Chapter 7: Lady Landra's Midnight Ruin
A phantom scent of crushed lavender and old books, faintly melancholy, snagged Kerr’s attention as he passed a certain corridor an hour before the feast. He paused, the guards’ boisterous footsteps echoing ahead of him without him. He turned and took the quieter route, his soft-soled boots whispering on the stone.
Lady Landra’s chamber door was slightly ajar, a thin blade of warm candlelight cutting across the dim hall. He pushed it open without knocking.
She was at the window, her back to him, a goblet of wine held loosely in one hand. The late afternoon sun gilded her unbound hair, doing little to warm the rigid line of her shoulders. The room smelled of her, of the perfume she favored and a deeper, hollowed-out quiet.
“I’d heard you weren’t feeling well,” Kerr said, leaning against the doorframe, filling it.
Landra didn’t turn. “I’m perfectly well.” Her voice was tight, polished to a brittle shine.
He closed the door, the latch clicking with finality. The sound made her flinch. He crossed the room in three silent strides, coming to stand behind her. He didn’t touch her. He just looked over her shoulder at the courtyard below, where stablehands were leading tired horses to the troughs.
“Looks like it,” he said, his tone flat.
She spun, finally, the wine sloshing dangerously close to the rim. Her eyes, a sharp hazel, were bright with a wounded anger she couldn’t quite control. “Don’t. Just don’t, Kerr. Your charm is wasted on me today.”
He took the goblet from her hand, set it on the windowsill. “Wasn’t trying to be charming. I’m stating a fact. You’re hiding up here, pouting. So either you’re ill, or you’re upset.”
“Pouting?” A bitter laugh escaped her. “Is that what you call it? You reduce a woman to a… a shuddering heap one night, then vanish into the machinery of your little castle for days. I see you from across the hall, playing the diligent lord with the shepherding Banns and the doddering knights, and you don’t even look my way. How am I supposed to feel? Like a satisfied customer?”
He didn’t argue. He just looked at her, his expression unreadable. He reached out and touched a strand of her hair, tucking it behind her ear. His fingers brushed her cheek. “You’re right.”
The admission disarmed her more than any defense. Her anger faltered. “I… what?”
“You’re right,” he repeated, his voice dropping. He stepped closer, forcing her back against the cold stone of the window arch. His body blocked the light, enveloping her in his shadow. “I got distracted. The keep doesn’t run itself. The lists, the grievances, the never-ending ‘my lord, if you please…’ It’s a tide. It pulls you out.”
His hands came up to cradle her face, his thumbs stroking the fine bones of her cheekbones. “But that’s an explanation, not an excuse.” He leaned in, his lips a breath from hers. “You’re not a customer, Landra. You’re a complication I can’t afford and don’t want to live without.”
He kissed her then, not with the frantic hunger of their first time, but with a slow, deliberate heat that felt like an apology written in fire. She resisted for a heartbeat, her body stiff, then melted against him with a ragged sigh. The taste of wine and resentment on her tongue turned sweet.
When he broke the kiss, her eyes were closed, her lips parted. “You say that,” she whispered, her forehead resting against his chest.
“I mean it.” His hands slid down, over the silk of her gown, finding the laces at the back. He began to untie them as he spoke, his words a low murmur against her temple. “But meaning it doesn’t change the facts. My father and Fergus are at the border. The Arl of Denerim is sniffing around our granary stores like a hungry fox. Every minor lord with a drafty hall thinks now is the time to petition for aid.” Each sentence was punctuated by the soft loosening of a lace. “I have to move. I have to be seen. I have to listen to complaints about blighted turnips and strayed hunting hounds.”
Her gown went slack. He pushed it from her shoulders, letting it puddle on the floor. The cool air pebbled her skin. He bent, his mouth finding the curve of her neck, his tongue tracing a slow, wet path to her shoulder. “So when I finally get a moment,” he breathed, his teeth grazing her collarbone, “I have to make it count. For both of us.”
He lifted her effortlessly, carrying her to the wide, curtained bed. He laid her down, following her without breaking contact, his body a delicious, heavy warmth. He kissed her stomach, the inside of her thigh, his mouth everywhere but where she was beginning to ache for it. He was mapping her, reclaiming territory.
“You think I don’t see you?” he said, his voice muffled against her hip. “I see you laughing with that prissy Orlesian dowager. I see the way you watch the door when new guests arrive, hoping for something, anything, to happen.” He looked up, his eyes dark in the shadowy light. “I’m that ‘anything’, Landra. And it terrifies me how much I want to be.”
He finally settled between her legs, but he didn’t enter her. He used his mouth, with a focused, devastating precision that had her arching off the bed within seconds. One hand pinned her hip, the other worked in a deep, rhythmic counterpoint. He was bringing her to the edge with ruthless efficiency, not as a prelude, but as the main event.
“Kerr—” His name was a gasp, a plea.
He lifted his head. His lips were glistening. “This is me seeing you,” he growled. “This is me not neglecting a single, fucking part of you.”
He drove two fingers deep inside her, curling them, and she came with a sharp, broken cry, her body seizing around him. He didn’t let her come down. He replaced his fingers with his tongue again, deeper, more insistent, licking into her as she trembled through the aftermath. A second peak, softer but wider, rolled through her before the first had fully faded.
He moved up her body, kissing her navel, the swell of her breast, taking a nipple into his mouth and sucking until she cried out again, a different, desperate note. He was layering sensation upon sensation, denying her any return to stillness.
He rose over her, finally lining himself up. He was thick and heavy, the sheer size of him a promise and a threat. He pushed in slowly, an inexorable, stretching fullness that made her whimper. He seated himself fully, buried to the hilt, and stopped.
He braced himself on his arms, looking down at her. Sweat beaded on his brow. “Tell me you feel neglected now.”
She couldn’t speak. She could only shake her head, her eyes wide and drowning.
He began to move. His thrusts were long, deep, and deliberate, each one a profound punctuation in the silent room. There was no frantic race. This was a thorough, almost medicinal administration of pleasure, designed to obliterate every other thought, every residual grievance. He angled his hips, changing the pitch subtly, finding a spot inside her that made her vision blur.
Her third orgasm built not as a spike, but as a rising flood. It didn’t crest; it simply kept rising, a sustained, impossible plateau of sensation that stole her breath. She made a continuous, low sound in her throat, her fingers digging into the muscles of his back.
He watched her disintegrate beneath him, his own control a taut wire. Only when her cries became wordless, when her eyes rolled back, did he let his own rhythm fracture. He drove into her, hard and fast, a few final, brutal strokes that pushed her over into a silent, breathless void. As her body clenched in endless, helpless waves around him, he followed, spilling into her with a deep, shuddering groan, his own release wringing a final, weak tremor from her.
He collapsed, rolling to the side to avoid crushing her, pulling her with him so she lay half on his chest. They were both slick with sweat, breathing in ragged unison. The room was utterly silent except for the sound of their lungs fighting for air.
Minutes passed. The sun had moved, leaving the room in deeper shadow.
Kerr gently extricated himself, sitting up on the edge of the bed. He found a cloth, dipped it in the now-cold water of the basin, and returned to clean her with a strange, gentle efficiency. She lay boneless, her limbs lead, her mind a white, humming static.
He dressed quietly, pulling on his clothes with the same focused practicality. He leaned over the bed, brushing her damp hair from her forehead.
“Sleep,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “When you wake up, the pout will be gone. All that will be left is the memory of how thoroughly you were not neglected.”
She managed a faint, twitching smile, her eyes already closing.
He left without another word, closing the door softly behind him. In the corridor, he adjusted his tunic, ran a hand through his hair. The scent of lavender and sex clung to him. He had an hour before the feast, before he would need to be the charming, attentive host, before he would need to navigate the political currents of the hall.
He thought of the lonely woman by the cold fireplace, waiting to be seen. He thought of Howe’s calculating smile.
His own smile was grim as he strode towards the stairwell, the phantom echoes of Landra’s climaxes still buzzing in his veins. One fire temporarily banked. Time to go find another.
He moved through the castle's back passages, the ghost of lavender and sex on his skin a fading echo. The torchlight here was sparse, the stones older and colder. His thoughts drifted to Arl Howe's too-sharp smile, the petty grievances of sheep taxes and blocked streams, the empty space where his father's counsel should be. Duty was a grey cloak he couldn't shake, even now. The anticipation of seeing Eleyna again was a bright, illicit thread against that somber wool.
Her guest chamber was in the old wing, where the floors creaked with the secrets of a hundred years. The corridor was deserted, silent except for the distant clatter from the kitchens far below. He paused outside her door, listening. No voices, no masculine snoring. Just the soft, rhythmic sigh of sleep.
As he suspected, the husband and son were not in Lady Eleyna’s room, so Kerr opened the door slowly.
The room was dark, bathed only in the thin, blue moonlight falling through a single narrow window. It smelled of cool linen and tired travel. She lay on her side in the large bed, a solitary mound beneath the covers, her breathing deep and even. He closed the door behind him, the click of the latch a soft, definitive sound in the quiet.
He undressed silently, letting his clothes fall to the woven rug. The chill air raised gooseflesh on his arms and back. He stood over her naked, watching the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders, the pale curve of her neck exposed on the pillow.
Her eyes opened to the sight of him.
There was no startle, no gasp. She simply blinked, the deep sleep receding from her gaze, replaced by a slow, dawning recognition. A smile touched her lips, soft and unguarded in the dark. She didn't speak. She just watched him, her eyes tracing the silhouette of him against the lighter gloom of the room.
He got under the covers and with no hesitation positioned himself on top of her and entered her slowly.
Achingly slow.
He felt her breath catch, her body still soft from sleep. He gave her time to stretch around him, to accept the heavy, relentless intrusion. Her back arched at the sensation, a silent, fluid curve pushing her hips up to meet his. A low, trembling sigh escaped her parted lips.
He held a finger over his lips as if to say shh.
He began to move, a patient, deep rhythm that had nothing to do with urgency. Each withdrawal was almost complete, each thrust a return to a profound, claiming depth. He filled her with indescribable sensations as she tried painstakingly not to make noise. Her hands came up, her fingers digging into the hard muscle of his shoulders. Her eyes were wide, locked on his, glowing in the sliver of moonlight.
Every stifled gasp, every bitten-off moan was a victory he collected. He could feel the tension coiling in her belly, the inner flutters that signaled her ascent. He shifted his angle minutely, grinding against her with each slow, devastating push, and her nails bit deeper into his skin. Her mouth opened in a soundless cry, her head pressing back into the pillow.
He watched her come apart in utter silence, her body racked by powerful, internal convulsions that made her thighs shake against his hips. He kept moving through it, prolonging the shockwaves until she was limp, her eyes swimming with unshed tears of overwhelmed pleasure. Only then did he allow his own pace to quicken, driving towards his own conclusion with a few final, deep strokes, his own release a hot, silent rush followed by a shuddering stillness.
He collapsed beside her, pulling her back against his chest, her body still trembling with aftershocks. He nuzzled the damp hair at her temple.
“Your husband snores like a boar in a bog,” he whispered, his voice a rough murmur in the dark. “I heard him from three doors down.”
She let out a shaky breath that was almost a laugh. “He does.” She turned her head slightly. “They’ll be drunk for hours yet.”
“Good.” He kissed her shoulder, his arm tightening around her waist. He felt a drowsiness pulling at him, a dangerous comfort. He couldn’t stay. The thought was a stone in his gut. “I have to go.”
She nodded against him, understanding. There was no pout, no complaint. Just the quiet acceptance of a stolen hour. It was the most heartbreaking thing he’d felt all night.
He slipped from the bed, the cold air shocking his skin back to alertness. He dressed quickly in the dark, his fingers deft on the laces. She watched him from the pillow, her eyes holding the moonlight.
“Tomorrow?” she asked, the word barely a sound.
Kerr paused, his hand on the door latch.
He turned back to the bed.
In three long strides he was there again, his weight sinking the mattress beside her. He didn't speak. He cradled her face in both hands, his thumbs tracing the high curve of her cheekbones. Then he leaned in.
His response was a deep, languid tongue kiss that tasted of salt and sleep and her. It was a promise without words, a slow, thorough exploration that left her breathless. As he kissed her, his hand slid down between her legs, his fingers finding her still-sensitive flesh.
He rubbed her clitoris with a furtive, knowing pressure, his mouth still sealed over hers, swallowing her sharp, muffled gasp. It didn't take long. Her body, already humming from earlier, convulsed in a sudden, shuddering release that tightened her legs around his wrist. He rode the wave of her climax with his fingers, gentle and unrelenting, until she went limp against the pillows.
He broke the kiss, a slow, satisfied separation. He looked down at her dazed, glowing face in the moonlight. He smiled, a quick, genuine flash of white in the dark.
Then he winked.
"Tomorrow," he whispered, the word a solid thing in the quiet room.