Egan dismissed her with a slight wave, but he continued to absorb the warmth of the fire and mull over her prophecies. Albyn was desperate to glimpse the future, while Oriana was loath to admit she possessed such a wondrous gift.
The possibility they might make a perfect pair haunted him, but rather than forcing Albyn to stay with him as Oriana had feared, he thought his old friend would be better off gone. They would not be the first friends to part over a beautiful woman, but the possibility weighed heavily on his heart.
Finally he rose, stretched lazily, and removed his tunic. Oriana was asleep on the far edge of the bed, but as he slipped under the furs, he kept well away from her. He propped his head on his hands, stared up at the darkened ceiling, and wished he were again sleeping beneath a canopy of stars.
His muscles ached with fatigue, but he could not rest with Oriana so temptingly close, and he swiftly began to hate the night and its endless silences. The deathly quiet brought thoughts of his father, and he wanted to scream with rage, but he had been raised to conceal his pain no matter how terrible the hurt.
Torn by an agonizing mixture of grief and desire, he got up to tend the fire, and when he returned to bed, he found Oriana watching him. He had never had a more lovely woman in his bed, nor shared it with one who had regarded him with such an insulting detachment.
“You can’t sleep either?” he asked.
“No, I have just been worrying. I should have been mindful of your grief and not spoken so crossly to you,” she murmured.
Her hair pooled over the furs and the lush pelts’ deep colors warmed her fair skin. He could not help but find her alluring, but there was no hint of welcoming desire in her glance. His only comfort was that she had shown a similar lack of interest in Albyn.
“When we agree on nothing, disputes are bound to occur,” he conceded generously.
“There is one thing,” Oriana reminded him. “You would not have sought me out had you not already believed you were in some terrible danger. I once inquired as to your own instincts. I now believe they’re very good.”
“If this is another argument in favor of your immediate departure, I would rather sleep than hear it.” Egan promptly turned his back to her and snuggled down under the furs, but he could still smell her delicious lavender scent and feel her slight weight on the bed. That he had so recently sworn never to want her struck him as demented now. Want her he did, and very badly.
Unaware of Egan’s torment, Oriana rested her hand lightly upon his bare shoulder. “I wish you would listen rather than discount my opinions before I voice them.”
What Egan wished was to ravish her until dawn, and he raised up as he rolled over to face her. “If you wish to become the cherished bride of some magnificent god, you’ll hush and not touch me again.”
Oriana’s eyes widened in surprise. Egan was blocking the firelight, and it gave his silhouette a golden glow. “What has the one thing to do with the other?”
Believing no woman could possibly be that innocent, Egan replied with a primitive growl, and with astonishing ease moved to pin her beneath him. He placed his hands firmly on her shoulders, nuzzled the smooth softness of her throat, then framed her face with his hands and kissed her tenderly.
“You warned the day would come when I would want you,” he murmured against her ear.
Dazed, it took Oriana a moment to catch her breath. “Oh, aye, now I understand,” she was barely able to whisper.
She knew him to be an agile warrior but had not known he could move as quickly as he had just now. Only a thin linen shift separated his bare chest from her curiously aching breasts, and she had only to turn her head slightly to kiss his shoulder.
She closed her eyes for a moment, but that only intensified the exquisite sensations created by the weight of Egan’s body. Surprisingly, she welcomed the burden until he rolled his hips to stroke the fierceness of his desire against her cleft.
Once Oriana was of a marriageable age, her mother had described the joys of making love. Now Egan seemed intent upon providing an affectionate demonstration, and rather than refusing, she longed to slide her tongue along his bare shoulder. She would not stop there either.
In the next instant, she felt herself falling as if from a great height and reacted with a startled jerk. “I’ll not touch you again,” she vowed through teeth clamped in anger. “Now get off me and go to sleep.”
Egan raised up only slightly. Her voice had changed so abruptly from sweet to furious that he could only wonder what she would demand next. “Are you certain that’s what you truly want?” He grazed his thumb along her jaw as he awaited her reply.
Oriana nearly choked on tears. “Truly.”
The catch in her voice shamed him as nothing else would. “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he swore, and sorry he had made such a clumsy mess of things, he instantly moved aside, then slid his arm under her shoulders to pull her close and cradle her head against his chest.
“Just go to sleep, and we’ll sort out everything in the morning,” he urged.
After a brief hesitation, Oriana relaxed against him. As she saw it, there was nothing to be sorted; she was born to be a bride in the Otherworld, not his mistress in this one. Surely it was Lugh himself who had grabbed hold and yanked her to her senses just now, but it would take a long while to recover from the frightening sensation.
She listened as Egan’s breathing slowed into slumber’s easy rhythm, but she did not sleep until exhaustion overcame her defenses. When she awakened the next morning, Egan was gone. Her head and soul ached, and the day promised to bring nothing but sorrow.
Egan rode Raven for the hunt, and Albyn chose a gray gelding he had admired in the stable. The pair took three plump pheasants in what had swiftly become a contest as to who was the better archer. Egan had killed two of the delicious fowl, but Albyn’s aim had proven truer on the third.
Several of the young men who served as guards at the fortress gate had accompanied them, but they dismounted and kept to themselves when Egan and Albyn stopped to rest beneath an ancient oak.
Egan covered a wide yawn and stretched out on his back in the shade. “Give me but a moment to rest, and I’ll find us a stag.”