Warrior's Moon

Chapter 20

Intimacy between mates will not always result in babes, but it should always result in a stronger mating bond.

—ANCIENT CELI DI

The wounds from earlier were nothing more than pink lines on Caelis’s flesh.

Shona stared at him in wonder. “You are healed.”

“It is the conriocht. When I shift into or out of that form, my body heals.”

“But not when you shift into your wolf?”

“Nay. ’Tis part of the gifts for the protectors of our people.”

“I am glad.” She worried less, knowing he had this amazing ability to heal from injuries. “Does it work even for grievous damage?”

“I dinna ken.” He prowled toward the bed, his wolf’s grace very much in evidence.

“Eadan said he will be conriocht one day.”

“’Tis a gift to look forward to.”

She nodded, the wonders of his Chrechte life paling in the face of the desire that had been burning between them all this time. Through every emotion laden word of their conversation, the physical need between them had not waned.

“I want you,” she told him with no shame.

“You will have me, now and forever,” he promised.

In light of what he had said, his vow took on deeper significance. And put her own strictures in question.

What had she wanted from him? To be able to trust. Somehow, in the past minutes as he’d made promises she needed to hear but had not asked for, he’d given her that.

Or perhaps it had been that terrible power of an incredible love at work, but she no longer doubted her place in her mate’s life.

He might not love her as she loved him, but he cared and he needed and he would protect her with his very life.

He would put the secrets of his people at risk for her and that was more significant than any mundane quest she assigned him to prove what he had already established.

His attention never straying from her, Caelis grabbed the fur he’d dropped earlier and laid it out on the bed, shifting her so she was on top of it.

Soft against her skin and thick, it gave additional cushion under her, but she got the feeling that his actions were not about comfort. There was special significance to this fur for him.

She did not ask. There were issues of greater import to address.

“I will marry you,” she told him. “I would like Audrey and Vegar’s marriage to receive the priest’s blessing along with ours.”

He stilled in his movements, his expression arrested. “I thought—”

“I did too…that you coming with me to Balmoral Island was necessary. It is not.”

“It isn’t?” Caelis sounded punch-drunk.

She shook her head. “I thought I needed you to prove something to me, to make reparations for the past.”

“But you do not feel that way any longer?”

“No. Your actions may have precipitated my parents’ loss of affection for me, but so did my own. Mostly, though, their actions were their responsibility. We cannot undo the past, nor would I. One thing I have learned is the capacity of my own strength, and that is a good thing.”

“Aye.”

“I love you, Caelis, Chrechte protector. My protector.”

“Mate. Mo toilichte. Mine.” His mouth came down on hers with a hunger that overshadowed anything that had come before.

She returned the kiss, pouring her love into and releasing the pain of the past through it.

Their tongues dueled while lips ate at each other and his naked body pressed against hers, the heat passing between them as if the fine lawn of her shift was not even there.

He pulled back, moving to kiss her all over her face, along her temple and down her neck. The entire time, he whispered words against her skin.

It was only as he caressed the sensitive skin behind her ear with his lips that she understood the words he was saying. “Thank you. Always mine. My gift. Thank you.”

The words and the fervent feeling behind them brought moisture to her eyes and a lump of deep emotion to clog her throat. She blinked away the incipient tears and swallowed her emotion, too happy with his response to let anything mar the moment.

Even her own ecstatic feelings.

* * *

Caelis brushed Shona’s shift up her legs, baring her alabaster skin to his gaze. The curve of her legs invited his touch, and the shadow at the apex of her thighs barely covered by the thin material drew his gaze and his hunger.

Hunger built to rapacious need by her words. She had promised to wed him, given him the gift of her love when he’d been sure that would never be on offer again.

The fact that she was so certain his own feelings did not match hers was not a conclusion he could gainsay. His actions had spoken too loudly for mere words to convince her otherwise.

“You are so beautiful,” he breathed.

She laughed softly, shaking her head in denial. “I am but a woman with all the marks to my body giving birth twice has left behind.”

He knew what she meant. The fine lines where her body had stretched to accommodate her womb swollen with child, the way her heavy breasts hung more like tantalizing pendulums than ripe apples.

No, she no longer had the body of an untouched girl with only eighteen summers, but that did not detract from her beauty to him. In fact, the marks time and circumstance had left behind only intrigued him and reminded him that he made love to a woman, not a girl.

A woman who should be proud of the loveliness gifted her, in all its forms. “They are the scars of battle you should wear with the same pride I wear my own.”

She laughed, the sound dark. “That is a unique take on my imperfections. The baron could not stand to see them.”

“Idiot.” He’d hated the thought of her being happy with someone else, but had discovered that he despised the truth she’d been unhappy even more.

Caelis would help rid her of those memories, starting now.

He laid his hands over her thighs, brushing his thumbs along the inside and upward toward the red curls peeking from where he’d pushed up the hem of her shift.

Shona shivered, goose bumps of pleasure forming on the skin beneath his touch. “How can such a simple touch evoke so deep a pleasure in me?”

“We are meant for each other.”

“The mating bond.”

“’Tis not the only thing between us.” She had to at least believe that.

She might well deny his love, but she must believe he had feelings for her beyond his wolf being inexorably connected to her.

She did not gainsay him and the soft expression in her beautiful emerald eyes gave no indication she wanted to, either.