His hand fisted in her wet hair and pulled her head back. His hips slammed forward again before she'd finished saying his name, and the word broke apart in her mouth.
There was nothing careful about it. No slow build, no patient preparation, no murmured narration of what he intended to do. Just his cock driving into her with a force that shoved her against the edge of the pool, his breath harsh and ragged against the back of her neck, his grip on her hip hard enough to bruise.
He fucked her like he was trying to get somewhere. Like the conversation about children and rooms and futures had cracked something open in him that words couldn't close, and this was the only language left.
Mab braced her arms against the stone and took it.
The orgasm was building in her belly like a fist tightening, inevitable, but she didn't chase it. Didn't need to. He was chasing it for her, every stroke angled to hit the place inside her that made her see white, and when it broke she didn't scream. She just stopped breathing, her whole body locking around him, and he followed her over with a groan that vibrated through her spine.
He buried himself to the hilt and held there. His forehead dropped to the back of her neck. His breath came in rough bursts against her wet skin, each exhale hot enough to raise steam of its own.
Neither of them moved.
The water settled around them. The steam rose. Somewhere across the valley, Drogga's laugh carried on the cold air, and someone told him to shut up, and the ordinary sounds of the camp went on as if nothing had happened.
Varek's arms locked around her. Not pulling out. Not moving. Just holding her there, filled, pinned against the warm stone with his body curved over hers like he could keep the whole mountain off her back if he had to.
Mab closed her eyes.
His cock pulsed inside her, softening by degrees, and she felt the slow leak of him into the water and didn't move away fromit. Didn't want to. The fullness was fading but the weight of him wasn't, his chest against her back, his arms locked around her ribs, his breath evening out against her neck.
Varek's thumb moved against her ribs. A small stroke, absent, like he was checking she was still there.
Mab pressed her cheek against the warm stone and let herself stay exactly where she was. Full. Held. Wanted in a way she still didn't entirely believe but was starting, in the smallest and most stubborn part of herself, to expect.
Chapter 19
The road dropped out of the pines and Mab saw Northwatch.
In her mind, she'd assembled a rough fortress from the pieces Varek had given her—stone, timber, mountain—and built it to the scale of Lord Cresswick's holding, because that was the only scale she had.
Northwatch was not that scale.
The fortress filled the head of the pass. Granite walls rose from the living rock, gray stone merging with gray mountain until the seam between them vanished. Watchtowers flanked the approach, each one flying a black banner with a silver sigil that snapped in the wind, and between them the gate stood open. They were iron-banded oak doors taller than any building Mab had ever entered, set into an arch carved so deeply into the cliff face that the stone above it jutted forward like a brow.
The road narrowed as it approached. The column, which had been riding three abreast since the plateau, fell to pairs, then single file. Varek's arm tightened across Mab's belly.
Behind them, the supply cart wheels ground against rock. Annie's voice drifted forward, asking Drogga something about the banners. Drogga's answer was too low to catch, but Annie laughed.
Mab did not laugh. She was counting watchtowers and losing track because the road curved and new ones kept appearing, set higher up the cliff where the mountain bent.
She had known it would be big. Varek had said fifty souls. Fifty souls needed walls, and walls this size meant rooms she couldn't picture, corridors she'd get lost in, a hall where fifty faces would turn toward her at once and see—
What? A scullion with a grease-stained belt. A human woman riding in front of their war-leader with her hair loose and her thighs aching from three days on a horse she still didn't know how to steer.
The black horse walked on beneath them. Varek hadn't spoken since the pines. His chest was warm against her back, his breathing even, his arm across her lap the same weight it had been for three days.
The gates grew as they approached. The shadow of the arch fell across the column, and the air changed. Colder. Stone-scented. The horse's hooves rang differently on the flagstones inside the passage, the sound bouncing off walls close enough that Mab could have reached out and touched them on either side.
Then the passage opened.
A courtyard. Wide, flagstoned, ringed by buildings that climbed the inner walls of the mountain in tiers. Forge smoke rose from somewhere to the left. The clang of a hammer on iron carried across the open space. To the right, a long low building with hides stretched on frames outside it. Ahead, set into the mountain itself, a pair of carved wooden doors smaller than the gates but still massive, flanked by torches that burned even in daylight.
People were already gathering. They came out of doorways and down stone steps and around corners. The warriors behind them began to peel off. Horses steered toward the left side of the courtyard where a boy with moss-green skin was already opening stable doors. Grald swung down from his saddle and said something to the smith at the forge that made the smith throw a chunk of slag at his head. Fenrik led his horse past without stopping.
The supply cart rattled through the gate passage. Annie was standing up in the back, one hand on the cart rail, the other pointing at everything she could see. Brownie's head poked out from the blankets beside her, ears pricked forward, nose working.
The column was dissolving around them. The strike force dispersing into the fortress like water into sand, absorbed, expected, home.
