“I love ye, Adair. I gift ye my heart. My body, yours to do as ye will, this one night.”
“Bradana, this is a holy act in my sight, a sacred one.” He captured her hands, wove his fingers through hers. “Let us here vow to belong to one another, handfast like this—even if only we two know.”
“Aye. I am yours, only yours, till the day I die. No matter what else befalls me.”
They kissed on it, their hands still linked, until the kiss became something more and he moved from beneath her, laid her with care upon the bed. Backed off a very short distance.
She thought he looked at her before she realized he untied the laces on the leggings he wore, then cast the garment aside.
“Bradana, ye have never…?”
She breathed, “Nay.”
“I ha’ no wish to hurt ye.”
Better him, who loved her, than Earrach come tomorrow night.
She thrust that thought away from her. It had no place here. “In becoming yours, Adair, I ha’ no fear.”
Yet she did not know what to expect. Women talked, aye. Her friend, Maeve, had lain with her lover last summer and given a fairly detailed description. She’d also heard that, like childbirth, it was hard to describe.
She cared for none of that now. And even less when Adair came down upon the cot and began to touch her, ran his hands across her belly and down her thighs, stroking. Softly, softly beneath her breasts.
He was up hard for her, and she could feel the heat of him like the warmth of sunlight on the rocks of this place she loved. What was there to fear? She belonged to him even as she belonged to Alba. He would as soon harm her as himself.
All such thought shattered when he bent and fastened his mouth to her breast.
Never had she known such a sensation. Never guessed it might exist. He drew upon her emotions, called up her arousal from the depths of her being. She wrapped her arms around his head and urged him closer.
Remember every moment of this, she beseeched herself.Remember, so you may relive it all again.
The weight of him settled upon her knees. Gently she reached down and caressed him. Sacred, he had said, aye, but something even beyond that, for she felt a great rush of wonder. Tenderness.Love.
Was not such love sacred?
He groaned and raised his head to look into her face. “I take ye, Bradana, as my wife.”
He kissed his way downward from her breasts across her belly and lower still. He dropped hot, fervent kisses on her thighs and parted them gently, exposing her to his gaze, to his touch. His fingers brushed her there. Lingered. Pressed inside.
She lost the last threads of her sanity.
Remember, she ordered herself again, and yet the feelings came too fast and too bright. A great, raging flame lit inside her. She spread herself wide in offering to this man she loved.
When he feasted on her, she did not question it. He was hers, as she was his to do with as he pleased. She would deny him nothing this night.
And he made her sing. Every drop of blood in each vein, each facet of her spirit, came alive and glowed in the magic he wove.
“Bradana.” By the time he moved up her body and whispered her name, she was more than ready for him. He took her gently, moving with care until the spell of it engulfed him. Until the rhythm of the song embraced them both and they moved, moved together in effortless harmony.
So this, Bradana thought foggily as she lay with her legs still wound around him, his face in her neck, was the manifestation of love. The highest place two souls could reach together.
She did not want to let him go. She did not ever want to let him go.
She did not want tomorrow to come.
If only they could remain together so, flying on the airstreams of the night, far up among the stars, the two of them become one.
“Bradana, love.” He raised each of her hands to his lips in turn and dropped kisses into her palms. Planted two more kisses at either corner of her mouth, then upon her cheeks. Her forehead. And it felt familiar. Dear.
