The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (42 page)

Yet ’twas more than the golden moon causing tension to gather all along his body. His breath quickened, and with the knowing ease of a woman, she shifted beneath him, taking him deeper, holding him tighter. His thrusts came faster, then he thrust once more and held, a low groan rising from his throat.

In her mind’s eye, she saw his seed spill out of him and into her, the rich, creamy fluid flowing up against the opening of her womb. He was the river; her body was the yielding earth. She followed the life-giving stream deeper, into a sanctuary hidden in a soft, warm cave, the core of her being—and a voice whispered to her in the dark .
Kael
.

~ ~ ~

Madron woke with a start. She had not meant to sleep. She swept a few straying strands of hair off her face and blinked. Time had passed. How much?

She pushed out of the maple chair and walked quickly to the cottage window, where her nimble fingers made swift work of opening the shutters. She bent forward over the sill, looking out and up at the sky. The Eve of Beltaine was over, thank the gods, the ruby wash of morn breaking on the eastern horizon, but daylight alone was no balm for the strange and disagreeable night she’d spent. Something was gravely amiss. The woods were still silent.

The trees had stopped talking to her at dusk—Rhuddlan’s doing, without a doubt—and her mind would find no ease until they spoke to her again. ’Twas as nothing for the elf-man to close her out of the forest’s scented murmurings. She’d always known his skills far surpassed those of the other Quicken-tree. Truly, she had once believed that the trees spoke only on his command—a smitten girl’s fallacy, she’d later learned. The trees acknowledged no earthly lord. Yet the rowans did his bidding; they’d carried Quicken-tree messages to her since the time of Edmee’s conception, and always during the fire festivals such as Beltaine, his intent on those nights to lure her back into the fold.

A small drop of morning rain fell through the trees and plopped onto the sill. Madron caught it up, with the pad of her finger and brought it to her mouth. There was taste, fresh and dear, but no hint of anything more.

Rhuddlan was keeping something from her.

D
ain held Ceridwen in his arms as dawn breached the night, his body half covering hers. Her gown and kirtle were haphazardly tossed over them for warmth; her chemise was tangled about them both. Silk ribands trailed down the pale, creamy contours of her body, looping onto her breast and coming back up, dipping into the curve of her waist and rising again over her hip like a meandering silver stream. She had drifted into a light sleep—trusting soul. Her faith might redeem him yet. Or mayhaps she had felt it too, his total surrender.

He wanted her again. Her hand was soft on his hip, her fingers delicate in their unconscious caress. He kissed the corner of her mouth, and she stirred, but did not waken. Just as well. He had not been so gentle. There was blood between her thighs and on her belly where his half-aroused penis rested, and blood on him as well. Such was to be expected, and despite the evidence of pain, her desire had been clear. She had wanted him and welcomed him.

The color of the sky changed while he held her, from velvet-black to midnight-blue to a chatoyant pearl-gray, the last sending rich, lustrous light running down through the trees, glazing branches and picking up an edge of gold from the east before reaching the forest floor. Birds. began their morning songs with the dawn,
tee-yairing
and
chir-rupping
their calls.

Being careful not to disturb her, he eased out of their grass nest and went to clean himself in the small freshets of hot water flowing from fissures in the stone and gathering in rock basins at the bottom of the limestone wall. They were offshoots from the grotto pool that steamed and bubbled inside the cavern. When he was finished, he wadded together a handful of spongy moss and soaked it in the water, getting it hot and wet.

Back at her side, he cleaned her and pressed the warm moss between her legs and against her mons, knowing the heat would soothe.

Her lashes fluttered open on a sigh and closed on another. “Dain,” she murmured.

He lay down beside her and kissed her again, letting his mouth linger on hers and warm her lips. Her response was to tease him with her tongue. He smiled and felt her do the same.

“Are you god or demon this day?” she asked when he raised his head. Her hand came up to trace the blue band painted across his face.

“Only a man.” She was beautiful beneath him, her smile not so innocent, her body the loveliest haven, so essentially female. “And you? Goddess or demoness?”

“Whatever you wish... for another kiss.” Her smile took a sultry turn as she tunneled her fingers through his hair and pulled his head back down. She plundered his mouth, her tongue deliciously sensual, tasting and exploring.

Her blatant seduction tantalized him, going straight to his groin and bringing him fully erect. So she would play the demoness for him? Mayhaps he would teach her how. For now, though, it would not take much to have her again as the angel-woman. ’Twas no more than the length of his cock from where he was to where he wanted to be. Yet he held back, losing himself in her kiss, but taking no more.

“Dain?” She pulled away and looked up at him, her question clear.

“’Tis too soon after your first time, Ceri.” He smoothed her hair back from her brow. The long silvery-gold tresses were spread out around her in every direction, a brilliant, mussed pillow strewn with leaves. “Your body is tender, and I would not hurt you again.”

“And what of you?” She glanced down to where they touched.

A grin teased his mouth. There was no shyness in her question. ’Twas as if she, too, realized that what was now between them went beyond the tangent boundaries of skin and bone, beyond the ever-shifting surfaces of emotion. She was his, and he would have no other. He had not known that love, that the act of love with her, would bind him so greatly or grant such a heady sense of freedom.

He brushed his thumb across her cheek and watched her eyes drift closed. Her hand trailed up his ribs and under his arm, before coming across his shoulder. They were tangled together as surely as her clothes, their legs intertwined, strands of her hair intermingled with his and flowed over their chests and arms. His gaze wandered down to her breasts and hips. Every curve enchanted him, so very pale against his darkness, so rounded against his much larger, more angular frame. Her allure was incarnate, needing no conscious effort. She simply was, and he wanted her.

“Lying this close to you, it would take little more than your hand to please me,” he told her. Desire was in him, fed by lust into a heavy need, and he would have it assuaged.

“My hand?” Her lashes rose in a leisurely sweep.

“Aye.” He interlaced his fingers with hers and brought them to his mouth, pressing his suit. She was willing and curious, and it was for her that his loins ached.

Ceridwen watched in fascination as he opened their clasped hands and laved her palm, then her fingers, one by one. His tongue was soft and wet and moved over her hand with the ardency of a hungry cat licking cream; a big cat, like a rampant lion with his mane of wild hair falling over the two of them and snaking across their torsos. His eyebrows were drawn toward each other with the depth of his concentration; his lashes were lowered into dark crescents on blue pagan cheeks.

She had not thought one’s hand capable of being seduced, that there was so much sensitivity in her fingers and in the skin between her fingers. He proved her wrong with every caress. She was entranced, and she wanted more. She wanted to touch him, to discover the part of him that had been inside her.

Dain felt the same need—to have her touch him. Thus when her skin was warm and moist, he slipped her hand down his chest and closed it around his phallus. Heat... luscious, erotic heat. He groaned, showing her the way of it, the varying rhythms of stimulation and the one that created the most intense pleasure for him. She kissed his face as she stroked him, proving herself adept at divining his desires, the silky pressure of her hand and lips giving him a glimpse of heaven. Even with his guidance, her touch was so very different from his own, delightfully, profoundly different, marking him with a deep rush of feeling, adding an element of tender care where for too long there had been only animal need.

With an ease born of empathy, he moved his hand from around hers and into the triangle of curls between her legs; and he bent his head to her breast, bringing her into the same swirling chaos consuming him. Her nipple was incredibly soft in his mouth, a lure for his tongue, just as her lush folds were a lure for his fingers. She was gratifyingly wet, the moisture he slid into like nectar, no different, for he remembered the wondrous, womanly taste of her vagina. He had thought to never know such again, to never again have the deepest scent of a woman infusing his pores. Then Ceri had come to him.

He moved his mouth up her body, kissing her and whispering to her of the fire running through his blood and of where virgin dreams ended and lover’s dreams began. Words created passion in the darkest corridors of the mind, and he wanted her to experience passion in all its shades. To that end, he closed his teeth upon her neck, gently, gently, until he could feel her pulse beating against his tongue and echoing in his throat.

Here was life.

Small sounds of distress and arousal escaped her, revealing the naked needs he had nurtured to fruition. With a move he had anticipated, she had him slipping inside her, guided by her hand. He knew a thousand ways to give and take pleasure without that invasion—but he had not the strength to deny her or himself. He wanted to sink into her, to feel her slick, velvety sheath close around him.

He groaned, holding back from going too far, too soon, but she was whispering his name over and over, and his last good intention went for naught. He began his thrusts, shallow at first, then deeper... deliciously deeper.

The pressure built and built inside him, centering his awareness between their legs where they met and came together, so hot and sweet. He felt her impending climax in the inexorable tightening of her body, he saw it in the tautness of her face, and when her low cry came, he was with her. Her intense contractions pulsed through him, along the full length of his shaft, along the full length of his body and down to the bottom of his soul. He bared his teeth, burying himself to the hilt inside her, coming as deeply as he could. He forgot to breathe. There was no thought or sight or sound, only exquisite sensations jerking through him, one after the other into oblivion. There was no dream, only the purest essence of the woman stealing him away.

At the end, he collapsed next to her, wanting nothing more than to never move from her side. Long moments passed as he held her to him and labored to catch his breath.

“So help me God, you are a witch.”

“Whose God?” she asked, her own breath shallow with the same latent thrills he felt coursing through his body. “Your God? My God?”

“It matters not” Without withdrawing, he pressed himself closer to her, deeper, wanting to feel her, all of her, and know she was a part of him. “By any God, you are the fairest witch of all.”

~ ~ ~

Far, far above them, in the crowning branches of an oak, Llynya lay stretched out on a limb, peering over its side with her chin in her hands, watching her charges. Not that there was much to see. Dain and Ceridwen had been rolling around in the grass all night, like everyone else in Wroneu Wood, and they were still at it.

With a quietly grumbled complaint, she turned over onto her back to better continue her skywatching. She’d done what she’d been told. She’d followed them to the Mid-Crevasse glade, so named because it was midway between the Great Western Crevasse and... and someplace else she couldn’t quite remember at the moment. She’d kept anyone else from stumbling into the glade, weaving a dab of bramble here and there, and she’d left Dain’s clothes and cloak in a pile on the path. Wouldn’t do for the O Great One’s butt to get cold on the long walk back to Deri. Oh, no.

No one seemed concerned about her butt getting cold sitting up in a tree all night.

“Hmmph.” She dug a honey-stick out of her pouch and stuck it in her mouth.

The morning star had disappeared with the first flash of the sun, and the other stars had long since been chased into the west, but the moon remained. ’Twas a wondrous thing, the moon, rich in elfin lore and woman’s magic, a perfect, white orb hanging in a sky that was turning blue with day. Unlike the sun, which one could not look upon even if she squinted her eyes into teensy-weensy slits, the moon was made for gazing, for long hours of contemplation. Its presence never failed to soothe. Llynya liked nothing better than running through its light at night. Though of late, Rhuddlan had been clipping her wings.

A green finch flittered in to share her leafy perch, a welcome bit of company. Llynya whistled at her, and the bird sang back, hopping closer.

“Hallo, peach,” she crooned, putting out her finger. The finch hopped up, and Llynya smiled. “
Malashm
.”

She rummaged through her pouch and came up with a seed, which the finch ate, and a bit of thistledown fluff the bird took into her beak.

“Nesting, hmm?”

Spring had been hard-won this year, making the laying with the Goddess of utmost importance. By Llynya’s count, Dain had lain with Ceri twice. Rhuddlan would be pleased.

The finch flew off, toward daybreak. There had been a promise of rain in the night that had not come to pass except in a few stray drops. But the changing color of the sky hinted at more moisture yet to be shed, and not long coming by Llynya’s reckoning.

Sure enough, within a short passing of time, rain began to fall, swept up from the south by the wind. Llynya closed her eyes and caught a few droplets on her tongue, and was startled to find a warning in the taste. She had smelled nothing, but rain had the quality of intensifying whatever message was in the trees and spreading it over a greater distance, and what she tasted was undeniable. Danger was coming.