He glanced over her. “Your womanly power fully realized.”
She flashed her eyes at him. “You set me afire, Lennox, and all of this only makes me wilder.”
He nodded, stroked her hair back from her face, and then he rolled her over onto her back and pulled free, so that he could kiss her properly.
On her back on the mossy ground, her hair spilled free and it looked like a shaft of sunshine across the forest greenery, just as she brought sunshine to him.
The bower they sheltered in was redolent with fecundity.
Under him, his woman was passion personified.
Lennox groaned against her throat, kissing her there.
He felt magic surging within him, the most powerful ritual of all, because they were so intimately connected. The life force that surrounded them was palpable in the air. Drawing on it, he whispered in the Pictish tongue, requesting that she would be as richly fertile with nature’s magic as was this precious haven.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tamhas Keavey watched his cousin heading toward the stables from his window. Dawn had scarcely broken and yet there Chloris was, fully dressed and hastening along the path to the stables as if she had an urgent appointment to attend.
Tamhas frowned. She would rather be out riding than anything else, it seemed.
It occurred to him that he should perhaps accompany her on one of these early rides of hers. If the morning air benefited her as much as she said it did, she might be in a more pliable state when he next invited her to share a carnal tryst.
The foolish woman ought to look kindly on his offer. Her husband had begun to refer to her as if she was an embarrassment. It would be her good fortune if she fell pregnant by another lover, giving Gavin Meldrum the heir he wished for.
Tamhas stepped closer to the windowpanes, his breath clouding the glass.
As a younger man he had been quite smitten with Chloris. She had acted like a nun, though, rejecting his advances. He remembered it well. So many evenings spent together while she would read and sew, and he would sit and lust after her, imagining her undressed with her legs spread. How pale she was back then, and how he would have enjoyed putting a flush on her cheeks. It would have been so easy to slip into bed with her, but she denied him.
When he’d suggested marriage to expedite the matter, she’d refused him. He had pursued necessary fornication elsewhere, but even after all these years Tamhas found he still had a hankering need to possess the thing that he had lusted after as a youth, even if only for a short while.
The best he could do for her when she refused him was to marry her off and get a good arrangement out of it, but now she was back and in his house and he wanted her again. How enjoyable it would be to see her on her back for him, at last.
He pictured it, and found it most pleasing.
When her fleeting figure disappeared into the stable, Tamhas returned to his bed, vowing to rise earlier one morning and join her.
* * *
The sky was streaked with pink and amber light when Lennox left Somerled to meet Chloris that morning. He urged his horse to a gallop. Shadow had fast learned the routine and huffed on the morning air, relishing the journey as much as his master relished the woman who waited at the end.
Lennox dismounted and let Shadow roam free to graze while he strode to the edge of the forest and stared out across the land for sight of her. When her figure appeared on the ridge and she waved his way, relief poured through him. He steadied himself with one hand against a nearby tree trunk, biding his time, but he could not resist stepping out to meet her when she closed on him.
She looked tousled, as if she had rushed to dress. That made him want to undress her all the more. He wanted to see her completely naked in his arms, so that he might picture her that way when they were apart. He captured her in his embrace, teasing her with hungry kisses on her neck and bosom.
“Lennox, you are wilder than ever.”
“That is what you have done to me.”
The sound of her laughter made him so happy. He took her hand and led her to their favorite spot.
“It is so beautiful here,” she said.
“It is, but especially so when you are in it.”
She looked at him as if she thought he were teasing her, but he meant it. “You have become the forest queen.”
“I am not one of your witches, Lennox.”