Heart's Compass, page 9
Since she had grown up with nothing but love, it was hard for Ciara to imagine what it was like for him. A cold, bleak world. Money was important, but nothing, nothing, was more important than love and family. What good is all the money in the world if you have no one to love, no one to share your life with? It seemed that he was short on both.
“Go ahead and smile, Wolf. I won’t tell anyone,” she teased.
His eyes snapped to her face as she grinned.
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? You should smile more. You appear very—how do you say it in England? Suave? Debonair? I don’t know. I do know that it makes you very, very handsome. Come, we need to go back. The weather will change soon.” She nudged Nyama on with her knees and he followed suit with Epona.
“What does Faolan mean?” Lucien asked as Epona drew up alongside Nyama.
“It is a Gaelic word for wolf. Pretty inventive, don’t you think?”
“Well, why do you call me Wolf? It’s not even part of my name.”
“Does it bother you?”
“No. But that doesn’t explain why you do it.” He could listen to her talk all day.
“Why do people call you Saint?”
“Part of my name. Besides only certain ones do that.”
“Let me guess, certain ones that you see at the functions you attend. Right?”
“Yes. That’s right. My friends call me Luc. My parents call me Saint as well.”
“Sort of a formal title for you. Well, I call you Wolf because you remind me of Faolan. When we were first together, he didn’t trust me and was overly cautious around me and yet at the same time he was full of himself. When I would get close to him he would hackle up and bare his teeth, to try to scare me. I knew he was just full of bluster. He was more scared than anything, and while he knew I was no threat, he still had to act tough. That is why I call you Wolf.”
“What about Kosse? What does that mean, lion?”
“Actually it does. In the language of my mother. What can I say when it comes to names? I am not very clever.”
“I think you are very clever.” The words made her stomach go all quivery. “Will you let Kosse go?”
“When he is old enough to fend for himself, the choice will be his. Faolan will teach him to hunt. He just never would have made it through the winter alone without his momma.”
“Amazing. And you didn’t think of the meat that he would need to survive? How that could affect you?”
“Not everything is about what you have. If I went through life like that, I would have left you in the bear’s clutches. It’s what I do. I help things that are sick. And when they are better, they can go. If not, well, then I just have another mouth to feed on occasion.
“Sometimes when Faolan brings down a deer, he brings me to it and we split it. We share and we survive. It is the only way up here.”
“Amazing.”
They rode into the area before the cabin. She swung down with grace as he slid off Epona, not as nice as she had. The mare stood there next to him and nudged him. “She wants some grain. I will bring it out,” Ciara said before she disappeared into the woodhouse and came back out with two buckets of grain.
The horses made short work of it, then with final pats from both humans they disappeared back into the trees. The clouds rolled in and snow started to fly. Both of them loaded up on wood from the woodhouse and headed into the cabin with the four-legged members of the group.
Lucien built up the fire as Ciara began making dinner. They had missed lunch since they had been away from the cabin so they were both hungry. By the time she got the dinner on the table the winds howled and the snow was so thick she couldn’t see past the porch.
Dinner was relaxed and easygoing. Afterward, since they had stayed out later than she had first believed, she said she would do laundry in the morning. Ciara changed into dry clothes and found some clean, dry ones of her father’s for Lucien to wear. He changed in her room and when he came out she was making up his bed pallet.
He groaned as he saw her bent over to pull up the blankets, her butt encased in tight buckskins that hugged her small waist and firm legs. Her hair was braided down her back in a thick, black rope. Whoever said that women should not wear pants was absolutely right, but not for the reason he believed that they stated that. They would drive men crazy if they all wore those kind of things. It had to be a sin to look like that.
He made himself some coffee and sat at the table to work on his plans. He couldn’t concentrate. His eyes kept straying to the woman bent over across the room. She moved a chair to beneath a shelf. He put down his pencil and watched as she stood on the chair and reached up to grab a small trinket off the shelf. She was crazy. Utterly and totally adorable, but crazy.
As he stared at her, it gave way. He was moving even before it registered what happened. “Damn it, woman! What in the blue blazes were you doing? You could have killed yourself. I would have gotten that for you if you had asked. Don’t ever do that again. Promise me. You just took ten years off my life with that stunt.” Words came in a rush as Lucien tried to slow his heart that, to him, sounded like war drums.
Now that she was in his arms, though, he didn’t wish to let her go. Seeing her fall toward the fire was too hard on the slim control on his nerves.
“Why didn’t you ask me to get that for you? That chair was not meant to be stood on.” His voice, once again calm, belied his true terror.
“I am not used to having someone here with me. I had hoped that the chair would hold.” Ciara wasn’t fighting to be let down.
His voice, deepened by desire, asked, “What was it you were getting from the shelf?”
She blinked like an owl, staring at him until he tapped her cheek with a finger. Then he repeated the question.
Lucien smiled as he saw what her reaction to him was. No matter how cool, calm and collected she appeared on the outside, he rattled her. He had to repeat his question twice before she answered him.
“The…the box. The carved one. Please.”
Seconds after he stepped away from her, Lucien felt empty. He took down the carved box and handed it to her. He observed her in silence as she sat on his pallet and ran her fingers in a loving manner over the box.
Ciara held the carved box in her hands. It was made of maple and, on the top, her name was carved into the wood.
On two of the sides, opposite ones, were a string of Celtic knots that led up to the top. The other two sides had African designs leading up. She ran her fingers over the knots and pressed a hidden button. The lid flicked open.
The gold and gems that were there were ignored. She instead looked to the underside of the lid where her father had engraved a saying for her.
Our dearest daughter,
We were blessed the day you came into our lives
This is your legacy. You are our legacy.
No matter what, we are proud of you.
We love you.
Lucien glanced over her shoulder. His jaw almost dropped as he saw the gold and gems inside the box. When he read the saying, he sat down beside her and took the box away from her and pulled her into his arms.
When she was settled on his lap, he just held her. He was not sure how to offer support but what he was doing seemed to be working. He rubbed a hand in circular motions on her back as her body shuddered with silent sobs.
They sat like that for a bit. Lucien froze when Faolan jumped up onto the bed and settled himself by them. The wolf did nothing more than nose Ciara and lie next to Lucien’s leg. Kosse, after a struggle, pulled himself up and was on the other side of Lucien.
What a picture they made. An English marquess holding an American colonial flanked by a black wolf on one side and a mountain lion kitten on the other.
A sense of security flowed into Lucien as time passed. When he realized that she no longer sobbed, he leaned her back and looked down at her. She met his gaze and he saw the unshed tears.
“I am sorry. I take it down only once a year. Will you put it back up there please?”
“Sure.” He wanted to ask her about the money and gems but now wasn’t the time.
Ciara got off his lap and the pallet. As the lid closed, she whispered, “Goodbye, Papa. Goodbye, Momma. I love you.” She caressed the lid as he took the box from her.
* * * *
It was late when Lucien took his attention from the papers. He was done. He had come up with a plan for how he wished his stables to look and the training area. Excited, he glanced around for Ciara. She wasn’t there. He banked the fire.
He saw Kosse come out of her room and when he looked outside he realized just how late it was. Damn, he had wanted to share this with her. He still did. His foot tapped the floor and he acted before he could realize that what he was about to do was dumb.
Lucien entered her room, held the lantern up and watched her sleep. She looked peaceful. She lay on her stomach, head under a pillow, one brown hand tangled in Faolan’s coat. The wolf looked at him and bared his teeth.
“Just go away. I am not going to hurt her. Can’t you see that?” Great, now he was talking to a wolf. If his jaw hadn’t been attached, it would have hit the floor when Faolan rose and left the bed, to curl up away from them.
“Ciara. Ciara, wake up.” More than a bit unsure of whether to touch her based on what happened last time, he spoke a little louder. “Ciara. Wake up.”
“What is it? Is something wrong?” Her voice, heavy with sleep, came from the pillow.
“No. I finished. I want you to see. I’m done.”
She pushed up from the bed. Ciara rolled over. Lucien gaped at the vision before him. Delectable. Her hair was free and looked rumpled. She looked as if she had just been pleasured, and pleasured well.
His groin hardened. Her tongue slipped out to wet her lips. He groaned. Lucien inhaled as he watched her nightgown slide off to bear one shoulder to his lecherous gaze. Her skin shone like bronze silk in the muted light from the lantern.
She patted the bed. “Let’s see them. Come sit. It’s cold out there and I am not getting out of bed.”
He moved to join her, once the light was set on a table beside the bed. It was difficult to swallow when she flipped back the blankets for him to get under them with her. He slid in to be immediately surrounded by her scent of honey—how she got that he had no idea—and a faint smell of drying herbs.
She took the papers from him and spread them out in front of them. As if it were nothing to have him in her bed. Their hips were flush and their legs were pressed against each other. It was not a huge bed.
Lucien’s vision swam as he pictured making slow love to her in this bed. The sight of her naked body as it was exposed to his gaze. The feel of her skin on his. He blinked a few times to clear his mind as soon as he realized that she had spoken to him.
“What? Can you say that again? I didn’t catch it.”
“I said, I thought they were good. Very good.” She gathered them up into a pile as she spoke. She set them on the table on her side of the bed and snuggled down into the quilts.
“That’s it? Nothing more to say about them? What are you doing?”
“It’s the middle of the night. I am going back to sleep.” She snuggled up against him and he thought he heard her say, “So warm. This is nice.”
Why not? He blew out the lantern and as he slid down next to her, he half expected her to demand that he leave her bed at once. Nothing. Well, not nothing. She curled up even more and flopped over onto her stomach. She put one leg over his and placed her hand on his chest, over his heart. It was like they had been sleeping together for years.
The last thing she said was “Faolan.” The wolf bounded up on the bed and curled up next to her. Kosse, the cat scrambled to get up as well. Before long it was quiet except for her soft breaths into his neck.
It was going to be a long night.
They slept in. Ciara awoke first. Her hand was still on his chest and her leg was, well, it was up against something rigid. Waking had never been so nice. She felt the chill in the cabin, and as she moved out of his embrace he groaned and tightened his grip.
Ciara wished she could stay there but she slid out of his arms and made sure he stayed covered by the quilts before she headed for the fire. She fed it and let the animals out as she heated a bunch of water.
She slipped on his coat and boots before going out onto the porch to drag in the tub. She set it close to the fire so it would warm. With Faolan and Kosse outside still, she snuck back to her room and found some clean buckskins. She brought them, along with a drying cloth and her honey and berry soap, out to a chair by the tub.
Once all was ready, she sank into the hot water. She groaned in ecstasy as she let the water ease her stiffness away. She washed her hair then, as she rose out of the tub, she heard, “Oh my god.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lucien awoke alone. It took him a minute to place where he was. The room was very colorful, he was in her bedroom, and it suited her. She was gone, the animals were gone, and he was alone. He was hard. He willed himself under control and slipped from the bed to head for the main part of the cabin.
What he saw when he got there nothing in all of his twenty-six years could have prepared him for. He had seen naked women plenty. Not like this. Not even close. Even the famed statue of Aphrodite rising from the foam had nothing on the vision before him.
She remained motionless in the tub at the same time as water ran down her body. The light from the fire transformed the water on her skin to diamonds and topaz. Her hair was down the middle of her back and ended at the curve of her waist.
Her breasts were full and high. Her stomach flat, muscular. Her legs were toned and firm. He ogled at flawlessness. “Oh my god.” The groan slipped past his lips.
Ciara turned at his voice. Before she could say or do anything, he strode across the cabin. Lucien plucked her out of the tub as if she weighed no more than a feather. Compared to him, she didn’t.
He set her down in front of the fire and picked up the drying cloth. He looked at her, asking the unspoken question. Could he dry her off?
She smiled shyly at him, which gave him the answer he wanted, craved. He worked at a snail’s pace as though to savor every moment. He started at her neck. When the skin was dry, he flicked his tongue in the spots of the water droplets. He stroked down each arm, as he followed the towel with his lips.
“Gorgeous.” He placed little kisses along her belly. Her body shuddered.
He dried off her legs, lifted each foot and kissed the instep on both. When she was dry, she was still shivering. He didn’t believe it was from cold. It had come time for him to make good on his promise. He swept her up in his arms and laid her on the pallet.
“You are so beautiful.” He moved up and inhaled her clean scent. He skimmed his hands along her body, making it tremble where he touched. “So wild, so untamed.”
He ran his calloused hand over her breast and swallowed her gasp as he plundered her mouth with his. Her nipple hardened in his palm. Her reaction was like a jolt to his system.
She arched her back to press herself more and more into him. He lay over her, dressed. Ciara inched her hands under his shirt.
“Off. Take it off, I want to feel you.”
He didn’t know he could get any harder. Lucien reared up and ripped off the shirt, not caring where it landed. “I always thought you were beautiful, even when I first brought you here bleeding. These scars only add to it. You are beautiful.” Her words made him feel like the only man in the world.
He kissed her quiet. She pulled on the waistband of his pants. Her meaning was clear. He shucked off the rest of his clothes. Within seconds he stood before her completely naked and watched her reaction.
Lust. Raw hunger filled her gaze, as she looked him over.
“I want you.”
Those three words hit him and he almost jumped on her right there.
“Slowly. We need to go slow.” Lucien prayed he had the control to go slow.
“No.” She looked up at him. “Now. I have dreamed about this since you arrived.”
“My god, woman,” he groaned as he fell on top of her. His hands were everywhere. They touched. They caressed. He slipped one hand between her legs and dipped his finger, one long finger, between her sable curls.
She was right, she was ready. She was wet. So wet. He almost spilled himself right there. Lucien moved over her and put the tip of his cock at the juncture of her thighs.
Ciara spread wider to accommodate him and she whimpered when he just ran the head along her slit. She raised her legs and wrapped them around his hips.
“God, that’s right, wrap them around my waist, princess.”
Lucien didn’t want to hurt her. Didn’t want to appear like a rutting bastard, but he had just about lost control. Her musky scent filled his nostrils, making him want to plunge deep within her and claim her as his own.
In the end, Ciara made the decision for him. Her legs, strengthened by years of traversing throughout the mountains, yanked him toward her. He slammed inside her to the hilt.
Both of them groaned at the sensation. In the back of his mind, Lucien realized there was no barrier that he broke through. It didn’t matter. She was tight, so tight. She fit him like a velvet glove. She caressed him.
Lucien lost control. Primal feelings, the likes of which he had never felt before, dominated his slim hold on his restraint. With a low growl that would have done Faolan proud, he pounded into her like a man obsessed.
She met each one of his thrusts with undulations of her hips, drawing him in deeper, farther, harder and faster into her soul. Lucien felt her body tighten so he slipped his hand between them and rubbed her core. Her back arched as she let loose a cry of uncontrolled and unrehearsed feeling as her lithe body shook with the aftershocks of her ardent release.
