"God," Alexandra breathed. "Erin."
Erin kissed her inner thigh. Her hip. The soft plane of her stomach. She crawled back up Alexandra's body, pressing her lips to every inch of skin she passed, and when she reached her mouth she kissed her deeply, letting Alexandra taste herself, and the sound Alexandra made against her lips was grateful and ruined and full of love.
"That was?—"
"I know."
Alexandra opened her eyes. Blue and dark and liquid and full of something that Erin recognised because she'd seen it a thousand times: the particular tenderness that came after vulnerability, the openness that existed only in this space, in this bed, between these two people. She pushed a strand of Erin's dark hair behind her ear with trembling fingers.
"Come here," Alexandra murmured, and pulled Erin down to kiss her. Then she reversed their positions with a fluidity that still surprised Erin after all this time — the ease of it, the confidence, the way her body moved from beneath to above in one seamless motion that was part grace and part authority. The Queen in her, even here. Especially here. Her hands were on Erin's shirt, unbuttoning it with steady fingers that had stopped trembling, pushing it off her shoulders, her mouth following her hands: lips pressed to the ridge of her shoulder, the hollow of her throat. Erin's sports bra went next, pulled over her head with particular impatience, and then Alexandra's mouth was on her breast, her tongue circling Erin's nipple, sucking with an intensity that made Erin's breath catch hard enough to hurt. Her hands found Alexandra's damp hair and held on and the ceiling above her blurred.
Alex knew her. Knew the place below her ear that made her vision white out. Knew the pressure of teeth against her hip bone that made her hips lift off the mattress. She kissed down Erin'sstomach, her tongue tracing the definition of muscle, teeth nipping at the hard line of her hip. Her fingers hooked into the waistband of Erin's briefs and dragged them down and off, and the cool air against Erin's overheated skin made her shiver.
Alexandra settled between her thighs and the first touch of her mouth made Erin's entire body jolt. Her tongue slid through the slick heat of her in one long, firm stroke, then circled her clit with a precision that was almost cruel, reading every twitch and gasp and adjusting in real time the way she'd learned over two decades. Erin's damaged hand gripped the headboard. Her other hand was in Alexandra's hair. Her hips rolled against Alexandra's mouth and the sounds coming from her throat were guttural and raw and carried no words at all.
The pleasure built in layers. Each stroke of Alexandra's tongue pushing her higher, the tension coiling tighter with each breath. Alexandra slid two inside her and curled them, her mouth never faltering, and Erin felt her body go taut, every muscle straining toward the release that was building at the base of her spine, the world narrowed to the single blazing point of contact between Alexandra's mouth and her body.
"Lex—" Her voice cracked. "Don't stop. God, don't?—"
She came apart with a force that surprised her. The orgasm tore through her body, her muscles clenching around Alexandra's fingers, pleasure radiating outward from her centre until every nerve ending sang with it. Her back arched off the bed and the sound she made was not a word or a name but something deeper: the sound of a woman breaking open, all the walls collapsing at once, the fortress that had kept her functioning for eight days finally demolished by the hands and mouth of the woman she loved.
Her hand left the headboard and found Alexandra's shoulder and she pulled her up, needing her close, needing her mouth, needing the weight of her body pressing against her own.Alexandra came willingly, sliding up the length of Erin's body, settling against her, skin to skin, the full warm press of her from chest to hip. Erin wrapped both arms around her and held her with a force that was closer to desperation than tenderness, and the aftershocks ran through her body in diminishing pulses while Alexandra pressed her face into the curve of Erin's neck and breathed her in and whispered words that Erin could barely hear but that sounded likeI love yourepeated over and over like a heartbeat.
They lay tangled together. Legs intertwined, arms wrapped around each other, the sheets twisted beneath them in a configuration that bore no resemblance to how they'd started, the duvet kicked to the foot of the bed, one pillow on the floor. Erin's heart was hammering and her skin was damp and her body was humming with the particular satisfaction that came after good sex, not just physical release but emotional, the feeling of having been completely seen and completely held and completely loved. The room smelled of them: of skin and heat and the cedar soap and the particular, unmistakable scent that was just them, together, the chemistry of two bodies that had been learning each other since that first night and still hadn't finished.
"Promise me something," Alexandra said. Her voice was sleepy and raw and pressed against Erin's neck.
"Anything."
"Promise me that whatever comes next, the investigation, the trial, the fallout, we don't do it alone. No shutting down. No walls. No 'I have to go' when what you mean is 'I can't let you see me breaking.'"
Erin's throat tightened. The accuracy of it, the precise identification of the thing she'd done, the defence mechanism she'd deployed, the way she'd turned operational focus into afortress and locked Alexandra out, was painful and necessary. She tightened her arms around her wife.
"I promise. No more walls."
"And promise me we'll always come back to this. To us. In this bed. In this room. Whatever the world throws at us."
"I promise. Always."
Alexandra lifted her head. Her blue eyes found Erin's green ones in the lamplight and the look that passed between them was the same look they'd exchanged on their wedding day and on the night the children were born and on the morning Erin had been shot and every other moment when the truth of them, the deep, fundamental, unbreakable truth, had been laid bare. Three children. A kidnapping. A constitutional crisis. A mother who had tried to destroy them. And here they were. In their bed. In their room. Together.
"I love you," Alexandra said. "More than the crown. More than the institution. More than any of it."
"I love you too. More than I know how to say. Which is why I usually don't try."
Alexandra laughed, soft, warm, the laugh that belonged only to this room. She laid her head back down on Erin's chest, her ear over Erin's heart, listening to the beat the way she'd listened to it for all these years. Erin's hand moved through her damp hair, slow and rhythmic, and their breathing synchronised, in and out, in and out, and the lamp cast warm light across their bodies and the summer night pressed gently against the windows and the castle held them and the world outside was far away.
They fell asleep like that. Tangled together, skin to skin, the sheets pulled up to their waists, the lamp still on because neither of them could be bothered to reach for the switch. Erin's last thought before sleep took her was not about the investigation or the confrontation or the days ahead. It was about the morning.About waking up beside this woman in this bed and hearing the children's footsteps in the corridor and the dogs barking in the garden and the ordinary, beautiful, irreplaceable sounds of a family that had survived the worst thing it had ever faced and come out the other side whole.
25
Eleven months later, the ponies were wearing glitter.
This had been Florence's idea. Florence, who approached most things in life with the measured precision of a future monarch, had decided that the joint ninth birthday party required the ponies to look festive, and she had spent three weeks planning the decorations with the focus and determination of a child who understood that details mattered. Percy was wearing a garland of silver ribbons around his neck and a glitter-dusted rosette pinned to his bridle. Bramble had been decorated with gold streamers that hung from her mane like tinsel. Captain, Frank's pony, had tolerated a crown of plastic flowers for approximately four minutes before eating it, which Frank had declared the best thing that had ever happened at a birthday party. Jazz, who was Hyzenthlay’s new pony with a coat in sleek black had silver glitter adorning her haunches.
The stables had been transformed. Bunting stretched between the beams, homemade, painted by the children in the castle schoolroom, each flag a different colour with birthday messages scrawled in paint that ranged from Matilda's careful calligraphy to Frank's enthusiastic but largely illegiblecontribution. A table had been set up in the yard with a cake in the shape of a horse: chocolate sponge, commissioned from the bakery in the village, with buttercream mane and fondant hooves and candy eyes that stared out with an expression of mild alarm. Balloons were tied to fence posts. A sound system played music that the children had chosen, which meant the playlist oscillated between pop songs and the kind of folk music that Hyzenthlay preferred, creating a listening experience that was eclectic and occasionally jarring.
The children were in fancy dress. Florence was a show jumper: proper breeches, a velvet-covered helmet, and a jacket she'd borrowed from Vic that reached her knees. Frank had come as a knight, which had nothing to do with ponies but everything to do with the plastic sword he'd been given for Christmas and refused to leave behind. Matilda was a unicorn. The horn was cardboard, wrapped in aluminium foil, and it listed slightly to the left, giving her the appearance of a magical creature that had had a long evening. Hyzenthlay usually considered fancy dress to be beneath her but had been persuaded by Vic with the promise of choosing the cake flavour, was dressed as a veterinarian, complete with a toy stethoscope and a clipboard on which she had written detailed medical histories for each pony.
