"Brother Ambrose brought me down here the other day to soak," he said. "To soften the scars a bit. It does feel good, doesn't it?"
"More than good." The water was so buoyant that I felt I might float away if I loosed my hold on the bench. I looked upward into the black shadows of the roof.
"Does anything live in this cave? Bats, I mean? Or fish?"
He shook his head. "Nothing but the spirit of the spring, Sassenach. The water bubbles up from the earth through a narrow crack back there"—he nodded toward the Stygian blackness at the back of the cave—"and trickles out through a dozen tiny openings in the rock. But there's no real opening to the outside, save the door into the monastery."
"Spirit of the spring?" I said, amused. "Sounds rather pagan, to be hiding under a monastery."
He stretched luxuriously, long legs wavering under the glassy surface like the stems of water plants.
"Well, whatever ye wish to call it, it's been here a good deal longer than the monastery."
"Yes, I can see that."
The walls of the cave were of smooth, dark volcanic rock, almost like black glass, slick with the moisture of the spring. The whole chamber looked like a gigantic bubble, half-filled with that curiously alive but sterile water. I felt as though we were cradled in the womblike center of the earth, and that if I pressed my ear to the rock, I would hear the infinitely slow beat of a great heart nearby.
We were very quiet for a long time then, half-floating, half-dreaming, brushing now and then against each other as we drifted in the unseen currents of the cave.
When I spoke at last, my voice seemed slow and drugged.
"I've decided."
"Ah. Will it be Rome, then?" Jamie's voice seemed to come from a long way away.
"Yes. I don't know, once there—"
"It doesna matter. We shall do what we can." His hand reached for me, moving so slowly I thought it would never touch me.
He drew me close, until the sensitive tips of my breasts rubbed across his chest. The water was not only warm but heavy, almost oily to the touch, and his hands floated down my back to cup my buttocks and lift me.
The intrusion was startling. Hot and slippery as our skins were, we drifted over each other with barely a sensation of touching or pressure, but his presence within me was solid and intimate, a fixed point in a watery world, like an umbilical cord in the random driftings of the womb. I made a brief sound of surprise at the small inrush of hot water that accompanied his entrance, then settled firmly onto my fixed point of reference with a little sigh of pleasure.
"Oh, I like that one," he said appreciatively.
"Like what?" I asked.
"That sound that ye made. The little squeak."
It wasn't possible to blush; my skin was already as flushed as it could get. I let my hair swing forward to cover my face, the curls relaxing as they dragged the surface of the water.
"I'm sorry; I didn't mean to be noisy."
He laughed, the deep sound echoing softly in the columns of the roof.
"I said I like it. And I do. It's one of the things I like the best about bedding ye, Sassenach, the small noises that ye make."
He pulled me closer, so my forehead rested against his neck. Moisture sprang up at once between us, slick as the sulfur-laden water. He made a slight movement with his hips, and I drew in my breath in a half-stifled gasp.
"Yes, like that," he said softly. "Or… like that?"
"Urk," I said. He laughed again, but kept doing it.
"That's what I thought most about," he said, drawing his hands slowly up and down my back, cupping, curving, tracing the swell of my hips. "In prison at night, chained in a room with a dozen other men, listening to the snoring and farting and groaning. I thought of those small, tender sounds that ye make when I love you, and I could feel ye there next to me in the dark, breathing soft and then faster, and the little grunt that ye give when I first take you, as though ye were settling yourself to your job."
My breathing was definitely coming faster. Supported by the dense, mineral-saturated water, I was buoyant as an oiled feather, kept from floating away only by my grip on the curved muscles of his shoulders, and the snug, firm clasp I kept of him lower down.
"Even better," his voice was a hot murmur in my ear, "when I come to ye fierce and wanting, and ye whimper under me, and struggle as though you wanted to get away, and I know it's only that you're struggling to come closer, and I'm fighting the same fight."
His hands were exploring, gently, slowly as tickling a trout, sliding deep into the rift of my buttocks, gliding lower, groping, caressing the stretched and yearning point of our joining. I quivered and the breath went from me in an unwilled gasp.