Chapter 4: Sweet Iona
The stone corridors of Castle Cousland were quiet, the day’s formalities having bled into a hushed evening. Kerr’s boots made soft sounds on the runner as he approached the guest wing, the lingering warmth of Nan’s kitchen and the crisp night air from the kennels still on him. He stopped before a familiar oak door, hand raised. He knocked, twice, a firm but polite sound.
A heartbeat passed before the door opened a fraction. Iona’s face appeared, her expression shifting from cautious inquiry to unreserved delight. “My lord,” she breathed, stepping back to swing the door wide. The room behind her was awash in soft candlelight, the velvet drapes drawn against the night. “I didn’t think… I mean, I hoped, but…”
“I regretted our conversation had to end so soon,” Kerr said, stepping inside. The room smelled of lavender and the faint, clean scent of her. He closed the door softly behind him.
“As did I.” She stood before him, twisting her hands. She wore a simple linen shift, her hair loose around her shoulders. “It’s… hard to focus sometimes. When you’re near. There’s a… feeling.” She met his eyes, her usual shyness pierced by a sudden, brave sincerity. “An attraction. I feel it. It’s foolish, I know—”
“It’s not foolish.” His voice was low, stripping the room of any remaining space between them. “I feel it too.”
That was all the permission either needed. The dance was over.
She moved first, rising onto her toes, her hands coming to rest on his chest. He bent his head, and their lips met. It was not a tentative kiss. It was an answer. Her mouth opened under his, warm and seeking, and a soft sound escaped her throat. He cupped her face, his thumbs stroking her cheeks, and kissed her deeper.
When they parted, her eyes were bright. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered, but her hands were already tugging at the laces of his tunic.
“You’re doing perfectly.”
He helped her, shrugging out of the garment, letting it fall to the floor. Her fingers traced the hard planes of his chest, then dropped to the fastenings of his breeches. He stilled her hands for a moment, turning the focus to her. He took the hem of her shift and drew it up, over her hips, her ribs, and over her head. She stood before him, bathed in candlelight.
Her body was like a swimmer’s: long and lean, all graceful lines and subtle muscle. Her breasts were small and high, her waist a gentle curve flaring to slim hips. A tight little navel, neither in nor out, sat above the dark triangle of hair between her thighs. She didn’t shy away from his gaze; she held it, her breath coming quick.
“You are stunning,” he murmured.
Then he undid his breeches, pushing them down. Her eyes went wide, her lips parting in a silent gasp at the sight of him, thick and heavy even at half-mast.
He stepped out of his clothes and pulled her back against him, skin to skin. The feeling was electric. He kissed her again, his hands roaming the sleek length of her back, down to the swell of her rear. He began a trail with his mouth, from her lips to the delicate shell of her ear, down the column of her neck, over the sharp ridge of her collarbone. He took one pebbled nipple into his mouth and she cried out, her fingers tangling in his hair.
He sank lower, kissing the flat plane of her stomach, nuzzling the thatch of dark hair. He hooked his hands under her thighs and lifted her, carrying her the few steps to the bed. He laid her down and knelt between her legs.
He kissed the inside of her thigh, then the other. She was trembling. When his tongue finally found her core, a broken, sobbing gasp tore from her. He tasted her, explored her, learned the rhythms that made her thighs clamp around his ears and her hands fist in the sheets. He built her up slowly, then faster, his tongue and fingers working in a practiced harmony until her back arched clear off the bed and she came with a sharp, shuddering cry, her body taut as a bowstring before collapsing.
Before the tremors had fully subsided, he turned her over onto her stomach with a gentle pressure. She made a confused, pleased sound into the pillow. He kissed the nape of her neck, the notches of her spine, the small of her back. Then he went lower, spreading her cheeks, his tongue delving into a place no one had ever touched her with anything but clinical indifference.
She froze for a second, shocked. Then a moan, long and low and surprised, vibrated through her. She pushed back against his mouth, a shy, instinctive motion. She hadn’t been introduced to such unfiltered desire, to pleasure given so freely, so thoroughly.
When he knew she was ready, slick and open, he positioned himself behind her. He guided himself into her, a slow, inexorable invasion that made her gasp. He filled her completely. For a moment, he stayed still, letting her adjust. Then he began to move.
The first orgasm took her within a minute, a sudden, clenching climax that made her cry out into the mattress. The second followed swiftly after, as he found a deep, steady angle. The third ripped through her as he picked up pace, her body convulsing around him in relentless waves. Three times, and the candle had barely burned down.
“Kerr,” she sobbed, the word a plea and a benediction.
She pushed herself up onto her knees, arching her back in a graceful curve. She reached a hand back, finding his neck, pulling his face down to hers so she could kiss him clumsily, passionately, as his hips continued to piston, scrambling her thoughts into pure sensation.
He felt his own end approaching, a tight coil in his gut. He wrapped an arm around her waist, holding her flush against him, and with a few final, deep thrusts, he spilled into her. He finished on their sides, spent, both of them slick with sweat.
He stayed embedded in her as they caught their breath. Her hand drifted down to her own belly, pressing there. She could feel the faint, firm outline of him through her skin, a deep pressure poking her navel outward with each of his fading pulses. A warm, sweet ache spread inside her, the hot jet stream of what he’d left behind.
He didn’t pull away. He held her, their breathing slowing, his lips against her shoulder.
Sleep found them, but it was thin and fractured. The deep night was punctuated by waking. A touch in the dark. A sleepy kiss that grew hungry. The urge would take him, a bone-deep need, and he would roll her onto her back, or her side, and slide into her welcoming warmth once more. He filled her repeatedly, each time a little slower, a little dreamier, until the world dissolved into a haze of skin and sigh and half-formed words.
They did not get much sleep. Just before dawn, as a pale grey light began to outline the window, he took her one last time, her body pliant and eager even in exhaustion. Afterward, she curled into his chest, her leg thrown over his. He could feel the damp heat between her thighs against his own skin, a persistent, intimate claim.
The exhaustion finally won. They succumbed, tangled together, as the castle, unaware, began to stir around them.