"He told me." Ciaran's first stab at a joke—his head might not be whole, but it seemed his sense of humor was intact. But the woman wasn't laughing. She merely stared at him, big-eyed, believing.
Why should I be surprised? Ciaran thought wryly. It was a small leap indeed to believe a horse could talk if you were already downright certain that a nine-hundred-year-old hero could pop back from the land of the fairies and land in your lap. Without a horse, unfortunately. Or clothes. Damned inconsiderate of him.
"Since you can talk to Cuchulain, perhaps you'd like to take the reins?" she asked earnestly.
He glanced at the cliff road, stretching down, perilous, unfamiliar, with little room for error. He didn't have the slightest idea where they were going, or how to make the horse go where he wanted it to. Yet the idea of handing control over to this madwoman made sweat break out across his brow.
Still, what choice did he have but to trust her? She'd gotten herself up the infernal slope in one piece.
"No. I, uh, he'd rather have you steer him."
Obedient as a child, Fallon Delaney mounted her hell-born stallion and looked down at Ciaran expectantly. It was one thing clambering up on the animal's back with no obstructions in the way, but Fallon Delaney's lithe legs looped around some impossible looking contraption, then both draped over one of the horse's sides.
She eased one slipper out of the stirrup, offering it to him. He wished to hell he could talk to the blasted horse. He'd ask it to kneel down, so he could climb on without dragging the girl off.
Tangled up in the folds of the blue velvet cloak, Ciaran attempted to grasp the saddle again, one arm on either side of Fallon's body. Straining, he heaved himself upward.
The cloak was dragged back, the chill wind burning his bare skin. His chest collided with the tender column of her arm, his momentum skidding that contact lower, to the flat plane of his stomach. He heard her gasp of dismay, but there was no escaping it. Flinging his leg over Cuchulain's broad barrel, Ciaran slid into place, the front of his bare body thudding into Fallon's back. His arms caught hold, hard about her slender waist, trying to anchor himself upright.
Cuchulain, objecting to such clumsiness, danced sideways, and Ciaran had no choice except to fall ignominiously on the ground, or to cup his body tight around Fallon's. His legs crushed hard against the horse's coat, the V formed by his thighs cradling the roundness of Fallon Delaney's bottom.
Whoever had beaten him hadn't bludgeoned the life out of him yet, because he felt the bulge in his groin stir at the contact with soft female flesh.
She was aware of it, too and tried to put some space between them. Did she feel the same shock of unexpected pleasure he did? No, there was an innocence about her, a newness. She had only recently turned from girl to woman. And he was the lowest kind of scum for feeling any sexual stirring at all in these circumstances.
He sobered as an unwelcome thought stole through him. He had no idea what he'd been like with women before he'd lost his memory. For all he knew, he was the sort of blackguard who preyed upon innocents like Mary Fallon Delaney.
"Hold the horse still," Ciaran growled, trying to keep balanced on the beast while at the same time grabbing handfuls of the cloak to stuff between his body and the woman before him.
But Cuchulain's patience was at an end. The monster-horse struck out down the path at a teeth-jarring pace, and all Ciaran could do was clutch Fallon's waist with all his strength.
There was no more time to worry about modesty as moonlight filtered across the treacherous path. He couldn't distract Fallon by writhing around, trying to preserve her sensibilities. They wouldn't do her a damn bit of good if she was crushed on the stones below.
"We'll have to be careful. If Redmayne or anyone were to..." She scooted a fraction farther away from him, the next jar nudging them back together. "If anyone were to see you here, like this, it might be dangerous."
"Dangerous? It would be awkward as be-damned. Unless, of course, whoever we met also happened to be waiting to cast hawthorn blossoms across a legend's path."
But he braced himself, alert, trying to focus his gaze enough to pierce the billows of mist that swirled up from Cuchulain's massive hooves. It was a grim prospect, the possibility that they might run afoul of someone, especially since the most likely person to be in the area would be his attacker. Worse still, Ciaran wouldn't recognize any enemy even if they were face-to-face.
For a brief while, he was distracted enough by the prospect not to think of the brush of those feminine curves against his body. Even Fallon seemed locked in fierce concentration. But the blessed perilousness of the path couldn't last forever. After a while, animal, woman and man settled into an even pace. The countryside swept out, deserted, quiet, as if there weren't another soul on earth.
Muscles that had been locked in a life-or-death grip loosened ever so slightly.
Ciaran's head still pounded like blue blazes, his body aching as if he'd taken the devil of a beating. That was a torture he could endure. But as the path widened into a sea of shadow-veiled Irish green, it seemed fate had another variety of torment in store.
Hair the color of flame teased his jaw and spilled down the sensitive skin of his arm. The scent of her—wild and windblown, heathery and fey and feminine—filled his senses.
Whatever it was she wore was gauzy thin. He could feel every dip and hollow, every delicate bump of her spine against his skin. She was in his arms, so intimately they might have been lovers—a mere wisp of muslin between them.
Did he know anything about women—the feel of them, the textures of mouth and breast and thigh? Was there a woman, even now, somewhere waiting for him?
No. The feel of her, the scent of her was unfamiliar, something longed for, yet unreachable as the moon. There was a hollow place, whispering of a longing unfulfilled.
Yet he was man enough to feel the ache, the urge to try to fill it.
Grinding his teeth, he yanked his thoughts away from such dangerous ground. What kind of a monster was he? He didn't know anything about Mary Fallon Delaney except that she was delusional. Unforgivably vulnerable, especially where this Ciaran of the Mist fantasy was concerned. He had real problems of his own, monumental problems to deal with: he must fight his way from the shadow land his wound had left him in.
Unable to bear the faint rubbing of their bodies against each other for another moment, Ciaran grabbed a handful of the cloak, trying yet again to slide the velvet between his body and Fallon's.
