Slowly, he lowered her to her feet. Her breath caught at the sight of him: the billows of the saffron shirt accenting his broad warrior's shoulders, the glow of the brooch holding his rippling mantle, the cabochons seeming to hoard ancient mysteries. He looked as if he had strode out of another century, daring to breach the gates of time to find her.
He said nothing, but she could feel the heat of desire emanating from his every pore. A desire magnified by her own need for him.
Tangling his hand in the silky cascade of auburn at her nape, he tilted her head back on the delicate stem of her neck and drank of her lips with the tenderness of the first awe-touched man who had ever made love to a woman. Fallon melted, pulsed, her breasts afire where they brushed his chest, the place between her thighs aching with emptiness only Ciaran could fill.
Her fingers went to the brooch, working the heavy fastening free. The cloak started to slide from his shoulders. Ciaran broke their kiss, caught the woolen fabric then knelt to make them a bed. And Fallon was certain she would be happy forever, with nothing more than this—an Irish sky above her, the music of the sea below, a crumpled mantle for a bed and Ciaran's kisses.
Her heart lurched as he shifted, kneeling before her, like a knight. Scooping up one of her feet, he placed it on his upraised knee. With deft fingers, he worked the ribbons that held her slipper in place. His dark head bent over the rose-colored satin enclosing her foot. After a moment, he slipped his fingertips beneath the slipper's opening and eased it from her foot. Then, his eyes burning, intense, he trailed his fingers upward, along the silken trail of her stockings, until he found the tender, secret velvet of her inner thigh.
The ribbon garter slipped free, and he rolled the stocking downward, pressed between his two hot palms, his thumbs skimming thigh and the sensitive skin behind her knee, down her calf, to the dainty bones of her ankle, then off her foot. She could scarcely bear the sensations racing through her, but he wasn't finished with his tender torture. He cupped her foot in his two hands, brought it to his lips. Then he began again, conquering the intimate curves of her leg, but his mouth now seemed hungry for the taste of her. He raised the hem of her skirt, and pressed hot kisses on the inside of her knee, the soft white of her thigh. "Beautiful," he murmured.
Her hands tugged at his shirt, longing to unveil his magnificent body. But he stopped her, his voice low, pleading. "Not yet,mo chroi. Not yet. Let me."
He rose again, so tall, so proud, his big hands impossibly deft as he stripped away her clothes layer by layer, treasuring each part he unveiled, soothing her nakedness with his mouth and his hands.
There was something excruciatingly sensual as he peeled away her chemise, letting the last of her garments drift to the floor. He was still fully garbed, yet she stood before him, naked except for the moonlight. But she needed nothing to warm her except the wild heat in his warrior eyes.
He stared at her, as if to burn her image into his memory. Her nipples pearled, her knees trembled, a heavy, thick pulse beat in the wind-stirred auburn down nestled between her thighs.
His hands skimmed the line of her collarbone, dipped into the hollow at the base of her throat and then he filled his palms with the lush globes of her breasts.
"I've dreamed of you touching me there," she confessed. "Your mouth suckling, as if... as if you could draw life from me somehow."
"Don't you realize I have? Drawn everything I am from you, my lady? Everything good and beautiful, until there are times—" He broke off the words, creases forming between his brows.
"Until what, Ciaran?"
"Until I never want to know any life but this—the one I found in your arms."
"Is that so terrible?"
"It might be. For you. What if—damn, who knows what kind of man I used to be? My past—"
"Don't you see? It doesn't matter who you used to be. What matters is who you are now. My husband. The man I..." she hesitated. "The man who convinced me that it might be possible—that we might be able to have a future together." Her voice dropped low. "That is, if you want one."
"Do you think I haven't thought of it? Dreamed of it? I can't stop. I imagine your belly swelling with my babe. Children with your fiery hair, your courage, your generosity of spirit. But even if I dared, I'd come to you with nothing, Fallon. No money to provide for you. No home to shelter you. No name, and no memory."
"But I had all those things—wealth and a grand house, a name I could trace back generations, and so many memories, I only wished I could forget some of them. But none of that mattered. What I came to you with was far sadder than a lost memory, Ciaran. I came with an empty heart."
"Empty? Your heart is brimming full with courage, with generosity, with the love of this place and these people."
"But that was safe, that love. Different. I didn't have to trust just one person, believe in just one person. The castle would always stand here. And the people—there were so many villagers, they would never all leave me. You awakened me, so I could care for something, someone real, instead of pretending my life away. I know that you never intended to stay, but isn't it possible that instead of being lost, Ciaran, you were meant to be found? Maybe you could be happy here."
His face contorted in anguished longing. "Fallon, there is nothing I want more than a future with you. But—"
"Hush!" She laid her fingers across his lips, stopping him. "You're the one who gave me life, brought me out into the world again after years of living in a land of dreams."
"It was a beautiful world, Mary Fallon."
"But a lonely one. I'd not go back to it again. Would you? Return to that other life? The man you were before?"
"I don't know who I was before, but one thing I can tell you." He traced her cheek with his fingertips, gazing at her. "If I were Ciaran of the Mist, with all eternity before me, I would trade immortality in a heartbeat for just one lifetime to love you."
His face was so raw, so vulnerable, so tender. If he had stood before the fairy king, striking this bargain before him, she couldn't have felt his sacrifice or his passion more keenly.
"Ciaran," she whispered. "Ciaran, I love you." Something ignited in his eyes, as if he'd waited twenty lifetimes to hear those words. The emotions in his face were so strong she nearly stumbled back beneath the force of them. Then he was stripping away the billows of his shirt, casting it away. Naked, he gathered her against him, the hot lance of his arousal pillowed against the soft swell of her belly, his mouth devouring hers, his hands skimming across her hip, her back, her breast, her buttocks as though he wanted to touch her everywhere at once.
And she gloried in it—the silky hair spanning his chest rasping against her nipples, the sinewy bands of his arms, the hot satin of his skin, so different from her own. This was the honeyed elixir Deirdre had cast aside a kingdom to taste. This was the primal magic that had made Naosi, the warrior, betray his king. A power beyond reason, an intoxication of the spirit, a fierce pull of destiny, of fate that no laws of man or of heaven could deny.
