“He had two blades,” Keenan said (26 page)

“Nothing dark then?”

“No,” she closed her eyes and opened her arms to the sides as if opening herself up to the air around her. “It feels more like a cloak of protection.”

Keenan nodded. “It’s saved me before.”

A small smile tipped her lips upward casting a playful look along the planes of her face as the last color of twilight vanished. “Perhaps we should stay here in this glade forever then. For we’re in definite need of saving,” she mused.

Keenan turned to the small ring of stones still at the center of the clearing where he’d left them last fall. “Hmmph, and hide away like a rabbit.” He let out a quick snort as he gathered some sticks and crouched down to pull some dry peat from his satchel. “Nay, I am not Lachlan,” he mumbled and cracked the flint and stone together. As night flooded the clearing with darkness, the fire’s glow reached out to illume Serena where she still stood. Keenan leaned back on his heels. She stared at him, the smile gone.

“Nay,” she said staring at him. “You are not Lachlan.” His brother’s name sounded bitter on her breath.

Keenan stood, sensing battle. “Serena, I…”

She held up her hand to stop him. “You don’t need to explain your reasons, Keenan.”

“Reasons?”

“Yes, your reasons for marrying me. I know you were as desperate as I was to get me away from Damin.”

That much was true. “Aye,” he said cautiously.

She frowned. Had he given the wrong answer? Serena moved closer to the growing fire and splayed her palms out to catch the first waves of warmth. Her eyes watched the flames. She spoke to the fire. “You married me to keep me from marrying another.”

Also true. “Aye.”

“You intend to take me up to your brother so that when you die, I will have to marry him.”

“Serena…”

She turned abruptly toward him, her eyes sharp. “Don’t deny it, Keenan. I read your plans through your men.”

“Through my men.”

She didn’t answer, just glared at him, her arms crossing under her luscious breasts, plumping them upward. He couldn’t deny it so he nodded instead.

“I suppose I said something about that to convince my men to accept my plan quickly. It was a tactical choice that made sense at the time. I had no intention of ye knowing about it.”

Her eyes widened at his confirmation.

“A mistake on my part,” he admitted. “I kent that ye couldna’ read my thoughts, but the skewed thoughts of my men were easy to sense.”

“So you admit saying that you are bringing me up to Lachlan, so that when you die, I can marry him?”

“Nay, I dinna say all of that. That is what my men inferred. I but said that if we wanted to bring you up to Kylkern it would be as my wife. The prophecy couldna’ come true with ye married to Damin Yallow.”

“You never mentioned your death?”

Keenan thought for a moment. He wouldn’t start their marriage on lies. He spoke slowly. “I did say that the prophecy never specified if the witch had been married before and that if I died, the prophecy could still be fulfilled.”

Serena’s shoulders sagged. “So you still intend to die. You intend to leave me.”

Keenan took two steps and caught her shoulders in his hands. He stared down at her until Serena slowly raised her gaze back to his.

“Before I met ye, all I thought about was staying alive to die.” She tried to look down but he caught her chin with a finger beneath it. “But now that ye’ve entered my life, all I’ve been thinking about is staying alive to live my life, no matter how long or short it is.” Keenan lowered his voice to a rough whisper in the still circle. “I want to live, Serena. I want to father children, I want to be more than a sacrifice for my clan, more than a wall of defense around my brother, more than a noble death as part of a long recited prophecy.”

Serena’s lips parted as her face remained upturned to him. Her warmth penetrated the linen of his shirt. “Forgive me, Serena, if I pulled ye away from yer life out of selfishness. But understand, I dinna do it for my clan, and definitely na’ for my brother. I married ye for me.” Keenan placed one hand against her chest where he felt the rapid pounding of her heart. He leaned in so that their hands lay trapped between their bodies. When she leaned in too, he smiled feeling his whole body relax. “Aye, I will die one day, Serena. But God willing, I will die after a good dose of living, with ye beside me.” His lips brushed hers. “Let us start this eve. Let me love ye, Serena.”

Her nod was almost unperceivable, but it was there. Permission granted, a truce given freely. Keenan’s lips descended on her parted mouth. So warm, so soft, he nearly melted into her sweet, moist breath. The heat in her mouth surged through him as his mind moved to another part of her tender anatomy that he anticipated would be just as moist and hot. A lightning flash of masculine power surged down through him, hardening him. He tilted her head, twining his fingers through the ribbons still tied loosely in her hair. His tongue touched her lower lip timidly, testing while his hand moved down her back to cup her buttocks through heavy skirts.

Serena moaned and touched her own tongue to his. Again Keenan’s muscles tensed in frustration at the costume that locked her supple body away from his touch. Without breaking the kiss, Keenan slid his hands in front and unbuttoned her jacket bodice, sliding it off her shoulders. His fingers shook with the exertion not to rip the gown from her.

He released her rigid stays. The peaks of Serena’s breasts pushed upward as he hugged her, cradling her upper body. Next came her heavy skirts. The ties caught, the tight knots mocking him.

“Cut them,” Serena breathed.

He severed the restricting ties with his dagger. A billow of cloth settled around Serena as the petticoats landed on the moss beneath their feet.

Serena stood in her silky shift, the thin white fabric lying seductively along the hills and valleys of her breasts, waist and hips. Keenan held his breath as Serena pulled the ties of her sleeves so that they fell in the voluminous cloud of green silk at her feet, leaving her slender shoulders bare except for the thin strap of lace at each shoulder. He stepped back to better view the landscape of her body where the silk ebbed and flowed like a sea of milk across her skin. She breathed deeply, her full breasts rising and falling, their erect peaks rubbing teasingly against the confines of the shift.

“Ye are so beautiful,” Keenan murmured as he combed his fingers through her hair, freeing one of the ribbons. He watched the slender, milky column of her throat as she swallowed, his gaze moving back up to her wide eyes. Desire lurked there, but also fear. He cupped her cheek in his rough palm. He traced his thumb below her eye and looked deep.

“Ye ken the way a man makes love to a woman,” he said and she nodded slowly.

“I’ve,” she said and swallowed as if her throat were dry. “I’ve seen the minds of men before.”

No wonder fear warred with desire. The minds of men could be violent in their lust. He pulled her close into the warmth of his arms and rested his chin on the softness of her hair. Keenan breathed deeply to calm the rush of his blood. “The minds of men, lass, are not always accurate and often lack the gentleness and respect that guides desire.” He felt her tremble, from cold or fear?

“Stay here while I raise the fire.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” She looked about the clearing.

Keenan found several dry branches under an old saddle blanket that he had left the last time he had visited. He threw them on the fire looking back over his shoulder at Serena’s soft form reflecting the glow of firelight. “Not in this clearing.” He indicated the thick bushes around them. “It seems to hide anyone it allows in.” He stood up. “And tonight lass, we are its guests.”

The fire caught greedily on the dry wood, and Keenan fed some fresher branches as well. It drove back the chill, and light bathed the clearing in cheery glow. Serena stared into the flames. She pulled off the other glove and held both hands out to the warmth. Keenan stood close but didn’t touch her. Fear lurked in her face. She seemed so fragile, like a glass angel in her shimmering cocoon of silk.

As she moved her arms before the fire, catching the heat, Keenan remembered her dance. Even amongst the roughness of drunken men, Serena had found peace in the movements around the Romany bonfire.

“Dance Serena. Dance around the fire, into the calm oblivion that ye find around the flames.”

She stared at him, her fear turning to confusion, and then to unease as she glanced between him and the waving flames.

He stepped back. “I willna touch ye while ye dance. It is yers alone, lass.” He turned her by the shoulders, careful not to caress the skin that slid under his fingers. He let go and spoke low near her ear. “Close yer eyes, listen to the crackle of the wood, hear the flute and drum in yer mind. Find yer peace, lass.”

He stepped back. The large oaks and ash trees swayed around them. The dark cool breath of night crept inward. Serena stood motionless.

Keenan took a deep breath and ran his hands over his face.
Foolish idea.
But then she stepped closer to the flame. Serena’s head rolled to the side and back along her shoulders, her hair cascading down to her knees. As she leveled her gaze again on the flames, Keenan watched her naked arms rise up and over her head, her wrists mimicking the twists in the fire that licked upward into the crisp, clear night. He could see her profile flushed with fire heat. Her eyes were half closed.

Serena’s hips moved slowly with her arms and she took a step, then another as she began to dance around the perimeter of the fire. As her body turned and canted, twisted and bowed in near perfect match to the dance of the flame, Keenan watched. She was a moonlit wood nymph bathed in fire glow, dancing in union with the scorching flame, taming it, worshipping it, becoming it.

In that magic-filled clearing with night falling around, Keenan felt something working within him as he watched the beautiful woman, his wife, dance. He began to hear the flute, the drum, the fiddle of her tribe playing a timeless tune, as timeless as the movement of flame, as timeless as the movement of a woman’s body. The rhythm of nature and the magic that flows up from the earth itself.

Keenan felt bewitched, caught in Serena’s spell. She held his breath hostage. Her body pulled but he forced himself to stand still, distant. He waited on the perimeter as she passed. Turning, her hair brushed against his arm. The pain in his groin rose higher into his chest as lust gave way to something stronger, deeper.

On she danced, around and around, her arms graceful, her steps floating as she skimmed the earth on her toes. The silk shift flared and twisted tight as she swiveled in arcs full of beauty and spirit.

Twice Keenan took a step out into her path, and twice he forced himself to recede. His breathing became more ragged as he followed her every turn, hoping with each circle that she would stop before him. As she passed him again, Keenan groaned low and turned his back to the heat to set his eyes on the sharp darkness that had descended around them. He sucked in the cool air, trying to force it down through his burning body. The fire blazed against his back, urging him to turn around again, enticing him to take her.

Keenan turned abruptly and stopped still. Serena stood there directly before him, her arms resting at her sides. He took a step toward her, his fists balled. Her eyes were open, without fear. Keenan raised his hand to touch her face, but stopped. She must come to him.

Serena stepped forward guiding her flushed cheek into his palm. He cupped it gingerly and rubbed his thumb across its smoothness.

“So warm, so soft,” he murmured with an undercurrent of longing he could no longer hide. “So beautiful.”

Serena closed her eyes and stepped into him, her form pressing into the contours of his hard body. She looked up at him. “Love me, Keenan Maclean. Wipe out the lies of other men’s minds. Teach me the truth. Teach me about the pleasure I feel in your touch.”

Time froze as Keenan stared down through her violet eyes into her heart. She trusted him, she loved him. He felt it as if they were his own emotions. Instead of shying away from the intensity, his chest released, filling his body with power. His blood raced, his heart battered against his chest. Keenan controlled the tremor in his hand as he moved it to the back of Serena’s head and wound her hair, slowly, reverently. His other drew her even tighter against him, melding, making them one. Her softness in brilliant starkness against his own hardness.

Keenan’s lips met hers and she opened under him. He groaned and tilted her head to gain better access to her sweet taste. He felt her small plea against his mouth and pulled back. Passion glazed her eyes.

“Keenan,” she breathed.

He picked her up and carried her to the pallet he had laid beside the fire on a soft mound of moss. Several blankets lay nearby to chase the chill once the fire died down in the night. He lowered her and pulled his linen shirt from over his head.

Serena’s eyes washed over his muscles and down his chest. Keenan leaned forward, his arms coming down on either side as he supported his weight above her. She was trapped, captured within his circle of strength. Keenan kissed her, tasted her, explored her until Serena groaned against his mouth. Her hands roamed his skin, lower still until she reached his hardness. The timid touch through his trews culled a roar from deep down out of Keenan, and he rolled to his side to strip quickly out of the rest of his clothing.