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She buried her face in her hands, unable to look at the evidence of her shame. That she, not just a practitioner of the light but a guide to thousands of others through her books and lectures, should have behaved so! She had struck him, again and again, for her own selfish pleasure. She was no better than the dryad, beating him until he bled.
She felt him stir beside her, but could not bear to look at him, not after what she had done.
“Good morning,” he said softly, his American accent strangely sharp to her ears. Was he angry at her for using him so?
Taking a deep breath, Eileen lowered her hands and looked at the man. He was smiling.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” he said. “For rescuing me from that hideous tree creature, and for what you did afterward.”
She shook her head, amazed at his foolishness. “I struck you.”
Rather than showing justifiable anger, his smile deepened. “Yes.”
He was remarkably dense, even for an American. She held out her hand, still streaked with his blood, and waved it in front of his face. “You were hurt. Bleeding. And I struck you.”
Now he did frown, but not in anger. His brow furrowed, and he glanced from her hand to her face.
The warmth faded from his expression. He could have been carved from stone. “I should not have asked you to. I apologize. Thank you for your assistance, and I won’t trouble you again.”
He turned as if to leave, and she grabbed his shoulder, wrenching him back to face her.
“Are all Americans as thick as week old pudding? You apologize, when it is I who have injured you? And I a priestess!”
He blinked. “A priestess? Of…what, exactly?”
“Of the light, of course. Did you think Ireland just happened to be filled with stones that glowed of their own will and power?”
“I don’t understand.”
Eileen took a deep breath. “No, of course you’d not. I’m a priestess of the light, what you would call a witch. One of our most sacred tenets is ‘Do what thou wilt, an it harm none.’ And I have harmed you. Now, are you seeing my wrong?”
He shook his head. “Honestly, no. I don’t see anything of the kind. You saved my life. And I asked you to give me an ass-slapping. Begged you, if I recall correctly.”
Heat blazed in her cheeks and she looked away. She recalled begging him for a few things, too. But in her case, they’d brought only pleasure, not pain.
She smoothed her hand over the coverlet, flattening the wrinkles, wishing she could restore order to everything so easily.
“It’s filled with the dryad’s magic, you were.” Hearing herself falling back into the lilting brogue of her youth, Eileen shook her head. “You were not to have known. But I knew. The wrong is mine.”
The man blew out his breath in a sharp huff. “Fine. If your religion says you were wrong, you were wrong. I assume there’s a penalty?”
She nodded, and gathered her tattered composure. When she spoke again, she had once again mastered her tongue. “The law of three. All that we do, for good or ill, returns to us threefold.”
“So you’re saying if I slap your ass three times as many times as you hit mine, we’ll be even and everything will be all right again?”
Eileen groaned. Americans. “Then you would have caused harm to me, and that harm would be visited threefold upon you.”
His arm snaked its way beneath the covers to find and caress her hip. Startled, she finally looked at him. He was smiling.
“I can live with that.”
Chapter Three
Dermot grinned at the woman’s wide-eyed expression. He shouldn’t tease her, not when she was so obviously distressed over what she perceived as a fatal flaw in her character. But he seemed unable to convince her that, far from hurting him, she’d helped him.
Ma
ybe his words couldn’t convince her. But he could show her.
