She trailed her fingers lovingly down his chiseled jaw, then slipped her hands into his silky hair, grazing his scalp with her nails. They were nearly touching nose to nose, and his hair fell about her face, framing it. She tipped her head back for a quick kiss. Then two and three.
“Do you know,” she murmured a few minutes later, “when you performed your ritual in the stones, at first I thought you had gone back to your century and left me behind in mine. I was furious. I was so hurt that you had left me. I thought you had begun to care for me—”
“I did!” he exclaimed. “I do!”
“My point is that if you’d told me everything that night in the stones, and had asked me to come back to the sixteenth century, I would have. I wanted to be with you wherever or even whenever that had to be.”
“You doona hate me for not being able to return you?” He paused for emphasis. “Ever, Gwen. I can’t return you ever.”
“I don’t want to go back. We belong together. I felt it the moment I met you, and it terrified me. I kept trying to find excuses to leave you but couldn’t make myself go. I felt as if fate had brought us together because we were supposed to be together.”
His smile flashed white in his dark face. “I felt the same way. I began falling in love with you the moment I saw you, and the more I learned about you, the more intense my feelings grew. That night in the stones when you gifted me with your maidenhead, when I gave you the Druid vows, I realized I would rather have a single night with you—even if it meant I was doomed to be bound to you, aching for you forever—than not know such love. I swore that if I were given the chance to have a life with you, I would treat you as befits a queen. That I would devote my life to making it up to you, what I’d taken from you. And I meant it, Gwen. Anything you want, anything at all…you have but to say.”
“Love me, Drustan, just love me, and I’ll not want for anything.”
Later she said, “Why can’t you go through the stones? You said they could never be used for personal reasons. What do you use them for?”
He told her, withholding nothing. The entire history, back to his ancestors, the Druids who’d served the Tuatha de Danaan, and about the war, and how the Keltar were chosen to atone and protect on behalf of all the Druids who’d scarred Gaea.
“The last time the stones were used, we sent two fleets of Temple Knights, carrying the Holy Grail, twenty years to the future so they might hide it away again.”
“Did you say the Holy Grail?” Gwen squeaked.
“Aye. We protect. It would have been a war to end all wars had the king of France, Philip the Fair, gotten his hands on it.”
“Oh, God,” Gwen breathed.
“The stones may be used only for the greater good of the world. Never for one man’s purpose.”
“I understand.” She paused a moment, then forced herself to go on. “I had to face a similar kind of situation once.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Tell me. I want to know everything about you.”
She rolled onto her side, and he stretched out on his, facing her. Their foreheads touched on the downy pillow, golden hair tangled with black silk. He laced their hands together, palm to palm. She told him all of it, which she’d never told another living soul. She confessed to her Great Fit of Rebellion.
There had been a time when, like her parents, she’d adored doing research. The pressure of their expectations had not seemed such a burden to her then. From the time she’d been able to talk, they’d made it clear that they expected her to be their greatest achievement, with a genius that would surpass theirs and enhance their reputation.
And until she was twenty-three, she’d toed the line they’d clearly defined. Her love of learning, of stretching her imagination to the furthest possible limit, had seemed adequate compensation for a strange childhood. She thrived on the rush of excitement whenever she discovered an alternative way of looking at things. And for a glorious time in her adolescence, she basked in her parents’ approval and committed to joining them at Los Alamos and working by their side one day.
But as she’d grown older and learned more, she realized the danger of certain knowledge. And one night, as she’d worked in the lab, she had a terrifying realization. For years she’d been playing around with a set of theories, working toward a hypothesis that—if it held water—would change the way the world viewed everything.
Her parents had been delighted with her progress, demanding constant updates, pushing her harder and harder.