His eyes flutter open, and he looks at me.
“Say that again.”
I swallow and repeat the line from Macbeth, “Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”
“What is it?” he whispers.
“Shakespeare.”
“Motherfucker.”
I laugh out loud at his reaction, but he isn’t laughing, he’s dragging my panties down my legs and pulling them off my feet, his gaze fixed on mine. He stands and begins to remove his own clothing. There are specks of blood on his shirt, and a long, angry red scrape along his neck.
“Oh, Keenan,” I say, sitting up. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine, lass,” he says. “Hush, now.”
He shrugs out of his shirt and undresses unhurriedly. I swallow when I note how hard he is, as if he’s been waiting for this, as if he’s been waiting for me. I have to be honest. I’m nervous about this, too.
But Keenan will be my husband. And he promised he’d take the very best care of me he can. That matters. I repeat the words he vowed to me, “As mine, I’ll take care of your every need.”
I wonder if it’s odd, that he’s about to take me as his own for the very first time after what he’s done today. But I have no social cues or expectations to reference what we’re doing, what we’re planning to do. This is who he is, and though it might fly in the face of what’s proper, I wouldn’t know. So I accept him, just as he is. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my limited view of life, from what I’ve learned in the pages of my books, it’s that we need to love each other just as we are, without question or conditions. Just as they are.
I’ll do my very best to do that. To love him as he comes to me. To love what he has to offer me. To be the woman he’ll love back.
His clothes fall to the floor in a jumbled, forgotten heap, and he stands before me naked. Unblinking. His eyes focused on me as if I’m a puzzle he’s trying to sort, and I notice for the first time since I met him, his hands are trembling.
I open my mouth to ask him if he’s okay, if he’s sure he doesn’t need to see a doctor or something, when he puts his finger to his lips to remind me of what he said. A thin sliver of moonlight illuminates his beautiful green eyes, as bright as the depths of the Irish Sea, as he begins to walk toward me.
This is it. Tonight is the night he takes me as his own, and I don’t need anyone to explain to me what that means.
“Keenan,” I whisper, lacing my fingers together to keep my hands from shaking.
“Yes, lovely?” He kneels on one knee beside me and strokes his fingers through my hair.
I swallow hard. I like that. Lovely.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Leaning down, he laces his fingers at the back of my head and brings my ear to his mouth, the heat and vibration of his voice making me shiver. “Exactly what I tell you.”
I close my eyes and nod. He kisses the shell of my ear, and I gasp when his tongue skirts the outer edge. He grasps my earlobe between his teeth and bites, the sharp pain quickly melding into trembling, expectant heat that suffuses my limbs.
Pressing one hand to my shoulder, he lays me down. My arms encircle his neck while he kisses his way down my jaw, fluttering, sensual caresses of his lips against my naked skin, down the column of my neck, then back up to my jaw on the other side.
“Tá mo chroí istigh ionat.”
I love the sound of the ancient words, though I’ve no idea what they mean. I want to ask him what he said, what this means, but he’s asked me to be quiet. I hold the words in my heart. Maybe I don’t need to know what they mean. But he doesn’t make me wait.
“Do you know any Gaelic at all, lass?”
I shake my head, running my fingers through his hair, and keen with pleasure when he kisses the valley between my breasts.
“My heart is in you. It means my heart is in you.”
I close my eyes, overcome with emotion.
My heart is in you.
“That’s beautiful,” I whisper, but his finger comes to my lips to silence me.
“You’re beautiful,” he counters, framing my body with his and returning to my breasts. He drags his warm, soft lips under first one breast then the other, before his tongue laves my hardened nipple. I stifle a moan. It feels so good, the heat between my leg intensifies, the pounding need for pressure overtaking me, and it’s like he knows this, the way he cups my backside and presses me to his hard length.