Page 101 of Shadow Spell

“I’ve ways around that. He doesn’t have what I have, or only a whisper of it. What Eamon has as well, and he’d love to drain the boy of his power, take it for his own.”

Idly, he stroked her hair, loose from its braid. Despite all, he found himself oddly content to just be with her, bodies warm and close, voices hushed in the dark.

“He bothered us so little before Iona came. With Fin he’s been relentless since the day the mark burned into Fin’s shoulder.”

“He never speaks of it, our Fin, or rarely.”

“To me he does,” Connor told her, “and sometimes to Boyle. But no, even then it’s rare. Things changed all around when Cabhan’s mark came on him. And changed all around again when Iona came. He pushed at her those weeks, as she was not only a woman but so new and inexperienced, just learning all she had in her and how to use it. He thought her weak as well.”

“She proved him wrong.”

“As you have more than once already.” He kissed her forehead, her temple. “But he won’t stop trying. Harming you harms us all. That he can see well enough, even if he can’t understand it, as he’s never loved in the whole of his existence. How is it, do you think, to exist for so long, so many lifetimes, and never know love, giving it, being given it?”

“People live without it—or do for one lifetime—and don’t torment and kill.”

“I’m not meaning it as an excuse.” Now he propped up on his elbow to look down at her. “He can bespell a woman and take her body, and her power if she has it. Lusting without love—without any love for anything or anyone—that’s the dark. Those who go through their time with only that? I think they must be sad creatures, or evil ones. It’s the heart that gets us through the hard times, and gives us joy.”

“Branna says your power comes through your heart.” Lightly, Meara traced a cross on it.

“That’s her thinking, and it’s true enough. I couldn’t be if I couldn’t feel. He feels. Lust and rage and greed, with nothing to lighten it. Taking what we are won’t be enough. It will never be enough. He wants us to know the dark he knows, to suffer in it.”

It made her want to shudder, so she stiffened herself against it. “You found that in his mind?”

“Some of it. Some I can just see. And for a moment tonight, I knew what he felt—and it was a kind of terrible joy that he would take you from me, from us. From yourself.”

“You were inside me—in my head. He never called my name, not this time, but you did. I heard you call my name, and I stopped for just an instant. I felt like I stood on the edge of something, pulled in both directions. Then I was under you on the floor, so I don’t know which way I’d have gone.”

“I know, and not only because there’s no weakness in you. Because of this.” He lowered his head, met her lips lightly, lightly with his. “Because it’s more than lust.”

Nerves rose, a shiver of wings in her belly. “Connor—”

“It’s more,” he whispered, and took her mouth.

Soft, so soft and tender, his lips coaxing hers to give, seducing degree by aching degree. If his power came from the heart, he used it now, saturating her in pure feeling.

She would have said no—no, it wasn’t the way for her, couldn’t be the way. But he was already gliding her along on the sweet, onto the shimmer, into the shine.

His hands, light as air, skimmed over her, and even with such a delicate touch kindled heat.

Quiet, so quiet and stirring, his words asking her to believe what she never had. To trust what she both feared and denied.

In love, its simplicity, its potency. Its permanence.

Not for her. No, not for her—she thought it, but drifted on its silky clouds. What he gave, what he brought, what he promised, was irresistible.

For a moment, for a night, she gave herself to it. Gave herself to him.

So he took, but gently, and gave more in return.

He’d known, in the instant she’d stood between Cabhan’s dark and his light, he’d known the full truth of love. He’d understood it came weighted with fear, and with risks. He’d known he might be lost in the maze of it, accepted he would work through its shadows, draw on its light and live his life riding its ups, its downs, its stretches of smooth, its sudden bumps.

With her.

A lifetime of friendship hadn’t prepared him for this change, this tidal shift from easy love to what he felt for her.

The one. The only. And this he would cherish.

He didn’t ask for the words back—they would come. But for now her yielding was enough. Those breathy sighs, the tremors, the thick, unsteady beat of her heart.

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