slid her hands over his back, glorying in the feel of the smooth flesh over his bunched muscles. “I didn’t know it would be like this. Like you’re part of me.”
“’Tis more, my sweet lass.” He gave her another of his possessive, hungry kisses.
Emeline gasped against his mouth as he moved, drawing out his length almost entirely before pushing back inside. The way his swollen cock stroked her made tremors surge through her belly and into her jutting breasts. The heat of that luscious friction spread in thrilling bursts of sensation unlike anything she’d ever experienced.
“Oh,” she gasped.
When the flare of his glans grazed over a pulsating spot inside her it was as if he’d set off a pleasure charge that pervaded her with bursts of electrified sweetness.
“So much more,” he said, his voice thick.
He slipped one hand between them, pressed his thumb to the top of her sex, and rubbed it against the tight pearl of her clit.
Emeline shivered, and then whimpered as he kept stroking her there while he worked his thick penis in and out of her. She had rubbed herself there before, furtively in her lonely bed at night, while imagining a man loving her. Never had it felt like the reality of Ruadri touching her and taking her, and it excited her so much that everything inside her knotted.
“You make me want more even now,” he murmured as he circled and caressed the hard knot, pressing deep into her softness. “I shall have you again with my mouth.” He swept his thumb back and forth while he slowly pumped his shaft in and out. “I want to fack you with my fingers, my tongue. I’ll devour you until you beg me put my cock in your quim and stroke you hard.”
Her face burned and her body shook as Emeline writhed under him, and then he pushed hard into her pussy and tenderly squeezed her clit. The double stimulation excited her so much she came apart under him. His mouth muffled her cry, her body stretching and then shaking beneath his, as sensual bliss swamped her. The climax seemed to go on and on as he stroked her and fucked her and murmured to her how much she pleased him with her ecstasy.
“Oh, Ru.” She finally went limp, exhausted, and entirely elated. If he’d never touched another woman in passion, how could he already know her body so well? “What are you doing to me?”
He kept gliding in and out of her. “Everything I’ve longed to, my lady. I’ve thought on you like naught else. ’Tis so much yet.”
She’d forgotten that in a way she was his first too. Her heart fluttered in her breast as she watched his eyes darken,
and his expression tightened as if he were fighting for self-control. All this time he had been seeing to her needs while denying his own, and now he was swelling even larger and harder inside her, and still he held back.
That he wanted her so much and could still be so gentle with her made Emeline blink quickly. At last something she’d never understood became clear: this man was who she had waited for. He was the reason she’d never taken a lover.
“You don’t have to wait any longer,” Emeline murmured, and on instinct stretched out her arms over her head. “Give me all of you now.”
Ruadri closed his eyes for a moment, and when he looked at her again his eyes had turned silver-white. He dragged up her legs and plowed into her with a fierce stroke that sent a fiery shockwave through her. Before she could catch her breath, he did it again, and she gripped the furs with tight fingers as she lifted her hips into his powerful thrusts.
His forearm tattoos had begun to shimmer with light, and Emeline felt a strange tingle in the crescent scar on her ankle. Somehow that felt as right as Ruadri’s savage passion, and she gave herself up to both as the light sank into her and filled her along with him.
The rushlights faded as the dark interior of the broch turned bright. As if from a distance Emeline saw chunks of wood flying through the air around them, and moonlight pouring in through the window openings. It curtained them with fountaining swirls of gray and white, circling and contracting until a thousand tiny moons filled the air.
A bolt of power raced from her ankle to her chest, where it swelled inside her and poured out through her skin to envelop them both. A new presence took her, but unlike the ugly darkness this was pure and beautiful. Emeline surrendered to it as she had to Ruadri, and looked at her lover with so much joy she thought she might weep.
The shaman held himself deep inside her as the power enclosing them grew bright. Then Emeline cried out as pleasure suffused and shook her, and he swelled and jetted in her core. The bliss became so intense she thought her heart would explode, and then at last he shuddered and poured his last stream into her, and they both went limp.
“Long I’ve awaited this night, my warrior.” The voice coming from her lips sounded like music over the rasp of her panted breathing. “You and your lady be one now. I’ve marked you, and I shall take my pleasure of you every night hence.”
Ruadri went still, lifted his head to look at her through narrowed eyes. “Aye, Goddess, so you shall. But Emeline doesnae belong to you. She gave herself to me. ’Tis I who shall serve you, no’ her. Release her.”
“Never would I clad your lady or you with any chain, my shaman.” A sharp sensation bit into her side as the words left her, and Emeline touched the tender scar of the wound writhing on her skin. “That you shall do yourself.”
Emeline heard herself laugh, and then the presence vanished entirely as the moons crowding around them burst and faded away. The air still crackled around them as if filled with magic, which made her feel oddly comforted. Some enormous thing beyond her understanding had just happened, but it had not been evil or destructive. She would swear to that.
“Emeline?” Ruadri cradled her face. “Come back to me, lass.”
“I’m back. I never left.” She flung her arms around his neck and held him close, grateful and strangely close to tears. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what that… I didn’t say those things. Something spoke through me.”
“’Twas my battle spirit, the moon. She rode you.” He lifted her from the furs, his hard cock still buried inside her, and held her close, resting his cheek against the top of her head. “I never reckoned she would try to claim you.”
She already has, Emeline thought, but he sounded so grim she kept that notion to herself. “It felt startling, but she didn’t hurt me.”
“She wouldnae.” Carefully he lifted her, separating their bodies, and lowered her to the furs before stretching out beside her.
Emeline studied his expression, which had gone from taut satisfaction to shuttered anger. “Why would the moon, ah, ride me like that?”
“I dinnae ken. Mayhap I used you too crudely. I ken that I hurt you.” He sounded disgusted with himself. “The druids feared the Skaraven too brutal to be trusted with their fragile bodies. ’Twas why they chained us to our beds before they’d permit a pleasure lass to attend to our needs.”
That shocked her down to her heels. “They put you in chains?”
Ruadri explained the only way the Skaraven had been permitted to have lovers, through an observed ritual during which they were chained and kept from touching or even speaking to the women brought to them for sex. Everything he described made her furious, for it seemed tantamount to rape. It also reduced what she now knew was a beautiful experience to shameful, deliberate humiliation.
“You didn’t deserve that kind of abuse,” Emeline told him once he’d finished. “What you and I did together wasn’t crude or hurtful. There’s almost always pain during a woman’s first time. I expected that. But I am not fragile, and you are certainly not a brute. I couldn’t have imagined it would be so thrilling. You might have to put me in chains the next time I…” She stopped as she remembered talking with Marga and the other tribeswomen.
Ruadri traced the down curve of her lips. “What makes you frown, then, lass?”
“Is ‘attend’ a term the Pritani use for having sex?” When he nodded Emeline groaned. “I told Ara’s ladies that I ‘attended’ to all of our tribe’s elders. Don’t laugh,” she added when she saw Ruadri’s lips twitch. “My McAra blood didn’t warn me I’d called myself a besom.”
“None could look upon you and think that.” He kissed her brow and gazed into her eyes. “Your courage shines as bright as your beauty.”
So did his honesty. Emeline was almost blinded by the clear, crisp blue sky that stretched inside her along with his beautiful emotions. She could see herself as he did now, and it humbled her, but she didn’t deserve it.
“You should know that I’m not particularly brave,” she said slowly. “Ask Cade. He’ll tell you how much trouble I caused during the escape from the mill.”
“Cade told us how you struggled,” Ruadri countered. “You walked full leagues and climbed slopes with an ankle broken. You cared for Lily when she fell senseless. You stepped in front of a spear meant for Perrin.”
“Most of that was stupidity, not valor. Especially getting hit by that spear.” She paused, working up the nerve to tell him the rest. “Even before I came here I was full of envy and misery. I’ve never been thin or pretty or well-liked by other women, and it always hurt. I’ve wasted years hating myself when I might have enjoyed the blessings and advantages I did have.”
“’Tis why you thought yourself fat,” he said, and looked down the length of her body. “’Twas what they called you, no’ what you were.”
“What I was doesn’t matter anymore.” Emeline was a little surprised by how much she meant that. In her time Meribeth Campbell and Lauren Reid had defined who she was. Now she did that on her own. “Everything has changed, including me. You’ve come into my life and I want to be brave and beautiful for you.”
Ruadri shifted onto his back and stared up at the roof beams. “That you shall be, with or without me.” Finally he turned his head to look at her. “I truly meant only to keep you warm tonight.”
“You did that.” Emeline climbed on top of him, snuggling against his broad chest. “I expect I’ll never feel cold again.”
Chapter Thirteen
MAKING THE QUICK jaunt to the McAra stronghold for Althea meant rising at dawn and going for a short, fast swim on horseback. Although immortality had given her the ability to water-travel like the Skaraven, it did nothing to keep her warm when she led her mare into the river and transformed. Now accustomed to being whisked through the icy currents by the bubbling light magic that surrounded her mistress’s water-bonding form, the horse only snorted and waggled her head as they emerged from the loch.
Having the ability to freeze an
ything she touched didn’t provide Althea with any particular immunity to cold either. If anything, she felt it more keenly. She smiled her gratitude to the McAra clansmen waiting with fur-lined cloaks on the banks, mainly because if she opened her mouth they’d only hear her teeth chattering.
Because apparently they both had ice for blood, Brennus and Kanyth disdained the cloaks and simply shook off like wet tigers.
“This is just so unfair,” Althea said once she had wrapped up. “How can you guys be completely immune to freezing weather?”
The men exchanged an amused look before Kanyth said, “We werenae coddled against it.”
They thought it was funny, but Althea’s mood darkened. Bred as indentured warriors, the Skaraven had been conditioned to endure physical hardships from birth. Brennus rarely talked about it, but she’d picked up enough to know what they’d suffered. During the years of brutal training they’d had as boys the druids had probably marched them through blizzards and made them sleep on frozen lakes to build up their resistance to cold.
“When we see Bhaltair, can you shake some spells out of him?” she asked her husband. “He might know a drying charm or something else useful. It’ll keep me from kicking him in that bad knee of his, too.”
“I’ll keep you warm, Wife.” Brennus lifted her from her mare to his big stallion and settled her on his lap. “And cease your worrying on Emeline.”
How the love of her life always knew what she was really thinking still mystified Althea. “I still think we should have gone down to check on her before we left. She was really in bad shape. Plus it’s not called the ‘fear pit’ because you feel warm and fuzzy when you’re in it.”
“Ru shall keep close watch over her until our return,” Brennus said before he looked over at the clan’s weapons master. “Ka, ride aside us. I want no surprises.”
“You and your suspicions,” his half-brother chided as he collected the reins and trotted up with Althea’s mount. “Old Flen willnae dare ambush us.” He saw the chieftain’s expression and sighed. “Very well, be an old wench who twice counts her every kernel at the miller’s. As for me, I’ve grown very fond of certain druidesses.” He winked at Althea.
