Enchanted by Elizabeth Lowell

pointed out.
    She bent down and kissed her husband’s hard
mouth,softening it into a lover’s warm
smile. As she moved, the tiny golden bells at her wrists and hips
chimed. A fiery braid slid forward. Golden bells trailed from it
like costly jesses, chiming with piercing sweetness.
    “Glendruid Wolf,” she murmured.
“Have I told you how much I love you?”
    “Not since morning chapel,” Dominic
said quickly. “’Tis a terrible long time to go without
your love.”
    Meg’s laughter was as rich and beautiful as
her Glendruid hair.
    Several yards away, Ariane paused at the side
entrance to the great hall, gripping her harp in both hands. She
was struck by the music of Meg’s laughter, the autumn glory
of her loosely plaited hair, and the unexpected sight of Glendruid
witch and Glendruid Wolf at play.
    “You are spoiled, my wolf,” Meg
said.
    “Aye. Spoil me some more,” Dominic
said, pulling her down onto his lap. “I grow faint for want
of kissing you.”
    “Faint?”
    Meg laughed again. Her hands slid beneath
Dominic’s mantle, pushing it over his shoulders. Openly
enjoying her husband’s unusual strength, Meg kneaded the
muscles of his chest and shoulders, approving his masculine
power.
    “Oh, yes,” she said gravely, hiding her
smile. “I can feel how faint you have become for lack of my
kiss.”
    “Then take pity on me. Revive me.”
    Meg tilted her face up to Dominic. At the same time
she threaded her fingers into his black hair and pulled his mouth
down to hers. The kiss that followed was slow and sensual.
    Unwillingly Ariane was reminded of the magic time
last evening when Simon’s kiss had held her enchanted,
forgetful of the danger that would surely follow a man’s
rising lust.
    Ariane had a mad impulse to cry out to the
Glendruid witch, to warm her that a man’s kiss was like his
smile,a lure for the unwary. Common sense made
Ariane bite her tongue before a single word was spoken.
    “Are you revived?” Meg asked after a
time.
    “Aye,” Dominic said huskily.
    Teasingly she traced the clean line of his lip
beneath his mustache with the tip of her tongue.
    “Are you quite certain?” she asked.
    Dominic’s smile was dark, sensual, and fully
male. With one hand he drew his mantle back over his shoulders so
that it covered Meg and himself. With the other hand, he urged her
fingers down the center of his body.
    “Tell me, small falcon. Am I
revived?”
    Dominic’s breath caught as Meg’s hand
moved.
    “You appear to be,” she said,
“but it could be just the bench whose hardness lies at
hand.”
    “Test more…closely.”
    “Someone might happen by.”
    “I promise not to scream.”
    “You are a devil.”
    “Nay. I am but a man whose duties have kept
him too long from his wife’s warm body. Can you not feel
it?”
    “Here?” she asked innocently, caressing
his thigh.
    Dominic shifted smoothly, making Meg’s hand
slide between his legs.
    “Can you feel it now, witch?”
    Her husky laugh was that of a woman who fully
approved of what lay beneath her husband’s fine clothes. The
laughter was as sensual as fire, and like fire, it was hot.
    But that wasn’t what shocked Ariane. What
shocked her was that there was no fear in Meg’s laughter. Not
even a hint. It was as though Meg anticipated the inevitable end of
such teasing as much as Dominic did.
    In growing disbelief Ariane stared at the couple
with a rudeness that would have astonished her under other
circumstances. Even though Dominic and his wife were shielded by
his mantle, Ariane had no doubt that the two were involved in love
play.
    A play that was as much relished by wife as by
husband.
    “Your hands,” Dominic said. “They
are the sweetest kind of fire. Burn me, small falcon.”
    Footsteps sounded down the spiral stone stairway
leading from the third floor to the great hall.
    Dominic hissed something in a foreign tongue and
quickly set Meg back upon her feet. By the time the footsteps
resolved into Erik and Simon