Chapter 15: Chapter 15
The door to the old millhouse groaned on its hinges, a sound as familiar to Kerr as his own breath. He ducked under the low frame, his bulk momentarily blocking the weak afternoon light. Inside, the world narrowed to the smell of damp stone, rotting wood, and the particular, sweet dust of forgotten hay.
“Maker’s breath, it’s colder in here than a templar’s heart,” Elspeth muttered, rubbing her arms. She moved past him, her footsteps precise on the warped floorboards, heading for the rickety staircase that led to the attic. “I’ll get a fire going.”
“I thought you said you just wanted to see the place one more time.” Kerr’s voice echoed slightly in the hollow space.
“I did. And my old bones want not to freeze while doing it. You coming up, or are you planning to stand sentry by the door all afternoon?”
He followed her up the creaking steps, the wood protesting under his weight. The attic was as they’d left it months before—a nest of old blankets and cushions pilfered from castle storage, the tiny window grimy, the air still holding the ghost of her perfume and the clove cigarettes she’d smoked when he was younger. She was already on her knees by the small hearth, expertly arranging kindling beneath the blackened iron grate.
He watched her work, the efficient flick of her wrist, the concentration on her weathered face. The fire caught, licking at the dry wood, and the growing light danced over the lines around her eyes, the silver threading through her dark hair. This place held the echo of a thousand whispered secrets, of laughter swallowed by moans, of afternoons where the only thing that mattered was the press of skin on skin, the river’s endless murmur their only witness.
“Remember the first time we came up here?” he asked, leaning against the slant of the roof. “After the harvest festival. You said you were showing me where the extra ale was stored.”
A genuine laugh barked out of her. She sat back on her heels, brushing her hands on her skirts. “Aye. And you, all of nineteen and towering over everyone like a young oak, believed me. You looked so disappointed when you saw it was just a dusty old loft.”
“I wasn’t disappointed for long.”
“No,” she said softly, the firelight softening her expression. “You weren’t.”
She rose, dusting off her knees, and walked to the center of the room where a thick, moth-eaten blanket was spread. She sat, patting the space beside her. He joined her, the floorboards cold even through the wool. For a while, they just listened to the fire crackle and the river’s relentless flow outside.
“I don’t like this Ostagar business,” she said finally, her voice losing its earlier lightness. She wasn’t looking at him, but at her own hands, curled in her lap. “All that pomp and ceremony for a war. Your father and Fergus, fine. That’s their duty. But you…” She trailed off.
“But me what?” He nudged her shoulder with his own. “I’m a Cousland too.”
“You’re my boy,” she said, the words simple and devastating. “The one who stole pies from my windowsill and grew into the man who…” She shook her head, a faint smile returning. “Well. You know.”
He put an arm around her, drawing her into his side. She fit there perfectly, as she always had, her head resting just below his shoulder. “I’ll come back,” he said, the promise feeling both necessary and flimsy.
“You’d better.” She turned her face into his tunic, inhaling deeply. “Or I’ll march down to the Void itself and drag you back by your ears.”
He laughed, the sound warm in the cool, dusty air. “I believe you would.”
They fell into a comfortable silence, the years between them not as a chasm, but as a well-worn path. The heat from the fire began to seep into the room, pushing back the chill. Elspeth’s fingers traced idle patterns on his thigh.
“That time in the wine cellar,” she murmured, her voice a low, conspiratorial hum. “The year the vintage was particularly good. You had me up against a cask of Antivan red. I was terrified we’d knock it over and your father would have my hide.”
“You weren’t terrified. You were inciting a riot,” Kerr corrected, a grin in his voice. “Told me you wanted to see if I could be as quiet as I was strong.”
“And you failed. Miserably. The racket we made… I was convinced the housekeeper would come down.” She chuckled. “But she didn’t. And the wine was fine. And you…”
Her hand moved, a familiar, claiming weight. He felt himself respond to her touch, to the memory, as immediate as if it were yesterday. It was never just hunger with her; it was a dialogue, a history written in skin and sweat and sensation.
“And I what?” he prompted, his own voice dropping.
She looked up at him, her eyes reflecting the flames. “You looked so pleased with yourself. So young and triumphant. All that power, and you let me hold the reins of it. You always did.” Her fingers worked at the laces of his breeches with practiced ease. “I’ve thought about that often. When I’m alone in my bed. The sheer weight of you. The heat. The way you’d whisper my name like it was a secret only the two of us knew.”
He helped her, shoving fabric out of the way, the cold air a sharp contrast to the sudden exposure. Her hands were on him, warm and knowing, sculpting the hardness of him with a reverence that belied her casual tone.
“Thousands of times, Kerr,” she breathed, leaning in, her lips brushing his ear. “In this attic, in the hayloft, in my little room by the kitchens when the castle was asleep. Thousands of times I’ve had this. All to myself. Every drop you’ve ever given me, I’ve taken. On my tongue, on my skin, inside me. And it was never, ever enough.”
Her breath hitched as she took him into her hand, her thumb tracing the prominent vein along his length. “The taste of you,” she whispered, her voice gone rough. “Like clean skin and salt. I’d spend whole afternoons just learning the shape of you with my mouth, the way the head would catch on my lips.” She bent, her tongue a hot, wet stripe that made his hips jerk. “I loved the weight of it on my tongue, the way I had to work to take you deep, the sound you’d make when I did.”
Kerr’s hand fisted in her hair, not guiding, just holding. A low groan rumbled in his chest.
“And when you’d finish,” she continued, pulling back to look up at him, her eyes dark and unblinking. “It was never just one thing. Sometimes it was bitter, sharp. Other times almost sweet. Thick. I’d swallow it down like a sacrament and feel warm for hours after, like I’d drunk sunlight.” Her hand worked him slowly, firmly. “I’d catch it on my belly, too, watch it pool in the hollow of my hip. Proof. My own secret trophy.”
“Elspeth,” he managed, her name a strained thing.
“No, let me say it,” she insisted, her own need making her words urgent, confessional. “My orgasms with you… they weren’t little things. They’d start deep, like a stone dropped in a well, and then the ripple would tear through me until I was shaking. You’d be inside me, filling me so completely I couldn’t tell where I ended and you began, and it would just… break. I’d see stars behind my eyelids. My teeth would ache from clenching. And you’d hold me through it, your big hands on my hips, never pulling away, giving me every last bit of it.”
She shifted, pushing her skirts up, moving to straddle his lap. The rough wool scratched against his thighs. She took him in hand, positioning him, and sank down with a slow, deliberate roll of her hips that forced a shared gasp into the dusty air.
The fit was perfect, familiar, a homecoming. She braced her hands on his shoulders, her forehead touching his, not moving yet.
“The gift of your body,” she breathed, her lips against his. “The sheer size of you, Kerr. It was a challenge I loved meeting. Feeling that stretch, that burn, knowing I was the only one who got to have this. That I could take all of you. It made me feel powerful. It made me feel young. You’d press in and my whole world would narrow to that one feeling of being opened, claimed.” She began to move, a slow, grinding rhythm that was less about frenzy and more about memorization. “The way your back felt under my hands, all corded muscle and sweat. The way your heartbeat would pound against my chest when you were spent. I’ve absorbed you for years. I’m a library of you.”
Her pace increased, her breaths coming in short, sharp pants that fogged in the cold air. The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.
“I don’t want other memories,” she choked out, her rhythm faltering as emotion overtook her. “Just these. The ones you gave me. The taste, the feel, the heat. That’s what I’ll have when you’re gone.”
That broke him. He gripped her, flipping them with a careful violence so she was beneath him on the blanket, never slipping out of that deep, wet heat. He drove into her, and her legs locked around his back, her heels digging into his thighs. The old floorboards creaked a frantic tempo beneath them.
Her climax took her silently at first, a sharp intake of breath, her eyes wide and fixed on his. Then a broken cry tore loose, her body arching, pulsing around him. It pulled his own release from him, a harsh, shuddering groan against the side of her neck as he poured into her, the physical truth of her words.
They lay tangled, spent, the only sound their ragged breathing and the river’s endless song. The fire was dying again.
Finally, she spoke into the quiet, her voice raw. “You have to come back. However you can. Because it still isn’t enough.”
The air in the attic was cooling again, stealing the sweat from their skin. Kerr felt the heartbeat against his own ribcage slow from its frantic drum