Free Under an Enchantment: A Novella by Anne Stuart Page B

well.

Chapter 5
     
    She looked like a ghost. A wraith, in her white nightrail with the mist surrounding her, kneeling in the center of the stone ring. Her breast was soft beneath his hand, but the tip hardened against his palm, and her blue eyes clouded in wonder and a longing that he’d have to be mad to deny.
    Perhaps he was mad, as mad as she was, to be kneeling in the soft grass in the midst of a faerie ring, ready to take a lass who ought to be left in peace. He couldn’t tell himself it was revenge, or anger, or anything but a longing for her, stronger than the rage and grief that had filled him, stronger than his failed mission.
    He wasn’t going to avenge his mother. He wasn’t going to punish Torquil Spens and his cohorts. He was going to make love to the girl kneeling in front of him, and he was going to remember her every day of his life.
    If he had any decency at all, he’d let her be. But right then he was a stranger to decency, to honor. He lifted his hands and threaded them through her thick fall of golden hair, pushing it away from her face, telling himself he’d kiss her, just kiss her, and then he’d send her away. But her mouth was so sweet beneath his, as her body swayed against him, and he could feel the softness of her breasts against his open shirt, and he wanted to feel the warmth of her flesh against his, skin to skin, heat to heat.
    Her lips were soft. It didn’t take much pressure to make her open her mouth, and he used his tongue, shocking her. He didn’t want to think about who had kissed her before. Who had been the first to take her body. All he could think about was how much he wanted her, needed her. Needed to lie with her in the grass with the sweet scent of crushed heather beneath them.
    He took her hand in his, drawing it down his body, placing it on him, half hoping he’d shock her into running away. Instead she touched him with delicacy and wonder, her fingertips tracing his swollen length until he had to bite back a groan of need that threatened to shake him apart. He forced himself to endure the pleasure of it, until he could stand no more, pulling her hand away.
    “ Don’t,” he said in a harsh voice.
    “ You started it,” she said simply, looking up at him. “Ach, you make me crazy, selkie. Do you want me or no? I thought you’d come to the island to father a bairn. You’re not going about it very effectively.”
    God, he wanted to smile at her. “I thought you were already crazy, Ailie. To be kneeling in the moonlight with a man you think is half seal isn’t the wisest act.”
    She smiled then, and he was the one who was bewitched. “There’s a difference between wisdom and sanity. I believe what I wish to believe, I’m just as daft as I care to be. Until you came along. You upset me, selkie. Confuse me. I don’t know what I want from you.”
    “ Don’t you?”
    She shook back her hair. “Yes, I do,” she said suddenly. “I want to run away with you. Live in the clouds, live in the sea, I don’t care where. I want to lie with you and give you bairns, I want to walk barefoot with you and sing songs and dance. I want a man who’s as mad as I am, who’ll never make me be what he expects but only what I am.”
    “ And you think I’m that man?”
    She shook her head, and her expression was wry. “I think you’re here for cruel reasons, selkie. And I think I’m not wise enough to care. All I know is I want you to put your hands on me, and let the devil take the consequences.”He stared at her, telling himself he was a bastard in deed as well as name if he took her. Knowing that there was no longer any question of “if.”
    He rose to his feet then, with one fluid movement, and he took her with him. Without a word he pulled her, away from the stone circle, into the scrubby forest, back the way he’d come. She followed behind him, her hand secured in his, barefoot, silent, and graceful, along the woodland path that led to the north end of the