wish to show ye,” he said and pulled her away by the hand.
“Where are we going?” she asked on a melody of laughter.
“Ye shall see.” He hurried with her back to the middle manor house and pulled her to the stairs.
She let him lead her forward. Her feet felt as if they weren’t touching the ground. If she had wings, she would have taken off.
They ran up the stairs and through a small hall to a door. Galeren opened it, letting sunlight spill into the hall in golden rays. Some of them fell over him.
The bright doorway led outside to the wooden walkways high above the ground.
“Come.” He held out his hand and Silene thought he looked like an angel, ethereal and beautiful, illuminated in the shafts of light.
She took his hand and stepped out into the full sunlight.
They were about twenty feet up, above the world. She looked to her left and saw the forest colored in greens and golds and oranges.
“This way.” He pulled her along in a quarter of a circle. Then entered the tower of the next house and came out over the forest and the village. They met some of his kin on the way around, including Elysande.
When Silene looked out at the view, she gasped at its beauty. “Oh, Galeren, ’tis breathtaking.”
“As ye are, my love,” he told her, stirring her blood with the huskiness of his voice. He took her hand and drew her closer.
Her heart soared. She could not wait to be his wife. She put her arms around his neck and laughed, feeling Daffodil there. He kissed her laughter from her mouth and closed his arms around her.
He swept her away on waves of pleasure and desire. Her body longed for more of him, and thoughts of his sleek, hard body made her want to touch him.
He broke their kiss to kiss his way to her ear. His strained breath fell hot and scintillating against her lobe. “Ye make me feel feral,” he told her thickly.
“Are you trying to frighten me? Because you are not.” She smiled when he closed his teeth around the pulse at her throat. He didn’t hurt her. He held her close and she gasped at the hardness between his legs. He felt as if he were made of iron. “How will it…”
“It gets even harder,” he told her against her ear. “Like a rod and I put it inside ye. Here.” He pressed himself between her legs.
She realized she knew nothing about living a fleshly life. She swallowed.
“Dinna be afraid. I will be considerate of ye.”
She smiled at him, not caring if her face was aflame. “Thank you, and I am not afraid. I will be with you, so I have nothing to fear.”
She watched him smile from the moment it began in his deep green eyes. She could feel his happiness, almost like a tangible thing. Her words pleased him.
“Three more days. Will ye wait?”
“Aye,” she told him. “I will wait.”
She looked out over the hills and clung to him, and he to her.
“Why did you vow six years?” she asked. “How old were you?”
“Ten and eight.”
“Oh. Was it difficult?”
“Some days were more difficult than others,” he admitted.
She appreciated his honesty. “But six years?”
“I had to break its hold on me. I had become consumed with it. I didna want any master but one. I knew that if I vowed somethin’ to Him, I would keep it. So, I made my promise fer six years.”
She remembered to breathe. “I’m thankful the time is almost over.”
His dimple reappeared while his gaze hardened. “As am I.”
“We can do this.”
He raised an eyebrow. “We? D’ye find it difficult as well?”
“Difficult not to be your wife, to lay in your bed and share myself with you, to wake up every day knowing I get to spend it with you? Aye. I find it difficult, indeed.”
He began to pull her back, but she pushed away—out of his reach. He took a step forward.
In this moment, he did indeed appear feral, like a bird of prey swooping down on her.
She held her neck where he bit her and something below her belly flipped and spread pleasure throughout her body.
“We must part,” she told him. “Or we will—”
He nodded, his brows dipping lower and casting shadows on his eyes.
She slipped through the door and then fell against it and bit her lip until it bled.
She didn’t understand these feelings plaguing her. She felt warm and raw. Even the wind outside pained her.