How long that kiss went on, she could not say. It lit her, calmed her, excited and yet reassured her. There was a place she belonged.Here.
After a time, he began to murmur. “Beautiful lass, glorious lass.” He lifted each of her hands and dropped kisses into the palms. Kissed each corner of her mouth, her cheeks. Blessed her with a kiss upon her forehead. “My lass.”
“Yours. I am yours. For all time.”
The little boat drifted, its sail still furled and the oars at angles in the bottom. The motion of the sea matched what filled Darlei, fluid and dreamlike, half wonder and half memory.
She reached out and touched his face. The freckles beneath the tan. The golden hairs growing along his jaw.
“I want you, Deathan MacMurtray. I do not just mean—” Though she did want him that way, shockingly, as she’d never desired any other man. Between her legs. Covering her body with his. The most natural of things. “I want you. At the center of my life.”
“I believe,” he told her most certainly, “ye are already there—at the center o’ my life, I mean. Beautiful lass.”
She gave a broken laugh. “You keep saying that. Fool! I am not beautiful. I have this nose and this wild hair that will not—”
“Ye be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”
His eyes said so, and his hands as they cradled her, cherishing her. His lips when they returned to hers. Their tongues met and twined, the bonds between them strengthening impossibly.
The little boat bobbed, aimless as Darlei’s life. Love for this man. Only this man.
Eventually she glanced back, searching for the shore. She could not see it.
“Where are we?”
How long had they been out here? Impossible to say. There existed only the sun on the water and the light in his eyes. The warmth of him. Those kisses.
“Deathan, Deathan, I do not want to go back. Not ever.”
Amusement filled his eyes. She loved it when he smiled at her that way, with his eyes.
“Darling, I doubt there is any going back fro’ this.”
He drew her down to lie against him, her cheek against his shoulder and her head tucked beneath his chin as the sea rockedand rocked them. The sun arced high overhead, and for the first time in more days than Darlei could number, she let go of her worries.
But even if they both desired it, they could not go on so forever. At length he sighed in her ear and said, “We maun go back. Let me tak’ up the oars.”
“Nay.”
“Darlei, my heart, we are a long way out. ’Twill be a hard pull. And people will start looking.”
“Not yet.” To silence any further protests, she kissed him, and the little boat bobbed on while they remained so, one attached to the other. The taste of him was now hers, as was the feel of him. But that had always been so.
“How is it,” she asked, still cuddled to his chest and gazing into his eyes, “I can love you this way?”
“Ye love me?” His eyes grew intent and once more serious.
“Fool,” she said again, with affection. “I have never dreamed of loving anyone the way I love you.”
“And I ye.” Another kiss that stole her breath and nearly her sanity.
“Yet it does feel,” she persisted, “as if we have done all this before. Kissed one another. Lain together. Sailed in a wee boat. As if my heart…my heart knew all along without knowing that you existed, and it needed you, would not stop needing you till it found you.”
He said nothing for several moments. The boat rode a swell and tipped its way down again. There might only be the two of them, the water and the sky, in all the world.
In all time.
“I do no’ ken what yer people believe,” he said then. “Some o’ our holy men teach that we live life after life. Time after time.” He stroked her hair tenderly. “They say the gods send us backthrough the cauldron o’ creation to learn lessons. To perfect our spirits and become heroes. Heroines.”
