The Irish Warrior

She tried to sound as much like Finian as possible, the rocking cadence of his speech, the slow, seductive dropping off of the sharp-pointed ends of words, as if he couldn’t be bothered to stab so at a thought.

The soldiers gaped. Finian adapted immediately. He put his palm lightly but possessively around the back of her head, exerting the slightest pressure downward, bringing her lips just slightly closer to what was now, partially, an erection. He was obviously familiar with the move. A fiery rush shot through her body, down to her womb.

The young soldiers turned their gapes to Finian, then burst out laughing, smacking each other on the arms, as if they’d accomplished something great and worthy. All pretense of being on opposing sides fell away in the face of getting a woman to suck their—.

Holding her stiff smile, Senna said through unmoving lips, “You may attack them now.”

Finian didn’t remove his gaze either. “Shall I? And yet, we like traveling together.”

“Let’s try this, then.” She lifted her voice. “Have a good day, lads,” she sang out, lifting one hand to wave. “I know we will.”

Finian yanked his paddle up and the boat began slipping downstream. One of the soldiers stepped forward, a concerned look on his face. He raised a hand, half roused from his voyeuristic stupor.

Again, it was the whisky that gave her the idea. She was quite certain this time.

She bent her head and brushed her lips over Finian’s erection.

The soldiers’ jaws dropped, then they exploded into whoops and hollers, jumping up and down like they were standing on a beehive. Nothing about Finian changed, except that his hand tightened almost imperceptibly around the back of her head.

The river sluiced away beneath the boat, but Senna, to her own dim surprise, did not move. The bottom of the boat was hard and wet, with a rib bone-like wooden beam jutting into her as she knelt between Finian’s legs. But she didn’t feel a thing.

All she was aware of was Finian’s hard thighs beneath her arms, the heat of him engulfing her chin and cheeks, the hot sun on the top of her head, and the powerful rising up of his chest. His was looking down, his face shadowed, his dark eyes unreadable but watching her. And his hand was still on the back of her head.

She must never drink whisky again.

“I’m feeling reckless,” she murmured. Reckless indeed. She felt like she was flying.

“That is a very bad idea,” Finian replied tightly.

He took a moment to say it, trying to compose himself, but every moment of looking at her unraveled him further. Her hair was still damp, tangled and drying in small, dangling curls, like a rainstorm of burnished amber gemstones beside her face. Her lips were plump and wet, and her mischievous eyes worried him. He removed his hand.

“A very bad idea,” he said again.

“But there it is,” she replied. Was that a smile underlying her words? Was the clerical virgin from the English Midlands teasing him?

No, he thought gloomily. The sharp-witted goddess who’d freed him from prison was teasing him.

“Don’t, Senna,” he said in a warning tone.

“But…why not?”

“Ye’re playing with fire.”

“Maybe I want to play with fire.”

“Then ye’ll get burned.”

“What if I kissed you?” she asked in that low, sultry voice.

As far as he could tell, Senna was no maven. She did not use her body for much beyond getting her quill-holding fingers from one contract to another. Surely, she did not negotiate with it. When she spoke in this husky-throated manner, she was probably just being innocently aroused, and discreet.

It sounded like she was sending him sex on her tongue.

“If ye kissed me, Senna,” he ground out, “I’d lay ye out on the grass and have ye howling to the sky, if all the soldiers in Ireland were riding for us.”

She blinked. Her mouth rounded into an ‘O.’ Then she said it. “Oh.” She sat back at the other end of the boat.

“Are ye still feeling reckless?” he asked with grim satisfaction.