“You learned that from a book?” Roger felt as scandalized as one of the ladies of his father’s congregation.
“Well, you don’t think I go around doing that with people I go out with!” She sounded truly shocked in turn.
“They write books telling young women how to—that’s terrible!”
“What’s terrible about it?” she said, rather huffy. “How else would I know what to do?”
Roger rubbed a hand over his face, at a loss for words. If asked an hour before, he would have stoutly claimed to be in favor of sexual equality. Under the veneer of modernity, though, there was apparently enough of the Presbyterian minister’s son left to feel that a nice young woman really ought to be an ignoramus on her wedding night.
Manfully suppressing this Victorian notion, Roger brought a hand up over the smooth white curves of hip and flank, and cupped a soft full breast.
“Not a thing,” he said. “Only,” he said, and dipped his head to touch his lips to hers, “there’s a bit more to it,” and lightly nipped her lower lip, “than ye read in books, aye?”
She moved suddenly, turning to bring all that long white heat against his bare skin, and he shuddered at the shock of it.
“Show me,” she whispered, and bit the lobe of his ear.
* * *
A rooster crowed, somewhere nearby. Brianna woke from a light doze, berating herself for sleeping. She felt disoriented, tired enough from emotion and exertion to feel light-headed, as though she were floating a foot or two off the ground. At the same time, she didn’t want to miss a moment.
Roger stirred by her side, feeling her move. He groped, put an arm around her, and rolled her over, curving himself to fit behind her, knees to knees, belly to buttocks. He brushed the tangles of her hair away from his face, making little pfft! noises that made her want to laugh.
He’d made love to her three times. She was very sore, and very happy. She’d imagined it a thousand times, and been wrong every time. There wasn’t any way to imagine the sheer terrifying immediacy of being taken like that—stretched suddenly beyond the limits of flesh, penetrated, rent, entered. Nor was there any way she could have imagined the sense of power in it.
She had expected to be helpless, the object of desire. Instead, she had held him, felt him quiver with need, all his strength leashed for fear of hurting her—hers to unleash as she would. Hers, to touch and rouse, to call to her, to command.
Nor had she ever thought such tenderness existed as when he cried out and shuddered in her arms, pressing his forehead hard against her own, trusting her with that moment when his strength turned so suddenly to helplessness.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly in her ear.
“For what?” She reached back, stroked his thigh. She could do that, now. She could touch him anywhere, delighting in the textures and tastes of his body. She couldn’t wait for the daylight, to see him naked.
“For this.” He made a small movement with his hand, encompassing the dark around them, the hard straw under them. “I should have waited. I wanted it to be…good for you.”
“It was very good for me,” she said softly. There was a shallow groove down the side of his thigh, where the muscle was indented.
He laughed, a little ruefully.
“I wanted you to have a proper wedding night. Soft bed, clean sheets…it should have been better, for your first time.”
“I’ve had soft beds and clean sheets,” she said. “But not this.” She turned in his arms, reached down and cupped him, that fascinating mass of changeability between his legs. He stiffened for a second in surprise, then relaxed, letting her handle him as she liked. “It couldn’t have been better,” she said softly, and kissed him.
He kissed her back, slow and lazy, exploring all the depths and hollows of her mouth, letting her have his. He moaned a little, far back in his throat, and reached down to take her hand away.
“Oh, God, you’re going to kill me, Bree.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, anxious. “Did I squeeze too hard? I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
He laughed at that.
“Not that. But give the poor thing a wee rest, hm?” With a firm hand, he turned her over again, nuzzling her shoulder.
“Roger?”
“Mm?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy.”
“Aye? Well, that’s good, then.” He sounded drowsy.
“Even if—if we don’t get back, as long as we’re together, I don’t mind.”
“We’ll get back.” His hand cupped her breast, gentle as seaweed coming to rest round a rock. “I told you, there’s another way.”
“There is?”
“I think so.” He told her about the grimoire, the mixture of careful notes and crazed rambling—and about his own passage through the stones of Craigh na Dun.
“The second time, I thought of you,” he said softly, and traced her features with a finger in the dark. “I lived. And I did come to the right time. But the diamond Fiona gave me was no more than a smear of lampblack in my pocket.”
“So it might be possible to—to steer, somehow?” Brianna couldn’t keep a hint of hope from her voice.
“There might be.” He hesitated. “There was a—I suppose it must have been a poem, or maybe meant to be a spell—in the book.” His hand fell away as he recited it.
“I raise my athame to the North
Where is the home of my power,
To the West
Where is the hearth of my soul,
To the South
Where is the seat of friendship and refuge,
To the East
From whence rises the Sun.
“Then lay I my blade on the altar I have made.
I sit down amid three flames.
“Three points define a plane, and I am fixed.
Four points box the earth and mine is the fullness thereof.
Five is the number of protection; let no demon hinder me.
My left hand is wreathed in gold
And holds the power of the sun.
My right hand is sheathed in silver
And the moon reigns serene.
“I begin.
Garnets rest in love about my neck.
I will be faithful.”
Brianna sat up, arms wrapped around her knees. She was silent for moment.
“That’s nuts,” she said, finally.
“Being certifiably insane is unfortunately no guarantee that someone is likewise wrong,” Roger said dryly. He stretched, groaning, and sat up crosslegged on the straw.
“Part of it is traditional ritual, I think—given that the tradition is ancient Celt. The bits about the directions; those are the ‘four airts,’ which you’ll find running through Celtic legend for some way back. As for the blade, the altar, and the flames, it’s straight witchcraft.”
“She stabbed her husband through the heart and set him on fire.” She still remembered as well as he did the stink of petrol and burning flesh in the circle of Craigh na Dun, and shivered, though it was warm in the shed.
“I hope we won’t be forced to find someone for a human sacrifice,” Roger said, trying and failing to make a joke of it. “The metal, though, and the gems…were you wearing any jewelry when you came through, Bree?”