Wolf Bride by Elizabeth Moss Page B

damp rocky earth and stare up at that drawing for hours, wishing I could decipher its secrets.’
    ‘You did not show it to anyone else?’
    ‘This may sound strange, but I did not wish to tell anyone else what I had found, in case they came down here and destroyed the peace of the place.’ He studied the drawing himself, almost as though he had never seen it before. ‘Later, I asked one of my father’s oldest friends if he knew anything about such things. He was a man of great learning, a true scholar and a visionary. I knew he would not insist I told others about the place. He came to look at the horse, then told me it had been drawn on this wall in ancient times, before men lived in houses. He said a great northern tribe lived near York once, and perhaps visited this cave as a sacred place, for they worshipped the horse as a god.’
    Afraid she might destroy the ancient art by touching it, she traced the horse with one delicate finger. ‘This is a sacred drawing?’
    ‘I believe so, yes.’
    ‘A pagan horse god.’ She looked about the walls, and her eye fell on another drawing. It was a small angular depiction of an animal with sharp ears and teeth, lunging forward as though leaping towards the sacred horse. ‘And what is that?’
    ‘No sacred animal this time, but my own poor effort at the art of the ancients.’ He smiled when she glanced at him in surprise. ‘I wanted to leave something of myself down here, if only in recognition of all those hours spent staring at another man’s creation.’
    She studied his drawing more carefully, seeing how he had tried to copy the thin curved lines of the original, and the sense of motion. ‘It’s a wolf.’
    ‘What else?’
    He had spoken lightly, but she was not fooled. ‘It’s very good,’ she said decidedly, then turned rather too quickly when he moved, as though afraid he was going to leave her down there in the chilly, echoing cavern.
    Wolf had moved closer, not further away, she realised too late, finding herself maybe an inch or two away from the reassuring warmth of his body. They stared at each other in silence, two softly breathing people in that glimmering space meant only for animals and gods, until she caught a sudden darkness in his eyes. He brushed her cheek with his fingers, bare flesh to flesh.
    ‘Eloise,’ he whispered.
    She had meant to draw back after his kiss, to refuse any further intimacy. They were not yet married, after all. Such things were forbidden between a man and a maid, even when betrothed, and she did not wish to shame her family.
    But the moment his tongue stroked her lower lip, gently stealing inside her mouth, she was lost to reason. The weight of the earth above their heads, the running of the sacred horse and the wolf dancing after it, the rock walls gleaming with water and pressing in on them: all these made her lose her senses, no longer aware of time and space, of rules and decorum, of what was right and wrong. Only of his body against hers, and the desire burning in her veins.
    She gripped his shoulders, clinging on. Her head fell back under his kiss, inviting his mouth on her throat and the tender skin above her breasts.
    He cupped her breast, and she muttered, ‘Yes,’ kissing him back as though it were the most natural thing in the world for them to be in a cave, making love in the half-light.
    There was a rightness about it when he lowered her to the earth, throwing down his jacket first to protect her from the dirt. She was his prey and he was the wolf, biting her throat so softly she found herself crying out in pleasure, not pain. His hands were so clever they taught her how to sigh and beg, and she stared up in wonder at the running horse on the wall when he dragged down her bodice and freed her breasts, kissing each one in turn. She felt like she was running too, wild and free across the grassy plains, her heart almost bursting out of her chest with the force of her own desire.
    ‘Here,’ he said, and guided