Claddagh Harbor
County Galway, Ireland
May 1819

“What is taking so long?” Aileen Joyce's anxious whisper echoed through the great room's dark expanse.

If Rourke didn't put in an appearance soon, she wasn't sure she'd find the nerve to ask him anything. He'd come home to wait on his dying father, not dance attendance on her and her whims. Except her plan was no whim. It was as necessary as her next breath.

Aileen’s satin skirts whipped behind her as she turned and paced back across the length of the hall toward the candle-lit hearth. Her heels clicked with sharp impatience against the stone floor before sinking into the lush confines of the Persian rug.

Of course you'll find the nerve, she scolded herself and steeled her spine. She turned at the hearth to cross the room again. There is no other choice. Eoghan's plan to secure his future at her expense was beyond intolerable. And by all accounts Rourke's life in Dublin had prepared him for far more debauchery than any proposal she offered.

Cold comfort there, but she clung to it.

She shivered as the mix of dread and anticipation collided in her stomach. Maybe it was the short, capped sleeves and daring décolletage of the lavender satin gown she wore that set the gooseflesh on her arms. She smoothed her hands over the cool fabric so different from the linen and homespun she usually wore. The high-cut gown, the elaborate hairstyle and carefully applied lip color were essential to her plan.

The king's son deserves a grand homecoming despite the circumstances, that's what Jenna had said earlier. The gambler and rake Rourke had become would also get a welcome befitting his character.

She gnarled her fingers-–white with cold and the scrubbing she'd used to get the berry stains out--gripped them tight and muffled a groan. Part of her wished he might never come down, that she might never have to face the task she'd assigned herself. The rest of her just wished she could get this night over with.

And a tiny wistful part of her wished everything was far different and they could go back five years to the days when they could laugh and tell each other anything with impunity. When Rourke had taught her how to fish with a net and how to sail a skiff across the harbor. She shoved those memories aside. That friendship had died when he'd walked away after their fateful kiss. Walked away and never looked back at the faithless girl who betrayed his brother.

Guilt harrowed her afresh, a guilt she'd carried for five long years. She'd proven herself unworthy of the one son and driven the other from his home. Perhaps she should resign herself to the new marriage Eoghan proposed as punishment deserved.

Everything in her rebelled at the thought of a lifetime with the groom of her brother's choosing. His greed and cruelty were fabled throughout the province. The king himself had pronounced his disgust with her brother’s intentions. Right before the old man had barred her from the sick room he'd promised to see her free of the proposal. And then he had looked at her with those deep sea-blue eyes so like his son’s.

Opportunity does not often come more than once, Aileen. Let none pass you by.

She shivered again. In that moment it had almost been as if the old man could see straight into her soul. She’d clung to his words. And now she would grasp the opportunity presented by Rourke’s return and pray that his father would forgive her for following his advice so thoroughly.

She bit back a sigh and swallowed as her glance at the clock above the hearth did little to allay her anxiety. There had been a time when discussing anything with Rourke would have been easier than taking her next breath. But that time had passed. Awaiting him like this was sheer torment.

Her betrothal ring dangled against her breasts as it had now for so many years. Two hands holding a heart-shaped emerald under a golden crown that had once belonged to Ranall and Rourke's mother. She would like nothing better than to hand it back to Rourke and put as much distance between them as possible. But the first thing she had to do was eliminate the distance all together.

She smiled at the irony and sighed as she continued pacing. Perhaps a glass of sherry would bolster her sagging courage if Rourke delayed much longer.

The fine hairs at the back of her neck stiffened and she knew even before turning that Rourke had entered the room. Her breath hitched in her chest as fear lanced her spine and shivered over her skin. It was time to face him, face her past and take a daring leap for the future.

She stayed immobile, staring out the window. Betrayed by fear and the impossibility of it all. Now that the time had come she seemed completely incapable of so much as turning around, let alone asking him to do something that by all rights should offend him to the very core of his honor. If his years of gaming and womanizing in Dublin had left him any.

“Aileen.” His voice, so deep and rough–and achingly familiar–-swept through her, leaving her feeling naked and raw.

Dismay held her immobile for the span of several more heartbeats. She had forgotten. Even in the deepest recesses of her memory where she embraced every word, every gesture that had ever passed between them. How could she have so thoroughly forgotten what just the sound of Rourke McAfferty's voice saying her name could do to her?

Her knees seemed to have turned to mush. She gripped the cold slate of the window sill and willed herself to stay on her feet. Now was not the time to allow her bones to melt nor lose all sense of her purpose in summoning him to the hall. There was very little time left to her. Very little protection left in this granite fortress that had become her home.

It was now or never.

Despite the breath locked in her chest, she turned to face him.Rourke McAfferty caught back a groan of longing that welled from the very depths of his soul as Aileen finally turned to greet him. He had been shocked enough by the sight of the elegantly clad figure gazing out the window when he entered the hall. Looking across the shadowed room toward her, regret and dismay clashed within him as he took in the changes the years had wrought.

Somehow in his mind, Aileen had remained frozen in time. Frozen on a windswept hillside with her golden hair spilling over her shoulders and berries staining her lips as her laughter cascaded through him. Untried innocence shining in the sun of his memories–-he'd steeled himself to deal with that Aileen. Yet here she stood now, the very embodiment of a sultry temptress. And he was at a loss.

Every nerve in his body tightened in traitorous response to the transformation. Dressed in lavender satin fit for a Dublin ballroom, the Aileen who turned to meet him was no longer the artless girl who harrowed his dreams, but a woman full-grown-- remote and sophisticated. Pale, golden-blond tresses swept up into a sleek knot with tumbled curls that kissed her slender neck soft cheeks. Her sweet face had haunted him for the past five years-—arched brows, wide violet-gray eyes and lips that begged a kiss to ravage his honor and his life--had ripened to full womanhood. But no winsome smile curved those soft lips, no welcoming sparkle lit her gaze.

What had not changed was his reaction to her. Derision twisted within him, writhing like a snake. He had but to look at Aileen and the time and distance he’d worked so hard to place between them disappeared like mist in the sun. He wanted nothing more than to reach across the separations dividing them. To take her in his arms and hold her there. To claim her as his own.

He had been right to don the guise of a man without honor and principles, for he stilled possessed none where she was concerned.“Hello, Rourke.” Aileen's voice came low and husky, rasping over his raw nerves and delving neatly betwixt the barriers he had so carefully erected.

Her breasts rose above the impossibly-low neckline of her gown, plump and full as she walked forward to greet him. The fabric of the gown clung to her hips and moved enticingly with her graceful pace, he could see now that it was far closer to a courtesan's dress than a debutante's. Where had Aileen gotten such a garment? And why?

She stopped a half-dozen paces away. Tantalizingly near and yet safely out of reach. Firelight flickered across her creamy skin and caught the gold ring glowing on the chain that dipped from her neck. The Claddagh ring. Hands for friendship, an emerald heart for love and a golden crown for loyalty.

His mother's ring. Ranall's betrothal gift.

“Welcome back. I hope you have not found things too unfamiliar from the time you left.” Aileen held his gaze, but what lay behind her impersonal greeting remained unreadable in her eyes. “You have been missed.”

You have been missed. A weak and watery description for the homecoming that was tilting his new universe even further off-kilter.

He loosened his dry tongue from the roof of his mouth.

“Da has refused to let me enter his chamber tonight. This seems a long journey for nothing save frustration. How have you found him over the weeks since Liam left to fetch me here?”

She looked away at last. Glancing down at her clasped hands, she shook her head. A hint of the wisteria scent that had always been hers wafted to him across the rug between them. “I can tell you naught of Niall McAfferty's condition. Your father has denied all save Muire and Liam access since he first fell ill. Even me. Your father has changed a great deal since you left him to carry on by himself.”

“Is that why you told Jenna you needed to see me? To heap recriminations at my feet?” He stiffened, ready for years of accusations over his escape, his neglect.

She shook her head, her golden hair and shimmering gown shining in the light with her motion. A shimmering figure from his past more dream than reality even now.

“Then why?” Why had he been summoned for this torture? He longed to escape. He longed to draw nearer.

Color washed her cheeks as her teeth worried at her lip. Whatever it was she wished to speak to him about, it had her knotted up inside. His interest tightened.

“I...I wanted to welcome you home.” Rosy red washed her cheeks again as the words came halting and soft. “I mean...I needed to...oh, why does everything have to be so difficult.”

The last came in a rush of frustration. For an instant the worldly woman's mask fell and he saw a flash of the girl she had once been. Memories knifed him.

She turned away--a lady once more, the girl gone--tension rigid down her slender spine.

His gaze traveled from the few loose curls dancing at the back of her neck, down over her almost bare shoulders. Desire tightened painfully inside him. Her skirts swayed and clung seductively as she paced to the windows and looked out over the harbor again.

At one time he would have thought nothing of crossing to her side.

Of inhaling her sweet scent and tracing his fingers over her shoulders.

She had been his friend.

She had been his torment.

She had belonged to his brother.

He ground his teeth together, remembering the feel of her in his arms, the taste of her mouth, and the fire she unleashed in his soul.

He shuddered as the urge to touch her nearly overcame him. He wasn’t about to give in to that temptation again. The one time he had indulged his craving sparked the worst tragedy in the history of his family.

She cast a half glance over her shoulder, a gesture he had forgotten, but which instantly tore memories free from their forced seclusion in his mind. He stifled yet another groan and armored himself with the steely determination that had seen him through the last five years.

“If you have nothing further, I’ll bid you good night.”

She jumped as he spoke and turned back to face him, her eyes widened. “No, please.”

“I've had a long journey, Aileen. I have not arrived in the best of moods. Whatever it is you wish to say to me would be better approached on a full stomach in the light of day.”

She paled and gripped her hands tighter together. Her lips pressed together in a thin line. A twinge of sympathy panged inside him. He squashed it. Her problem, whatever it might be, must be of her own making this time. Her own solution. He would have nothing to do with either, and heaven willing, he would manage to keep his distance despite the ancient feelings roiling through him.

He inclined his head and bowed slightly. “Good night, Aileen.”

He turned to make good his escape. To live to fight another day as Garrett would say.

“Rourke.”

Her one-word protest, his name alone, sank into his heart like a barbed hook and halted him before he taken so much as a step. He blew out a quick and all-too shaky breath. If his men could only see him now–-the Green Dragon’s right hand man, a scion of command, paralyzed at the sound of his name on a woman’s lips.

Derision snaked through him again. He straightened his shoulders forced himself to face her. “What is it you want, Aileen?”

Determination etched her features as she advanced on him, her satin skirts whispering across the stone floor. “There are many things I want, Rourke. But what I mean to discuss with you now has nothing to do with wants.”

He arched a brow at her, fought to keep from stepping back as she halted in front of him. All too close. The soft scent of wisteria assailed him. He could almost taste her. He swallowed hard and held his ground as the demons dancing madly inside him made the detachment he craved impossible.

He met her gaze, those wide violet-gray eyes that haunted his soul.

“State your purpose and be done with it.” He bit the words out.

She took a deep breath that threatened to spill her breasts from the low décolletage of her gown. The Claddagh ring glistened at their crest, taunting with its intimate caress of the skin he'd give his soul to touch and yet branding her for all time as untouchable. Not again. Never again.

"You are right.” She nodded, the light of earnest need shining in her eyes. Stray curls caressed her cheek. He suppressed the urge to wipe them aside, to smooth the worry creasing her brow.

“I do neither one of us a service in procrastinating. Rourke, I must beg a small boon from you. It is my fervent hope that your...experiences over the last five years will allow you to see your way toward granting it.”

His heart hammered, ready to promise her anything. His better sense, honed over the bitter years apart, kept a tight fist on his tongue's reins. “My experiences--as you put them--have taught me not to make blind promises.”

Hell, hadn't he promised himself a hundred times over that he'd never allow himself to melt again into the liquid appeal in her gaze just as he was doing at this very moment. Ready to do whatever she bid?

He was a fool to have come here at all without ascertaining she was gone. “Tell me what you want from me and I'll consider the matter.”

Her gaze locked with his again. “I shall state my situation baldly and expect the same in return.”

She paused searching his face as if seeking his agreement to this at least. He nodded.

“After years of refusing to return your father's bride price, my brother found another match for me a little over a month ago. I have no desire to marry his choice. Not now and not ever. Once Eoghan returns the money to your father, my alternatives will be eliminated. Time is short. Only your father's illness has delayed matters this long.”

“Indeed?”

“Aye.” She nodded again, though her soft skin had paled to a luminous pearl. “I need you to help me, Rourke.”

I need you. He ground his teeth together.

“How?”

“I want you to help me in the only way that will stop my brother permanently. As I said, I believe your experiences...your new life in Dublin...make you the best choice for the task.”

She paused for breath and Rourke could only stare at her. Did she expect him to murder her brother? To somehow discouraged her new prospective groom?

“Aileen, what is it you want from me?”

She straightened her all-but-bare shoulders and lifted her chin, a clear signal of troubled waters ahead.

“I want you to ruin me, Rourke. Take my virginity. It is the only way.”

The words rang in Aileen’s ears in concert with the rapid thumping of her heart. Right up until the moment the proposition fell from her lips, she hadn't been sure she possessed the courage to speak her request so plainly. Yet she had done it with Rourke standing before her so tall, so remote, and so desperately out-of-place in the home generations of his family had occupied.

Opportunity does not often come more than once, Aileen. Let none pass you by. She had acted on his father's words. Would he?

With his elegantly tailored evening attire, polished boots, and distant demeanor it was hard to see past the man he had become and seek the boy she had once known. The kindred soul she had once loved and needed more than her next breath. Despite his outward refinements, his entire body exuded a raw power to accomplish anything he put his mind to. He could more than fulfill her request, there was no question.

But would he? Her thoughts and doubts circled like screeching gulls.

Her heartbeat drummed faster still as a flash of some emotion she couldn’t name played over his features. Horror? Revulsion? Hunger? His face paled to a shade only just darker than his elaborately-tied cravat. She had shocked him to his core.

Her heart sank a little, but then she had known her words would shock him. Shock she could deal with. Denial she would not accept.

“You want me to what?”

He bit out his question in a low, deadly-quiet voice. His lips barely moved while his entire body seemed frozen, save for the narrowing of his eyes as his outraged gaze bore into hers.

“I...I want you to...remove me as a matrimonial prize for my brother to award where he sees fit.” If she were not so desperate she was quite certain she would hike up her skirts and run from the room faced with his glowering countenance.

Rourke closed his eyes. Tension stood out along the column of his throat as he swallowed. His fists bunched and flexed as though he restrained himself from throttling her. She bit her lip and straightened her spine, along with her resolve. She could not allow his recoiling from the actions necessary for her escape plan to stop her. Candlelight and shadows flickered over the harsh planes of his once beloved face.

The peat fire hissed derision, mocking her determination.

“Impossible,” Rourke ground out at last.

He opened his eyes and strode past her without another glance, pulling the door shut behind him. His booted footsteps rang against the flagstones as he crossed to the mantel and stared down into the flames. Every line of his shoulders and stiff back screamed his affront at her suggestion. His denial.

The desire to gather her skirts and flee the hall surged. She wanted nothing better than to leave him behind along with the turmoil of emotions just the sight of him evoked.

She had anticipated his initial resistance, but she had not considered her own desperate need for his acceptance and the devastation his refusal sparked in her soul. It tore afresh the pain she'd felt when she discovered him packing to leave after Ranall's death. When she'd begged him to stay. Begged him to take her with him.

She shuddered. She would not beg. Never again. But neither could she give up without a fight. Five years of loneliness had taught her that.

She mustered her arguments and marched across the rug to join him by the fire. “Surely such an idea is not impossible for one who leads the sort of life you do in Dublin? Will you at least hear me out?”

He fired her a scornful look and reached for the decanter of whiskey on the mantel. “What do you know of my life in Dublin, Aileen? What could you possibly say to convince me that this is the only course open to you? And, most of all, why me?”

“Because you are my last hope.” She watched as he poured himself a tumbler-full of his father's finest spirits before shooting his shuttered gaze back toward her.

"Too bad.” The grim finality in his voice lanced her heart as he raised his glass in a mocking salute. “Care to join me?”

An occasional sherry or glass of wine was all the Claddagh king allowed his ward of eight years. But the king was dying and she would soon be at her brother's mercy if she failed to convince Rourke to help her. She nodded, willing to meet any gauntlet he tossed. He quirked a brow and poured a lesser amount in one of the cut-crystal glasses before handing it to her.

"Slainte.” He raised his glass and tossed back a healthy swallow.

She took a sip and struggled not to choke on the fiery liquor as it numbed her mouth and burned down her throat, bringing the sting of tears to her eyes.

She drew in a much-needed breath. She could not give up. “Why won't you even consider what I ask?”

“What made you think I would?” He retorted.

She gripped her glass tighter and forced herself to hold his gaze. “There was a time when I could have asked anything of you. When we were friends.”

The glitter in his eyes made her look away. “I know that friendship died along with Ranall. I know I am to blame for how you have lived, for...what you have done since you left.”

A snarl of amusement twisted his mouth. “How can you know what I have done? How I have lived?”

“I am not the naive girl you left behind.” She took another sip of the whiskey, welcoming its peat-smoke taste and the warmth it brought to her frozen heart. Courage to continue flowed in its fiery wake.

She faced her quarry squarely.

“I know that you have lived a wastrel's life, gambling and drinking. Carousing with your new friends in dens of iniquity or visiting houses of ill-repute. Your father kept an eye on you even at this distance. I found the accounts of your activities in his desk.”

Rourke’s dark gaze never wavered from hers, though his lips pressed to a thin line.

“I know how much your fall into disgrace has cost him,” she pressed on. “He used to be so proud of you.”

He grimaced. The muscles in his jaw tightened as he took another swig from his glass. “So what makes you want to lie with a man who holds so little honor in your eyes? So little promise?”

“We were friends once,” she repeated, trying to suppress the memory that they had been far more. Those feelings had not been enough to hold him then, she could not allow them to halt her plan now. “Better one night with a devil you know than a lifetime in hell with a stranger.”

“Were none of the local lads willing to help you with your predicament?” Ire edged his tone.

“Jasper Farley, the man my brother would sell me to, could exact a high vengeance. Not to mention Eoghan's fury at losing not only your father's Bride Price, but the fat purse Farley has offered him to replace it. How could I ask one of your people to live with that?”

“Yet you ask it of me?” He rubbed a hand over his shoulder and moved a step closer.

She stood her ground. “You don't live here anymore. You've made it plain you will leave once you have paid your respects to your father. The new king will be under no obligation to honor the friendship between our fathers that brought me here in the first place, that has offered me shelter all these years.”

For a moment his gaze slid from hers and his jaw worked.

Please God, let me be getting through to him. “It is enough that I will lose my own reputation without soiling another's. You are my only choice if I am to gain my independence. Surely you of all people can understand that.”

Again his jaw worked in silence for moment before he answered her. “You have honored me with your proposal because I am a devil without honor, without a reputation to lose and no ties to the area. The lesser of two evils.”

She nodded. Hardly the persuasion she had hoped to use to move him. So much for dressing seductively and gaining his acquiescence through feminine wiles.

“I may be a devil, Aileen. I may hold little that resembles honor, but that does not make me a despoiler of virgins, no matter how willing.”

“I...I can make it worth your effort.” She forced the words out as her own sense of honor shuddered inside her. “I don't expect your cooperation to come without a price.”

“What?” He choked on his swallow of whiskey and thunked his glass down. The contents sloshed on the mantle. “Are you really offering to pay me for my services? You truly do think I have sunk into the muck.”

She was lost. She knew it to her very core, but she could not stop now. “Under the Brehon Law your people still follow I can claim my Virtue Price from you when Eoghan returns the Bride Price due to my...new ineligibility. In six months time I will come into my inheritance from my mother. I can pay you back, with interest, then. Surely such an arrangement will help maintain your Dublin lifestyle.”

Rourke stepped closer still, looming over her. His blue eyes glittered darkly in the firelight. Without warning, he gripped her shoulders so tight her glass fell from her hand. The crystal shattered against the hearth stones. “A woman can claim her Virtue Price only if she is unwilling.”

His gaze ravaged her lips as he pulled her roughly against him. The rough texture of his brushed wool jacket scoured her bare flesh almost as throughly as the scorn in his voice.

“You are not offering to pay me for my cooperation, are you Aileen? You would have me force myself on you. Is that truly what you want, muirneach? Are you so desperate to escape this Farley you would damn us both completely with this deception?”

His fingers dug into her tender skin. Her satiny gown offered her too little protection from his assault. The truth was her only defense. She tilted her head up to meet his gaze and cursed them both. “Aye.”

For a breathless moment he held perfectly still, looking so intently into her eyes she swore he could see her very soul.

“Hell--”

His lips claimed hers. But this was no repeat of the spontaneous embrace they had shared on a hillside so long ago. His kiss purposefully plundered her this time. As though he meant to strip away any artifice, and rend her defenseless. But despite the anger she could feel thrumming through his body, raw sensuality poured from him, tormenting her, punishing them both for the past they couldn’t change and the future she had dared to propose.

His tongue pressed past her lips and thrust against her own. Fire, so blazing hot it stunned her, rushed through her veins. She melted against him, unable to do anything but accept his anger and the passion blazing to life between them.

His hand slid along her back, rough-yet-gentle, to cradle her neck and tilt her head up to better accommodate him. His tongue slid against her own, tasting of peat-laced whiskey. He groaned into her mouth, laving her teeth and tongue without mercy.

All the lonely days and nights of missing him roiled inside her. All the anger at his desertion, and the guilt over her role in his departure, seethed to the surface. She wanted no mercy. And she would grant him none.

She wound her hands around his waist pulling herself further into his embrace, pulling him closer. He smelled just as she remembered, fresh and beautiful, like ocean breezes ruffling blue sage shrubs along the sandy paths in the hills behind Claddagh. The pain and the years separating them dissolved. This was Rourke, the boy who had tempted her days and tormented her dreams. Rourke, the man who had returned just as she had prayed for so very long.

Rourke the stranger who would break her heart again.

Tears broke loose inside her and streamed her cheeks as his fingers arched through her hair and massaged her scalp and neck. The myriad of sensations his kiss unleashed raged through her with the ferocity of a late summer storm blowing in from the open sea.

Without warning he released her mouth and stepped back, leaving her bereft and dizzy. All the wild things he had unleashed within her swirled on at a breathless pace. She had never realized desire for a man could be so overpowering. She felt open, exposed--ready for anything he asked of her.

She swayed and clung to him to keep herself standing. His hand cupped her cheek and he brushed the pad of his thumb over her tear-damp skin. Regret and desire warred across his features. For the briefest moment, his gaze softened and she thought he meant to kiss her again.

Instead he placed his hands back on her shoulders and firmly pushed her away.

“You are a tasty enough morsel, I warrant.” His words stung. “Probably well worth the price of a little scandal, with a tidy profit thrown in.”

He looked her up and down with an arched brow. “Shall I rip the dress off you here and have my way with you on the hearth? Rend your virginity amid the shards of crystal? Or would you prefer me to drag you off to the comfort of your bedchamber?”

With her defenses already lowered, his barbs struck hard, but the cold gleam in his eyes stung worse. Her hands shook as she reached for the mantle and gripped it tight to keep more trembling at bay.

She drew in a deep breath and gathered strength to speak. “One night is all I ask. One night and then we can be done with one another.”

He raised a brow. “Perhaps I haven't changed as much as you think, Aileen. As much as I had hoped.”

He snatched up his whiskey glass and turned away. “Devil or not, a night such as you require is more than I have to give. More than even you can ask of me.”

The door slammed shut behind him and he was gone. More so than if he had never arrived.

The finality of his repudiation echoed through her for a long time as she stood racked by dry sobs of despair.