He began to move his hand slowly, his mind drifting once again to moments involving Ava.Her waist under his palm, the scent of her neck when he stood close enough to catch it. The sound she made in the tower with her head tipped back and her fingers curled into his hair.
He worked himself through the leather, his breath coming heavier and the ache growing more pleasurable.
He gripped the armrest with his free hand and let his thoughts grow more heated. He was thinking of her hands on his shoulders and the way his name had broken in her mouth. He pressed harder, moved faster, and felt the grain of the wood bite into his palm. His hips bucked, and his breath came in through his nose and out unevenly.
Then, a knock sounded at the door.
Quickly, he adjusted himself and looked up. Hector walked in without waiting long enough to be invited, which told Ciaran exactly how visible his unrest had become.
Hector shut the door behind him and took one look at the bottle on the desk. “That bad?”
Ciaran reached for the cup again. “Did ye come for anything useful?”
Hector leaned one shoulder against the door. “I came to see whether marriage had finally bettered ye. It appears it has only made ye thirstier.”
Ciaran drank and said nothing.
Hector’s mouth twitched. “A husband needs nae sit alone fighting himself in a study.”
Ciaran shot him a look. “Choose yer next words carefully.”
There was no real heat in the warning. Hector noticed that, too. His expression stayed much too calm.
“Aye,” he said. “That bad, then.”
Ciaran turned away and set the empty cup down. The fact that his brother could walk in, make one crude observation, and land so near the mark put him in a black mood at once. He had not even managed to carry himself like a man in control of his own body, let alone his own marriage.
Hector pushed off the door and stepped further into the room. The lightness dropped from him in small increments.
“So I was thinking,” he started. “Now that we have Laird MacKenna here, this would be the time.”
Ciaran did not ask what he meant. He knew.
“If an annulment is what ye still want,” Hector continued, “better to speak while the old man is under our roof than wait and make a bigger mess later.”
The words settled heavily.
Ciaran looked at the whiskey bottle, then past it to the wall, almost absentmindedly. The matter had lived in his head as a threat, an answer, a road kept open because he had feared what his marriage was becoming. Spoken this plainly, with Ava’s father only one floor away, it took on harder edges. It became an act. A conversation.
It suddenly became something with consequences.
He did not answer.
Hector waited a moment, then asked the only question left. “Ye still want it, daenae ye?”
Ciaran knew what a clean answer should sound like.Yes. Without hesitation. Yes, because this marriage had gone too far in directions he had sworn to avoid, and because liking Ava had become a danger he had no wish to feed.
However, the answer did not come cleanly.
He heard the pause before he spoke. Hector heard it, too.
“Aye,” he muttered. “Of course I do.”
The words were sharp enough, but the conviction in them had already thinned.
Hector did not move.
Ciaran continued speaking anyway. Now wasn’t the time to remain silent. “The old man has been through enough. His castle is ash. His skin is burned. His people are under me roof. He deserves peace for a few days before anyone puts more strain on him.”
