Selkie's Song (Fado Trilogy) (17 page)

Backlit by the fire, he was unable to read her face even from only a few feet away as he approached. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“What Feeney said…I need to explain.”

“Oh, no explanations necessary.” Her voice had a hard edge only slightly modulated by what sounded like tears in her throat. “I was completely stupid to believe you when said you came here to find me.”

“You don’t understand.” He wasn’t sure even he understood. “I did come to find you. And…well, there was another reason. I can explain.” It would be foolish of him to promise her he wouldn’t sell the land. The taxes alone would break him financially.

“I think I understand more than I want to.” Her voice held a chill and an edge of anger.

“I didn’t know about your campaign to save the fortress. I didn’t know until I saw the newspaper with you chained to
my
tree.”

“That land should have been left to me. If it weren’t for some stupid inheritance law, I’d have it now and you would never have known about it.” She spun on him. “You could have saved yourself a trip.”

“Don’t you see? I didn’t want to save myself a trip. I wouldn’t even admit it to myself, but when I got that letter in the mail, I had a reason to come back here, to find you. “ Ty put his hand on her shoulder and nudged her closer. “What can I do to make this right with you?”

“Oh, I don’t think you want to get me started.” She shrugged his hand away. “Looks like you and Feeney have a deal.”

“Feeney’s a gobshite.”
And probably a crook.
“I have no deal with him,” he said in his own defense. “That nonsense back at the pub has nothing to do with us.” He took her hand in his. “Let’s find a place to sit and talk.”

Muireann folded her legs under her and hit the sod with a thump. “This is as good a place as any.”

He sat beside her. “I said once, a long time ago, ‘you will always be for me.’ Do you even remember that?”

“You were what…sixteen and horny? You would have said anything to get into my knickers.”

“Obviously, what I said did not have the desired effect.”

“Only because your mother found us and boxed your ears,” Muireann said and Ty could see a little hint of a smile at the corners of her lips. “I wondered for a long time how far we would have gone.”

“I wanted you to be my first,” Ty admitted. “I thought I was in love with you.”

“After one kiss?” Muireann shook her head in dismay. “You’re easy.”

“If my memory serves, it was more than one kiss. Besides, it wasn’t just that,” he insisted. “I told you my dreams and you listened like you understood. Do you remember?”

Muireann leaned back, supporting herself on her elbows. “You were going to be a rock star. Sure, I remember.”

Ty joined her. “Now it’s your turn to tell me
your
dreams,” he encouraged. “I’ve waited half my life to hear them.”

“What do you care for the dreams of a culchie from the west counties?” The cynicism in her words was not lost on Tynan. “And if I share my fantasies, will you make them come true?”

“If it is within my power, I’d like nothing more than to fulfill your every desire.” He combed his fingers through her hair and the light glimmered over the strands.

The firelight revealed jewel-like tears at the rim of her lashes. Muireann’s breaths were audibly rapid.

The thought that anything he might have done or said could cause her such pain cut through him like a cold knife edge. “Please don’t cry,” he pleaded softly. “Just tell me what you need.”

She blew out a breath. “Why didn’t you tell me why you really came here?”

Yes, why hadn’t he? Possibly because he knew it would stop dead any chance he had with her. “I’m not sure,” he suggested. “Maybe because…well, I wasn’t sure myself. Then, when you talked about the old fortress, you had such passion about it. Maybe I didn’t want to spoil the moment.”

Muireann turned away, her face in darkness. “I never really believed you came just to find me. It would have been nice, but…too good to be true.”

He could hear a change in her voice. The tease in her tone cut through the tightness and he could sense her let go just a little. His hands slid under the curtain of her hair and smoothed the muscles of her shoulders. She relaxed and leaned back against the pressure of his touch. Tynan took the cue and pulled her against his chest, cradling her close, breathing her scent.

The moon was new and the sky a black velvet depth over their heads. Tynan lay back, easing Muireann with him. “Here’s how it seems to me,” he began. “It’s a very big universe out there. I’d have to be the most foolish man in it to let two hectares of County Clare stand between the two of us.”

Muireann flipped over and lay against him, hip to hip, heart throbbing against heart in rapid unison.

He took a chance. “You want me as much as I want you. You just won’t admit it.”

A moment of pure silence passed over. The sound of the sea receded and the wind was still. Never at a loss for words, but having no desire to interject into the quiet, Ty waited for her to break the hush.

When she did not, he cupped her face and drew her to him. He kissed her and slid his hands down over her back to caress her hips. Muireann gave a little gasp and ground her pelvis slowly against him.

What would it be like to make love to her right here, the firelight playing on her skin? He tried to imagine them giving themselves up to passion, here on this mystical night, becoming part of the cosmos…embers blown on the wind.

A warm, dizzy, and otherworldly sense captured his imagination as he held her lithe body close and drank in the substance of her. His tongue tasted salt on her lips. It flashed in his mind that she often tasted a little like the sea.

Perhaps she
was
born of the waves.

“Want to take this indoors?” she asked when his lips traveled to her neck to nibble a morsel of skin there.

Decisions were the last thing he wanted to make right now. “I think we’re alone, except for the cows.”

“Until the pubs close,” she warned.

“Are you telling me we need to hurry?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She rose up, straddling his hips. Her hands played over his chest, the fine cotton of his shirt slick and tactile against his skin.

The world spun in a core of heat, a pain of pleasure he could only relieve by filling her. He didn’t want to wait. Urgency trumped thought; all he wanted was to spread her open and delve deep into her. The risk of discovery by solstice celebrants, though titillating, was probably not in the best interest of their relationship.

“What did you have in mind?” Muireann asked.

“This,” he said as his hand slipped up under the skirt of her dress, played at the edge of her panties until his fingers found her prize. She was warm, moist, and silken.

She shuddered and moved against the pressure of his touch.

“I like the combo of sexy dress and cowgirl boots,” Tynan whispered.

“Don’t all the women in America wear cowgirl boots?”

“Not in Boston.” He brushed her lips with a kiss. “And I’m not an expert on the subject, but I don’t think they make love by bonfire on grassy cliff edges either.”

“They don’t know what they’re missing.”

The sound of laughter carried on the night air. Muireann rolled to Tynan’s side and straightened her dress. “I think our time just ran out.”

Muireann’s arms had chill bumps and she wasn’t sure it was from the loss of the sun’s glow in the west. Tynan’s hand held hers as they walked away from the Solstice celebration toward her cottage.

Every few hundred feet he would stop, turn her to him, and kiss her. “I can’t help myself,” he confessed. “You taste wonderful.”

At this pace, it took more than a few minutes to traverse the fields between the cliffs and Muireann’s cottage. When, at last, they reached her garden gate, the air was thick with the scent of wild flowers and herbs wet by evening’s gentle mist. Muireann wondered if the potted jasmine really did have an aphrodisiac effect. Surely it couldn’t simply be Tynan’s kisses that banished all sense of decorum.

“Here we are,” he said, slipped the key from its hiding place and opened the locked door.

This was probably completely insane. The man was a virtual stranger. She didn’t do this sort of thing. It might not be immoral, but had to be unwise.

But as desire fought with trepidation, Muireann had no doubt which would be the victor.

Chapter Fifteen

Muireann expected to look across the room and see her mortal self calmly observing the scene, a tableau she had played out in her dreams over the last many years. She couldn’t be standing here in Tynan’s arms consenting to this intimacy.

His lips searched her face, kissed her closed eyelids, and traveled down to the sensitive spot behind her jaw as he nudged her dress up over her hips and caressed her backside. She would become a puddle of melted bones and flesh at his feet if he continued to heat her up this way.

Tynan’s warm fingers explored the lace edge of her panties while his eyes raked her body.

Muireann tried to keep her fingers from trembling as she released the buttons of his shirt and stroked the smooth skin of his chest. She put her lips to his breastbone and breathed in his scent.

Tynan shrugged out of the sleeves and tossed the garment onto the back of the sofa.

His fingers played over the zipper at the back of her dress, fumbled with it until she grinned up at him, and shook her head.

“Wait.” Muireann reached behind herself steadying his fingers on the tab at her neck. With each zipper tooth released from its mate, her pulse rate accelerated. She waited for him to take the next step.

She held her breath and hoped she wouldn’t turn blue before he proceeded. He must have sensed her acquiescence, because his hands journeyed up under the folds of her skirt and nudged it over her head in one movement.

Muireann exhaled.

Tynan looked at her and slowly shook his head.

She raised an eyebrow and asked, “What?”

“I’m speechless.”

No easy task, tying the tongue of an Irishman. Muireann knew it was an accolade rarely bestowed.

Tynan placed a hand behind her neck. He coaxed her to him, his eyes dark as a storm-shrouded night sky, and kissed her.

Muireann wondered how such a polite kiss could render her helpless. No tongue, no saliva, just a clean, soft, breathy meeting of lips. It buckled her knees.

She must have actually started to weave on her feet, because his arms came tight around her and pressed her into him. “I want to kiss every inch of you,” he whispered just before he grazed her ear with a flick of his tongue.

That did it. The glow in her belly danced and demanded until it ignited a bonfire that screamed to be quenched. There was no denying the need obliterating reason and restraint. Who was it who promised to take this step by step?
Don’t ask stupid questions and you won’t have to answer them in the morning.

His kisses were on the move across her neck and headed south. Muireann commanded her legs to move, march, stride in any direction, preferably toward her bedroom. The useless appendages refused to comply.

If he’d been less than her fantasies recalled, she would have had a reason to resist him. If he’d gone at the process with less finesse, rushed, sweated a little, grabbed and fumbled, she could possibly deny his ability to romance himself under her skin as well as her clothes.

A last, primitive instinct told her she would pay with her heart for this folly.

Feck my heart.
Though not in her nature to admit he was right, she did want him as much as he wanted her.

“Uh, you’re going to have to stop this,” she gasped between attempts to breathe and think. Multitasking had never been so difficult.

Tynan halted mid-kiss. “Huh?”

“I mean…long enough for us to get somewhere more...horizontal.”

“Right,” he said as though the reality of where they stood hit him full on. Without hesitation, he led her to her room and closed the door behind them.

Muireann felt the burn of his gaze travel down from her eyes to settle on the peak of her breast. Her heart threatened to crash through her chest with each beat. She pulled her hand free of his and reached both arms around his neck.

“I’ve a confession,” she whispered, brushing her lips soft against his shoulder.

Ty exhaled with a slight shiver. “Now’s the time.”

“I’ve been thinking about this since…well, the night you gave me a lift home from the pub.”

“And?”

“I don’t want you to think I do this with every tourist who offers me a lift.”

“Are you saying I’m special?”

“I’d like to find out.”

Tynan kissed her neck where it met her collarbone. “So, tell me, will you still respect me in the morning?”

Muireann smiled and waited to answer just long enough to see a flash of worry cross his face. “Of course not.” She ran her hand down the column of his back and under his belt.

His buttocks tightened.

“Boxers?”

“Silk,” he whispered and let his lips caress her nape with a feather-light touch. “Italian.”

“Another suggestion from your friend Miguel?”

“My little sister,” he mumbled between nibbles of the tender skin below one of her ears.

“Smart girl.”

“Brill.” He tasted the little dip where her shoulder met her neck. “When I first saw you…on the beach…I thought you were a figment of my jet-lagged imagination.” Ty backed her to the edge of the bed. “This is much better than anything I could have imagined.”

Thoughts skipped wildly through her head. Had she worn fresh panties this morning? Should she offer him a drink? What about condoms? Too late. His tongue was tracing a warm track between her breasts.

Ty knelt and laid moist kisses on her belly just above her panty line, encouraging a warm release from deep inside her. Muireann put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. The edge of her bed nudged her and her knees gave way.

Before she could have second thoughts, he removed her boots, pulled off her socks, and massaged each foot. “You disappoint me,” he said as he examined her toes.

Muireann laughed. “Sorry, luv, not all selkies have webbed toes.”