Between Wolves & Doves

Chapter 20 Lycanthropy

When Kylo wakes her the next morning, it is with a whisper of a kiss pressed to her forehead.

She slept snugly in his chest, in the enfold of his arms. Tangled and knotted in bedsheets and her legs lay impossibly entwined with his. There's no telling where he begins and she ends. They are much too entangled. Iris wonders how it hasn't always been this way.

She just knows she wakes up sighing a smile. With Kylo raining kisses and nudging her head out the way with his nose so he can kiss her throat. Little growls of content fall upon her skin like warm syrup and thorny scarlet roses from his lips; warm and lovely, but husky and sharp.

Dawn heralding to a new day outside the window. A spill of amber across the sky bleeding into an excellent blue. Slants of copper and gold shaft the clear sky. Life starts to warm up around them in the little Inn. The maids arrive and the cook is warming up the stove in the kitchens. The stable lad begins to tend to the fussing colts under his care in the stalls.

She's just on the edge of consciousness. When kylo slants his lips to her ear. His voice rumbles at her like the deepest shattered splinters of granite. "I have a surprise for you today." He promises. She can hear and feel his cunning smile.

"What would that be husband?" She asks. He gets a little flutter of something proud and boastful flickering at his stomach with the way she refers to him.

He smiles secretive to himself. Nuzzles into her back of her neck and smells her hair. Cosy musk of it from sleep and the spice of her heathery floral soap. His smile nestled in the crook of her neck.

Matter of fact, he says nothing. Not one word until they're both atop and astride Erland once again. Clopping gently along biscuit dusty country lanes under a clear sky. A chilling wind wrapping around them as they huddle closely together. His hand curling around her hip feels natural now, she doesn't see how she could ever ride a horse again and not have that sensation of his palm covering her.

He admits to nothing. Nothing, nothing, and still nothing.

Not until they've been riding for a while and suddenly the wind changes. It dances with notes and fragrance of something Iris can't place. Brine and salt. Something sodden and rotting green and bitter.

Then there comes the rushing crash of waves. The sound of ocean and rocks and pebbles on sand being dashed by a receding frothing tide. He smiles. And his mystery is revealed.

Where the grass of the field ahead of them tumbles away. Pale gold creeps along the cobalt space edging the sapphire emerald sea, between the water and the clear cornflower sky. Jagged granite sprouts out the earth and the water in great hulking splinters of dark rock. Tumbled and jutting over the horizon.

That scent was the foam and the salt whipping off the ocean in curling sprays of wind. Salt baked by sun and swimming in that ocean with the green fauna of those waves, waxy tumbled ropes of seaweed lay claggy and drying on the shore. Baked to leathery strips in the sunshine. Dune grass, dry and brittle, thrashes and hisses in that furious breeze. The frail yellowed hair of it sprouting out the tuscan butter of the rough sands.

They dismount Erland and pick their way gently down the empty dunes leading to the cold beach. The sky looks chowder grey and thick like a silver coverlet in the distance. But still the sea glitters and she delights in stepping onto that golden gold dust sand.

She takes it in deep. She's never seen the ocean before. He knew this.

Kylo watches her walk out ahead. Watches the wind carve around her skirts and her coat. She left her hair down today. Merely tied half of it back in a navy silk bow, the ribbon is the exact colour of the deepest sapphire black ocean that lay out ahead, and now those free muddy curls riot and toss on the wind. She stands and watches the glitter and shimmer of the sun skipping over the dazzling waves coming in to crash and tug hungrily at the shore. Eating away the wet sand beneath her toes.