Chapter 7: The Lap That Changed Everything
Seven days.
Seven days of silence from the northern wing where Michael’s chambers were. Seven days of catching his tall, rigid form disappearing down a corridor just as she turned into it. Seven days of her dining alone at the vast table, the clink of her cutlery echoing in the cavernous hall. He was a ghost in his own castle, and Catherine was tired of haunting empty rooms.
The avoidance was its own message, clearer than any shouted order. He was regrouping. Licking his wounds from the council chamber. Treating her like a strategic problem to be quarantined. A slow, hot anger had simmered in her all week, but tonight, it had cooled into something harder, more deliberate. She wouldn’t be ignored.
She found him in his tower study, a room she’d never entered. The door was slightly ajar, lamplight spilling onto the stone floor of the turret stair. Inside, the air was still and carried the scents of old leather, candle wax, and the distant, salt-tinged wind from the sea. He was at his desk, a broad slab of dark oak littered with dispatches, his head bowed over a map. A single, ancient-looking letter lay to the side, its wax seal a cracked, meaningless blur.
He didn’t hear her approach. She was good at that, moving quietly.
He only sensed her when her shadow fell across the vellum. His head jerked up, his eyes—the cold grey of winter sky—widening in genuine shock. He began to stand, a protest forming on his lips. “Catherine, this is—”
She didn’t let him finish. In three swift steps, she was around the desk. She placed a hand on his shoulder, not to push, but to pivot. As he rose, unbalanced, she turned him back into the embrace of his high-backed chair and, in one fluid, decisive motion, swung a leg over his thighs and settled herself squarely in his lap.
He froze. Every muscle in his body went rigid, a statue of stunned royalty. “What in the seven hells do you think you’re doing?” he growled, his hands coming up to grip the wooden arms of the chair, not her.
She leaned in, her face inches from his. She could see the faint pulse hammering in his neck, the dilation of his pupils in the lamplight. She felt the hard, hot line of his erection already forming beneath the wool of his breeches, a traitorous truth his scowling face denied.
“You’ve been hiding,” she said, her voice a low, intimate murmur that belonged in a bedchamber, not a study. She pressed her hips down, a slow, deliberate grind against that hardening length. A sharp intake of breath hissed through his teeth.
“Get. Off.”
“No.”
She did it again, rolling her pelvis in a small, filthy circle. The friction through their layers of clothing was maddening, teasing. His resolve was in the tight clamp of his jaw, the white-knuckled grip on the chair. But his body… his body was answering hers with a desperate, growing thickness.
With fingers that did not tremble, she began on the buttons of his breeches. They were stiff horn, difficult. She worked them with a deft, frustrating slowness, her eyes locked on his. “It’s taking you too long,” she whispered, her breath warm against his ear, “to realize I’m the best damn thing that ever happened to you.”
The final button gave way. She slipped her hand inside, past the linen of his smallclothes. Her fingers closed around him. He was fully, brutally hard, hot velvet over steel. He jerked as if burned, a strangled sound catching in his throat.
“Catherine…” It was meant to be a warning. It sounded like a plea.
“Quiet,” she said, and shifted, lifting herself just enough. She used her other hand to bunch her skirts and shift her own smallclothes aside. The cool air of the room kissed her exposed skin. Then she guided him, notched the broad head of his cock against her entrance. She was wet, had been since she decided to come here, a slick, willing readiness that was her own form of power.
She sank down.
It was an exquisite, unbearable invasion. He was large, and she took him in a slow, relentless descent, stretching around him, burning with it. She watched his face, studied every flicker of torment and rapture. His eyes slammed shut, his head falling back against the chair with a dull thud. His hips tried to buck up, to drive himself deeper, faster, but she braced her hands on his shoulders, controlling the pace, holding him down.
“No,” she breathed. “My turn.”
And she began to move. Not with frantic passion, but with a torturous, grinding slowness. She rose until he was almost, almost out of her, then sank back down in a long, deliberate slide, sheathing him completely. She set a rhythm that was pure agony, a pace designed to madden. Each downward stroke was deep, claiming, rubbing a spot inside her that made her own vision blur. But she wouldn’t hurry. She wanted to see him break.
His control was a physical thing, a cage he held around himself. It was in the corded tendons of his neck, the brutal clench of his teeth. Sweat beaded on his temple. His hands had left the chair arms and now gripped her hips, his fingers biting into her flesh through the wool of her dress, but he let her set the pace, his body trembling with the effort of submission.
“Look at me,” she demanded.
His eyes opened. They were glazed, dark with a hunger so profound it scared her. She saw no victory there, only a need so raw it stripped him bare. This was the man beneath the prince, the warrior beneath the crown—undone, vulnerable, desperate.
“You can’t avoid me,” she said, riding him with that same infuriating, glorious slowness. “I’m in your council. I’m in your bed. I’m in your head. And now I’m here.” She clenched around him internally, a tight, pulsing grip, and he groaned, a deep, ragged sound torn from his chest.
His restraint was fraying. His hips began to meet her downward strokes with tiny, involuntary jerks. His breathing was a ragged saw. The careful, scholarly silence of the room was now filled with the wet, soft sounds of their joining, his guttural gasps, the creak of the old chair.
“Faster,” he gritted out, his voice ruined.
“Ask me.”
“Catherine…”
“Ask. Me.”
A battle waged in his face. Pride, shame, need. Need won. “Please. God, please, move faster.”
It was what she wanted. Not just his body, but his surrender. With a sharp, approving sigh, she leaned forward, changing the angle, and began to ride him in earnest. The slow torture was over. Now it was a driving, demanding rhythm, the chair slamming against the stone floor with their force. He took over then, his hands on her hips now guiding her, lifting her, slamming her back down onto him, fucking up into her with a ferocity that stole her breath.
The intellectual duel, the political maneuvering—it all burned away in this primal sweat. This was simpler. This was truth. He chanted her name, a curse and a prayer against her throat. His mouth found hers, not in a kiss but in a devouring clash of teeth and tongue, as fierce and conquering as his army, yet she met him thrust for thrust, taking everything he gave.
She felt the coil within her tighten, snap. Her climax ripped through her with a silent, searing intensity, her body clamping around him in rhythmic pulses that milked him, dragged him over the edge with her. With a raw, broken shout that echoed off the tower walls, he surged up, his own release pumping into her in hot, endless waves, his whole body shuddering violently beneath hers.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their heaving breaths. The scent of sex and salt air. She was still impaled on him, spent, trembling. He was slumped back in the chair, eyes closed, his face a map of stunned exhaustion.
Slowly, carefully, she lifted herself off him. The loss of connection felt profound, a sudden cold. She rearranged her skirts, her movements practical, though her legs felt like water. He watched her, his gaze heavy, unreadable.
He fastened his breeches with hands that were not quite steady. The silence stretched, thick and laden.
Finally, he spoke, his voice hoarse. “That changes nothing.”
Catherine walked to the study door, pausing on the threshold. She looked back at him, the prince undone in his chair, the lamplight gilding the sweat on his chest. She gave him a small, weary smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“It changes everything,” she said softly, and left him there, the unopened letter and the broken seal of his control the only company he could bear.