The Parting Glass (Caitlin Ross Book 4) (17 page)

“Genuine love leads to Union. Union with Other. Union with Self. Union with the material world, with the world of Spirit. It doesn’t matter, as long as the Union is real. Because all creative force comes from Union. That’s where you’ll find the power to do what you need to do. Do you understand?”

“Aye,” he repeated. He seemed to be having difficulty drawing breath. For the record, so was I.

“But to achieve that kind of power, that kind of Union, you have to make a choice. A choice to put the self aside. To be in equal partnership, neither leading nor following. And then you must surrender to the choice, wherever it takes you. And choosing to surrender can be a kind of sacrifice.”

I had no more to say about the card. I’d reached the point where I should attend to the reading in its entirety. I should say something about how the whole thing was about giving up control to gain Mastery. How choices did not necessarily determine outcomes, but choices still had to be made. I should tell him the nature of the choice didn’t matter, only that he made it. I should point out how so many of the cards were wands and swords—will and thought—and how only one cup, representing emotion, had appeared, as an obstacle. I should advise him to stop overthinking things. To trust and follow his heart.

I couldn’t speak. I watched his gaze wander from card to card, his mind straining to encompass their meanings, to put the pieces of the puzzle together. To find the balance in the opposing concepts. Control and Surrender. Mastery and Union. Isolation and Love.

I saw him choose.

My hand lay on the table, fingers just grazing that last card, The Lovers. With great deliberation, he covered my hand with his own. He lifted eyes wide with apprehension and dark with emotion to my face.

“Caitlin,” he whispered, my name a plea.

Not twelve hours ago, I’d offered him my body as a surcease from pain. Then, he’d turned me down. Now he wanted me. Not for healing, but for something else. And it terrified him.

“Timber,” I said, and my naming him seemed to give him strength. A little of his fear drained away.

“Timber,” I repeated. “It’s all right.”

A vast shudder ran through him. He raised his hand to my hair, running a long lock through his fingers. His hand drifted back up to caress my face.

He leaned across the table and kissed me, his lips on mine tentative at first, but rapidly increasing in passion. Melting into him, I opened my mouth to his insistent tongue.

It went on for a long time before he broke away from me and leaned his forehead against mine.

“The taste of you. So sweet,” he murmured, stroking my cheek. “But let’s not destroy anything this time, aye?”

We got to our feet. Taking him by the hand, I led him upstairs. Behind us in the reading parlor, the candles burned on, forgotten.

Chapter Fourteen

L
ate in the afternoon, we lay side by side in my tumbled bed. My leg was flung across Timber’s, and his hand rested lightly on my bare thigh, tanned and dark against the white flesh. The breeze through the open window wafted over us, drying the sweat of exertion and the juices of our lovemaking. The sun’s rays slanting across the room gilded the walls, gilded us.

“I’m in love with you,” Timber told the ceiling.

My heart stopped. I drew in a long, deep breath and it started again.

“I didna want to be,” he went on. “I tried not to be. But, well. I am.”

Slow tears seeped from the corners of my eyes and trickled down my cheeks, filling my ears, wetting the pillow.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I whispered.

“I was afraid.” He removed his hand from my thigh and rolled toward me, raising himself on his elbow. With one gentle finger, he sketched the track a tear had made down my face. “Why are you crying?”

Joy. Relief. Fear. Release.

“I don’t know.”

He kissed me on one cheek, then on the other, tasting my heart.

“Even your tears are sweet,” he murmured. He lay back down and took my hand, twining his fingers with mine.

“I’ve never been in love before.” Once more, he addressed the ceiling.

A snort of skepticism escaped me. “I find that hard to believe.”

“I havena!” he protested, turning his head to me. I slid my eyes toward his face and saw the truth written there. “I’ve been with women, aye. A great many women, as a matter of fact.” Clearing his throat, he colored and looked away again.

“But?” I needed to hear him say it.

“Not like you. Never like you.”

I couldn’t help myself; I started sobbing in earnest. Timber reached out and gathered me in to pillow my head on his chest. For a long time he held me, stroking my hair and body and crooning soft reassurance. Gods, I had wanted this. The thought made me cry harder.

In due course, my tears came to an end. I disengaged myself from my lover’s arms and sat up, reaching for a tissue from the box on the nightstand. I blew my nose and dried my eyes.

“I never thought declaring love for a woman would bring her such grief,” Timber remarked. The amusement in his voice didn’t quite cover renewed fear.

I grabbed another tissue from the box and wiped off his chest, where my tears had made a sizeable wet spot. His hand closed on my wrist. Glancing at his face, I saw the urgent question written there.

“I’m in love with you, Timber MacDuff,” I answered it. “I have been for a while.”

“Ah.” Relaxing, he released me and I snuggled down beside him once more. “I wasna certain. I knew you wanted me, of course,” he added with infuriating confidence. “But the rest… I thought perhaps it was merely compassion. Like this morning, ken.”

“This morning was
not
merely compassion,” I informed him.

“No? Well, I had no way of knowing it. You havena exactly been dripping with sentiment. Desire, aye. That comes off you in a great wave one canna ignore. But the other…”

I snatched a throw pillow from behind my back and hit him over the head with it.

“You didn’t make it easy, you great Scots lout! I seem to recall the last time you woke up in my bed, the first word out of your mouth was ‘Hell!’ And you couldn’t wait to get away from me!”

“I’m sorry to have hurt you. More sorry than you can know.”

I wasn’t yet ready to accept an apology. “After that, I had no intention of troubling you with a messy emotional scene. I’ve done unrequited love before. I don’t like it. I wouldn’t have troubled you at all if not for the problem at Gina’s.”

I punctuated my tirade with more smacks of the pillow. He tolerated it for longer than I would have imagined. Doubtless he thought he deserved it. And he did.

When I ran down, he took the pillow away from me with so little effort I knew he could have done it any time he wanted.

“Caitlin. Please leave off raging at me and come back. I’ll try to explain.”

He tossed the pillow aside and opened his arms to me. I lay back down beside him, still fuming. For a while, he didn’t speak, just stroked my hair.

“I told you I was afraid,” he said at last.

“Yes.”

“Not just because I’ve never been in love before, although that made a part of it.” He sighed. “When I first came here, to Boulder, I Journeyed. Looking for John Stonefeather.”

“I know. You told me.”

“Aye, I did. And I told you I didna find him.”

“Yes.”

“So then…” His voice grew heavy with memory. “I did what I should have done in the first place. I asked for help. And my guide gave me your name.”

“You told me that, too,” I reminded him.

“Aye. But I didna tell you what else my guide said. She said I must find you, that without your help I would never complete the task before me.” He paused for a deep breath; this came hard to him. “And she told me getting involved with you would change me. Forever. In ways I could not imagine.”

“Oh,” I whispered, beginning to understand.

“Aye. Well. I didna want that. I supposed myself to be quite content the way I was. So I determined I would not ‘get involved’ with this Caitlin Ross person, whoever she might be. I’d take her help, and be glad of it. But no more.” He turned toward me and ran a finger down my cheek, down my throat. “I did have some hopes she might turn out to be a dried-up old granny, mind.”

I giggled.

“Then I saw you for the first time. The night I came here, and you not expecting me. I couldna see you clear, only your shape. Still, something… Something in me knew you. As if… As if your shape filled a hole in my heart I didna know had been there until that moment.” He stared across me, eyes fixed on some distance beyond the bedroom walls. “It disturbed me. I didna like to admit it, but it was a relief when you sent me packing.

“So.” He rolled onto his back again, folding his arms beneath his head. “I thought, well, she wilna see me. I’ll have to find some other way. It quite pleased me to come to a decision in the matter.”

“What did your spirit guide say to that?”

His lip twitched. “I didna tell her. I went back to Spruce’s, and slept. And in the morning, I decided to have breakfast at a place I’d heard mentioned. And there you were.”

“Fate works in mysterious ways.” I remembered he’d said the same, upon being seated with me.

“Indeed. Well, I went back to my original intent, to take what help you could give, but to keep myself apart. And I couldna do it.” He faced me once more, laying his hand on my hip. “It wasna just that I wanted you from the moment I saw you, though I did. More than I’d ever wanted a woman before, so much I fair sickened with it.”

“Sage said you looked at me as if I were a big bowl of ice cream and you were a little boy with a spoon.”

He laughed. “Did she? I thought I did well at keeping it to myself.”

“Sage’s perception can be irksome.” I hesitated, and added, “She also said you were blocking something.”

His laughter died and his face turned serious. “My life isna an open book. Some things I dinna speak of, even to myself. You need to understand that about me.”

I nodded. I had suspected as much. “Go on.”

His hand trailed from my hip to my belly, rested there. “Saturday night, when you dragged me to the session, I first suspected what I felt to be love. By the next day, I knew for sure. I think it was when you puked.”

“How romantic,” I said with a grimace.

“Still.” His hand wandered across my belly to my other hip, lingered there for a moment, and skimmed down to my thigh. And back again. “I did keep telling myself it was simple lust.” Now the hand slid up my waist and over my stomach, circling my navel. And back.

“Oh,” I said.

“I thought I’d go mad when you told me you wouldna see me the next day. That’s why I went to the bar, ken.” His fingers explored the soft curve under my breasts.

“Beer and pool,” I wheezed.

“Aye, and drunken men bitching about women. It suited me. And then I heard Stonefeather had been there. It gave me the perfect excuse to intrude on your holiday.” With agonizing slowness, he traced his way up my sternum and across my collarbone, his touch feather light. Back down again.

I whimpered.

“I hadna taken the Solstice into account, though. Nor its effect on me.” Musing on the fact, he drew a line down my torso, to the crease of my groin. Cupped my pubis in his hand. Stayed there. “By the time we’d finished our walk, I didna care anymore what might become of me.”

He removed his hand. I grabbed it back.

“Don’t stop.”

“Do you no want to hear the rest?” He cocked an eyebrow at me.

“You’re a bad man.”

“Aye, I expect I am.” With a soft chuckle, deep in his throat, he started stroking me again. “I thought, I have a sickness in my blood and I know the cure for it. Best take my medicine and have done. Even so, I did give you a choice.”

“Some choice,” I gasped. “Asking if I wanted you to leave after what you’d started. That was completely unfair.”

“Och, well.” He lowered his head to bite my neck, his hand circling my breast. My nipples, already hard, stiffened to an almost intolerable degree. I arched my back, wanting more.

“Not yet,” he murmured against my throat before drawing away. “That night, it wasna so terrible and frightening for me.”

“I should hope not,” I moaned.

“It was bodies joining, just bodies.” He took my breast in his mouth and stayed there quite some time. “Gods, you are so fine. I love to pleasure you.” He turned his attention to the other breast.

“Then in the morning, McGuyver came in,” he continued at length. His control astounded me; he didn’t even seem to be breathing hard. “He said to me, MacDuff, isn’t it a fine thing to wake beside the woman you love? And I agreed it was. I rolled over and saw you there. I thought I had dreamed. I’d had such dreams of you before, ken. But when I touched you, you were real. I knew what I’d done, and I panicked. That’s the all of it. Can you forgive me?”

For an answer, I drew his face to mine and kissed him, long and deep.

“Ah,” he sighed when we parted. “I’d hoped you say that.”

He lowered himself onto me, and we spoke no more for a time.

As the sun began to sink toward evening, he asked,

“Is the reading over, then?”

I smirked into his chest hair, enjoying the firmness of his muscles under my breasts.

“Oh, you remember the reading, do you?”

“Not for want of distraction.” He squeezed my butt, moving his hips in a suggestive way. “But do you?”

I sat up, straddling him. Seduce the Oracle, would he? I’d show him.

“You had a high proportion of Major Arcana. Four out of ten. Big surprise there. This is your test. Your final exam. It’s a big deal. Of course it would show up as a major life issue.” I thought a bit. “Almost every card showed a single figure. In the ones with multiple figures, a single figure stood out. Again indicating your choices will determine your path, and yours alone.”