Chapter 10: Embers and Surrender
The climb to the tower room was a silent, shivering pilgrimage. Kate’s teeth chattered uncontrollably, the borrowed cloak a sodden weight. James’s boots left dark prints on the stone steps, his own posture stiff with cold. The memory of the cove—the laughter, the fall, the drowning look in his eyes—hung between them, unaddressed, more palpable than the damp.
He shouldered her chamber door open. A maid was there, laying out a fresh shift by the cold hearth.
“Out,” James said, his voice a hoarse rasp.
The girl scurried away with a frightened curtsy. He went straight to the fireplace, kneeling with a grimace of effort. His hands, usually so sure, trembled slightly as he struck flint and steel. He nurtured the weak spark in the tinder with furious concentration, adding kindling, then smaller logs. The flames caught, licking greedily at the peat and wood, growing from a ghost of heat into a true, crackling blaze.
He stood, turning to her. In the firelight, his face was all stark planes and shadow. They stared at each other, both shaking violently now, the adrenaline of the shore gone, leaving only the deep, invasive cold.
“This is useless,” he muttered, his gaze dropping to her cloak, which dripped a steady patter onto the rushes. “We’re soaked to the bone. The only way to get warm is to get the fucking clothes off.”
It wasn’t a seduction. It was a tactical assessment, delivered with the blunt practicality of a soldier in the field. Yet the air in the room tightened.
Kate’s blue eyes held his. No witty retort came. The defiance was there, but it was quieter, turned inward. She gave a single, sharp nod.
He moved first, fingers clumsy on the clasp of Ewan’s cloak. It fell to the floor with a heavy, wet slap. Then his own doublet, the leather groaning as he peeled it off his shoulders. He kicked his boots off, each thump echoing. He didn’t look away from her as he worked the laces of his breeches.
Inspired by his pragmatism, or perhaps by a deeper, more urgent need, her own fingers flew to the fastenings of her gown. The wet laces knotted, resisting. She cursed under her breath, a soft, English oath. He stepped closer, his larger hands batting hers away. “Let me.”
His efficiency was brutal. He yanked the laces loose, the fabric tearing slightly. He peeled the gown from her, then the leaden under-shift, until she stood there in nothing but her skin, pearled with water and gooseflesh, her dark hair a tangled river down her back. He was naked too, now. The firelight played over the hard lines of his torso, the old scars, the taut muscle of his arms and thighs. He was already half-hard, his cock a thick, flushed weight between his legs.
The cold was a knife on her skin. Without a word, she turned and grabbed the thickest wool blanket from the bed, dragging it with her. She sank onto the deep rug before the hearth, the wool scratchy against her legs, and held the blanket open. An invitation. A demand.
He followed, lowering himself beside her. She enveloped them both, pulling the blanket over their heads for a moment, creating a dark, private cave where their breath mingled, quick and white in the dimness. The warmth from their bodies began to build, trapped under the wool, a fragile, shared climate. His skin was cold at first touch, then rapidly warming. She could feel the heat radiating from him, a banked furnace.
Their first time had been in the dark, a consummation of treaty and tension, all sharp angles and suppressed fury. This was different. The fire painted them in gold and moving shadow. He looked at her—really looked—his brown eyes tracing the curve of her shoulder, the dip of her waist, the dark triangle between her thighs.
“Kate,” he said, just her name. It wasn’t ‘Princess.’ It wasn’t ‘Katherine.’ It was the name she’d given him in the storm.
In answer, she reached between them, her fingers circling his hard length. He hissed, a sharp intake of breath. She stroked him, feeling him pulse and thicken in her hand, learning the shape and heft of him. “You’re not laughing now,” she whispered, her voice low.
“No,” he grunted, his own hand moving to cup her breast, his thumb rough over her tightening nipple. “I am not.”
He shifted then, pressing her down into the rug. The blanket fell away from their shoulders, baring them to the fire’s heat. He didn’t enter her immediately. Instead, he kissed her. It was not the punishing kiss of their wedding night. It was searching, slow, a deep, wet exploration that tasted of salt and something perilously close to tenderness. His hands were everywhere, warming her skin, mapping her: the arch of her foot, the back of her knee, the swell of her hip.
When his mouth left hers to trail down her throat, over her collarbone, and lower, she arched off the rug. He took her nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, his tongue flicking the peak until she cried out. The sound was raw, unfiltered. He moved lower, his breath hot on her belly, his hands hooking under her knees.
“What are you—?” she began, but the words dissolved into a gasp as he pushed her legs up and apart, settling his shoulders between her thighs. He looked at her cunt, slick and glistening in the firelight, for a long, devastating moment. Then he lowered his mouth to her.
The intimacy of it was a shock more profound than the cold sea. His tongue was relentless, a hot, clever point that licked into her, circling her clit with a precision that stole her reason. He fucked her with his tongue, deep and then shallow, before sucking that sensitive bud between his lips. She threaded her hands through his short copper hair, not pushing him away, but holding him there, her hips lifting off the rug to meet each stroke. The pleasure built, coiling tight and desperate in her belly. “James… God, please…”
He didn’t stop. He drove her right to the edge, her thighs trembling against his ears, her cries becoming fragmented pleas. Just as she was about to fall, he pulled away.
She whimpered at the loss, her eyes flying open. He was over her again, his weight braced on his arms, his face flushed, his mouth wet. He was breathing hard. “Look at me,” he commanded, his voice gravel.
She did. Her blue eyes were dark, blurred with need.
He guided himself to her entrance, the broad head of his cock nudging against her wetness. He pushed in, not with a savage thrust, but with a slow, inexorable pressure that stretched her, filled her utterly. He sank in to the hilt, a deep, joining ache that made her sob.
He held there, buried inside her, their bodies fused. The feeling was overwhelming. It was fullness, it was heat, it was a terrifying vulnerability. She could feel every inch of him, the subtle pulse deep within her.
Then he moved. He pulled back almost all the way, then sank in again with that same deliberate, deep stroke. A groan was torn from his chest. “Christ, you’re tight,” he breathed against her neck. “So fucking deep.”
He set a rhythm, a relentless, measured cadence of slow, penetrating thrusts. Each one dragged against a spot inside her that made her see sparks behind her eyelids. She wrapped her legs around his hips, trying to pull him deeper, to quicken the pace.
“No,” he murmured, catching her knees in his hands. He broke her hold, pushing her legs up farther, up and back, until her knees were near her shoulders. He settled her legs over his shoulders, opening her impossibly wider, changing the angle. The new position drove him even deeper, hitting a place that made her cry out, a sharp, broken sound.
“There?” he gritted out, his own control fraying. He fucked into that spot again, and again, each slow, deep thrust a masterpiece of agonizing pleasure. The obscene, wet sound of their joining filled the space between crackles of the fire. She was utterly exposed, utterly taken, the view of him above her—his clenched jaw, the sweat on his brow, the fierce concentration in his eyes—imprinting itself on her soul.
“You feel that?” he growled, his pace incrementally increasing, the deep drives becoming more urgent. “That’s me. All of me. In you.”
She could only nod, her head thrashing side to side on the rug. The coil was winding again, tighter, hotter. She clutched at his forearms, her nails biting into muscle.
“Come on my cock, Kate,” he urged, his breath hot in her ear. “Let go. I want to feel you come around me.”
It was the permission, the filthy, raw command, that shattered her. The climax ripped through her without warning, a convulsive wave that clenched around his driving length, milking him. She screamed, a raw, throaty sound that was his name.
The sensation of her pulsing around him broke his control. With a final, brutal thrust, he buried himself as deep as he could and came. A rough, guttural roar was torn from him, a sound of pure, unvarnished release. She felt the hot, sudden flood of him inside her, jet after jet, as his body shuddered violently against hers.
He collapsed, careful even in his abandon to keep his weight on his elbows, her legs still draped over his shoulders. They stayed like that, joined, panting, the sweat cooling on their skin. The fire popped. Slowly, gently, he lowered her legs, withdrawing from her body with a soft, wet sound. He rolled to the side, pulling her with him, tucking her back against the solid wall of his chest, dragging the blanket over them both.
No one spoke. The only sounds were the fire and their slowing breaths. His arm was a heavy band across her ribs, his fingers splayed possessively over her stomach. Her back fit against his chest as if carved for it.
Outside, the first drops of a new rain began to tap against the tower window. But inside, for the first time since she’d crossed the border, Kate felt warm. And the warmth had nothing to do with the fire.