Return of the Danu Read online

  She did not hear him join her sometime later, but she felt him, even as deep into the magic as she had sunk, something inside herself opened and untwisted at his presence. And she sighed without opening her eyes. Ansgar had joined her in the water with nothing more than a ruffle of sound as he removed his weapons and leathers, and a ripple of water as he stepped down into the water beside her.

  She did not open her eyes when she spoke, content and finally able to relax with him near. “Satisfied there is nothing of danger here now that you have patrolled the place so thoroughly?”

  “Satisfied would not be the word I would use at the moment, but I vow both of us will feel it by morning light.”

  At the growl of his provocative words her eyes flew open to meet his, and whatever serenity she had found was gone in an instant. Instead an altogether different surge of power flashed between them, as if the power of the wilds were suddenly made flesh between them, and Elena gasped as her back bowed with the shock of it. Then a hard naked arm caught her around the waist and she was suddenly pressed skin to skin to Ansgar the Bloody and that power surged even hotter. Then, before she could protest that it was too much, his lips crushed down over hers and it was too late for words.

  ***

  The night was quiet. The peace of the valley unbroken and unmarred but for the whisper of skin on skin and the soft gasps of pleasure coming from Elena’s softly parted lips.

  Ansgar pulled her deeper into his arms, hard hot warrior to soft naked woman. The slap of the water against the stone lip of the hot spring a prelude to more intimate sounds to come. And with any other woman he would have simply sunk into that pleasure and enjoyed having a wet willing woman in his arms. But it was not just any woman in his arms. For the first time in his life no other woman would do. Unlike anything he had ever felt, Elena belonged there in his arms, and he finally understood what made his brother give up everything to follow a Danu witch into the wilds.

  He was not sure if it was the magic of the wild he could feel thrumming through his blood. Or just the magic of Elena but it connected them, wrapping around them and through them with each touch of skin to skin and lip to lip. He felt the magic binding them, so it was nearly impossible to tell where one of them ended and the other began. It should have made him angry, suspicious as he was of magic and what it could do, but this was Elena, and he would welcome anything that bound her closer to him, even wild magic.

  She wrapped those soft nimble thighs across his back and groaned into his mouth, surrendering to his touch and gasping into his mouth at the feel of his hand traveling from her waist to her breast. Ansgar vowed that it would be the witch who was snared this time, since the warrior could not afford to be. He would give her so much pleasure she would follow him to the ends of the Southern lands if need be. He would accept this magic wrapping like vines around them, because it was Elena, and he would face more than wild magic to keep her. One thing he would not do, ever, was let her go.

  Elena pressed into all that hard body and gasped as he claimed every inch of her like the marauding barbarian he was. She buried her hands in his hair and wrapped her legs around all those warrior muscles and hung on. With his hands busy learning every inch of her body and his mouth staking claim to hers there was nothing else she could do but feel all of it. If she had been thinking more clearly, she might have questioned the magic that surrounded and bound them, but thinking was beyond her the moment his skin touched hers. And with all that heat pressed against all of her she was quite simply lost.

  There was a moment when she could have stopped it. A moment when the barbarian had pressed her back over the wild grasses beside the spring and licked every inch of her, steam rising above and around them, magic like a scent on the wind. A moment when he rested between her thighs and took her face between his hands and made her meet his eyes. His blazing like molten sapphires even in the moonlight.

  “Accept me,” he said tightening his grip when her eyes would have slipped closed at the feel of his hardness where she wanted it most. “Accept me Elena, tell me you are mine.” It was not even remotely a question, his voice so hard and growly. His jaw tight with the strain of holding himself back from her.

  Elena felt a clearing of her thoughts, just enough that she could be amused by his question formed, in his barbarian way, as an order.

  “Are you asking, barbarian or telling?” It might have even sounded like the challenge she tried to make it, if her voice had not been so breathy and her body had not sought to move closer to his while she spoke.

  At the feel of her hips moving against his, or her words, she did not know, but he gritted his teeth so hard she was sure he was going to grind them down. His hips pushed hers down so that she was nearly crushed under his weight, but the hard length of him was not where she needed it. Even then, still it was pleasure enough to be both a warning and a promise.

  She gasped and tried to throw her head back only to find that she could not even move that much. She opened her eyes and glared at him. She knew from the way the shadows played across his face that her eyes had flashed to Danu Green. “Are you really wanting to talk right now warrior?”

  “One word witch and I will give you what we both need,” he growled, nipping at her bottom lip so that it stung and then flared with heat. “But I will not claim you and tomorrow have you say it was this wild magic that made you want me. I will have your surrender in words before I take what is mine. Because mark this witch,” he said. His eyes shot sapphire sparks, like flint scraping against the iron will that blazed behind it. His growly lips rubbing over hers and then trailed heat up her cheek to nip at her ears. Right before his tongue swiped wet heat over the firing nerves there. “I will claim all of you, and what I claim, I keep.”

  Elena opened her mouth to say she was not a village he was conquering or a battle to be fought, but his lips came back down on hers and took the denial he must have seen in her eyes before she could utter it.

  It was Elena’s turn to growl and bite. And when he yanked his bleeding lip from hers and pulled his head back and away, she glared magic at the big barbarian. “You continue to underestimate me general. Have I not yet proven that I am neither meek nor mild to be led about by your will alone?”

  Ansgar narrowed those warrior eyes and gave her a smile that showed a lot of teeth. “Then give me your answer freely witch, as I lie between thighs slick with your need of me. Deny me after I have tasted of your flesh and even now feel your dainty claws in my back pulling me closer.”

  Elena narrowed her own eyes and would have hissed at the arrogant bastard but for one fact. He was right. From the second he had kissed her she had accepted him with her whole body and every bit of her mind. Even the magic wrapping around them was reacting to her emotions. Her need to claim and be claimed by the brash warrior known as Ansgar the Bloody trumped everything else.

  The future and the past held no sway here, because he was right. At this moment she was his and he was hers. To deny it was beyond her abilities when she needed him inside her, wrapped around her, above her, more than she had ever needed anything in her life. And he felt the same, she knew, witch, enemy and all. He wanted her, Elena of the Danu. Something in the future might and probably would change between them when loyalties and duty came between them, but he was right. She could not deny him, or herself, this night.

  She sucked in a deep breath and spoke giving them what they needed. “I accept you Ansgar the Bloody. For this night and for as long as we travel in the same direction, I am yours and you are mine.

  He looked like he would have argued with her, but she saw the moment when his anger at her limitations for them turned to sly acceptance and then to pure heat. “So be it witch, for as long as we travel in the same direction.”

  Then he pulled his hips back, found the center of all that wet heat with that thrusting hardness and plunged inside her. The hard hot length of him claiming every inch of the hot core of her, then pulling back and plunging forward again, claiming
everything else.

  There was a bite of pain that Elena easily ignored as she finally understood what it meant to be claimed completely by a barbarian. She reveled in it as more than one kind of magic built between them. Binding them closer and closer until with a final thrust the magic and pleasure building burst showering them in both, and it was only when she felt that final lock snap closed as the magic bound them together so closely she could feel his emotions that she realized more than what she had intended had happened here.

  Somehow, someway Ansgar the Bloody and Elena of the Danu had formed a weave between them. Not like what she could still feel between her and the wild weave that still looped her to the sustaining power of the Green, but something else, something not as tangible, but somehow enduring just the same.

  She very nearly panicked at the idea that she had somehow trapped him with her magickly, but he surprised her. He rolled to his back taking her with him so that she sprawled across that massive warrior chest and laughed. She rose up, giving him wide eyes as she considered he must not feel what she was feeling if he was laughing. Then he pulled her down and wrapped hard arms around her holding her close and in a hug that she would not easily escape from.

  “I think my lady witch that now there will never be a time when we are not traveling in the same direction.” And he sounded both arrogantly pleased and smug at the same time. It shocked her so much she just gaped at him until she could finally speak.

  “You understand that somehow the magic here has bound us together? That somehow you and I are magically connected?”

  “I feel it well enough,” he said as soon as he was done laughing. He pulled her up his chest until he could reach her lips and then he kissed her again. Even if she could not feel his arrogant satisfaction and proprietary feelings towards her through the new bond, she would have felt it in that kiss.

  She slapped a hand down on his chest and forced herself up, so she could glare down at him. “I have trapped you with my magic, you should be furious, how can you be so…” she had to bite out the last word. “Smug?”

  He grinned a big barbarian grin at her and she did not know if she wanted to smack him or kiss him again. “Because, my lady witch, the magic has trapped you to me just as tightly. Which is good since I was going to keep you anyway.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him further and would have taken exception to that arrogant statement but something else came out first. “Why are you suddenly calling me your lady witch?”

  Ansgar the Bloody smiled his marauder smile and then a moment later she was flat on her back and he was leaning over her. His eyes locked on hers, his mouth close enough to touch. She gasped at the feel of him already hard and hot against the soft skin of her thigh.

  “Because Elena of the Danu,” He pushed his way between her thighs and moved down her body enough that his face was directly over the quivering mounds of her breasts when he finished. “You are not yet ready for me to call you my lady wife, and I do not have the wedding cuff to make it official in any case. So My lady witch will have to do.” Then he looked down at the bounty spread under him and growled his last words. “For now.”

  Before she could protest either his words or that look of pure possessive intent in his eyes, his mouth dropped to her breast and he took the hard tip inside the fiery heat of his mouth and sucked. Elena threw her head back and gasped, trying to get closer to that well of sucking heat. Even as she tried to hold onto the splintering thoughts in her head.

  “You might…” she forced out in gasping breaths around the pleasure that had immediately started to build between them again. “Not be…so smug…when you find out…” she meant to finish telling him he would not always get his way but by then he had moved from her breasts to lower things, and she could no longer form the words.

  It seemed the barbarian was as good at these kind of battles as he was every other kind she had seen him wage. And right now she could not even force herself to feign regret about it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ansgar would have worried about the silence he was getting from his lady witch if he did not know exactly how confused and conflicted she was. She wanted him, that much they had proven deep into the night and again in the hot spring this morning. So, he knew it was not that she regretted their mating or wished to escape him. The rest he was certain would take care of itself.

  Something interesting did happen when she called her wild horse to her side. He felt her use her magic, even though he could not see her doing anything at all. He did not hear the conversation she seemed to have with the beast when the horse joined her, but he knew they were having one. Interesting, he thought. Wondering if the pull of his mate and the feeling of her magic would grow or lessen with time. He liked that she would be able to keep no secrets from him, but it did give him a moments pang to realize he was truly bound by some magic he could not understand.

  She looked over at him just then before looking away and mounting her horse. She had seen something of his emotions that made her sad. He felt that well enough and walked over to lay his hand along her leg. Her horse was big enough that even with his great height he had to look up a bit to catch her eyes. She gave him nothing but cool politeness, but it was wasted on him now. He could feel how churned up and confused she really was. He smiled, and her eyes narrowed on him just enough to be a warning.

  “You could set the horse free and ride with me,” he suggested knowing she would refuse, and knowing she expected him to insist when she did.

  “I prefer my own mount,” she said simply but with clear challenge. She did not want a fight, he understood that, but she would give him one if he pushed.

  He liked to think he was a better strategist than that. He ran his hand up her leg incapable of not touching her when she was that close, but he let her go as soon as he saw the way her breath picked up at the casual touch. “Very well my lady witch, lead the way to this farm land you propose for the new city and we shall follow.” He would give her the space she seemed to need on the ride to inspect the proposed land they would see this day. But if she tried to keep that distance once night fell, she was going to find he was not called conqueror for nothing.

  He turned to find his horse directly at his back. It did not occur to him to wonder at the beast following him around until Beck made a comment.

  “I swear that horse acts more like a loyal hound than a war horse born of the wild these days.”

  Ansgar had already mounted, but at the words something occurred to him and he looked to his witch with a raised eye brow. She gave him a dubious stare and snorted. “Don’t look at me barbarian, you are the one who bonded with a Frendi.” She suddenly stopped, and he could see her mind whirling with some new possibility that had occurred to her.

  “You have thought of something?” he asked. Seeing for himself the emotions crossing her face and feeling them even more clearly. “What is it?”

  She looked from him to the two warriors waiting patiently on their mounts behind him. Then her eyes met his and he could feel her sudden caution. “Perhaps we should discuss this on the journey?” she asked quietly. “The proposed land is not far but I would like to show you it and the seashore you hope to garrison today as well. That will cut our daylight hours close.”

  He almost insisted she tell him what thoughts she held back, but her logic was sound, and he had a feeling she did not want to have this discussion with his men listening in. He could have assured her they were completely loyal but instead he motioned her forward. “Then lead the way my lady witch and we will see what these wilds of yours have to offer.”

  Being so far North had its advantages when one was traveling with a Danu, especially a Danu who communed with the wild beasts. While they would occasionally hear howls and noises of other creatures, they never ventured close. He knew it was Elena keeping them away from what would usually be considered more along the lines of a traveling feast in these wild parts of the deep Green, if he did not have the proof of her magic sh
iny from her glowing Danu Green eyes, he would have felt it regardless, from their new bond.

  Knowing when she was throwing out her powers was an intriguing experience. The frequency of it made him aware or just how precarious their situation would have been without a Danu along with them to warn away predators. Occasionally they would catch a glimpse of something watching them from the Green. They were left in no doubt that even with their swords they would have difficulty defeating these beasts. Armor plated scales and razor fangs only a few of the changes the magic of the wilds had worked to fortify its defenses after the fires.

  Since he knew she was busy magically protecting them through what he was fast coming to appreciate as impassable to any but a Danu, he was left to wonder at her thoughts before they started the trek. It was as the sun rose to prominence in the sky that he could feel a lessening Elena’s magic frequency that he understood they had passed through the worst of it.

  Even the plants around them started to look less sparse and a tension he was unaware of seemed to leave the group, as if they could all feel that they were leaving behind the most dangerous area.

  Elena confirmed that a little while later when she relaxed enough to smile at him. “We have left behind the deep Green.”

  “Then you can finally tell me what it was that you thought of as we were leaving.”

  She did not appreciate his persistence he knew but she sighed and answered him anyway. “I just wondered if the bond you had with your Frendi horse made it possible for you to enter other weaves, the way you did with me last night.”

  “Is it so important how the bond happened?” he asked mildly enough. “Whatever the reason behind it, you cannot deny it is there.”