Devil's Angel (36 page)

His fingers dug into the pile of metal in his hands. “So you believe I have turned to another? To Magda?”

All the fight drained from her as she collapsed onto the side of the bed. “I cannot do this, Conor,” she whispered. “I have tried to find my place here, to no avail. You will not allow me to fight. Magda rules your household. It will be years before I achieve Aine and Gwynna’s skill for healing, so your people don’t need my skill with herbals. If you refuse our bed, ’tis obvious you don’t need my body either. I am set aside in all but name.”

He was shaking. From fear or anger he could not tell. How had they gotten so far apart that she could believe he wanted her out of his life?

“I do not want Magda for wife,” he managed to say, every bit of control he could summon thrown into his voice. “I do not want another in my bed or as mistress of my household.”

The shackles bit deeply into his hands. He wanted to tell her that she was what he desired most, his angel, and his heart. He couldn’t. Not until he knew that she would stay, consent to be his—forever.

“What do you want, Erika?” he asked. “If it is in my power, I will give it to you.”

Her shoulders lifted in a bone-weary sigh. “I want you to forgive me for all that I have done. I want to be necessary to you and to Dunlough. I want to bear you the child you desire.”

Unshed tears spiked her lashes as she looked up at him. “But if I cannot bear you another…”

He lowered his head, blinking against the sudden pain that shafted through him. Blessed Danu, he had driven her away without conscious aforethought.

“Then you will have your freedom.” The cuffs dug into his palms as he held them in a death-grip. “All you have wanted, since before we were wed, is your freedom. I will give you that. I’ll not hold you—not by vows, not by these damned shackles!”

With every ounce of strength he possessed, he jettisoned the heap of metal rings out the high window. “You are free, if that is what you want.”

His heart pounded like a thousand horses galloping. If she asked for her freedom he would give it to her. Sweet skies, if it was the one thing that would bring a smile back to her eyes he would do it. How he would be able to live with her gone, he did not want to contemplate.

Looking at her, at the sadness that slumped her shoulders, was akin to looking into his soul. He saw the sadness and the anguish, the resolve and resignation. Beneath it all he saw a deep, elemental need. A need, he realized, that mirrored his own.

Before he could speak, she reached out one pale, slender hand to him. “What I want, what I’ve always wanted, is you.”

“Me?” It wasn’t that simple. It couldn’t be that simple. “When every right thing I have attempted to do for you becomes wrong? Why would you be wanting me?”

Her eyes swam with tears. “Can you not know? I love you.”

It was that simple. His senses reeled as he stumbled to his knees before her. “Erika.” Her name ripped out of his very soul as he wrapped his arms about her waist and buried his face into her lap, her empty womb. He wanted to give the words back to her, tried to say them back, but they were trapped by the powerful surge of emotion in his chest.

She curled over him, and he could feel hot tears scald the back of his neck. “I choose free to stay here with you, Conor—if you’ll have me.”

He raised his face to her. “Do you think I could be without you, you who have been the wellspring of my happiness these last months?”

“Conor.” She threw her arms about his neck.

“Ah,
aingeal
.” Rising to his knees, he buried his face in her hair. “I need you sure as a homeless man needs a place to lay his head and food to line his belly. You’ve given me back my soul, and I thank you.”

She answered him, but he couldn’t ascertain her meaning through the tears and tremors that shook her. Truth to tell, he wasn’t dry-eyed himself. Crying females made him uncomfortable, right enough. The Angel of Death reduced to tears undid him.

For a long moment they were silent, grieving together. He consoled her best as he could, with gentle touches and light kisses to her forehead, eyelids, cheeks and jawline. Using the pads of his thumbs, he brushed away the tears that tracked her cheeks. He brushed a feathered kiss across her lips, intending only to soothe. Her lips opened beneath his in invitation to give and receive succor, and he accepted.

The kiss deepened, opening a pathway to the passion that always simmered between them. He wanted to give more than take, to show her by actions what he could not with words.

Slow and gentle, he marked kisses down the slim column of her neck, dipping his tongue in the pulsing hollow at the base of her throat. She sighed, trembling, then angled her head to bare her throat full to him.

When her hands dropped from his shoulders to the belt about his waist, he drew back. “Nay, my lady wife. This is for you.”

Her hands fell away as he molded his palms to her thighs, pulling the fine material of her shift up her legs with the upward motion of his caress. Once she was free of the garment, he returned to the fullness of her lips and throat.

Still kneeling before her, he cupped the silken rise of her breasts in his calloused, battle-roughened hands. The rosy peaks swelled at his touch, blossoming beneath his tender ministrations. Lowering his head, he placed kisses to one hardened peak then the other, then laved each with his tongue.

Erika gasped then arched her back, presenting her bounty for his feast. He bore her back on the bedstead, shifting until they were side by side. As he continued his impassioned worship of her breasts his free hand tracked a path down her ribcage, skittering to a stop on the now-flat plane of her stomach.

Her hands threaded through his hair. Raising his head, he saw the misty understanding smile she gave him. His heart surged in response, and his hand continued its southern journey until it reached the pale curls that hid her secrets.

With gentle strokes he found the core of her femininity and slipped a finger inside, just a light caress. She warmed at his touch, her essence drenching his finger as she moaned his name. He continued his slow, tender loving until she shuddered and gasped her release.

Pleased to have pleased her, he raised his head to kiss her, long and deep. Her hands once again went to his
leine
. “I need you, Conor,” she whispered. “I need to feel you inside me.”

Wanting nothing more than to join her, he nevertheless hesitated. “Are you certain? I do not want to hurt you.”

She stared back at him with love in her passion-heavy eyes. “I am.”

After removing his
leine
, he found himself trembling as he guided his arousal to her heat. As nervous as the first time, he bathed himself in the waters of her passion. Then with a long, careful stroke, he slid home.

Her soft sigh welcomed him, her thighs circling his hips and settling him deep. Shaken, he paused to rest his forehead against hers, savoring the pleasure and rightness of their joining.

He loved her most thoroughly, withdrawing until just the tip remained inside her soft folds then sheathing himself again to the hilt. Again and again he advanced and retreated with measured stroke, giving in to a joining truer and more profound than any furied coupling.

Release was a deep outpouring of his soul, accepted and reflected by hers with soft world-shaking exclamation. Together they floated in a cocoon of sensation and emotion, at last united body, mind and soul.

Chapter Thirty

Conor set the missive on the table before him, rubbing at his eyes. Fall was completing its inevitable change to winter. Soon, fierce rains would lash the westernmost shores. It was a time when those most sensible remained in their homes eating, drinking and bedding their women.

“Is something amiss?” Erika asked, looking up from the
leine
she embroidered with painful precision. She was well recovered from her ordeal in the lough four days’ past. Her skin fair glowed in the hearth light.

“It’s an urgent summons from Taig, to join him.”

The
leine
fell forgotten in her lap. “He’s not thinking of waging war during winter, is he?”

“It does not say.” Conor sighed. By the saints, he hoped not. He looked forward to exploring the wonders of his wife’s love, not hieing about the countryside beating sense into those too foolish or too ambitious to stay home. “With luck, he wants nothing more than to discuss strategies for the spring.”

He rose then crossed to where she sat near the fire. “I would take you with me, but winter travel is not good at even the best of times.”

She set her sewing aside then rose to her feet, stretching before leaning into him. “I would beg off in any case. Gwynna is near her time and I must go to her.”

He wanted to be there with her, with them all. “Will you fare well?” he asked, threading a hand through her hair.

“I am in fine spirits,” she answered, her voice soft. “I will be well in Glentane.”

He gathered her close. “Then we can travel south together for a time.”

“Will you be away for long?”

“If it were within my power, I would be gone but a moment,” he answered, want coloring his voice. “I am loath to be apart from you.”

Her arms tightened about him as she laid her cheek against his heart. “I love you.”

It still stunned him to hear the words. Not five days past he’d wondered if she could even suffer his touch. Thank God he had been wrong.

He placed his forefinger beneath her chin, lifting her face to his. “Say it again.”

Laughter spilled from her, causing her eyes to dance and break up her words. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a vain man, needing flowery speech to swell your chest. But I tell you true, Conor mac Ferghal: I love you. I love your prowess in battle and bed, the silver of your eyes and the smile made all the more precious for its rarity—”

He cut off her words with a deep, slanting kiss that had the room tilting at a crazed angle. Then he realized that they’d fallen back against the wall.

Erika righted herself first, fixing him with a stern stare ruined by the blush staining her cheeks. “’Tis a wonder you didn’t crack your head open,” she scolded. “Are you certain enough of what I feel for you?”

He glanced at her through lowered lashes. “There’s one thing more you could do to convince me.”

“What? Oh.” Her ears crimsoned. “Have we time enough for that?”

“Not the time I want to take,” Conor said in disappointment. “We should be on our way while the weather holds. Can you ready us for departure within the hour? I mean to make it a quick journey.”

“Yes, the faster gone, the faster we shall return. If I may request it, I would like Ardan to remain here. He’s near himself again, but I’d rather he not ride about the countryside if the winter rains come sooner. Besides, Padraig needs the exercise.”

Conor barked a laugh, sure the commander wouldn’t appreciate the inference that he’d grown comfortable in his duties guarding his lady.

“Done. I need Ardan here to oversee the final harvest. Fionn and Cian will accompany you.” He gathered her close again. “Take your sword, but no looking for battles, wife. The sooner gone, the sooner returned.”

She smiled. “And the sooner you’ll be out of the black and into your new leine. We’ll have a homecoming feast to celebrate.”

“We will indeed.” He opened the door for her. “See to our preparations while I talk to Ardan and Padraig.”

After Erika disappeared upstairs, Conor went in search of Magda. He found her in a side chamber on the main level, her maidservant and two guards, Renald and Crutchin, with her.

Conor hid his dislike behind an impassive mask. He liked the two men little, as they had little care for his standards of work and exercise.

“Leave us.”

Magda looked at him with reserved curiosity. “You wish to speak to me?”

Conor wasted little time. “My lady wife is appreciative of the assistance you have given her, Magda. Rest assured, when I am confident that my wife has fully recovered, you will be able to regain your status as a guest in our house, and my wife will visit such thanks upon you as she sees fit.”

Magda lowered her head. “There’s so much left to teach her, and difficult to do, with herself riding about instead of tending the hearth as she should.”

He felt a spark of anger and sought to subdue it. “My wife has done what has been needed.”

“For Dunlough, or for herself?” she wondered. “She is gone so long, with no accounting for her whereabouts. Is it certain, where she goes?”

“You would do well to guard your tongue.”

“Forgive me, Conor,” Magda said, contrition limning her voice. “I’ve no wish to speak ill of anyone. It is the love I bear you as brother that urges me to speak of rumors that continue of the woman you have taken to wife.”

“I thought you above such petty deeds.”

“Even rumors at times possess a kernel of truth. You are wrong if you believe I take joy in telling you this. I tell you so that you may be ware.”

“Then tell me and be done with it.”

“It is rumored that the Angel of Death is in league with Ronan of Ulster.”

Conor stared at her a moment before roaring with laughter. “That is the great rumor you have to tell me? It is one I have heard before, and even considered myself before I wed her.”