Free Unwanted by Kerrigan Byrne

eyes to the child latched at her breast.  
    She understood that if one dared to gaze at the sun, they were eventually struck blind.   And yet, the urge often proved overwhelming, such was the alluring beauty of the golden radiance in the sky.  
    Finn’s physical magnificence was equally awe inspiring, but likely held just as grave a risk.
    A part of her still denied that anyone so flawless had wanted her.   Touched her.  
    Been inside her.  
    Warmth that had nothing to do with the glow of the fire spread through her limbs and she smiled down into the sweet face of the babe.   Tiny, feather-fine lashes rested on cheeks that needed to plump.   His pulls on her breast dwindled to intermittent as he drifted into slumber, but she couldn’t seem to put him down.   Instead, she caressed his unruly patches of downy black hair and savored the bittersweet ache in her womb.  
    “I just can’t believe someone would abandon such a precious bundle to the brutal winter,” she murmured.  
    “How do you know he was left?”
    “There’s a convent to the south and east of here on Campbell land.   It is well known that Christian women from all over Scotland go there and pay to give birth to unwanted children.”   Rhona shivered.   “It is whispered that many of the children meet such a fate, if their parents cannot pay for other arrangements.   A babe is left in the snow, as it is mostly painless to freeze to death.”
    Finn grunted and spat into the flames.  
    “ ’Tis what I think of the practice as well.”   She pulled the lad free and situated the furs around her to cover her nakedness.   Leaning over to gingerly rearrange the makeshift cradle on the floor, she wondered what would become of the bairn .   Would the barbarian take him back with him to the North?   Did he expect her to care for him indefinitely?   He must know that this was no place to bring up a small child.  
    She looked up again at Finn, who watched her with a new intensity.   This time, a bleak desolation marred the sharp, strong angles of his face.  
    There it was.   His flaw.   An impenetrable casing of ice protecting a yawning abyss of pain.     Somehow it shone for a moment through a chink in the frigid armor.    
    He unfolded to his full height, and even still, her insides trembled, and she had to clench her thighs together.
    He was not of this world, certainly.   Bestowed by an ancient Deity with a cruel and feral beauty meant to tempt and destroy.   Firelight licked his skin, inviting her to do the same.   It cast shadows into the deep grooves between his thick, corded muscles.   It burnished his flesh and hair with such a pure gold that he seemed to glow with some kind of divine light.
    He truly was an angel.   Sent to consecrate her body and redeem her soul from the depths of her own personal hell.  
    Rhona’s mouth flooded with moisture and she swallowed convulsively.   A renewed rush of liquid desire drenched her loins.  
    Finn’s nostrils flared and a growl escaped his clenched teeth, but he remained motionless, eyes filled with a primal need and something else that broke her heart.  
    Rhona lifted herself to her knees, dropping the furs behind her.   She couldn’t tell if it was the warmth from the flames or the heat in his possessive stare that singed her naked skin.  
    Maneuvering to the edge of the bed, she knelt before him, her eyes never wavering from the dangerous, emerald intensity of his gaze.    
    “Come to me,” she beckoned.   She knew what this moist, needy emptiness was now.   And that only he could fill it.  
    He stepped to her, hands clenched into tight fists at his side.
    As Rhona reached for the hastily strung laces of his trews , she vowed that though she’d promised herself to him for the night, this satisfaction belonged to her.   She wanted to explore his body as he’d done with hers.   To taste him.   To watch and feel the effects of the pleasure she was about to give.