Chapter 4: Insomnia
The great hall was silent, the day’s bustle settled into dust motes drifting through the last slants of evening sun. Kerr made his final round, a habit ingrained since his father and brother rode south. His boots echoed on the flagstones, a solitary sound in the sleeping fortress. He checked the bolt on the main door, ran a hand along the cold iron of a sconce, and turned toward the kitchen passage.
A rectangle of warm, honeyed light spilled from the kitchen doorway. Inside, Elspeth was banking the great oven, her movements efficient and practiced. The scent of baked bread and rosemary hung in the air. She turned, wiping her hands on her apron, and saw him framed in the archway.
“Done with your patrol, my lord?” she asked, her tone neither formal nor familiar, but somewhere comfortably in between.
“All quiet,” he said, stepping inside. The tile was still warm underfoot. “Bread oven secured. Stables checked. Gatehouse reported in.”
“Good.” She hung her apron on a hook, smoothing her plain woolen dress. She looked tired, but her eyes were clear as they appraised him. “And did you eat? Or just order everyone else about?”
A faint smile touched his lips. “I ate. Cook threatened me with a ladle.”
“Smart woman.” She snuffed the last of the kitchen candles, leaving only the one she carried. “Walk me to my door, would you? These corridors get darker than a witch’s pocket this time of night.”
“Of course.”
They walked in companionable silence, their footsteps soft on the worn stone. The castle felt different like this, hollowed out and private, a shell containing only their two shapes moving through the gloom. He matched his long stride to her shorter one. At her heavy oak door, she fit the key into the lock with a solid clunk and pushed it open.
The familiar scent of jasmine and old books wafted out. She stepped inside, then turned, the candlelight carving soft shadows into the lines of her face. “Come in a moment.”
He followed, closing the door behind him. The room was as he remembered—the velvet-draped chairs, the low fire, the sense of a secret kept from the world. She set the candle down on the table beside her inkwell and turned to face him, her arms crossed over her chest as if she were cold.
“Kerr,” she began, then stopped, her gaze dropping to the rug between them. She took a slow breath. “I haven’t slept proper. Not since… you know.”
He stayed quiet, watching her.
“It’s like you woke something up in me and left it hungry,” she said, her voice a low, frustrated murmur. “I lie there in the dark and my whole skin feels… tight. I try to take care of it myself, like any sensible woman would, but my own fingers feel like strangers. It’s not the same. It’s a pale, stingy little imitation.” She looked up at him, her expression openly pained. “I toss and turn all night with the itch of it. The memory of it.”
He understood then. The duty in his spine, the formality he carried like armor, melted away. He closed the distance between them in two slow steps.
Without a word, he reached for the laces at the back of her dress. His fingers were deft, unpicking the knots she couldn’t reach. She stood perfectly still, her breathing shallow. As the wool loosened, he helped her shrug it over her shoulders, letting it pool at her feet on the faded rug.
“That night,” she whispered, her eyes fixed on his chest as he worked. “The way you filled me… it was like you found a hollow place I didn’t know I had and sealed it shut. The weight of you. The stretch.” A slight shudder went through her as his thumbs brushed the sides of her breasts, pushing her simple linen shift down her arms. It followed the dress to the floor.
The firelight played over her skin, over the tight, weathered lines of her body. He traced a path with the backs of his fingers, from the slope of her shoulder to the peak of her nipple. The touch was so light it was barely there, yet a wave of goosebumps rippled out across her flesh, chasing the path of his hand.
“There,” she breathed, her head tilting back. “Just like that. So slight it’s almost cruel.”
He bent his head and took the tightened peak into his mouth, sucking gently, then with more pressure. Her hands came up to clutch at his hair, not guiding, just holding on. He moved to the other, giving it the same attentive worship, feeling her tremble against him. Then his mouth trailed down, over the tense flat of her belly, to the shallow bowl of her navel.
He circled it with his tongue, then let a single finger trace the same path. Her abdomen jumped under his touch. He found the perfect, protruding knot of her navel and pressed the pad of his finger against it, a gentle, insistent pressure. She gasped, her hips giving an involuntary little roll.
“Yes,” she hissed. “Gods, yes. It’s connected. It’s all connected straight down.”
He guided her backward, until her legs met the edge of the bed. She sat, then lay back, her body a pale offering against the dark coverlet. He undressed quickly, his own need now a thick, urgent pulse. She watched him, her lips parted, still whispering.
“It’s the fullness, Kerr. The complete… occupation. My own hand, it’s just a thing outside of me. But you… you become the center. You—”
He knelt on the bed, moved over her, and positioned himself. The broad, blunted head of his cock pressed against her entrance, already slick with her need. He didn’t thrust. He eased forward with infinitesimal slowness, a relentless, yielding invasion.
Her whisper cut off into a sharp, choked inhale.
He sank deeper, and her words became a broken string of vowels. Deeper still, and her back arched, her mouth opening in a soundless cry. When he was fully seated, buried to the hilt, she was utterly silent, her eyes wide and unseeing, lost in the sensation of being split so perfectly open.
Then he moved.
Slow. So slow it was agony. A leisurely retreat, then that same devastating, gradual return. Each stroke was a lesson in fullness, a redefinition of her limits. The friction was a low, sweet burn, building a heat in her core that had nothing to do with the fire in the grate.
She tried to speak, to describe it, but only ragged breaths came out. Her hands scrabbled at his back, his shoulders, finding no purchase, feeling only the relentless, rocking rhythm of him. The pleasure wasn’t a spike; it was a plateau reached within minutes, a dizzying height that she simply occupied, breathless and trembling.
And then it crested.
It began as a sharp, clenching deep inside, a lock clicking open. A wave of pure, white sensation crashed through her, wringing a shattered cry from her throat. She expected it to ebb. It did not. It rolled, and built, and rolled again. Another crest, higher than the last, her body seizing around him, muscles she didn’t know she had clamping down in rhythmic pulses.
She was making a sound, a continuous, low wail that seemed to come from somewhere else. Her vision spotted, then whited out entirely. The feeling was everywhere—in her bones, her teeth, the roots of her hair. It was an annihilation of self, a dissolution into pure, shuddering feeling. Her hips rose to meet his steady, undulating thrusts, each impact now sending fresh detonations through her overloaded system.
She lost all sense of time. There was only the endless, cataclysmic unspooling of her own nerves. Her belly, taut as a drum, now bore the visible imprint of him moving within her, a deep, rhythmic bulge with each stroke. Her navel, that perfect knot he had circled, now stood out in a stark, little peak against the strain.
His pace remained unwavering, a deep, piston-like rhythm that stoked the endless waves of her climax. Fifteen minutes. An eternity. She convulsed beneath him, her eyes rolling back, tears leaking from their corners. A thin line of droool escaped the corner of her slack mouth. She was a vessel being filled, over and over, with a pleasure so profound it bordered on pain.
When his own end came, it was with a deep, guttural groan. His thrusts lost their measured control, turning sharp and frantic. She felt the hot, pulsing flood of his release inside her, a final, incendiary trigger. Her body gave one last, violent shudder, a quake that started in her core and rattled out to her fingertips and toes.
Then, stillness.
He collapsed beside her, his breath roaring in his ears. She lay utterly spent, a sweaty, trembling, speechless mess. Their combined fluids leaked from between her thighs, a warm, slick testament. A profound, ringing silence filled the room, broken only by the crackle of the fire and their slowing gasps.
Slowly, feeling returned to her limbs, a heavy, liquid warmth. A smile touched her swollen lips, a blissful, unfocused curve. Her hand flopped out, her fingers brushing his wrist. She was ruined, empty, and filled to bursting all at once.
She had never been happier.