“By the rites of men we cannot be married,” she said softly. “Are you willing to take me as your wife in the old way, as the priestesses mated with the men of the royal kindred, before the gods?”
He groaned as his hand curved around her breast, and she felt her nipple hardening against his palm. “Till death and after, by Mithras and the Mother,” he muttered. “Eilan, oh, Eilan!”
When the Merlin touched her, the fire had flared from the crown of her head to her heels; but this flame seemed to rise upward from the earth, burning all other thoughts away.
She touched his face and he reached for her. A clumsy hand tangled in her hair and her veil fell unheeded to the ground. Then his lips claimed hers, no longer gentle but demanding, like a starving man. For a moment surprise held her still in his grasp; then she became aware of an answering hunger, and her lips opened, welcoming him.
As they kissed her arms went around his neck; her hair, released from its careful coils, tumbled down her back as hairpins scattered across the grass. Gaius groaned and pulled her against him. Now she could feel the hard strength of his body, and his need. His hands moved from her shoulders down her back, molding her body to his.
Eilan felt the strength going out of her knees. She clung to him, and her weight drew them both downward to the green grass. His lips moved to her cheek, her eyelids, and the soft skin of her neck as if he would devour her, and she arched against him, trembling. Her skirts had ridden upwards as they fell; his exploring hand moved down her body, paused a moment as he touched soft skin, and then brushed upward again beneath the cloth until it came to rest in the sacred place between her thighs.
Gaius grew suddenly still, breathing hard. Then he pulled away, his eyes wide and dazed, as if they had looked into too much light.
“Lady,” he whispered. She could see the tremors shaking him, but somehow he was finding the control to act deliberately, dealing with their clothing, worshiping her body with an authority that grew until the light filled him also and she realized that he was not entirely Gaius any more.
“My King!” she whispered as the flame he had kindled seared along every nerve. “Come to me!”
He sighed then, sinking into her embrace as the sun into the sea, yielding to her even as she gave herself to him. In the distance she could hear shouting, as if it came from another world, and knew that the priests had lit the Beltane fires.
But a greater fire was blazing within her, and by that time, even if Caillean and all the women in the Forest House had been standing in a row watching them, Eilan would neither have known nor cared.
The day was far advanced and the sun was setting when Gaius finally stirred. Eilan drew reluctantly away from him; he reached for her once more and kissed her hard.
“I must return to the Forest House,” she said very gently. “They will be looking for me.” Indeed, Miellyn would be beside herself with worry. But if Eilan could manage somehow to get back into the enclosure unseen, they might believe that the crowds had kept them apart and she had somehow found her way back alone.
Even now, when passion had ebbed and she could think clearly once more, Eilan did not regret breaking her vows; the Goddess had known and had not intervened, proof enough that she had served a higher law. Part of the secret doctrine that Caillean had revealed in the months since Eilan’s initiation was that before the coming of the Romans, the priestesses had taken lovers as they chose, or even married. It was only since the coming of the Romans that men had had the arrogance to control the private lives of their women. Caillean had never met the man who would tempt her to break her vows, but perhaps she would understand. On the other hand, Caillean would not agree with Eilan’s choice of a lover, so perhaps she had better not tell the older priestess after all.