Chapter 22: Kerr’s summer awakening
The wine’s sweetness lingered on Kerr’s tongue as he walked to the barracks, but it was the memory of the blackberry summer itself that truly engulfed him. It wasn’t a single recollection, but a haze, a whole season distilled into heat, sweat, and the maddening press of skin. Sixteen, muscles finally catching up to his height, and filled with a restless, pounding energy that had no direction but everywhere.
He found his bedroll in the barracks, the quiet drone of sleeping men a familiar blanket. He lay back, lacing his fingers behind his head, and let the ghost of that summer pull him under.
The memory began in the dark, in the panting silence of the larder two days after they’d first fumbled their way past her door. The air was cool, thick with the dusty scents of burlap, dried herbs, and the earthy promise of potatoes. Moonlight leaked through a high, narrow window, painting a silver stripe across the jars of preserves. Kerr's back was against a sack of flour, the canvas rough against his skin. She was a warm weight in his lap, her work dress rucked up around her hips, her mouth hot on his neck, sucking a bruise he’d have to hide under his tunic.
His hands were everywhere he could reach, clumsy with need, tracing the curve of her waist, the heavy swell of her breast through her shift, the startling heat between her thighs. He was painfully hard, but she kept shifting, evading him, a teasing smile playing on her lips in the silver light.
“Patience,” she whispered, her breath tickling his ear.
“I don’t have any,” he growled.
She laughed, low and throaty, and slid off his lap, kneeling on the cold stone floor. The sight of her there, the servant he’d seen scolding scullions, now on her knees before him, unbuttoned something primal and frantic in his gut. She untied his breeches with a brisk, practical efficiency. He sprang free, thick and aching. She didn’t hesitate. No maidenly shock, no demure glance. She leaned in, her silvered hair brushing his thighs, and took him into her mouth.
The wet heat was a shock, a lightning strike up his spine. He gasped, his head thudding back against the flour sack. It wasn’t gentle or exploratory. It was deliberate, a claiming. She worked him with a rhythmic, hungry intensity that spoke of experience and a lack of patience herself. One hand wrapped around the base of him, the other cupped and rolled his heavy sac. Her mouth was a silken, sucking vice.
It was over in less than a minute. He tried to warn her, a strangled sound in his throat, but she only hummed in response, a vibration that tipped him into freefall. He came in great, pulsing waves, back arching off the sack. She swallowed it all, every last drop, without pulling away, milking him with a firm, final stroke of her tongue.
He slumped, boneless, spent. The world was a fuzzy, blissful blur. He thought he might sleep right there.
Then he felt her move. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, a purely practical gesture, and climbed back into his lap. She guided him, still slick and miraculously, impossibly, beginning to swell again, inside her. She was so wet, so ready. She sank down onto him with a deep, satisfied sigh, her inner walls still fluttering from the taste of him. She began to ride him, slow and deep at first, her hands braced on his shoulders, her eyes closed. The gentle rocking became more urgent. Her breath hitched. He could feel the tremor starting deep in her belly, a tightening that spread through her whole core. Her rhythm broke, became erratic, frantic. She cried out, a sharp, muffled sound she bit into his shoulder, and he felt her convulse around him, a series of shuddering pulses that milked him back to full, rigid hardness. She collapsed against his chest, breathing in ragged sobs, her body quaking.
Before the last tremor had even subsided, before his own release could crest again, she opened her eyes. They were dark and glazed in the moonlight. She found his wrist, guided his hand down between their still-joined bodies, pressing his fingers against the slick, swollen nub at the apex of her sex.
“Again,” she breathed, her voice raw.
He was nineteen again, not sixteen, the memory shifting, layering. This time it was a humid afternoon in a disused grain loft above the stables. Dust motes danced in sunbeams slicing through cracks in the wall. Hay scratched his naked back. She was astride him, a goddess of sweat and desire, her body gleaming in the hot, golden light. She rode him with a relentless, grinding intensity, her head thrown back, tendons standing out in her neck. Her stomach, usually soft, was visibly distended with him, taut with each deep thrust. She looked down at it, then at his face, her own a mask of utterly consumed pleasure.
“Look,” she panted. “Look what you do to me. You fill me up. Maker, you fill me up until I can’t think.”
He watched, mesmerized, as her abdomen tightened and quivered with her approaching climax, a visible storm gathering under her skin. She came with a guttural cry that sent pigeons scattering from the rafters, her inner muscles clamping down on him in a brutal, rhythmic vice. He followed her over, his own release a blinding white roar. For a long moment, they stayed locked together, breathing in the dusty, sweaty air.
He softened inside her. She shifted off him with a wet, soft sound and flopped onto her back in the hay beside him. “I’m ruined,” she breathed, staring at the roof beams. “Properly ruined. I won’t be able to walk down the stairs.”
He turned his head. “I could carry you.”
She snorted. “And explain what to the stablemaster? That I tripped?”
He grinned, the familiar mischief returning. He propped himself on an elbow, looking down at her. The sunbeam caught the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the sheen of sweat on her collarbone. He was already, unbelievably, feeling the stirrings again. A deep, insistent thrum in his blood.
Her eyes flicked to his groin, then back to his face.She saw it. She always saw it. A slow, wicked smile spread across her lips. “You’ve got to be jesting.”
He wasn’t. He leaned in, kissed the salty hollow of her throat. “Once more.”
“Kerr, I’m spent. I’m an old woman.”
“You’re not.” He traced a path down her sternum with his tongue. “You’re immortal.”
She laughed, but it turned into a gasp as his hand found her again, slick and sensitive. “Oh, you bastard. That’s not fair.” But her hips were already tilting, giving him access. He moved down her body, his intentions clear. “Wait, the hay, it’ll itch—” her protest died as his mouth found her. He tasted himself on her, mixed with her own unique salt. He loved that taste. It was the taste of the summer.
He worked her with his tongue, slow and thorough, until her protests became pleas, her hands fisting in his hair. By the time he slid back up her body and entered her again, she was sobbing with need, her earlier exhaustion burned away by this new, deeper fire. This time, he took control, pinning her wrists into the hay, driving into her with long, powerful strokes that shook the loose floorboards. He took her past the point of satiation, past comfort, into a raw, screaming bliss that left them both breathless and trembling, their skin prickling with hay and sweat.
Later, as the sun slanted lower, she traced the faint red lines the hay had left on his back. “Every day,” she murmured, her voice sleepy. “It’s like a madness. I see you across the courtyard and I get wet. I hear your laugh and my knees go weak.”
“Good,” he said, nuzzling her hair.
“It’s not good. It’s daft. I’m meant to be ordering the turnips.”
“Order them tomorrow.”
She smacked his chest, but there was no force in it. “You’re a terrible influence.”
“You knew that when you let me in.”
“Aye,” she sighed, a contented, defeated sound. “I did.”
The sigh hung in the dusty air, a confession. That was the truth of it. She’d known, and she’d opened the door anyway. He kissed her forehead, tasting salt and summer. The hay rustled as he shifted, his body already humming again, a low, persistent thrum beneath his skin.
It was not long, that summer, before he was creative with their lovemaking and in no need of guidance.
The guidance had been simple, at first. Her hands showing his where to go, her whispers telling him how hard, how fast. Now, his own instincts took over, a raw and hungry physics. When she would ride him, he’d let her set the rhythm, let her think she was in control. Then his hips would snap up, a sudden, piston-like buck that stole her breath. He’d find a brutal, perfect tempo—four times a second, a relentless drumming of flesh—overloading her senses until her eyes lost focus. While he drove into her, his free hand would roam, down past the sweat-slicked small of her back, and his middle finger would press, insistent, and slip up her ass.
She’d gasp, a shocked, sharp sound that always turned into a moan. Her body would clench around him, a vice of pure sensation. “Kerr—oh, Maker—” was all she could ever manage.
He learned all the spaces of the castle. The quiet corner behind the tapestry in the great hall, where the wool smelled of mothballs and dust. He’d lift her dress from behind, one hand splayed on the cold stone wall to steady them, the other working frantically under the fabric. He’d rub her clitoris with calloused fingers, feeling the nub harden and swell as he pushed into her from behind, his own breath loud in the enclosed space. They’d both freeze at the sound of passing footsteps, his body buried deep in hers, her teeth biting into her own fist to stay silent. The moment the footfalls faded, he’d move again, a few desperate, perfect thrusts until she shattered against him.
All day, every day. If they found a spare moment between his training and her duties, he would make her cum and he would fill her to the brim. In the cool shade of the wine cellar, leaning against a barrel of vintage red. In the armory, his back against a rack of spears, the metal groaning softly in time with them. Once, riskily, in the upstairs linen closet, with servants chatting just outside the door.
“This is madness,” she’d whisper afterward, her face flushed, hurriedly straightening her apron.
“Probably,” he’d grin, fastening his belt, his body still buzzing. He felt invincible. The whole world was a secret waiting to be tasted, and she was the flavor on his tongue.
The blackberries ripened, then burst, then began to wither on the cane. The days grew shorter, the evenings carrying a sharp, metallic hint of autumn. One evening, she didn’t meet him in the loft. He waited until the light bled out, the pigeons settling into their night-time murmurs. When he found her in the kitchen, she was elbow-deep in flour, kneading dough with a ferocious intensity. She didn’t look up.
“Elspeth?”
“Not tonight.” Her voice was flat, final.
“Why?”
She finally stopped, wiping her hands on her dress, leaving white streaks. She looked at him, and for the first time, he saw a deep, weary fear in her eyes, not the playful fear of being caught. “The Teryn and your brother return in a fortnight. The household prepares. There will be no more… spare moments.”
The words landed like a physical blow. He hadn’t let himself think about it, about the world outside their endless, sweaty afternoons. “So?”
“So?” She gave a short, hollow laugh. “So you return to being the young lord. And I return to being the cook.” She picked up the dough and slammed it back onto the board. “It was a summer, Kerr. Just a summer.”
He stood there in the kitchen doorway, feeling suddenly very young. The scent of yeast and burning hearthwood filled the air, ordinary and crushing. “It doesn’t have to end,” he said, the words sounding foolish even to him.
She glanced at him, her face illuminated by the erratic firelight. “Doesn’t it?” She wiped her hands again, a futile gesture against the ingrained flour. “Your father returns. Your brother. The world gets real again, Kerr. This…” She gestured vaguely between them, encompassing the loft, the larder, every hidden corner. “This was the dream.”
“I have no intention of stopping,” he said, the defiance in his voice surprising him. It felt like a vow.
She laughed, a dry, shattered sound. “Oh, of course not. Because I just hate coming until I’m brain-dead.” The sarcasm was a shield. He could see the hurt behind it, the fear of being discarded.
He stepped into the kitchen, the flagstones cold under his bare feet. He moved close, invading the space she’d carved with her work. “Keep it simple,” he told her, his voice low. “It works. And if I find a free moment with you, I intend to take it.”
She looked up at him, really looked, her eyes searching his face for the boy he’d been weeks ago. She saw only the man, stubborn and determined. The shield in her eyes wavered. A slow, reluctant smile touched her lips, erasing years. It was a smile of surrender, and complicity, and want. Without a word, she reached for the heavy wool blanket she kept folded on a stool by the hearth. She spread it on the stone floor before the fire’s dying heat.
She lay back on it, the wool rough beneath her, and pulled him down on top of her. His weight was familiar, anchoring. He entered her slowly, a long, slow slide that made her breath catch. The world outside—the returning Teryn, the duties, the end of summer—faded into the crackle of the fire.
He fucked her slow. There was no frantic race, no desperate pounding against time. Each withdrawal was a deliberate ache, each return a deep, profound claiming. The pace was a languid river, pulling her under. One orgasm began to build, then subsided, only to have another crest on its heels before the first had fully receded. They stacked, wave upon wave, a mounting pressure in her belly until her muscles ached with a delicious, sore fullness. She clutched at his shoulders, her nails digging into the hard muscle, her head turning to press her face into the rough wool to muffle her cries.
When he finally came, it was with a deep, shuddering groan he felt in her own bones. The heat of him flooded her, an impossible abundance. It overflowed, a warm spill between their joined bodies, and she gave an audible, guttural moan at the feeling of it, at the sheer, obscene fullness. He collapsed onto her, his breath hot on her neck, their skin slick. For a long time, they just lay there, listening to the fire pop and the castle settle around them.
Finally, she shifted beneath him. “You’re heavy.”
He rolled off, staring up at the soot-blackened ceiling beams. The silence stretched, comfortable at first, then thickening with everything left unsaid. The flour on her hands had transferred to his tunic in ghostly white handprints.
“They’ll see it on you,” she said quietly, nodding toward the prints. “This… mark.”
“Let them,” he muttered, but the bravado was thinning.
“Let them,” he muttered, but the bravado was thinning. The floury handprints on his tunic seemed to glow in the firelight, undeniable as a brand. She propped herself up on an elbow, studying his face, and saw the shadow there, the one that belonged to his father’s expectations. She reached out, dusted at the flour absently. It only smeared.
“Your fortnight, then,” she said, her voice softer now. “We still have it.”
He caught her wrist, held it. Her skin was warm, pulsing. “Every hour.”
And they did. She did not want to stop either.
It began with a morning hunt. He woke her before dawn, a hand over her mouth, his eyes glinting in the gloom of her little room. “Quiet,” he breathed. He’d smuggled out a pair of his old trousers and a tunic for her. Dressed in his cast-offs, hair braided tight, she looked like a scrawny, ancient squire. They slipped out through the postern gate as the sky bled from grey to pink.
The forest was a world of dripping green and muted birdsong. He moved through it like a shadow, all that restless energy focused into pure, silent grace. She tried to follow, twigs snapping under her borrowed boots. He’d stop, touch her arm, point to a print in the mud—a stag, passing not minutes before. His world, shown to her. They didn’t speak. They just were.
Later, by a creek, she showed him hers. She pointed to plants with clever, practical hands. “That’s elfroot. Crush the leaves for a poultice, stops bleeding fast. This one, with the serrated edge? That’s rashvine. Don’t touch it. But steep it slow, it’ll loosen a cough.” He listened, his large frame folded awkwardly on the mossy bank, watching her with an intensity that had nothing to do with herbs. He looked at her like she was the only thing in the woods worth seeing.
That night, in the loft, she was still breathing hard from the walk back. He pulled the tunic over her head, his movements slow. He kissed the sun-warmed skin of her shoulder, then lower. His mouth on her was a different kind of lesson, patient and thorough. He tasted the salt of the day’s sweat, learned the rhythms that made her hips arch off the hay. She came with her fingers twisted in his hair, a stifled cry against her own arm.
After, while her heart still hammered, she returned the favor. She took him into her mouth with a greedy hunger that surprised even her. She’d forgotten this feeling—not just the physical act, but the power of it, the sheer, life-affirming hunger. His groan was a deep vibration against her lips, his hands cradling her head not with force, but with something like reverence.
She rode him as the moon rose, a pale spectator through the cracked slats. Then, when she was slick and spent, he turned her onto her hands and knees. The first press against her other entrance was a shock of pressure, then a slow, breathtaking burn of fullness as he pushed inside. She buried her face in the crook of her arm, her whole body singing a ragged, overwhelmed hymn. He held her hips, his thrusts deep and claiming, and she came again, a sharp, sweet unraveling that left her trembling.
They didn’t sleep. They talked in the dark, shared a skin of wine. He laughed, a low, easy sound. “You know you’ve ruined it, don’t you?” He traced the line of her spine. “Every lady in a fancy dress, every simpering noble daughter. They’ll all seem like… practiced silliness. After this.”
She snorted into the crook of his arm. “Poor lad. My heart weeps.” She shifted, propping her head on her hand to look down at him. A mischievous glint lit her tired eyes. “And how do you think I feel? I had a perfectly serviceable life. Ate my porridge. Slept through the night. Now?” She gestured vaguely at their naked, sweat-damp bodies, at the hay sticking to everything. “Now I know what’s out there. I know a cock like that exists. It’s a terrible cruelty.”
He grinned, wide and genuine, and pulled her back down to him. The bravado was back, but it was softer now, shared. The flour had long since been rubbed away, but other marks were being made, deeper ones, invisible and permanent. Outside, the first bird began its morning call. Their stolen fortnight was bleeding away, hour by precious hour, but in that loft, for that moment, they had swallowed the sun whole.