King's Warrior (Renegade Lords)

A shimmery ceiling stretched overhead, narrowing to a V high above, cathedral-like, which was entirely fitting, for when he thrust the torch into a knot in the stone walls, the walls glittered and shimmered all the way up to its towering height as if laid with tiny bit of stained class.

Her body, bare and curving, slipped into the water, first a pointed toe, then the other foot, then her calves and thighs, then she bent her knees and her rounded bottom slid beneath the surface of the water, and notwithstanding all the reasons he had to be too exhausted to be aroused, he was aroused.

He pushed to his feet and stripped the tunic from his body.

She leaned back against the walls of the little pool and sighed a long, innocently seductive sigh, her breasts slipping in and out of the water as it bobbed around her. Her hair floated all around her.

She tipped her head back and looked at him, then held up an arm. “Come,” she commanded.

He stripped off his mail shirt.

They heard the sound from the main chamber of the cave at the same moment: the scrape of a boot on stone.

Tadhg spun, his hand thrust out, silently cautioning Maggie to be still, then swept up his sword belt and moved into the cave. Then he let out a breath and dropped back, his heart hammering.

“Rowan, Christ alive, you’ll be the death of me.”

“Aye, if I can, I will,” he retorted, then straightened and clapped Tadhg on the shoulder. He hesitated for half a second, then pulled him forward for an embrace.

Tadhg returned it. Rowan stepped back and cleared his throat, looking around. “Haven’t been here for years,” he muttered.

Tadhg turned with him. “Nor have I.”

An understatement of epic proportions.

He heard more steps, then Fáelán himself ducked into the chamber. He came and stood beside them, nodded to Tadhg wordlessly and turned, equally wordless, and tracked his fingers along the wall for a few steps, just as Maggie had done. Then his knees bent, and he knelt in the sand.

He’d found their old etching.

Rowan crossed the sand too, his boots making no noise, and stood behind him, then he too dropped to his knees. Their bright torches burned in white-hot gusts of sea air. It was a chapel for a moment, for outlaws.

Then they got to their feet and turned to him, as if nothing had happened.

“Just wanted to make sure you made it here alive,” Fáelán said. “Wouldn’t want all our efforts to go to waste.”

Tadhg smiled.

“You made it out all right then?”

“Because of you, aye. Your horse is up there, you can have her back.”

Fáe nodded absently. His gaze strayed to the back of the cave. “Where is your woman?”

“In the spring.”

He nodded and for a moment, they stood in a companionable silence, Fáelán leaning against the black rock, Rowan walking the walls, occasionally mentioning an etching he saw, recalled from their youth.

“I see there’s no…” Tadhg swept his hand out. “No chests, no barrel, no bundles, no booty.”

“That is so,” Fáe said with a nod.

“Decided we’d leave the cove to its natural unsullied state,” Rowan put in, and Tadhg felt a jab of guilt.

“You are not sullied.”

Fáe pursed his lips and shrugged.

“Och, we’re a bit sullied,’ Rowan said. He and Tadhg smiled at each other.