"Shall I make sure of it?" I teased, tasting my newfound power.
"How?"
I slid my hands into his auburn hair and kissed him in reply, long and deep, pressing my body against his. Cillian groaned into my open mouth. I broke off the kiss and slipped from his arms with a deft twist. The blood was beating hard in my veins and I wanted more as surely as he did—but I knew just as surely that this was my gift and I was in control of it.
"Will that do?" I asked innocently.
"Aye," he said in a daze. "That will do it."
CHAPTER SEVEN
My gift.
Desire.
It came to me as easily and naturally as breathing, and once woken, it refused to sleep. I slid into a state of desire as surely as a trout in the stream—only instead of being cool and swift and darting, it was warm and languorous.
Cillian came often that summer. Familiar as he was to me, I learned him in a whole new way. I kissed the corners of his lips and the dimples that formed when they curled in a smile. I bit his earlobes and the sturdy, slender column of his neck until he groaned. I let him put his hands on me, reveling in the feel of them. Where once we had lain for hours in the meadow talking, now we lay and kissed for hours, until I felt my blood had turned to molten gold.
Only the shadow of worry in my mother's eyes kept me in check.
"Dagda Mor!" Cillian pushed himself away from me when I bade him stop. He crouched for a moment, then rose and walked a few steps. I sat up and tugged the loose bodice of my dress back into place, watching him curiously. He glanced over his shoulder and winced at the sight of me. "Do you know what you do to me?"
"Aye," I said softly. "You, too."
He spun, fists clenched. "Why make us wait?"
"My mother—"
"Oh, Manannan of the deep take your mother!" Cillian shouted.
I raised my eyebrows.
"I didn't mean it." He flung himself on his knees before me like a penitent, shuddering. "Ah, Moirin! Forgive me."
I touched his cheek. "I do. Of course I do."
But I did wait.
I spoke to my mother about it, asking her why it worried her so.
"You're young," she said shortly.
"How old were you?" I asked.
She was stirring a pot of cattail roots and didn't answer for a long time. When she did, she didn't answer the question I'd asked. "Would you have the truth, my heart?" I nodded and her dark gaze met mine. "It's a powerful calling. I fear losing you to it."
"Cillian?"
My mother shook her head. "The bright lady's gift."
It was my turn to be silent.
"Did you imagine I didn't know?" There was sorrow in her smile. "Ah, I suppose you did. Children are slow to credit their elders. Yet how could I not, when I felt her presence there at your conception? How could I not, when it's hung like a bright shadow over you all your life?" She laid a hand on her breast. "The diadh-anam within me says that this is right. That this is as it should be. For reasons I cannot know, the Maghuin Dhonn Herself wills it. But I am a mortal woman and I fear to lose my child. So I have sheltered you from it as best I could. And now that it has found you, I do but beg you to go slowly from me."
My heart ached. "Stone and sea! I'm not going anywhere."
"No?"
"No." I laid my head in her lap. "No."
"Moirin mine." Her fingers stroked my hair. "I pray it's so. Stay a child for a while."
"I will," I promised.
I did.
It was hard, though—so hard! I wanted and wanted and wanted, and Cillian's wanting added to mine, setting my blood to boiling. But I held off through summer and autumn, and then winter came again, necessitating distance between us and cooling our ardor.
I took solace in the cold and the quiet.
Then came spring.
It was a time of greening and new growth, when the soil was damp and fertile. Every plant sent out new shoots, feverish with excitement. Every tree burst into leaf. All my nerves were on edge with it. When Cillian came for the first time that spring, grey eyes hot with yearning and his shoulders grown broad and muscled, there was no question. I didn't even ask what he'd brought in his satchel.
No more waiting.
"Moirin." His voice was hoarse. "Now?"
"Now," I agreed.
In the meadow, he kissed me like he was starving, yanking at my gown with impatient hands. It should have been tender, but it wasn't. We'd waited too long for tender. I didn't care. The feeling of his callused fingertips on my breasts drove me mad. Cillian pushed my thighs apart, fumbling between us. I reached down and took his phallus in my hand. It pulsed against my palm, at once hard and soft to the touch. I fitted the head of it to my nether lips. His hips jerked forward and he groaned, filling me.
Him inside of me—it was like nothing I'd ever felt. For a moment, I almost panicked. His weight pinned me to the ground, pressed the air from my lungs. His chin ground against my neck. His hips moved convulsively. Over and over, Cillian drove into me, and the fullness was overwhelming.
"Slower!" I gasped.
He shuddered and grated out a single word. "Can't."
And then, at the end, it changed. Just as his buttocks began to quiver and his back arched, discomfort gave way to pleasure.
"Ah, no!" I clutched his shoulder blades. "Not yet!"
"Sorry!" He spent himself helplessly in me.
We lay quietly for a moment. Cillian's breath was ragged in my ear. I waited until it slowed. "Can we try it again?"
"Aye." He rolled off me and propped himself on one elbow. "Forgive me, will you? That's a winter's worth of wanting you like I've never wanted anything else." He traced a line between my breasts and down my belly. "Gods," he whispered. "There's no one else like you, Moirin. No one in the world."
I smiled. "No?"
His fingers slid between my thighs. "No." He pulled his hand away. Milky seed glistened on his fingertips. "No blood." Cillian frowned. "Was I not the first?"
"You were. Who else would it be?"
"Don't lie to me." There was a note in his voice I'd never heard before. It made me angry.
"Why would I?" I retorted. "I'm a free woman, Cillian. If I chose to take another lover, I would, and it would be no concern of yours. But I'd not lie about it. There's no one else."
Cillian sighed. "I'm sorry! It's only that the thought of anyone else having you puts a knot in my guts."
I thought, choosing my words with care. "You do not have me, Cillian mac Tiernan. No one has me. I am my own to give. Is that understood between us?"
After a moment, he nodded. "It is."
"Good." I reached for him. "Now let us try this again. Only this time, I want you to go more slowly and not spend so quickly. Is that understood?"
He grinned. "Aye, mistress."
The second time was better. I was slick inside with his seed and there was no discomfort. Cillian moved slowly inside me, propped on his arms, watching my face. I felt a quickening deep inside me and found my hips moving to match his rhythm without thinking. Cillian thrust harder and this time I wanted him to. Stone and sea! He was so big and so deep inside me. Faster, now—faster and faster. What my body wanted seemed just out of reach.
And then it wasn't.
Deep, deep ripples of pleasure burst inside me. I abandoned myself to it, grabbing his buttocks, moaning mindlessly. The bright lady opened her hands and an entire flock of doves took flight.
"Oh, gods," Cillian whispered reverently.
When it was over, I felt calm and happy. We lay drowsing in the meadow, limbs entwined. A curious dragonfly came to investigate, hovering above us on gossamer wings. I stretched out one languid arm. It lighted briefly on my forefinger, regarding us with eyes faceted like gems.
Cillian's breath stirred my hair. "Magic?"
"Only the ordinary everyday kind." I watched it take wing.
"Moirin."
I looked at him. "Aye?"
His face was solemn. "Marry me."
I sat upright with a jolt. "What? "
"I'm serious." He leaned on his elbows. "I miss you when we're apart—and I daresay you miss me, too. So why ever not?"
I said the first thing that came into my head. "I'm too young."
Cillian gave my naked self a pointed look. "Oh, aye?"
It made me smile reluctantly. "I'm not ready, Cillian. I've not even begun to think about it."
"Surely you don't plan to spend the rest of your days living like a wild thing," he pressed me.
"Why ever not?"
He made an inarticulate sound. "Dagda Mor, girl! You look like something that just stepped out of a fairy tale, and you run around in a dress that might as well serve as a gunny sack with twigs in your hair and no shoes on your feet."
I felt at my hair. "So?"
Cillian tried a different tack. "At least do me a kindness. Promise you'll come to visit Innisclan and meet my family this summer."
"I met your family," I reminded him.
"You stood atop a cliff for five minutes and exchanged a grand total of four words with my father," he said in exasperation. "And it was years ago. Come now." He waved one arm around at the woods. "You've shared every part of your life with me. Is it asking so much of you to let me share a little piece of mine?"
"No," I murmured.
"So you'll come?"
I sighed. "I will."
CHAPTER EIGHT
I expected my mother to speak against the visit to Innisclan, but she didn't. "You'll pass the night there?" was all she asked.
"Aye," I said. "I promised Cillian I'd stay for supper, and it will be too late to return afterward." I hesitated. "I won't go if you'd rather I didn't."
"No, no." She shook her head. "Whatever life you choose for yourself, you need to choose out of knowledge, not ignorance. Go."
So I did.
Cillian wanted to dress me in borrowed finery, but I refused. "Let them meet me as I am," I said to him. "If they reckon I'm not good enough to sit at Lord Tiernan's table, no amount of lace and baubles will change their minds."
He blew out his breath. "Gods, but you're as stubborn as your mother!"
"And rude, too," I reminded him.
"Aye." He grinned. "But oh, so very, very sweet in other ways."
It was afternoon when we rode into Innisclan, me behind Cillian on his long-legged gelding. It had been five years since the pilgrimage to Clunderry, and it felt strange to leave the untamed spaces to which I was accustomed. Cattle grazed in meadows marked by low stone fences. Here and there, we saw people who called out greetings to Cillian. When they saw me, they stared, curious. It made my skin prickle and I fought the urge to summon the twilight and conceal myself from their prying gazes.
At the top of a rise, we halted and regarded the green hollow below.
"Innisclan," Cillian said in satisfaction.
It was a vast stone hall surrounded by outlying buildings. Cillian pointed out the mill and the smithy and the Academy founded by Eamonn mac Grainne and his Skaldic bride. In an adjacent field, a group of young men played a vigorous game involving sticks and a ball. When we drew near, they hailed him with shouts.
"Cillian, lad!"
"Come, give us a hand!"
And then they saw me and went quiet.
"That's the witch's daughter," someone murmured. Aye.
"'I'd fancy a piece o' that," another voice declared boldly.
There was heat in their eyes. I could feel it on my skin—an itch of a different sort. It set the wings to fluttering in my belly in an unthinking response, but it made me nervous, too. There was no care in their regard, only hunger. I was glad when Cillian shook his head at them and kept riding.
Desire, I thought, could be a dangerous gift.
At the stable, Cillian dismounted and helped me down. The freckled lad to whom he gave the chestnut's reins stared at me with frank awe.
"Witch-girl." Cillian kissed my lips. "Come. Meet my family."
I went with him.
The doors to the hall of Innisclan were tall. Wood, bound with steel. One of Lord Tiernan's men inclined his head to Cillian, doing his best not to stare at me. The tall doors swung open. Despite the brightness of the day, it was dark inside. I hesitated on the lintel, curling my toes on the cool stone. I'd never been inside a man-made dwelling.
"There's naught to harm you here, Moirin," Cillian said softly. "I swear it."
"Moirin!" A young woman hurried toward us, her arms extended. She caught my hands in hers and squeezed them, her eyes bright. "You've come at last."
"This is Aislinn," Cillian said. "My sister the heir."
She hadn't been at the meeting atop the cliff, but I would have known who she was without him telling me. They both had a look of their father.
"Well met." Aislinn kissed me on both cheeks. Still holding my hands in hers, she regarded me. "Dagda Mor! Cillian, she's a vision to be sure, but could you not at least have offered the lass the loan of a decent gown and a pair of shoes?"
"He—" I began.
"I—" he said.
"No mind." Paying our words not the slightest heed, Aislinn tugged me across the threshold. "Come with me. I've things you can borrow."