He kissed the soft nape of her neck. He could sense her confusion, yet he could also feel her resistance beginning to ease. He pressed his advantage, for this first time their mating must be swift lest she grow wary again. There would be time for the slow, drawn-out pleasure of passion that he well knew how to give. But this first time he must show her that the coming together of a man and a woman was sweet and tender, not hard and cruel. “I shall be the white stallion to your golden mare, Lara,” he told her. “Did you not find the mating between those two symbolic?” His hand undid the neckline of her kaftan, baring her two breasts, and he began to fondle them gently. “A woman’s body is to be treated with tenderness, and worshipped,” he told her low.

“The Forest Lords thought of a woman’s body only as a vessel,” she replied.

“I saw the bruises on you, Lara. Tell me they did not beat you,” he said.

“Nay, they treated me as well as they knew how to treat a woman, for they sought a faerie child of me. But their manner was rough, as I have said.” His hands on her were unlike anything she had ever known. She sighed, realizing that she was actually enjoying his touch, watching as her nipples hardened when he teased them.

He smiled as he sensed her reaction to his hands. She had the loveliest breasts. They were like small summer fruits, round and perfect, but not yet quite ripe. He caressed them, one in each hand now. His lips brushed the graceful curve of her neck, nuzzling her long hair aside, moving down to the soft curve of her shoulder. Her head fell back against him, and her green eyes were closed. She sighed again, this time more deeply.

“You are not sickened then?” he asked her.

She shook her head in the negative. “I like it,” Lara told him. “Is it always like this, my lord prince?”

“I will try to make it so, especially as you have had such a bad experience with the Foresters,” he told her. Then his hands fell away from her breasts, and he turned her about to face him. His lips began to kiss her-first her mouth, which he explored tenderly with his tongue, then her face and her eyelids.

Their bodies were touching. Her breasts against his smooth chest, her belly and legs pressed to his warm flesh. His arms wrapped about her, holding her as close as he could. She could feel his manroot stirring and swelling as his desire increased, but instead of being repelled, more than anything Lara wanted her body joined to this man’s. And she knew he waited for her to tell him so. “Yes!” she whispered against his mouth.

He drew her down to the floor, and to her surprise there was a soft silken mattress beneath them. He turned her onto her stomach. “I want to mount you like my stallion did,” he groaned. “Raise your buttocks up for me, Lara, my love.” And when she did he covered her as his stallion had covered the little golden mare, his manroot finding her silken passage and sliding into it. “Remember the beast,” he murmured in her ear. “Remember his size, and feel me growing within you. I am the white stallion, and you are the sweet golden mare he desires.” He thrust hard.

Lara cried out, but it was not with fear. His words excited her. She actually could feel him swelling within her, and imagined the stallion’s length and power as he had taken the mare. She was the mare, and the stallion was driving himself within her body with a fierce rhythm. She could feel her own heart beating wildly as she realized that she wanted this man. Truly wanted him. She could hardly breathe with her own excitement. She wanted him to go on forever. “Oh, my lord!” she finally managed to cry out.

His teeth sunk into her neck. His haunches contracted and expanded with his efforts. He allowed the magic in his veins to guide his manroot as he pleasured the girl beneath him, and gained from her the most incredible pleasure he had ever known. He groaned, knowing it must end soon, but not wanting it to, until Lara cried out again, and he recognized the sound as a woman about to reach the apex of her pleasure.

Her head was swirling. There were bursts of color behind her closed eyelids. Within her she felt what she had never experienced before. A tightening, a quickening, a wild burst of tremors that shook her to her very core. She sobbed his name once. “Kaliq!” She felt his juices flooding her, and then Lara fainted with the emotions he had aroused within her.

When she finally opened her eyes several minutes later, she was lying on her back. She raised herself on one elbow. He lay next to her, his eyes closed. They were in the middle of the wide corridor on the mattress that had so mysteriously been there for them. “What will your servants think?” Lara said softly.

His blue eyes opened. “My servants are wise enough to keep their thoughts to themselves,” he told her. “You are an incredible creature, Lara. You felt pleasure, didn’t you? It was not like that for you before, even when your body responded to the Forest Lord. Today you responded body and soul.”

“Yes,” she told him. “It was an amazing experience. Can it be that way all the time? Should it be?” Lara wondered.

Reaching up, he pulled her down, and kissed her mouth a long slow kiss. “It will always be that way when you and I make love, my faerie girl.”

“Do not call me that!” Lara cried. “The Foresters called me that.”

“Then I shall never call you that again,” he promised.

“The mattress?” She quickly changed the subject.

He laughed. “I have some magic, although I do not practice my skills as much as I should. When I knew we would make love I quickly conjured us a soft place to lie.”

“In a most public place,” she murmured. “What if someone had come upon us? Comes upon us?” She looked anxiously for her kaftan.

He laughed softly. “They will not,” he told her. “My servants know me well, and knew what watching my stallion with the mares in the company of a beautiful girl would lead to this afternoon. No one will disturb us.”

“I should get back to the village,” Lara said.

“Stay with me,” he said to her.

“I am not ready to give you that much of myself quite yet,” Lara told him honestly. “I am only beginning to get used to the idea that I am a free woman. Og says that the Foresters can not reclaim me here, or ever again if I can manage to keep out of their sight for a full year. Is that true?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Remain with me for a year, and I will protect you from them, Lara. You will never give them what they want, but I think they would not believe you even if you told them so. They are brutish men with little intellect.”

“Swear you will not fall in love with me,” she said to him.

“Why?” he demanded, smiling at her, his hand caressing her face.

“I have told you. I do not believe in love. But you do, and you are a kind man. I would not hurt you, my lord Kaliq,” Lara said quietly.

“The decision is mine to make,” he told her, “and who knows? I may teach you to love. But whether I can or not, say you will remain at least a year with me that you may be truly free, Lara. I can teach you many things other than love.”

“You would share your magic with me?” she asked him.

“You should have magic at your disposal, Lara, for you are half faerie,” he said.

“I think Ethne would approve,” Lara replied. She held up the thin gold chain, and dangled the star crystal before his eyes. “Do you see the flame within it? That is Ethne, my guardian. My mother put this chain about my neck, my father once told me.”

“Ask Ethne then if Maeve is your grandmother,” the prince advised her. “If it is so you should meet her before she fades away entirely.”

“She has other grandchildren, I am sure,” Lara said almost bitterly.

“But no child of Ilona’s,” he told her. “If that Ilona is indeed your mother she never bore another child for human or faerie man.”

“I will ask Ethne,” Lara responded. Then she arose from the mattress, and picked up her kaftan from the floor of the wide corridor. “If I do not return Og will worry,” she said. “Where are my clothes?”

“You are not to wear those ugly garments again,” he told her.

“I do not want the villagers seeing me as I truly am, nor do I wish to be the cause of undue notice,” Lara told him. “You know that gossip travels on the wind, and the north wind will enter the Forest now that winter is there. If I am seen, word might reach Enda and Durga. Despite their misgivings they will come into the Desert seeking me. And if they find me, Hetarian law or no, they will take me back with them. I must remain covered and veiled at all times.”

“Then remain with me, and be safe,” he said.

“What of Og? I cannot leave him, for without him I would have never escaped the Forest,” Lara replied. “He is my friend. I will not desert him.”

“He may come into the palace and be with you,” the prince suggested. “He is not the largest giant I have ever seen. I suppose it comes from his mother’s time in hiding, and a lack of food in his early years.”

“He is six cubits tall,” Lara defended Og. “And he has his own magic. His boots can go a league with each step he takes!”

“Nonetheless he is a small giant,” Kaliq said, and standing, he drew on his own kaftan. “My palace ceilings will be high enough to sustain him. I will send a servant to the village to fetch him.”

“What of my sewing?” Lara said. “The villagers have come to depend upon me.”

“Yes, you have made yourself quite useful to them,” the prince noted. “The women will have to do their own mending again, I fear. There are other things you must learn, Lara. You are intelligent, and have a certain wisdom. You need to know more about Hetar and its peoples if you are to eventually continue on your journey.”

“What do you know of my journey?” Lara asked him, curious about his words.

“I know nothing of it but that you will remain with me no longer than a year,” he told her. “Once you can be assured of your safety you will go. I see it when I look at you.” He caressed her cheek again. “Do not look sad, Lara. I am but a stop on your journey. We will not waste our time together, however. There is much I can teach you. You asked me how old I was before, and I said I was older than you. I am much older. I have been here since the beginning of time, as have all my kind. You see no society of women and children among us, for there are none. There never have been. Our kind came from the purple shadows, and one day we will return into those shadows. We share our pleasure with the women to whom we are attracted, and who find us congenial. We raise and sell our horses, keeping to ourselves as much as we can. Hetar is changing more each day. Soon the time will come when the people have to choose between the light and the darkness. It will not be an easy choice to make, but make it they must.”

“What has this all to do with me?” Lara queried him.

“I do not know, but it does,” he told her. Then he clapped his hands together, and at once a servant appeared. “Send servants into the village to escort the giant, Og, to the palace. See they pack up all his and the lady Lara’s possessions.”

“At once, my lord,” the servant said, bowing, and he hurried off.

“How do you know?” she demanded.

He laughed. “I just do. Now come, I will show you where you will live.” He brought her to a suite of beautiful rooms that all opened out into a cool, green garden. “My apartment is across the garden,” he told her. “We will always be near one another, Lara. How many servants would you like?”

“I am capable of taking care of myself,” she told him.

“You are my chosen,” he replied. “You must be served.”

“Og will serve me,” Lara said.

“No. I want Og to work with my horses. Forest giants are extraordinarily good with animals. You must have a serving girl, and I think I have someone who would do well. I bought her off the last Taubyl Trader who came through several months back. She is young, and was very frightened, but she has learned well, my head serving man tells me. She will be as much a companion to you as a servant. Her name is Noss.”

“Noss!” Lara cried. “That is the girl the Foresters would not have! Yes, she will suit me admirably, my lord Kaliq.”

“Then I will send her to you,” he said. “For now, explore your quarters. They were conceived with you in mind.” He turned, and was quickly gone in a swirl of his white robes.

Alone, Lara reached down and raised the crystal to her gaze. Am I safe with him?

The flame flickered. That is a question to which you already know the answer, Ethne said. Ask what it is that you really desire to know from me.

Is Maeve, queen of the Forest Faeries, my grandmother?