Erinsong (36 page)

“No, you don’t, princess.”
He smiled wearily and
moved closer to her.
“It’s not what you think.”

Fire danced through her veins. Anger? Aye,
that was safe. “We’ve not said more than a handful of words to each
other all week. How would ye be knowing what I think?”

“Because everything that
goes on in your head shows on your lovely face.” He reached across
and
cupped her cheek, his thumb tracing
the curve of the
fine bone. His hand was
warm, and she found herself
leaning into
his touch.

The heat she’d mistaken for
anger a moment ago
flared into a darker
flame. She despised herself for
rousing to
this man who intended to leave her. She didn’t trust herself to
speak.

“Even if you had it in you
to lie, you don’t have the
face for it.
Your soul, your thoughts, your feelings all shine out of you so
strong, you’re incapable of hiding w
hat’s
rolling around inside you. But this time you’re
wrong, Brenna.” He leaned forward and planted a
gentle kiss on her forehead. “I’m not leaving
you.”

“Ye mean to send me alone
back to me father. If
that’s not leaving,
what might ye be calling it?”

“A temporary separation. At
least I hope that’s
what it is.” Jorand
dropped his hand back into his lap
and
Brenna felt instantly colder, deprived of his touch. “I’ve tried to
think of another way, any other
way I can
do what I must in the next few weeks, but I
can’t.” He stared at the smoldering remains of their fire as
if a solution might be lurking in the smoky depths. He shook his
head slowly. “You’ll have to trust me.”

Brenna swallowed hard. He’d
said the same words
the first time he took
her body, the first time he swept
her to
that incomprehensible place where she lost herself in him. She had
little choice. It was either
trust him or
stop breathing. “Where are ye bound?”

“Back to Dublin for a
start,” he said. “I have some
unfinished
business there.”

“Unfinished business? Is
that what Northmen call
it?” she asked,
unable to keep the bitterness from her
voice as she edged away from him. “That business
wouldn’t be called Solveig, would it?”

“Solveig and I are well and truly done,” he
said.

“And now ye settle for your poor second,
me?”

Jorand’s brown knit
together. “Is that what you
think? Never,
Brenna. You’re not second to anyone.”
He
dragged a hand over his face. “I know I’ve been distant, but it’s
because something is about to happen and I’m not sure I’ve thought
through all the possibilities.”

“What is about to happen?”

“Brenna, I don’t know how
to explain it to you, but
this is
something I have to do. Do you remember
when I told you of Thorkill’s ambitions?”

“Aye. He means to rule the whole of Erin, ye
said.”

“I promised you I’d stop
him if I could. What I must do touches on that. Thorkill is about
to move and so will I.” His words were guarded but his grim
expression told her he was determined on his
course. “Otherwise, you and I will never have peace
together.”

Together. Oh, Mother of
Mercy, aye, together.
She
could meet any future so long as it included
him.

He cast her a searching
look. “If you’ll still have me
after what
I’ve put you through.”

“Of course I’ll have you,”
she said, her chin quiver
ing and her
Donegal pride be damned. “I was so afraid you’d choose
Solveig.”

“When my memory came back,
it was a confusing
jumble, but the part
that was hardest was remembering how I’d felt about Solveig. I
confess I was afraid
I’d be torn between
the two of you.”

“You weren’t?”

He shook his head. “No.
Once I saw her, it just
wasn’t real. I
mean ... it seemed as if I wasn’t real. As if my life with her had
happened to someone else and
I’d somehow
stepped into his skin. So now there are
two men trapped in here.” He thumped his chest hard with the
heel of his palm. “Jorand the Northman and Keefe Murphy the
wandering stranger.”

“What is it ye must do?”
Even though relief
flooded through her,
she felt unaccountably shy, as if
he were
still the stranger she found on the beach instead of the man she’d
come to know and love. She
ventured to
place a hand on his arm and he covered it
with his. Warmth spread up to her shoulder and
across her chest. “Can ye speak more
plainly?”

He frowned, clearly torn
about how much to tell
her. “No, you’ll be
safer if you know nothing of what
I’ve
planned.”

Jorand turned from the fire
and fixed her with a steady look. She scarcely dared breathe as his
gaze
left her face, traveled down the
exposed whiteness of
her neck, and
lingered on her breasts before returning to meet her
eyes.

Could he feel her heart,
she wondered, fluttering
like a snared
bird against her ribs? Did he know the
heat of his gaze had warmed her more than the smoky fire ever
could?

“I’ve missed you so,
princess,” he said, raw hunger
plain on
his face.

“And I you.”

When he reached a hand to touch her, his
fingertips skimming across her collarbone, her breasts ached for
him as well. A tiny sigh escaped her lips, the breath catching in
her throat as his hand dipped lower.

“And I’ve missed the
blissful look on your face when I pleasure you.” His blue eyes
darkened to indigo as he watched for her response. “I do love
you,
Brenna, and if you don’t let me love
you right now, I
think I’ll
die.”

“Don’t die.” She let her
cloak slip from her shoul
ders and slid
into his waiting arms. “Promise me you
won’t.”

“I promise.” His mouth covered hers to seal
his pledge.

Her lips were soft and
yielding. He tried to hold
back, not
to
let the
raging
need overpower him, but it had been so long.
She’d barely allowed him to touch her since they’d come to
Dublin.

Then she moaned softly into
his mouth and the
beast inside him sprang
free. He answered her, bruising her lips
with his, crushing her to him so he could feel her breasts
pressed against his chest. His lips left hers and devoured her
cheeks, her eyes, down the softness of her neck.

She didn’t pull away.

Instead, her blessed
fingers twined through his hair, pulling his head down. He sucked
the skin at the base of her throat, tasting her sweet
saltiness.
Even in the dim firelight, he
saw he was leaving love
marks on her, but
he couldn’t seem to stop.

She didn’t seem to want him to.

Even as his hands and mouth
invaded, Brenna met
him at every turn with
encouragement—feverish whispers, an arched back pressing a soft
breast into
his hand. He felt a stiff
nipple rise under the cloth of
her tunic.
He tried to unfasten the brooches at her
shoulders, but couldn’t get his clumsy fingers around
the delicate catches. He heard the fabric ripping
and
gave it a stout tug, baring her to the
waist.

She gasped, but didn’t cry out.

Her breasts shone pale as
moonstones, unbearably
soft mounds, each
topped with a sensitive
tip, deep rose and
quivering for his touch. He
laid his head
between them and decided, promise or
no,
he might just die, after all.

Her hands fluttered over
his shoulders, a pair of butterflies teasing along his spine. He
found a nipple and took it into his mouth, his tongue
swirling
frenzied patterns around the
sensitive flesh. She
squirmed beneath him,
murmuring his name.

It made him feel like a god.

Jorand fumbled with his
trews, his patience quickly
waning.
Brenna’s eyes drank him in as he bared him
self to her, a soft smile on her angel mouth. She gave
a
low groan when his hand slid up under
her hem.

Oh, the feel of her, all slick with need.

She opened herself to him,
a warm, wet haven that
molded around him
to fit more perfectly than the finest knife-sheath. He slid into
her up to the hilt, straining to be accepted in total, all his
faults laid bare, just as he was.

She grasped his buttocks and pulled him
closer yet.

Heat. Friction. Each stroke
took him closer to the
edge. Long past the
point of being able to stop, he
opened his
eyes and looked down at her.

Her face was alight with
passion, her skin glisten
ing in the
moonlight. She was close to the edge. He
felt the start of her release in the mounting tension
of
her body.

“Come with me, love,” she
breathed as waves of
delight rolled over
her, arching her back to meet him.

He cried out as his seed
burst forth inside her, his frame racked with spasms. When it was
done, he let his weight settle
down on
her, content to bury his nose in her hair and
breathe her in.

He meant to say something, to tell her how he
loved her, but by the time he rolled off her, Brenna was already
breathing with the relaxed rhythm of deep sleep.

Jorand brushed a wayward
strand of hair from her
forehead. When he
touched her cheek, the corner of her mouth lifted in a fleeting
smile, but she didn’t stir.

He didn’t mind. He drank in
the sight of her, relaxed with spent passion, the starlight
playing over
the hollows of her
cheekbones. He longed to kiss her
again,
but didn’t want to wake her. He closed his eyes, imprinting this
vision of her on his memory,
just in case
this was the last time he’d see her thus.

He settled beside her and
drew her into the circle
of his arms. Then
he wished he could pass silently from this waking
dream into a deep dreamless sleep, but he knew it
would be hours before he let exhaustion claim him. He’d made a
promise to Brenna he might not be able to keep.

He’d promised not to die.

“I hoped we’d be there
before now.” Jorand reined in
his mount
and dropped back on the trail to ride alongside her.

“Aye, but ye weren’t
counting on me having mend
ing to do, I’ll
wager,” Brenna countered, a wicked
grin
lifting the corners of her mouth as a wave of
re
membered passion surged over her. In
the early
morning light, she’d stitched up
the front of her tunic and kyrtle. She was a dab hand with a
needle, but the
repair still meant getting
a much later start for the last leg of their journey.

“I’d say I’m sorry about your clothes, but
you’d know I’m not.” He leaned over and kissed her, his mouth warm
and firm. Her lips tingled when he pulled away.

“Well, and if it comes to
that, I’m not feeling a bit sorry meself,” she admitted. Blood sang
joyously in
her veins. Jorand was hers.
Hers alone. And they
were within a pinch
of finding her sister’s lost bairn.

If she were any happier, she’d sprout wings
and fly the rest of the way.

Brenna and Jorand topped
the last hill and looked
down the velvety
green slopes rushing to the river Shannon. The clans who lived near
Clonmacnoise had been busy in the weeks since the raid. The
wooden skeleton of a new chapel rose in the
center of
the desecrated abbey. The
pounding of hammers and the steady thrum of two-man saws rent the
air. Clon
macnoise had been washed clean
of the reek of smol
dering fires, and now
the smell of newly hewn wood
and cut
thatch greeted the travelers.

Brenna and Jorand skirted round the abbey and
wound their way to Murtaugh’s little croft. The old man was seated
on a stump outside his doorway, pipe in hand, soaking up the last
remnants of the day’s sun.

“Murtaugh, we’re back!”
Brenna called out as she
dismounted and
tied up the piebald cob she was riding.

“So ye be.” He peered at
her from under his scrag
gly brows, his
sharp-eyed gaze raking Jorand as well. “I see ye still have the
Northman in tow. If he saw ye
safe to
Dublin and back, I expect he might be worth
the keeping.”