Lord of the Dark (4 page)

Safely inside behind the cascade, she dried herself and slipped on the kirtle. It fitted her as if it had been made to order. Then arranging the rest of the towels to cushion her on the floor, she curled up in the warm, fragrant womb of her waterfall lover and drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.

T
he storm raged on all day before the wind finally died, and it was on the verge of a spent and breathless twilight that Gideon returned to the cave exhausted. He and the other guardians had done what they always do in such emergencies. They’d worked tirelessly to carry the stranded to safety, rescue those who could be saved, and reverence the dead consigned to the deep on their passage to the afterlife.

Gideon felt not a little responsible for the many ships the sirens’ songs had run aground. If he hadn’t been responsible for Muriel’s rage, the casualties might have been lighter. Would there be no end to the burdens weighing upon his soul? Would he never cease causing them? If he hadn’t in all the eons he’d been thus cursed, it didn’t bode well.

Standing on the threshold, he examined the double teakwood doors. He distinctly remembered leaving them ajar when he went to the strand to assess the storm. He’d worried about that. Could the wind have closed them? Not likely. Maybe he was mistaken. Maybe he’d closed them after all. He’d been out of sorts over the incident with Muriel at the time. He entered with a shrug. He was alone on the Dark Isle. It must have been the wind.

The moment he crossed the threshold and closed the doors behind him, Gideon felt a tremor in the atmosphere. Something was…different…out of balance. Both his sensory and extrasensory perceptions flagged caution, yet everything seemed as it should be, as he prowled through the chambers. The musical sound of the waterfall called to him, and he followed it to the pool. The rippling breast of the water looked inviting. It beckoned like sultry black satin in the misty semidarkness, but he was too exhausted to take up the invitation. Exhaustion always heightened arousal, and he was too tormented to go through that again now.

Something under his feet nearly tripped him up as he was turning to go. Bending, he snatched up what looked like a pile of rags. At closer inspection, he saw that it was some sort of women’s shift. Giving a start, Gideon glanced about but saw nothing. His night vision was infallible, still he strode back through the corridor and snatched the torch from its bracket. Holding it high, he returned to the pool, his narrowed eyes snapping around the perimeter. Nothing untoward met them, only the waterfall, and the pool of satiny black water, with steam from the mineral spring ghosting over the surface.

Gideon raised the torn garment to his nose and breathed in deeply. It smelled of sweet clover, and he stood for a long moment, staring into the pool, as if he expected its owner to rise up out of the water. But she did not, and he strode back the way he’d come, taking the shift with him.

Storming into one chamber after another, he searched every one and found them empty. But someone
had
been there—a woman. He wasn’t alone on the island. He
had
left the door ajar, and she must have entered. But who was she? Where did she come from, and where was she now? Could she be a refugee from the storm? She must be.

Bolting out into the bleak semidarkness, Gideon took flight. There wasn’t much shelter aside from the cave on the Dark Isle. Nothing but rubble too shallow to conceal anyone remained of his original keep after the watchers demolished it eons ago. The petrified forest that hemmed the strand offered the only place someone might hide, and he made a pass over it heading for the strand, for he had decided to start from there.

The black volcanic sand at the water’s edge was littered with wreckage, none of it human, though he flew the length of it and back before combing the forest itself. But there was no sign that anyone had been there. The evening tide had come in and foreshortened the beach, obliterating any footprints that might have been amongst the assorted debris.

It was full dark when he abandoned the search. Nothing living moved on the Isle of Darkness. Aside from the sighing, crashing thunder of the waves beating upon the shoreline, all was still. Perplexed, Gideon returned to the cave. He would search again in the morning. If there was someone abroad on the isle, they could go nowhere without a vessel, and he threw the bolt on the double doors, made another search of the rooms without success, and went to his sleeping chamber.

Unfurling what was left of the shift, he examined it in the light of a rush candle in its hanging bracket beside his sleeping alcove. Whomever it belonged to was small in stature, and slender, young as well, for it was of a style worn by maidens. He raised it to his nose again and breathed in clover. Something urgent stirred in his loins, and he dropped it on the little table alongside as if it were hot coals, wiping his hands on his naked thighs, half expecting a watcher’s lightning bolt to find him even there, in his private sleeping chamber, the only refuge he had from the diabolical winged watchers of the gods.

He almost laughed. He had never brought a woman there for lustful purpose. Not after what had happened what seemed a lifetime ago when he’d tried to secret one into the keep. He’d never brought a woman to the cave at all, except for Simeon’s Megaleen once, when she was in need of refuge, while he fetched the Lord of the Deep to her. The watchers never let him get that far. They’d always hurled their lightning bolts well before any courtship he might have instigated came to bed sport.

All at once he broke out in a cold sweat. What would happen if one did get in and he could keep her? Could he cheat the gods of their harsh punishment and live in the arms of a woman at last? Suppose one did wash up on the shore below and sought refuge from the storm in the cave. The watchers wouldn’t have been watching her, they would be watching
him,
and he was nowhere about. He was off with the other guardians, trying to salvage something of the ravages his lust had caused, bringing the sirens’ wrath to bear.

It was a pleasant fantasy, but not very probable. Still, in all the eons he’d been outcast, nothing like it had ever occurred before…and there was that shift on the table calling his eyes, proof positive that someone had been there…. If only she still remained. Impossible! He would have found her. He’d searched every inch of the cave—
every inch
. Hadn’t he?

Wearily, Gideon stepped into the sleeping alcove, folded his arms across his hard, muscled chest, his taut abdomen beneath corded as if steel bands roped it. He shut his eyes in a desperate attempt to beat back the arousal finding that shift had caused. But he would not sleep the sleep of the dead his sore, tired body demanded, not while the scent of sweet clover drifted past his nostrils and his mind was racing with possibilities. What dreams may come would be dreamed with one eye open until he’s solved the mystery.

As he drifted off, from somewhere on the periphery of consciousness, hushed voices echoed in his mind. He’d heard celestial murmurings before, but they had never become so clear that he could understand them. He had always thought them to be long forgotten imprints upon his soul from that other life before the fall. As ever, they were strange whispers, like pieces of dreams that made no sense, but still he listened….

Shall we wake him?
one voice said.
There is one place he has overlooked
…

No,
another voice replied.
It is too low and narrow for him to enter in. Leave him.

But what if
…The first voice trailed off, then said,
Shouldn’t we warn him—tell him
?

Leave him, I say!
said the other.
We may not have to
…

On the verge of sleep, Gideon could make out no more though the disembodied voices droned on and on as he drifted off to the meter of their mumblings.

Rhiannon had no idea what time it was when she yawned and stretched awake in her little niche behind the waterfall. Peeking through the lacy cascade that barred the entrance, there was no way to tell if it was day or still night, with no window to show it to her.

Attempting to rise, she groaned. Every muscle in her body ached from her ordeal in the bay. The warm, steamy water beckoned. How good it would feel to soothe the pain that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. She gazed through the falling water with narrowed eyes. Everything seemed as she’d left it. Without a second thought, she struggled out of the mulberry homespun kirtle, stepped out on the ledge, and dove into the water. It was just as warm and soothing as she remembered, and she let the steamy spindrift caress and titillate every pore.

The sea sponge had floated to the far side of the cascade, but the soap had vanished. It had sunk like a stone the minute she dropped it when arousal called her to the pulsating flow of the waterfall. Hoping it was hard milled and that the warm water hadn’t melted it, she ducked her head beneath the surface. An eerie phosphorescence caused by the miniscule organisms living in the water showed her the soap, in better condition than she’d supposed, on the bottom. The pool was shallow there, and though she would have never attempted it in deep water, she swam below and snatched it only to drop it again when she broke the surface. Her breath caught in her throat and a strangled gasp escaped her when she came face-to-face with the towering figure of a naked man, with massive silver-white wings. He was standing on the marble edge of the pool staring down, arms akimbo, his dark eyes all but hidden beneath the ledge of his brow. The stiff muscles in his handsome jaw were ticking an angry rhythm, and his sensuous mouth had formed a hard, lipless line above the shadowy cleft in his chin. He was aroused, and like everything else about him, his erection was gargantuan.

“W-who…
what
are you?” she breathed, for that was the first thought that rushed into her mind. She regretted it the moment the words were out. His posture clenched and seemed to expand, and his wings unfurled halfway. His sex had grown larger, if such a thing could be, and when he took a step closer to the edge of the pool, Rhiannon put more distance between them, treading water to stay afloat, for it was deeper there.

He flashed a smile that did not reach his eyes. “I will ask the questions,” he said. “You trespass! Where did you come from? How did you get in here?”

Rhiannon swallowed audibly. “The doors were open,” she defended. “The storm…my ship came apart on the rocks and I washed up on your dreadful beach. I did not think whoever lived here would be so rude as to deny hospitality in such a tempest.”

“This gives you leave to invade my bath?”

“How was I to know it was ‘your bath’?” she fired back. “There was no one here. For all I knew this cave was abandoned, like the rest of this godforsaken isle. I was covered with bruises from the rocks and mud splatter from those horrible marshes, and this bath seemed sent by the gods.”

“Nothing here is a gift of the gods,” he said succinctly.

“I beg your forgiveness for the intrusion,” she returned. “If you will kindly step outside, I shall try to find the shift I came in and leave. I borrowed one from a wardrobe in one of your chambers. I will return it.”

“That will not be necessary. You cannot go about in the shift you came in, it is in tatters.”

“Oh? So you’ve taken it, have you?” Rhiannon cried, her voice echoing, amplified by the water.

He nodded, turning to go. “Keep what you’ve taken. Leave at your leisure.”

“Wait!” she called after him bravely. She’d gotten out of it nicely. What possessed her to antagonize him? He was still aroused, and decidedly angry. Would she never learn to hold her tongue?

He turned from the threshold, his erection even more pronounced in profile. “Yes?” he grunted. The man had no modesty! Had he forgotten he was naked, and erect? It was almost as if it were his natural state.

“You have not told me who you are,” she reminded him. “One of the fallen angels, I take it? I’ve heard the tales. I thought them myth.”

“Believe me, I am no myth,” he snarled at her, his handsome face spoiled by a riveting scowl. “I am Gideon, Lord of the Dark, guardian of this isle, prince appointed by the gods.” He thumped his chest with a scathing fist. “And there is only one of me. No other ‘fallen’ reside in this hemisphere.”

Rhiannon was so taken aback she lost her rhythm and nearly floundered. Recovering herself, her breasts rose above the surface of the water, calling his eyes like lodestones. She quickly hid her nipples in the water.

“But Gideon was an
archangel
!” she breathed. “I know the tale. Even in the polar hemisphere they tell it—”

“Is that where you come from, then?” he interrupted her. “You are a long way from home.”

“No, it is not!” she snapped. “I have no home.” It was the first time she realized she was homeless. She was completely on her own; saved from being sold to the shamans by another storm, now saved from a dreaded marriage by this maelstrom. The gods were known to possess a warped sense of humor at times. What did Mica, god of all, have in store for her next?

“Did anyone see you enter here…anyone at all?” Gideon asked her.

“I saw no one.”

“Have you eaten?”

Rhiannon hesitated. It was too bizarre. Here she was without a stitch on her body in a pool of steamy mineral water, staring at what had to be ten inches of erect, hard male flesh, casually discussing the Arcan polar hemisphere and food! She couldn’t help but stare. His thick, veined shaft was so engorged it was nearly blue, and the mushroom tip was slick with pre-come.