“Saerla, let this chamber, this one enclave, be a place apart. Where MacLeod and MacBeith do no’ exist.”
Was that possible? Could they take it back, back to a time before the hate and strife began? Could he be a wild lad once more, and she the lass who gathered the light?
Almost as if he heard her thoughts, he caught her hands again, this time against his heart. “Please, Saerla, shed your light upon me.”
If she were to give to him, so Saerla decided, she would do it unstintingly. Without question. Without restraint. For a gift given in obligation was no gift at all.
So she arose and cast off her gray gown and what lay beneath while he knelt at her feet and watched. She took down her hair, which had been held back in a plait, because she knew—she knew by then—how he liked that. And when she stood bare from her head to her feet, she held out a hand to him.
“Now you.”
He was already hard for her when his clothing came away. The sight made her go hot and boneless all at once. Weak and strong with the power of it. She could feel his fingers upon her even before he lifted her up and carried her to the bed.
She had turned it down because she’d hoped—hoped he might come to her, aye, even though she’d forbidden it and did not know whether she would let him in. Now she stretched her body atop the linen sheet, ready to let him into her body just as readily, an invitation.
He knelt between her thighs, caught her legs, and lifted them to tilt her toward him. Without hesitation, in a move that stoleall her breath, he slid into her the way a sword slides into its sheath. The sound that came from his throat might have been a sob or a groan of satisfaction hard won. She reached for him, curled her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, drew his mouth to hers, and kissed him as the fire built and built.
The light kindled inside her and spread to him. It traveled along their tongues that meshed and tangled. Along her limbs that held him and all the places where their bodies met. It shone the brighter for illuminating his darkness.
They moved together, thoughtless, heedless, helpless. When he came, she did also, the waves of pleasure lifting her into flight. Once again he flew with her on strong wings, and she could not tell which of them carried the other. In those glorious moments there was no past, no future. Only the feel of him, the heat, and the inexpressible sense of completion.
“Saerla,” he whispered as he eased down upon her. He kissed her all over her face with palpable tenderness. “Saerla, och, God.”
She captured his mouth like a starving woman, opened to him once more.
“Lass, I canna stop touching ye. Wanting ye.”
“Do no’ stop.”
“D’ye give me leave—”
“I give ye leave. Anything.”
He kissed her throat, her shoulders, her breasts. He trailed caresses over her belly and onto her thighs. When his breath whispered across the place between them, she offered herself readily, and time itself stood still while she tangled her fingers in the silken black locks of his hair.
She flew again, racked by the pleasure that was also somehow pain. This he gave her, even as she gave to him. Equal. Unstinting. A form of worship.
After, when he stretched his body beside hers in the bed and held her, he still could not keep from touching. His hands slid everywhere, smoothing her skin. Palming her breasts. Twining through her hair.
Neither of them spoke, Saerla because she had no words, and even if she had, she would not seek to break this spell. Instead, she kissed him over and over again, conveying with the caresses what mere words could not.
Eventually he slept, and after a time, so did she. She dreamed.
She saw the three lads running on the green turf, the brown head, the yellow and the black. They laughed and tumbled as they played together. They should be back at their lessons, but instead they had escaped, at large in the glen they loved. They made their way down to the loch, where, as always, a few wee boats lay drawn up on the shore.
Looking across the loch, Saerla could see the opposite shore. Three girls stood there all in a row. Holding hands.
“’Tis magic over there,” Leith breathed, serious for once.
“I do no’ believe in magic,” Rory declared.
“How can ye fail to believe,” Farlan demanded, “when ye can look across and see it?”
The three lads gazed across the loch. They saw the three lasses. One had hair of copper red. One’s locks were darker, a rich auburn. The last—the smallest—had a halo of red-gold.
“I want to row across.” Farlan moved to the nearest boat. “To live there.”
“Ye canna,” Rory hollered. “That land does no’ belong to us, no’ yet. Ye belong here.”
