“You already have me, Thom. Always.” Gathering every bit of her courage, she rose up on her knees. “Always. When we reach home, I want you to stay. No papers, no separation. I want to call you my husband for the rest of my life.”
His fingers stilled on his coat buckle. As if not daring to believe, his gaze desperately searched her face. “Tell me again.”
“I love you, Thom, and I want you to stay,” she said, and fierce joy replaced the pain. Oh, she would tell him again and again. “I loved you before, but I love you so much more now. Before, I’d have let you leave because the hurt was too much. It isn’t now. And I couldn’t let you go now, even if I was torn apart. If you went, I’d be trailing along behind you—or tying a chain around you to drag you back. So I want you to stay.”
With a sharp hitch of his breath, he clutched her against his chest. Tightly he held her, his hands slipping up her back to tangle in her hair. Gently, he tilted her face up, and the aching love in his eyes was a mirror of her own. “You know I wouldn’t have ever gone. But I don’t know that I’ll be any better a husband than I was.”
“Will you be with me?”
“Every single night.”
“Will you love me?”
“Always, Georgie.”
“Then that’s all I need.” She tugged him down to the bed. When he sank down on the edge, she straddled his thighs. His coat still needed unbuckling. Her fingers started in on the task. “If it’s money that worries you, you ought to know it’s not a concern. My business is yours, too—at least the profits from it are, since I invested your earnings to start it. And it’s done well. I’ve got a fleet of ten ships, and I’ll soon be acquiring more. Maybe airships, too. It’s not a chest of gold, but we won’t want for anything.”
He struggled with that, but finally nodded. “Considering that gold is likely in a shark’s belly, I’ll trade it.”
“It’s a good trade. Your share of the profits is a hefty one.” She took a deep breath. “If you want a new ship for your salvaging work, you’ve earned more than enough to buy another one. A new submersible, too.”
“I don’t want to salvage.”
“You’re very good at it.”
“I was good at hauling fish, too.”
He was good at a lot of things. But that wasn’t the question she needed to ask—the question she’d never bothered to ask before. “What will make you happy, Thom?”
“Just you, Georgie. And you loving me even half as much as I love you.”
“I love you twice as much as that.” And her heart was bursting with it. Smiling, she pushed his coat down his arms. “Is there anything you want to do?”
He grinned and rocked up beneath her. “I want to make you my queen.”
“Thom!” She laughed, her face hot. “I’m sure we’ll do plenty of that.”
“Soon.” His expression gentling, he softly kissed her. “You’re the one person I care about proving myself to, Georgie. And yet you make me feel like I don’t have to.”
“You don’t have to. You already have, over and over.”
“And I’m not going to stop now.” And he seemed to be thinking her question over again now, his brow creased in a thoughtful frown. “I do like diving. And I enjoyed working with Ivy.” His hand smoothed down her suddenly tense back. “I’m not saying I want to go off and do it again. I’m saying that I liked tinkering, and putting that submersible together with her. I could make more of them, test them in local waters, sell them.”
“You’d like that?”
“I would.”
Then it sounded perfect to her. “We could build a workshop for you next to the house. Or in town, by my offices.”
“I’d like that, too. And I’ll figure out how to help you take care of our children—and learn to read and write a bit, so that I can send you love notes and make up for all the messages I never sent before.”
Her heart swelled. “I’ll send some to you, as well.”
“And I’ll make a better man of myself.”
“Oh, Thom. You’re the best man I know. You couldn’t be any better.”
He lowered his lips to hers, said softly against them, “You’re wrong, Georgie.”
Smiling, she wound her arms around his shoulders. “You’ll have to stay around to prove me wrong.”
“I will. You wait and see. You’ll never be able to get rid of me.”
She’d never try. “Is that your new promise? Because my new promise is that I’m never going to be separated from you again.”
“It is, Georgie.” His voice roughened. “I swear it.”
“And is there any chance you’ll ever break it?”
“None at all.”
“Then I was wrong, Thom,” she said, and leaned in for another kiss. “Sometimes, no chance is better than some.”
ECSTASY UNDER THE MOON
A Children of the Moon Novella
LUCY MONROE
Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
This Children of the Moon story occurs in the years between Moon Burning and Dragon’s Moon. It’s a stand-alone romance, but perhaps it will give you insight into how difficult it is for the Éan to make the transition to the clans you read about in Dragon’s Moon. Una and Bryant are very dear to my heart and their story was an emotional one for me to write. Enjoy!
Hugs,
Lucy
PROLOGUE
THE BEGINNING
Millennia ago God created a race of people so fierce even their women were feared in battle. These people were warlike in every way, refusing to submit to the rule of any but their own . . . no matter how large the forces sent to subdue them. Their enemies said they fought like animals. Their vanquished foe said nothing, for they were dead.
They were considered a primitive and barbaric people because they marred their skin with tattoos of blue ink. The designs were simple at first, a single beast depicted in unadorned outline over their hearts. The leaders were marked with bands around their arms with symbols that told of their strength and prowess in battle. Mates were marked to show their bond.
And still, their enemies were never able to discover the meanings of any of the blue-tinted tattoos.
Some surmised they were symbols of their warlike nature, and in that they would be partially right. For the beasts represented a part of themselves these fierce and independent people kept secret at the pain of death. It was a secret they had kept for the centuries of their existence, while most migrated across the European landscape to settle in the inhospitable north of Scotland.
Their Roman enemies called them Picts, a name accepted by the other peoples of their land and lands south . . . they called themselves the Chrechte.
Their animal-like affinity for fighting and conquest came from a part of their nature their fully human counterparts did not enjoy. For these fierce people were shape-changers.
The bluish tattoos on their skin were markings given as a rite of passage when they made their first shift. Some men had control of that change. Some did not, subject to the power of the full moon until participating in the sacred act of sex. The females of all the races both experienced their first shift into animal form and gained control thereafter with the coming of their first menses.
Some shifted into wolves, others big cats of prey and yet others into the larger birds—the eagle, hawk and raven.
The one thing all Chrechte shared in common was that they did not reproduce as quickly or prolifically as their fully human brothers and sisters. Although they were a fearsome race and their cunning enhanced by an understanding of nature most humans could not possess, they were not foolhardy and were not ruled by their animal natures.