Orla smiled. She had no idea whether Liam’s clan understood, but every fairy in her own clan took a step back.
“We will consummate the marriage, aye,” she said in her quietest, deadliest voice. “But we will do it as celebration. Not—” she met him eye-to-eye, so there was no question “—as a conquest. For there is no conquest here, Liam the Protector. Is there?”
“There is submission,” he said, looking more irritable then mighty. “It is your obligation.”
“I have fulfilled my obligation,” she said, ramrod straight with pride. “You may have my cooperation, my felicitation, even my delectation. If you wish for submission, however, might I suggest ensorceling some poor mortal woman? Faith, it’s not hard to do. As the last leannan sidhe, sure I could show you how—if you can’t manage the task on your own.”
The air fairly crackled with tension.
Ah, well, more than tension, Orla admitted. For all that she never would have chosen this punishment, sure, wasn’t it a braw one that set her pulses racing and her skin prickling and anxious? Wasn’t he every bit as compelling as he’d been that midnight they’d met by the ocean? Sure, she would be more than happy to welcome his touch. Just standing so close made her breasts tight with the wanting of him.
But as a wife. Not as a hostage, no matter what her mother might have offered.
She just hoped none of these fairies could hear the thundering of her heart.
If only she still had her own rings…
“I come freely, priest,” she said to the wizened little man who stood silently next to her husband. “I have walked away from my world and stand now in yours. But I am a Princess of the Blood and wife to this man. Not consort. I will not suffer your coercion. Am I understood?”
“You would say you don’t want me?” Liam asked, his voice purring like a great cat’s.
Orla laughed. “Don’t be daft. A fairy would have to be ashes not to want you. But that isn’t the point at all, now, is it, my lad? And sure, it can’t be that you need to test for my chastity. If so, you should have presented yourself a good eon past, before I offered my maidenhead to the goddess on my Rite of Passage.” She let an eyebrow drift north. “Or is it your chastity we’re testing this day, lordling?”
She thought she actually heard a snicker behind her. The prince was not amused.
“We test your merit as the wife of the king’s kin,” he said.
Faith, he did know how to rile her, then, didn’t he? “I am the queen’s daughter,” she said with every bit of imperious pride that had been bred into her. “You have no right to ask more.”
All about them, the legion of faerie stayed silent and still. She swore they were holding their collective breath in dread of the heated words being exchanged. Orla paid them no mind. She was waging battle. And by the great queen Eriu, she thought wearily, wasn’t it only the first? What had her mother brought her to?
Before Orla could think of another objection, her new husband reached down to grab the hem of his tunic. In one swift movement he pulled it over his head and handed it to the priest. Then, without taking his eyes from her, he divested himself of his leggings to stand before her as naked as she.
Ah, goddess, what an unfair advantage! He had to know he was magnificent. Orla heard the feminine sighs of appreciation from both sides of the border. She felt the unmistakable flush of hunger seep into her bones and flesh. He was granite and moonlight and the deep sounding of the sea. He carried new scars on his mighty chest and stood on the legs of a warrior. And his proud cock stood tall and hard.
“And I desire you, Orla, daughter of Mab,” he said. “What is wanted is the ritual.”
Orla had to wet her lips with her tongue so she could speak. “Then build me a hall, fairy prince. A grove of trees to rest in, so I know you honor me. I am not sport.”
“No,” he answered, his deep, deep eyes setting loose sparks in her. “You are not sport.”
It seemed he was having trouble concentrating, as well. “Priest?” he asked without taking his eyes from her.
“We must have proof,” the little man protested.
“Great-horned moon,” a slim fairy chortled alongside him. “The sparks these two set off will make the fireworks of Beltaine look like wills-o’-the-wisp. I can live with just the imagining of it in my head. Can’t you, old man?”
Orla chanced pulling her gaze from her new husband to assess this unexpected champion. “So you suffer no confusion, little man,” she said to him, “my sparks will be the scarlet ones.”
The fairy was slim and sweet-faced and almost comically dramatic. “Well, since our Liam’s here will be a grand gold, we should have quite a show, then, shouldn’t we?”
“Enough,” Liam growled without looking away from her.
“And who are you who keeps track of a man’s sex-lights?” Orla asked the newcomer.
The exquisitely pale fairy waved a languid hand that carried rings on four of its fingers. Excessive indeed. “My dear princess,” he said with a sweet smile and a courtly bow, as if he were in a great hall rather than standing before two naked fairies in the dusk. “I am the Stone Keeper. It is I who will redress you to reflect the gifts you bring us.”
I bring no gifts, Orla almost admitted. “Well, then, I’d best consider you a friend, hadn’t I?”
He tilted his head and laid a hand on one slim hip. “Oh, I think there’s no question about that, lady. Don’t I just adore a bit of fire in a woman?”
“Stone Keeper,” Liam warned.
“Well, didn’t I need to have the time to have your hall woven, then?” he demanded. “It just needed a minute, and now it awaits you while you think more on setting the night afire. Now then, priest, what say you?”
Orla watched as the Dubhlainn Sidhe priest consulted with her priestess. She imagined they reached an agreement. She didn’t care. Sure, the minute she’d turned back to her husband she’d found herself taken up with the heat of those eyes, with the wanting of those hips grinding against hers. Her mother might have taken the powers of the leannan sidhe from her, but, sure, she hadn’t stolen the wanting. Orla hadn’t wanted even the throne of faerie this badly.
“It is acceptable,” the grave old man intoned. “We will wait.”
Faith. Just in time. Liam said not a word, just grabbed Orla by the hand and pulled her after him into the deep shadows of the woods. Later, she was sure, she would think about how dark and cool it was here. Later she might wonder how she could be comfortable in a place with no light, no warmth and precious little laughter. Later she might even wish she could have pulled him into her light, instead.
Now she could think of nothing but wrapping her body about his. About mating with him, tongue and hands and cock. She lost her breath with the scent of him, a mixture of smoke and night and the sharp pines of the forest. She clenched her free hand to keep from reaching out to him first. She was hot and cold and hungry with the waiting for him, and she hadn’t even taken the time to climb into his head for the beginning of the dance.
And she knew he felt the same. Goddess, it pulsed off him. It gleamed in the sweat on his skin. It vibrated in the very air about him. Orla wasn’t sure they were even going to make it inside the small house he led her to. An upended basket of trees, it was, a simple shelter that wore leaves for its roof. A holy place woven of the sacred woods, the nine of life: oak, alder, willow, hazel, hawthorn, birch, rowan, yew and elm, each waiting to bless this union between the fairy clans, each demanding the acknowledgment of ritual.
Orla should have been afraid. She didn’t know how to mate without her gifts of seduction. She had no knowledge of her own worth. Worse, she tasted yearning, and it was a new and terrible thing for her. A leannan sidhe did not yearn. She was the one others yearned for. This ache sat uncomfortably on her, a wanting of something more than flesh and heat and completion. This need to see his eyes, to hear his cries, to hold him even when they were done.
She hated that—and she didn’t care. She followed him a step past the door and waited as he turned for her. For a heartbeat, two, they stared at each other, eyes almost black with arousal, nostrils flared to catch the scent of it, bodies poised on the edge of insanity.
“You will accept my seed,” Liam the Avenger demanded, not moving.
Orla battled back her uncertainty. “I will take your seed,” she countered, and prayed he didn’t realize that she trembled from more than wanting. She waited, the breath caught high in her chest, terrified that this would all go wrong.
He said not another word. Just caught her face in his hands and opened his mouth over hers. He meant to consume her; she could taste it. His lips were unbearably soft, but they commanded; they seized rather than courted. He pulled a response from her that all but buckled her knees. She wanted this—she wanted him—and was terrified with this wanting, but she couldn’t let him take control.
Reaching up, she grabbed fistfuls of his hair and pulled him hard to her. She met him mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue, hungry teeth to hungry teeth. They battled, they parried, they nipped and tasted and supped from each other until Orla could feel the velvet of his cock against her belly, until he captured her groans with his kiss, until she was melting with the taste and touch and scent of him. Fairy tastes, cinnamon and honey. Fairy scents, the clean pine of the forest, the air of the mountain, the salt of the sea.
He pulled her fully against him, and he measured the length of her with his hands. He was not gentle; she hadn’t expected it. She didn’t want it. She wanted him to challenge her to her limit. She wanted to match him move for move. She wanted his mouth and his satin-sleek hair and the powerful lines of his throat. She wanted to run her tongue along those new scars they had caused together and bite his belly where the skin was soft. She wanted him inside her, and she wanted it now.
There were no love words, no sighs of contentment, no laughter. There was a deep, intense silence broken only by the slide of hands, the moist music of kisses, the high hum of impatience.
Ah, goddess, his hands, his broad warrior’s hands, his callused, clever hands, sweeping over her like a brand. Ah, his mouth, his hot, deep, sweet mouth, that marked every inch of her. His back and belly and thighs, sculpted from living flesh for the sole purpose of pleasuring her. He claimed her, but she claimed him, as well, marking every inch of his skin with her touch, claiming the sweep of muscle and tendon and the unyielding edge of bone with hand and tongue and skin.
She was so lost in sensation she almost failed to feel him turn her, face to the wall. She felt him wrap his hand around the back of her neck and bend her over, so that he would mount her from behind. A position of submission. A statement more powerful than this mating. She was so lost she almost didn’t care.
Begin as you mean to go on.
Goddess. She didn’t care. She wanted him in her.
Within a breath of losing herself to him, she ducked under his hand and spun away from him. Panting as if she’d run all the way here from her own great hall, she balanced on her feet, prepared for attack. Her body screeched in impatience. Now, it demanded. Satisfy me.
“Did you learn your mating from the beasts, then, princeling?” she demanded, swiping her tangled hair out of her eyes.
Goddess, she didn’t want to let him hear the fear in her voice, the overwhelming urge to just turn around and succumb so she could feel him impale her right there against the rough wood wall.
He was trying to keep his breathing still. She knew better. He gleamed with sweat, and his cock was rock-hard. He was no more in control than she was.
“You will accept me as I wish,” he grated, reaching out.
She whirled away again.
“I think not. Didn’t I tell you and all your friends already? I am daughter of the queen. Not a hot fairy’s passing recreation. Meet me face-to-face or meet me not at all, lordling.”
Her hands were clenched to keep from reaching for him. Her nipples were as taut as his cock. She could feel her own juices dampening her thighs. Answer, damn you, she wanted to shriek. Finish this.
He shook with the struggle to keep control. He glared at her as if she were the enemy. “You are such a prude you cannot accept invention?”
She actually laughed. “I was leannan sidhe, lordling. I could shatter you with my invention. But now, my armies need to return home. Do we set off those lights or go home without honor?”
His movement was quick and hard. He reached to grab her. She stepped back just out of his reach.
“A fairy does not harm,” she said, glaring herself.
“Well, that would depend on how well you accommodate me, wouldn’t it?” he asked.
The size of him should have made her faint. It made her all the hungrier.
“Elven-made you are,” she admitted, melting all the more for the sight of that size, “but I’m a strong woman, or else I’d not swear to defend you in battle. Now choose, princeling.”
Another heartbeat. A breath. A stretching of the near-silence to tearing.
“I agree,” he finally said. “Now come here.”
She allowed him this small victory. She went to him. The minute they touched, lightning sparked fierce in them. They wrapped themselves in each other’s arms and plunged into each other’s heat. They found the earth somehow and stretched out on the sweet, soft grass so he could take his time savoring her breasts, so she could close her eyes against the exquisite pain of his suckling, so she could curl around him like a vine.
He slipped his cunning fingers along her belly and then down as she arched toward him, toward the hard ache deep in her, toward the empty ache of her, into the hottest core of her. He stroked, he slipped in and out, he tormented her to the point of madness until she could stand no more, so she pushed him back and went down on him, took that lovely hard length of him in her mouth, teasing it with her teeth, with her tongue and fingers and the flat of her palm, until he rumbled like a nearing storm.
The world went away, lost beyond her frantic need for completion, her hot craving for his touch, for the satin feel of him, for the slide of his skin against hers and his mouth on her mouth, for his fingers deep inside her and the arrogance of his cock in her hand. There was only the two of them and the sanctuary of this living hall in the deep woods, and the battle to meet as equals in this odd dance of dominance.
Again he pushed her legs open. This time she let him, welcomed him, pulling away from his kiss to meet him eye-to-eye as he paused, breathless, on the edge of that terrible precipice, trembling and hard-eyed. She smiled, but it wasn’t a smile of submission. It was the smile of conquest, and he knew it, and he smiled back and drove into her.
Oh no, oh no, she thought vaguely, as he filled her, as he stretched her impossibly wide. He fits too well. He feels as if he belongs here, as if he’s always belonged here, and how do I deal with that? How do I meet him as an equal when I know it will come to needing him? When it seems that after this I won’t be whole anymore?
She wished she could close her eyes, wished she could just surrender and be done with it. She couldn’t, though, could she? For he would never let her fight her way back. So she kept her eyes open. She met his black, black eyes with honesty, with the hunger she had for him, with the pride of her ancestry, with her challenge to his dominance, and she met him, thrust for thrust, reveling in the way he filled her, in the abrasion of the grass against her back as he rocked her, harder and harder, faster, until the hard, hot pain of arousal gathered, until it tightened, pulling at her feet and her arms and her eyes, until she saw his climax coming and knew that she would crest with him, a detonation of light and scent and lightning that would sweep everything before it.
And, oh, it did, obliterating the sun and setting off fireworks and splintering the day with white-hot light, until she keened with it, the joy too great to hold in, even as he reared back, his mouth gaping, and gave one great cry as he spilled himself deep, deep inside her where she would never lose him, not even if he lost her, not even then.
And then the two of them collapsed, still entangled with each other, arms and legs, hearts still thundering in tandem, bodies slick with sweat and sharp with the scent of climax, and lit by the dying embers of their sex-lights, a shower of red and gold sparks that floated away into the trees.
Orla lay there, surrounded by him, and she knew real fear.
She’d meant to show him that no one dominated Orla, daughter of a queen. She’d done nothing more than lose herself, and she had no idea what came next. She just knew that she could no longer be satisfied alone, and that was too great a power to give a man—especially an enemy.
“Is it enough for them, do you think?” she asked, her eyes closed and her ears filled with the sound of his slowing heart.
He made no move to comfort her or settle her. Orla thought his arms were still around her because he simply didn’t have the strength to move them. “It’ll have to be, won’t it?” he said. “Sure, I’ll not do it again.”
Orla raised her head so she could see his expression. “Because you obviously found it so distasteful.”
His hair tangled and his chest still heaving, he didn’t so much as smile. “From now on our mating will be our business.”
She nodded. “Ah, grand. I thought for a minute you’d gone all monkish on me.”
“No matter if you were cross-eyed and spavined, I’d take you as is my duty to my king.”
“And a way with the words on ya, too.”
“It’s all you’ll get.”
She closed her eyes again, wishing herself anywhere else. “Ah, and who could ask for more?”
For a second she thought he might actually have reached for her cheek. She swore there was a breath of movement against her. But when she opened her eyes, he was just watching her, his expression bemused.
“Well, if you bring nothing else to this farce,” he said at last, “at least you bring passion.”
Ah, well, then, and wasn’t that just the sum of her life? And him still so magically wrought that she could drown in him like a fast-running river.
“So it’s a romantic man they’ve given me, then, is it?” she asked.
“They gave you nothing,” he said. Untangling himself from her, he climbed to his feet as if they hadn’t just set the afternoon sky afire. “They imposed a life sentence on us. Get dressed, princess. We return to report this folly to the king.”
Without so much as a look to where she still lay sprawled, heavy-lidded and flushed on the ground, he walked out of the hall and into the sunlight. Orla lay back and wished her mother had simply run her through with the dullest fairy blade in existence and been done with it. The pain would have been easier.