He crossed to the window and braced one hand against the frame, drawing in a slow breath of the cold morning air. Below, the keep was already awake, men changing watches along the wall, servants moving in steady lines. Lewis moved on.
But his eyes wouldn't stay on the courtyard. They drifted, traitorous and hungry, toward the jagged line of rock that hid the path to the lake.
The memory hit him like a physical blow. The slick, weightless slide of the water over his skin. Andher. Hidden in the gorse,her eyes wide and dark, devouring him with a curiosity so raw it had made his own skin feel too tight. It wasn't just shock he'd seen in her face; it was a reflection of the same thrumming ache currently hollowing out his gut.
This is nae the time.
Harald exhaled sharply through his nose and looked away.Idiot.
He forced himself upright, squaring his shoulders. He returned to the desk, reclaimed the chair, and gripped the quill as if he intended to snap it in half. He bent over the ledger, willing the numbers to mean something, forcing his brain to prioritize routes and rations over the curve of a woman’s neck.
He was just beginning to find the cold clarity of logic when the door swung open without a knock.
“Harald.”
Her voice sliced through his defenses and found the raw, pulsing center of him instantly.
His head snapped toward the door before his mind could build a wall, his breath snagging in his throat like a caught sleeve. For one jagged, defenseless second, the Laird of Lewis ceased to exist. He forgot the Council, the unmarked sails, and the suffocating weight of his crown. He forgot the icy logic he’d spent the last hour hammering into his skull.
He forgot everything but the fact that she was there.
She is so beautiful.
Enya stood just inside the threshold, the heavy oak door clicking shut behind her with a sound like a heartbeat. The flush still bloomed high on her cheekbones, and her eyes were bright—dangerous and alive with a mixture of mischief and raw, sharp determination.
She had dressed in haste, her hair pulled back so loosely that several dark, silken strands had already escaped to coil against her temples. They softened the fierce line of her jaw, making her look vulnerable and lethal all at once.
The room seemed to shrink, the stone walls pressing inward until the only air left was the space between them.
A violent, unwelcome pull clenched in his chest. As her gaze locked onto his—unflinching, searching, burning—the heat he’d tried to drown in the lake roared back to life. It was a physical strike, a thrumming vibration that started in his marrow and radiated outward until his skin felt too thin to contain it.
He became painfully, acutely aware of himself. He felt the heavy thud of his own heart against his ribs, the way his lungs had stalled in a silent plea for oxygen, and the agonizingly short distance between his hands and her waist.
She was standing at the very edge of his control, and she knew it.
Collect yerself.
Harald forced himself to straighten, dragging composure over instinct as he reclaimed the distance he should have kept from the start.
He pulled authority back into his voice, because without it, he did not trust where his body wanted to go.
“Ye should knock.”
Her mouth curved at once, quick and knowing, as though she had been waiting for the admonition. “I did,” she said lightly.
His brow lifted despite himself. “Did ye?”
“And ye ignored it,” she added, stepping further into the room, eyes locked on his. “Which felt like permission.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. He tried to kill the smile, but the warmth lingered, a traitorous glint that he knew she’d caught.
“Enya,” he warned, but the edge was gone, replaced by a low, vibrating rasp.
She held his gaze, unrepentant and vivid. The spark between them was a live wire now, humming in the small space between the desk and the door. Her chin lifted. “I need tae speak wi’ ye.” She tilted her head, her eyes flicking to the messy ledger before returning to his face with a look of mock pity. “Besides, ye looked like ye needed interrupting. Ye were scowling at that paper like it had insulted yer clan.”
The directness of it pulled at his chest—half irritation, half raw, reluctant admiration. He folded his arms slowly, trying to look like a laird and not a man who was imagining the taste of her. “And what is it ye’ve decided this time?”
She moved then, the soft, rhythmic brush of her skirts against the stone the only sound in the room. She stopped directly opposite him, the heavy desk the only thing keeping them apart. Her hands came down on the edge of the table, palms flat, fingers spreading over the worn wood as she leaned forward. The table gave a quiet, protesting creak beneath her weight.
