Divine By Choice. P.C. Cast
settling fluidly to the floor by my side. His expression was grim as he studied what I realized must be my glazed, Barbie-exposed-to-math-word-problems expression.
“What is it, love? What has happened to you?”
“You!” A semi-hysterical giggle escaped from my lips.
His brow furrowed in concern. “I? I have injured you?”
I reached up and touched his cheek. “You haven’t injured me, you’ve impregnated me.”
He blinked twice, his expression blank. Then realization folded over his face.
“A child!” His deep voice resonated with joy. “We are to have a child?”
“Yes…” I knew I sounded reticent, but I had gone from tumor to baby in just a few heartbeats.
ClanFintan took my hands in his, kissing both my palms before leaning down and kissing me softly on my lips.
“Ugh.” I pulled away. “I taste like puke.”
“I do not care.”
“Well, I do.”
He pulled back and studied my face. “Rhea, are you not pleased?”
“I’m scared.” I blurted out before I took time to think.
His face softened and he pulled me into the warmth of his strong embrace. “Do not be afraid. Epona will always care for her own.”
I rested my cheek against the butter-soft leather of his vest and murmured my fear. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings or anything, but, well, what am I going to have?”
He remained silent, and I bit my lip. I loved ClanFintan, and I didn’t want to cause him pain, but the facts were that he was part horse and he was the father of my child. I couldn’t help but be concerned about the meshing of our two gene pools—especially when I would be the one giving birth—in a world without C-sections or epidurals.
“She will have your form, Rhea.”
“And what will she have of yours?” I whispered into his chest.
He paused for just a moment, then quietly said, “My heart. She will have my heart.”
My arms tightened around him while my eyes filled. “Then she will have everything.”
His warm lips briefly pressed against the top of my head. Then he shifted his hold on me so that he had me scooped up in his arms. Rising to his feet in one fluid motion he started toward the door.
“Oh, please don’t make me go back there with all that food and all those people.” I futilely tried to wipe at speckles that clung to my soggy dress.
“No, I am taking you to your bathing chamber. Tonight I will care for you, and our daughter.” He beamed down at me as he shouldered our way through the door and turned down my private hall in the direction of my bathing room.
The temple guards leaped out of his way, saluting me and calling, “Blessings on you and your child, Lady Rhiannon!” as they opened the door to the steamy chamber for us.
For a world that didn’t have TV or the Internet, it never failed to surprise me how fast news could travel.
I grinned mischievously at them over ClanFintan’s shoulder and winked. “Thanks, guys!” I didn’t “know” my guards (yes, I do mean in the biblical sense) as the original Lady Rhiannon had, but I did appreciate them.
“Do not encourage them.” ClanFintan chided goodnaturedly.
“Soon I’ll be too fat and pregnant to get a second look from them.”
“Humph,” he commented eloquently as he deposited me near the edge of the deep pool.
One of the many benefits of being Goddess Incarnate was that a veritable plethora of overenthusiastic maidens considered it an honor, as well as a duty, to keep me in the lap of ancient luxury. Which meant I had all the best wine, food, clothes, jewels, horses, warriors…on and on, but no television, telephones, computers or cars. In return I had to care for the spiritual health of Epona’s people: conduct ceremonies (albeit bare-breasted, which took some getting used to, especially as the weather had begun turning cold), serve as figurehead, you know, do whatever it was my Goddess asked of me to the best of my ex–high school English teacher abilities.
I was pretty sure I’d gotten the best part of the deal, which included having an opulent bathing chamber that was perpetually kept in a state of ready-for-me-to-use.
“Let me help you with that.” ClanFintan’s deft fingers took over for my pukey ones, which were struggling upside down to unclasp my diamond-encrusted brooch.
“New brooch?” he asked as he studied the mini replica of himself.
“Yes, today is the first time I’ve worn it. Do you like it?”
“I like that it rests near your breast.”
“Talk like that, if I recall correctly, is how I got into this condition.” I swatted at him playfully.
“I have suspected your old world wasn’t as, shall we say, knowledgeable as our world, and if you think talking impregnated you, then we should—”
“Oaf!” I swatted at him again, causing the once-lovely, now-crusty fabric of my bodice to slide down, exposing the very bosom to which he had been referring. I watched his expression change as he reached one hand out to gently cup my breast.
“You already appear changed. Your breasts are more full, more welcoming.” His voice was hypnotic as he framed my rib cage with both of his hands, softly caressing the sides of my weighty breasts with his palms.
Even after being married to him for half of a year, the heat of his body still had the ability to surprise me. A centaur’s natural body temperature is several degrees higher than a human’s body. ClanFintan’s touch was always erotically warm, and, although I knew it was simply the state of his physiology, his heat worked on me like an aphrodisiac.
I shivered in anticipation, pleased the queasy feeling in my stomach had subsided.
“You are chilled…” His sensuous touch was replaced by a matter-of-fact unwinding of the rest of my soiled dress. “Start soaking,” he ordered.
“Not very romantic,” I muttered, trying to bend seductively and slip out of my teeny thong, but he had already turned toward the shelf near my vanity and was searching, opening bottles and sniffing.
“The vanilla-almond one is in the gold-colored bottle.” I called to him over my shoulder as I lowered myself slowly into the clear, bubbling mineral water, and made my way to my favorite rock ledge.
ClanFintan turned back with a triumphant smile, golden bottle in his hands. “I like the scent of this one.”
“I know you do—that’s why I use it.” We grinned at each other.
His hooves clicked on the marble floor as he approached the edge directly across from where I was submerged. In one swift movement, he divested himself of his leather vest, and placed it and the bottle of perfumed soap on the floor.
“Do I need to remind you that you must not speak?”
“Oh!” I blinked in surprise. “No, but, I, uh, didn’t—”
“Shh…” He put a finger to his lips.
I closed my mouth, preparing myself for what I knew would come next—the Change. As a High Shaman, ClanFintan had the extraordinary ability to shapeshift from his centaur form. I didn’t think it would ever stop amazing me. I watched in awe as his concentration turned within, and I felt a shiver of bittersweet desire. We could only mate as husband and wife if he Changed, thus the fluttering of passion I felt as his chant began. But the Change did not come without cost. He could only maintain a different shape for a temporary amount of time, approximately eight hours, and he was never truly comfortable in