And there her heart beat in the same hammer blows as his own.

"Rowan," he murmured, as those secrets, as that power glinted in her eyes. "You are all manner of witch."

Her laugh was quick and triumphant. She leaned down, took his mouth hungrily with hers. Heat, sudden and brutal slammed into him, leaped into his blood like the fire she'd made only hours before.

She felt it, too, the quick change, and that she had made it. That, she thought wildly, that was power. Riding on it she took him into her, bowing back to revel in the shock of it, watching stars wheel in the black sky overhead.

His hands gripped her hips, his breath exploded from his lungs. Instinctively he struggled for control, but his already slippery grasp broke as she took him.

She took. Her hips moved like lightning, her body soared with a wild whip of energy that pushed him, raced ahead, dragged him with her.

She rocked herself to madness, then beyond, and still she drove him on. He said her name. She heard the sound break from him as his body plunged with hers. And she saw as they flew up, how his eyes flashed, then went dark and blind.

She all but wept with triumph as she grabbed hold and fell over with him.

He'd never allowed a woman to take control. Now, as Rowan lay sprawled over him, he realized he hadn't been able to stop it. Not with her. There were a great many things he hadn't been able to stop with her.

He turned his face into her hair and wondered what would come next. Only seconds later, when she spoke, he knew.

"I love you, Liam." She said it quietly, with her lips over his heart. "I love you."

He called the panic that sprang up inside him sense, responsibility. "Rowan-"

"You don't have to love me back. I just can't stand not telling you anymore. I was afraid to tell you before." She shifted, looked at him. "I don't think I'll be afraid of anything ever again. So I love you, Liam."

He sat up beside her. "You don't know all there is to know, so you can't know what you think or what you feel. Or what you'll want," he added on a huff of breath. "I have things to explain, things to show you. We'll do better at my cabin."

"All right." She made her smile easy, even as a dread filled her heart that the magic of that day was over.

CHAPTER 12

What else could he tell her that would shock or surprise? Rowan asked herself. He'd told her he was a witch, then had proved it and somehow made her accept it. He'd wiped out twenty-seven years of her simple beliefs about herself by telling her she was a witch as well. Had proved it. She had not only accepted it, but had embraced it.

How much more could there be?

She wished he would speak. But he said nothing as they walked through moonlight from her cabin to his. She'd known him long enough to understand when he fell into this kind of silence he would tell her nothing until he was ready.

By the time they reached his cabin and stepped inside her nerves were strung tight.

What she didn't think about, refused to consider, was the fact that he'd withdrawn into that silence after she'd told him she loved him.

"Is it so serious?" She tried for a light tone but the words came out uneven, and very close to a plea.

"For me, yes. You'll decide what it means to you."

He moved into the bedroom and running his fingers over the wall beside the fireplace opened a door she hadn't known was there into a room she'd have sworn didn't exist.

A soft light glowed from it, as pale and cool as the moonlight.

"A secret room?"

"Not secret," he corrected. "Private. Come in, Rowan."

It was a measure of her trust in him that she stepped forward into that light. The floor was stone, smooth as a mirror, the walls and ceiling of wood, highly polished. Light and the shadow she cast reflected back off those surfaces and shimmered like water.

There was a table, richly carved and inlaid, and on it a bowl of thick blue glass, a stemmed cup of pewter, a small mirror with a silver back ornately scrolled and a slim, smooth handle of amethyst. Another bowl held small, colorful crystals. A round globe of smoky quartz stood on the silver backs of a trio of winged dragons.

What did he see when he looked into it? she wondered. What would she see?

But she turned and watched Liam light candles, watched their flames rise into air already perfumed with fragrant smoke.

She saw another table then, a small round surface on a simple pedestal. Liam opened the box resting there, took out a silver amulet on a chain. He held it a moment, as if testing its weight, then set it down with a quiet jingle of metal on wood.

"Is this- a ceremony?"

He glanced over, those tawny eyes distracted as if he'd forgotten she was there. But he hadn't forgotten her. He'd forgotten nothing.

"No. You've had a lot to deal with, haven't you, Rowan? You've asked me not to touch your thoughts so I can't know what's in your mind, how you're thinking of all this."

He hadn't meant to touch her, but found his fingers grazing her cheek. "A lot of it I can read in your eyes."

"I've told you what I think and what I feel."

"So you have."

But you haven't told me, she thought, and because it hurt her, she turned away. "Will you explain to me what everything is for?" she asked and traced a fingertip over the scrolling on the little mirror.

"Tools. Just pretty tools," he told her. "You'll need some of your own."

"Do you see things in the glass?"

"Aye."

"Are you ever afraid to look?" She smiled a little and looked back at him. "I think I might be."

"What's seen is- possibility."

She wandered, avoiding him. There was change coming. Whether it was her woman's instincts or her newly discovered gifts that told her, she was sure of it. In a glass case were more stones, stunning clusters with spears rising, smooth towers, jewel-tone globes.

He waited her out, not with patience but because for once he didn't know how to begin. When she turned back to him, her hands linked nervously, her eyes full of doubts, he had no choice but to choose.

"I knew you were coming here."

He didn't mean here, to this room, tonight. He saw her acknowledge this. "Did you know- what would happen?"

"Possibilities. There are always choices. We each made ours, and have more to make yet. You know something of your heritage and of mine, but not all. In my country, in my family, there is a tradition. It's simplest, I suppose, to compare it to rank, though it's not precisely that. But one takes a place as head of the family. To guide, and counsel. To help in settling disputes should they arise."