A Storm of Passion (18 page)

“With you? Nay, Moira. I will never tire of you, as long as you give yourself to me willingly. I will not force you to come to me or use false reasons between us.”

She kissed him gently on his mouth, and he winced as his torn lip pulled. “I will not force you either, Connor,” she said, making light of his injuries in a way he knew she did not feel.

She led him to the bed and helped him undress. They spent the night comforting each other, and by the time the dawn’s light crept into his room, she admitted that she would mourn his loss. But every time he tried to speak of his love, she stopped him.

“After Samhain, we will speak on such matters.”

“After Samhain then,” he said, knowing for certain that he would not be there to tell her.

The next days passed both too slowly and too quickly for them. Diarmid brought his guests to meet Connor, encouraging this one or that one as the one to choose. Connor flexed his powers over those days, testing them, using them in small ways, and then deciding who would receive the last vision.

He kept Breac busy, and began moving things from his chambers back to the farm where Dara and Pol could use them. His strongbox held gold accumulated over the years, and he divided it so that both Moira and those dependent on the farm would be cared for.

Moira watched in silence, seeing more than he wanted her to, but never saying a word about the things he did. The day before Samhain, he brought out the map he’d found to show her where her village had been and how to return to that area. Such sadness filled her eyes that he rolled the parchment back up and put it away.

They spent what time they could together, and each time they joined, Moira seemed a bit more frantic, as though realizing their time was coming to an end. She would not allow him his words of love, and when he asked if she could receive his last vision, to give her peace about the past, she became so upset that he had to swear not to do so.

It mattered not, for he had already made his decision; he only waited for the rise of the moon, just after midnight on Samhain to carry out his plans.

The irony struck him again when he realized that as his powers were ending, he’d learned more about using them since meeting her than he had since they began more than six years ago. And if not for Moira forcing him to see the reality of his life, the misuse of his gift, and his need to make reparations, he would have never even tried.

The night before Samhain, when Diarmid brought the last few men to meet him, the unexpected happened, and he was able to “see” some parts of Diarmid that he’d never known before: the most important thing he learned was that not only was Diarmid aware of Steinar’s plans and his shadowy manipulations, but he was pulling the strings to bring Steinar down.

And he enjoyed informing Steinar of that when he came to remind Connor of his demand. Word would spread by dawn that Steinar had broken with his half brother and had been exiled from Mull and the surrounding isles.

Finally, midnight approached, and everything that could be done had been put in place. Now, there was nothing left to do but wait for it all to play out to its conclusion.

S
he woke to discover him sitting by the hearth, staring off at nothing. Climbing from the bed, she realized that midnight had passed and it was Samhain, the day when the veil between the Sith world and the mortal world was at its thinnest and the Sith were able to walk the earth.

“Sleep, love,” he said softly, and she felt compelled to do just that, in spite of her curiosity about what he was doing and her fear that something was about to happen. Sleep dragged her away, and when next she opened her eyes, the faint light of dawn pierced through the darkness and through the open window high in the wall.

“Connor,” she whispered. “Are you here?”

He walked around the screen and stood by the bed. Something was different about him. Something was dangerous about him. His eyes had changed somehow, but it was the look within those eyes that took her breath away.

“Aye, love,” he said, climbing onto the bed and peeling the bedclothes back to expose her naked body to his sight. “I am here.”

The first touch of his strong hands encircling her made her shiver in anticipation of what was to come. She moved closer and opened her legs to let him in. With little prelude, for her body had prepared for him at the sound of his voice, he filled her emptiness with his flesh. Spreading her legs, she urged him in deeper and felt his hardness touch her womb and swell, filling her to her core and taking her breath away.

He did not move, but only remained there, while he kissed her mouth gently, tasting her and stroking her with his tongue until she ached for more. He took her mouth and then began to take her body for his own. Slowly, so slowly she nearly screamed out a protest, he slid back until she felt the emptiness, and then he filled her at such a pace that she nearly impaled herself on him.

“Hush now, Moira,” he whispered as he slid in to fill her once more. Then, leaning back on his heels, he lifted her until she rested on his thighs. She only realized how this position opened her more fully to his touch when he slipped one finger into her cleft and touched the sensitive spot there even while his manhood filled her channel. She arched against it, swelling and throbbing until she could feel the tension pulling her from inside. And, damn him, he stopped moving his finger and only held it there as her body pulsed around it. Her release was close, but he did not allow it yet.

She closed her eyes, enjoying every touch, every stroke, every caress as he bent forward and teased her with his mouth and his tongue and his hands. He brought her close to release two—nay three—more times before he called her name and met her gaze with those eyes that spoke of something more than human within him. Staring into hers, he moved closer and thrust deeper and deeper still until she moaned out her pleasure at the cascade of sensations moving through her body. From inside her core, through her hips, through her womb, to her heart, she ached for him, and she began to match his movements so that they moved together toward that moment when she could let go of restraint and revel at his flesh possessing her.

Then her breath caught in her chest, her body surrendered to his, and she lost everything of herself as somehow they merged and melted into one being.

No longer a quest and a searcher.

No longer a seer and an enemy.

No longer man and woman, Connor and Moira.

Just one body that breathed together and one soul that began and ended in each of them.

She wrapped her arms around him and held on as he thrust himself into her flesh and spilled his seed there. Wave after wave of pleasure and heat shot through her as her body shuddered around his, spasming on and on around him until she drew out the last drop of his release.

Moira collapsed in his arms, overwhelmed by the connection she’d felt between them in that moment and unable to understand how it could be that way between them. Connor kissed her mouth so softly it made her cry when he lifted away from her.

“I love you, Moira,” he said, putting his finger across her lips. “Deny me not the chance to say that to you.”

Her heart filled in that moment, but she could not find the words to say what she found there. The tears flowed freely now as he slid from her body and climbed off the bed.

“Come to me, my Moira,” he said, as he walked away from the bed.

Confused, she slid off the bed, wiping her eyes so she could she her path around the bed and then around the screen. He sat in his chair now, but it was somehow not Connor there—it was someone more than Connor. He had become the Seer right before her eyes.

His release still pulsed through his body, and he could feel some part of her remaining in his heart and his soul. They had touched just then. They had joined more than just their fleshly bodies in that moment of ecstasy and passion. Their souls had touched. Their hearts had touched.

Somehow her need for justice still burned deep within her, for he could feel her soul cry out for it even now. It gave him the strength to give her that one thing she would never ask for herself: a vision to see the truth of her family’s destruction.

He knew that she would never heal and never be free of the past until she knew all that had happened, and now, as his last vision, he would try to give her what she needed so that she could move on with her life after he was gone.

He would give her the truth.

She watched him as he held out his hand to her, and he thought she might refuse to take it, but she moved ever closer until she stood before him, much as she had the first time he’d joined with her. She leaned over and put her hand in his, and he closed his fingers around hers, holding her and willing the power to flow, instead of waiting for it to happen.

The shock of it took his breath away, and he heard her gasp as she felt it, too. It moved like fire through his body and into hers, filling her blood as it filled his. Soon he could hear her thoughts and see her memories. He’d never moved back through time before, but it was necessary to show her the truth.

“Take me back, Moira,” he ordered. “Take us back and show me how it was then.”

He, they, watched a scene unfold before his eyes: the days and years peeled away, and the Moira who held his hand was only a girl now. The brightness of the day was so strong it hurt his eyes, but it was her voice that he heard as she called out to her family.

“That is Eibhlin, my sister, carrying the bucket from the well. Look! My brothers, Cailean and Dòmhnall, are chasing her now!”

The girl, younger than Moira, had long blond hair that curled around her bright face. The boys, twins, had the darker coloring of eyes and hair, but the shape of the chins and noses bespoke their relationship. The children passed by her, and she laughed out at their antics.

Moira turned around and watched them run to the cottage on the lane where they lived. She followed, as did he, and she opened the door on an argument between her parents. Shaking her head, she pulled the door closed. He could feel her discomfort over witnessing the exchange, and her hand grew cold in his as he heard the angry voices spilling out.

“Moira lass, come with me,” he told the child, and then he leaned back and brought them both high into the sky soaring over the village below. She laughed in childlike joy as he moved them through the air faster and faster until the winds pushed against them and the sun warmed them. The Quinag hills separated their village from the higher mountains, and from their place high above he could see the whole of the peninsula where their town lay. Connor turned in one direction and then another looking, searching for something, until he saw a group of men approaching from the east.

“Connor…I cannot do this…” she stuttered.

She said his name in her own voice, and he felt the fear within her growing.

“Be strong, my Moira,” he said. “You need to find the truth. Hold me tight, and all will be well.”

Some of this was familiar to him from the time he called it forth for Skuli, but Moira and her siblings had not been part of that vision. Now he remembered seeing only her father’s role, which he knew she would see next.

They slowed then, and Connor brought them to stand just outside the group of men, some Norse from the look and sound of them and others from Diarmid’s lands. Seumas, son of Neacail and Moira’s father, of Quinag, stood arguing with the man called Skuli of Caithness.

“You betrayed me, Seumas. If you wanted out of our deal, you could have walked away with nothing more than some gold lost. Instead you sold your honor behind my back. Did my brother pay you more?”

“Your brother is the rightful earl; you should honor his claim to Orkney,” Seumas said, but Skuli cut off his words.

“My claim is stronger and has been upheld by the King of the Scots, and you swore you would fight at my side if the king named me earl here.” Skuli drew his sword and held it out in front of him. “You sold your honor and your word to my brother. Your honor is broken, your word no good. All in Caithness and Orkney will know you cannot be trusted.”

Skuli lifted his sword and would have cut off Seumas’s head had not Seumas called out an offer of gold. “Your brother’s gold is in the village. If you let me leave here alive, I will tell you where I have hidden it.”

Moira shook as she watched her father betray himself and their family, selling his honor for gold and their lives for his. “No, Papa,” she cried. “No.”

Connor lifted them up and away, and they could see the Norsemen heading for their village and hear the screams. They flew then, moving over and ahead until they could see the men catch up with her father and take their vengeance out on him, leaving him hanging from a tree as a sign to others of the cost of treachery.

Now, he felt Moira fall into his arms, and he brought her back the way they’d come, through the years and months and days and hours until she was once again the woman he loved. She sobbed in his embrace for a long time; the terrible truth that her own father had brought death to her family and village would be hard to accept. He watched as she stood and stepped away from him and as the brightness in the chambers began to fade.

“That was some trick—that could not be the truth!” she cried out. “Did you make me see that believing that I would accept it and condemn my father instead of you?”

“I wanted you to see the truth, so that you can have peace and live your own life now,” he said, every word he spoke draining him of energy. “You deserved to know.”

“I told you I did not need to see it,” she pulled away and shook her head. “I did not want to cause your…” Now a look of terror entered her eyes, and he knew she was seeing his end.

“Connor, do not leave me,” she screamed. “Connor…”

The room faded, and he felt a coldness pierce his eyes now, draining his sight even as the power seeped away, draining his life. He tried to reach out to her, but his heart slowed and slowed until he felt the last beat.

And then nothing more.

He’d sworn not to do this, and now his death was on her soul after all. He’d sworn to fight the last vision, to try to prolong the power until he could learn more about it. And in the end, he’d called down the vision for her to seek the truth she needed.

Connor was dead.

She fell on the cold floor in front of him and wretched uncontrollably. He could not be dead. He could not be. She’d wanted his death for so long, but not like this. Not now, not now that she’d accepted his love. Not before she could tell him…

She looked at him, his body reclining in the damn chair of his visions as though relaxing, much like the first time she’d joined with him, here, in this room and in that chair. She shook her head, not believing it.

He was right. He was right. His last vision would bring his death, and he’d called it forth for her.

Why?

Why?

So he could make her believe something he suspected? He showed her a scene that could not have happened the way they saw it from above. She’d felt younger when she took his hand and heard him speak in that voice. The one he used during his visions, when someone else sat in his place and spoke his words.

What could she do now? She looked down and realized she was naked. Running to the bed, she found her shift and pulled it and her gown on quickly.

He could not be dead.

He could not be.

She needed help. Wanting only to shake him until he woke, she felt her heart pounding in her chest and tried to think of the right thing to do.

Moira ran to the door and told the guard to find Breac. Then she went back and placed her hand on his chest. His chest did not rise, and no heart beat beneath her palm now.

But, his face looked at peace. For the first time since she’d met him that small furrow did not form between his brows. She touched his mouth and felt the heat of his body changing to cold.

She slid to the floor, grasping his hand, and she sobbed.

Minutes later, or longer she knew not, Breac entered and stood over her.

“He is dead, Breac,” she said, wiping the tears with the back of her hand. “He called the vision, and it killed him, as he thought it would.”

Breac did not seem surprised by what he found. Without a word, he moved around the chamber, gathering clothing and other things.

“Breac, he is dead,” she repeated.

“I know, Moira,” he answered, coming to stand behind her. “He told me to tell you farewell.”

She turned to look at him, but he placed his arm around her shoulders and held her chin in his hand. Then, he leaned her head back, and before she could do anything to stop him, Breac poured some foul brew in her mouth, pinching her nose until she swallowed it down.

The room spun and grew dark, and she stumbled back against him.

“Breac?”

Connor had promised not to turn her over to Diarmid if he died. Was this his way of taking her with him in death? Moira forced her eyes to open and took one more look at Connor. Somehow she knew it would be the last one.

The darkness swelled then, and she fell away from it all.