ROWAN STOOD IN front of Gael’s empty stall for a long moment before an annoyed squeal drew her gaze to the one next to it. Ceann bobbed his head and batted his long eyelashes as she went over to give him a nose rub. All the other horses in the stables had retreated from sight, likely in response to Taran’s furious mood.

“But not you, Slappy,” she murmured to the gelding, who blew some air against her neck. “I want to chase after him, and I know you’d help, but I think he needs to process all this.”

She lingered for a while, mucking out Ceann’s stall and scattering some fresh straw before she brushed him down. Everything was an excuse just to wait for Taran, but the horse master didn’t show up. The work she did only added to the layer of grime and sweat that lack of bathing for a week among the crazies had created. After she promised the gelding a ride she probably wouldn’t be able to take, Rowan returned to the stronghold.

“Blimey,” Lily said as she passed by her, stopped and sniffed. “You really need a bathe, love.”

“On my way to detox right now,” Rowan assured her. She wasn’t sure what to say about the intervention, so she just went with what she genuinely felt. “Thanks for what you did for me. I know that interrogation wasn’t easy on you, either. If you ever want to go back and kick Edgar’s ass, I’m in.”

“Eh. Sod him.” The Brit winked at her. “We never have to go back, love. Only forward. Cheers.”

Down in the lower levels Rowan collected some clean clothes from her chamber. She passed Manath who was sharpening what looked like an already sharp sword. Waiting to attack at nightfall made sense, but it was hell on the nerves. She nodded to him as she walked down to the bathing spring.

“Cannily done, your sabotage, my lady,” Manath called after her. When she stopped and eyed him he smiled uneasily. “Forgive my ire earlier. ’Twas wrong of us to judge you.”

“The judging, not really. The spitting was gross, though.”

She gave him a cheerful salute before she continued down the passage.

At the entry to the hollowed-out cave that contained the bathing spring Rowan tied a rag strip on the outside handle to indicate it was occupied. Then she went in, closed the door and gratefully stripped out of her odorous clothes. Grabbing a bucket and a crock of the strong soap the Skaraven used, she went to the edge of the big pool to draw some water. Stepping into the smaller, adjacent scrubbing pit, which constantly drained through a slanted pipe, she doused herself with the bucket.

The steaming water washed away most of the surface filth, and left her dripping for the soaping phase. Liberally smearing a cloth with the lye soap, she started at the top of her head and worked her way down.

Washing away every trace of the Wood Dream settlement did nothing to get rid of her nerves, however. She didn’t want to go back there again, not even playing an escaped prisoner. Hendry would be waiting, and so would Ochd. She might be able to con them, but Murdina had gotten so crazy she might kill her on sight.

We never have to go back, love. Only forward.

Rowan scrubbed and rinsed until her skin glowed pink in the torch light, and then moved to the larger spring pool. Easing down into the hot water, she swam over to a natural shelf in the stone and propped herself there to soak.

What Bhaltair had told Taran and her still hovered at the back of her mind, as if waiting for her to decide how she felt about it. Like everything else that had happened since coming to this time, it seemed both bizarre and yet completely logical.

She’d chosen Taran long before either of them had been born. She’d choose him again and again until… There was no until. They’d spend eternity finding and loving each other.

Rowan took in a breath, held it, and sank under the water. The heat clasped and soothed her like gentle hands. Like Taran’s hands.

She surfaced as the door swung in, and swam to the front of the pool. “I’ll be out in a sec– Hey.”

“My lady,” Taran said. There was snow in his hair, and mud spatter on his boots and trousers. “Lily said I’d find you here.”

She could pester him with a thousand questions, or try to comfort him about all the old druid’s revelations. She went with the third option.

“Want to join me?”

Everyone had their way of dealing with the waiting. This was hers.

“Aye.” He glanced down at himself. “I must wash first.”

Rowan nodded, and swam back to her shelf seat. She tucked her hands behind her head to watch the horse master strip, which he did with flattering speed.

The torches cast their dancing light over his tall, sinewy body, which from the high arches of his long feet to the strong cords of his throat looked like creamy marble. He was one of the more massively ripped Skaraven, and she preferred his hard build. Her fingers wanted to feel those muscles bulging over his long bones. As for the serious business equipment, Taran had nothing to worry about whatsoever. In fact, Rowan felt sure that the clan’s stallions would turn green if they ever saw him naked.

Seeing him pour a bucket of water over all that gorgeous male beauty made her heart pound and her thighs shake. Hopefully he could scrub fast, or she might have to get out of the pool and help him.

“You’re staring,” he chided as he began to lather his chest.

“You’re naked.” She decided to even things a little more and hoisted herself up onto the edge. “But then, so am I.”

Taran watched her as she stretched out on her side, his eyes moving from her nose to her toes and back again. He liked what he saw, and judging by the way his penis swelled and rose to jutting attention, wanted to get closer.

Rowan propped her head on her hand, and shamelessly rolled her shoulders back. She had a build like his but with full, curvy breasts and hips made for a man’s hands. His hands. Her tan had mostly faded, but her skin had a natural rosiness to it that always made her look a little sun-kissed. Although she’d never been a delicate waif like Perrin, she’d always felt comfortable in her hard, strong body.

As he sluiced off the soap Taran turned to face her. Watching the lather stream down his body made Rowan want to do the same thing with her fingers, her lips, her tongue.

Taran pushed the dripping fall of his white-blond hair back from his face and climbed out of the scrubbing pit. He stepped down into the pool, sinking into the water before swimming over to her side.

Rowan sat up as he surfaced, and wanted to forget about everything else in the universe as she looked into the glory of his eyes. Yet if they were to become lovers, she wanted him to know who she was and what she’d done before she’d found him.

“I’ve been with other men,” she told him. “I also spent a night with a beautiful French prop girl in Paris, just to see if a woman would do more for me. She didn’t, by the way.”

“I’ve had some pleasure lasses. A trainer brought me to one lad who wished to have me, but I felt naught for him.” His mouth hitched. “How did you fare with your male lovers?”

She considered that aspect of it. “I tried not to fall asleep during. You know. It seemed rude. How about you and the ladies?”

“I did what I could, but ’twas tedious. I’ve felt more pleasure watching you sleep.” He held out his hand, and helped her down into the water. “You’ll never be free of me, in this life or any other.”

“Sure, but you’ll have to listen to me snore for all eternity,” she pointed out.

He nodded. “While I steal the blankets from you.”

“And I warm my feet on your back.”

“Aye, but we willnae have to fack before two tribes in a henge,” Taran said gravely.

They could go on like this all night, but she needed to know one thing. “Are you still okay with what we decided as Ruadhan and Tairne?”

“That life doesnae matter to me. Nor any of the others.” He slipped his arm around her, tugging her against his wet body. “You’re mine, Rowan Thomas. No’ Rowena or Wren or Ruadhan. You.” He lowered his mouth to hers.

Their first kiss had been a wild, terrifying revelation. Now their second suffused her with such hunger and heat she thought they’d vaporize the spring. Taran’s mouth matched hers perfectly, like their bodies, like their desires. In her mind she felt wind and sunlight pouring into her, and felt herself return it with rain and moonlight.

The spring lit up, and bubbles began to churn as Taran shifted into his water-traveling form. He sank down, taking her with him, and breathed for her as they entwined.

Rowan wondered if she might drown, and discovered she didn’t care. All she wanted was this man, in any shape or form he came to her, for she was his. Utterly, completely his. She wrapped her legs around his transparent body, and felt the caress of his penis press between her thighs. It felt like water, and when Taran gripped her bottom and surged into her, his cock flooded her and locked their sexes together in a perfect fit.

Together as one, at last.

Rowan writhed, impaled and impatient, and felt them drifting back to the surface. Taran held her against him as the incredible kiss ended, and slid out of her, making her groan. As he swam back with her to the side of the pool, the rest of his body transformed back to human flesh. He knelt on the rock shelf and set her next to him.

“I’ve waited twenty-two years for this, and you,” she warned him. “Do not bail on me now.”

“You must first ken this.” Taran drew back and tilted her chin up. “You told Lily that no one loves you. ’Tis no’ true.”

She shook her head. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say that. We may be soul-mated, but we barely know each other.”

He touched his fingers to her lips. “Permit me say this. ’Twas the moment you opened your eyes here, that first day. I looked upon you and my heart knew. ’Twas yours.”

Rowan’s heart fluttered wildly. “Oh, Taran.”

He slid his hands down her arms. “Mayhap as other men I’ve loved Ruadhan, and Wren, and Rowena, and all the other incarnations you’ve lived. They matter naught to me. I’ve waited for you for twelve centuries and more.” He brought her hand to his heart. “I give this only to you, my lady. I love you.”

Heated mist rose around them, glowing amber and dark blue. Rowan watched Taran’s centaur ink light up, the legs of the half-man, half-horse pawing at his skin. The raw marks left by the shackles on her wrist throbbed as she touched his tattoo, and felt the power sifting into her fingertips.

“I think your other half wants in on this,” Rowan said as the light encircled her wrist, and healed the minor wound.

When it ebbed away it left a narrow band of two scars twined together all the way around like a bracelet. Although thanks to the soul-mating it wasn’t strictly necessary, she felt ridiculously pleased that his battle spirit had also decided she should be his mate.

Taran stroked the centaur’s mark. “You’ll have all of me, then? The druid and the Pritani?”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you are, or were, or will be. I love you.”

As she said that she felt a rush of sensation that poured through her, as thrilling as riding Ceann at full gallop, and gave herself over to it.

Taran came out of the spring, lifting and turning her as the dark light enveloped them. Rowan braced herself on her hands and knees, and shivered as he clamped an arm around her waist. He made a low, primitive sound in his chest as he nudged apart her thighs, and brought his swollen cockhead to her slick folds. This time when he pressed in he was all man, hard and thick, and plowed so deep Rowan felt it in her soul.

Through the haze of lust and longing Rowan felt what she had never before experienced: completeness. She’d dragged herself through twenty-two lonely years, giving up parts of her life along the way just to survive. Now Taran gave her back everything she’d lost.

He’d made her the woman she was meant to be.

For a long time neither of them moved, captivated by the ecstasy of joining. Then, so slowly that it made her gasp, Taran drew out of her and pumped back in. She gripped him as he did, caressing his shaft with her own softness. He groaned and stroked her again, igniting all the sensitive nerves inside her body. Sex had always bored her. She hadn’t exaggerated about that.

But sex with Taran was turning out to be the most enchanting, erotic thing she’d ever felt.

Rowan lifted her hips into his deep, hard thrusts, feeling her bottom jolt against his hard belly. His hands slipped around her, cradling her breasts as he fucked her, his long fingers strumming her nipples in time with each penetration. His breath whispered against her nape, and then her ear as he traced the outer curve with his tongue.

“You’ll come to me when you need me thus,” he said, his voice making her shake as much as his cock. “As I’ll come to you.”

“Yeah, definitely.” She closed her eyes as he squeezed her mounds. “That may be a lot.”

“I’ll see to your every pleasure,” he promised. “Anything you wish, I shall do. You’ve but to say to me.”

Rowan felt something tighten deep inside her, and knew she was about to come. “This. Just this is fine. For now.”

“I want your every joy,” Taran told her, his fingers slipping down to part the top of her folds and stroke her clit, “and you shall have mine, my lady.”

She couldn’t think, not with his cock so deep in her core, and the aching delight of his hand on her breast and his fingers caressing her nub. When he kissed her shoulder she stiffened, and then felt his teeth. The love bite he gave her made her pussy clench, and her mind explode with hot bliss.

The climax went on and on and on. His voice urged her through the waves of delight, hoarse and hot against her ear, and just as she reached the final peak he jerked against her. His cock did the same inside her pussy, pulsing thick jets of his seed into the center of her pleasure.

When it leveled out Rowan felt her arms and legs shake, and then sighed as Taran lifted her and stepped down into the spring. He held her pressed against him as the water massaged them both.

“We’re going to need to put a bed in the hayloft. A big, roomy bed. I’ll make that.” She lifted her cheek from his shoulder to see his expression. He looked almost smug now, and it made her laugh. “Not so tedious anymore, huh?”

“We shall need to brace the loft floor,” Taran told her. “’Tis no’ so sturdy.”

She’d have to give up celebrating her birthday, Rowan decided as she studied his face. She had all she’d ever wanted now. No gift would ever be as amazing or beautiful as Taran’s love, but the sex? Might be her second favorite present of all time.

“Why do you look at me thus?” he asked.

“Even with the bald head Tairne was sexy as hell,” she told him. “And I think Aran would have won every wet t-shirt contest ever held in the history of time. But I prefer this you.”

Taran smiled. “At least I’m no’ ancient in this incarnation.”

She thought of the old man and the young, pregnant druidess who had tried to run away together, and stroked Taran’s neck as other, distant memories came back to her.

“Wren kept her promise to Tarn, and named their daughter Rowan. She also told her about her dad, and how they’d found each other almost too late. She told her that death didn’t matter because they’d find each other again. I think Rowan told her kids, and they told theirs.” Dimly she recalled her own, dark-haired father telling her the story. “That’s why there’s always been a Rowan in every generation since Wren.”

“’Twas wise of Tarn,” he said, but his expression sobered. “’Twas your name that made me ken who you were, even when I remembered naught else.” He scooped her up out of the water and set her down on the stone. “But wherever you go, I shall find you. Here or in the afterlife, we shall ever be together.”

“Count on it,” she said as he lightly kissed her forehead.

In the easy silence that followed they dried off and dressed, but as they left the chamber Rowan took hold of his hand.

“I’d like to go measure the hayloft,” she told him. “Want to help me figure out how big a bed we’ll need?”