A beat passed. His hands pressed harder into the table as if he needed the wood to anchor him.
“And ye’re nae allowed to touch me either,” she added, lifting her chin again. “According to me rule.”
He stared at her. The reminder hung like a blade between them, bright and sharp. She held it there and did not look away.
“We have an arrangement.” Her voice shook, but not from fear. “In case ye forgot.”
The corner of his mouth curved, slow and dark and entirely male. “Och,” he said softly. “Do I nae?”
He leaned in, caging her with his arms, his broad shoulders blocking out the candlelight. The air between them tightened; there was nothing in it but the thud of hearts and the heat of a dark look.
“Say ye daenae want me,” he taunted, close enough that the words brushed her mouth. “And I will take my hands off this table and walk away.”
Her lashes fluttered. “Daenae order me about.”
“I am asking ye,” he said. “For once.”
She held his eyes, fighting the quiver in her belly and the ache that had no name but all names. “I told ye me rule,” she forced out. “I made it for a reason.”
“Because ye daenae trust me.”
“Because I daenae trust what this will make of me,” she corrected. “And because ye left.”
“I left and came back as a sharp dagger,” he said roughly. “It cuts the wrong people. I ken that.”
“Then sheath it.” The smallest breath of a laugh escaped her lips. “Ye are in a hall, nae a battlefield.”
His gaze fell to her mouth again, heavy as a hand. “If I sheathe it,” he murmured, “I will unsheathe something else I have kept buried since the day I let ye go.”
“Ye never had me,” she whispered.
His eyes flashed. “I have thought of ye every night I could manage to think. Does that nae count for anything?”
“It doesnae warm a bed,” she pointed out, heat bleeding into her tone. “And it doesnae keep a woman from being a joke in her own castle.”
He leaned closer, so close their noses nearly touched. “Prove me wrong,” he murmured. “Tell me ye feel nothing. Tell me ye want me to walk away.”
Her throat worked, but the words did not come. He heard her breath, quick and thin, and she heard his, rough and heavy, and neither of them moved.
“Neil…” His eyes closed at the sound of his name on her lips. “I cannae… speak lies.”
“Nor can I,” he said, opening his eyes again. They raked over her face, slowly softening. “That is why I am here, and why I am a fool.”
Her fingers curled into the fabric at her sides. “Ye will regret this in the morning.”
“I have endured five years in captivity,” he said. “I will allow me first regret to bemeown, nae yers.”
He pulled her skirt up to her waist.
“Ye think that makes it noble?” she asked, her breath hitching. “It doesnae.”
“It makes ithonest,” he emphasized. “And I have nay honest thing left but this.”
With that, he sank to his knees. The cold from the stone bit through his trousers, and the heat of her hit his face. She was right there, bare as ever, open to him.
Without saying another word, he buried his face between her thighs. His tongue was a broad, flat stroke through her center, and she threw her head back, suppressing a moan. She tasted salty, musky.
He groaned into her, the vibration making her hips jerk. Her fingers fisted in his hair, not to guide, but to pull, the burn sharp on his scalp.
