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Iona’s whole body was shaking with the need to hurt him, and she had never in her life wanted to hurt anyone so much.

She came around the end of the desk, off the scrubbed boards, through the rosewater of those women still hanging in the air. He did not step back. He stood there in his shirt with his bound hand at his side and waited for her, and the waiting was the worst insult of all.

“Ye smiled at them,” she said.

“I did,” Alasdair said.

“Ye let her stroke my knot. In front of me. Ye stood there and purred like a cat at the cream.”

“And ye stood there and watched every stroke,” Alasdair said. “I saw yer face. I’ve never seen ye so green, lass, and ye came to this keep in a green gown.”

“Ye let her,” Iona said.

“Yer knot.” His mouth curved. “So it’s yours now, is it, the hand under it?”

She walked straight into him.

Chest to chest, chin up, so close that he had to look down at her or step back, and he did not step back. Her heart was slamming so hard he must have felt it through his shirt, and for one savage heartbeat she was glad of it.

Then he looked down at her, and he was not smiling any more.

He took her by the waist and pulled her up against him so hard that the breath went out of her. His chest was a wall. She pressed both palms flat to it and could not make it move an inch.

“That’s as close as ye’ll get for free,” he said.

“I’ll come as close as I like, MacVey.”

“Then come.” He bent his head until his breath was hot on her mouth. “Ye’ve wanted to put yer hands on me since the moment that fair one touched my sleeve. Fight me, or kiss me, lass. But stop lying to me about which.”

“I’d sooner kiss the hangman,” Iona said.

“Ye said that about begging.”

She meant to spit in his face. She meant it with her whole heart. Instead her fist opened on his shirt and closed again, full of the linen, and then his mouth came down on hers.

His mouth came down on hers hard. She bit at it and he took that too, and kissed her harder, and her back bowed against his arm. There was no softness in it at all. It was a fight, mouth against mouth, and she meant to win it. She dragged at his shirt. He drove his good hand into her plait and tipped her head back and took her mouth so deep that her knees went to water.

She hated him. She hated him, and her whole body had caught fire at once, her breasts aching against his chest, a hot hollow pull low in her belly that made her press closer when she wanted to shove him away.

He tore his mouth from hers. His eyes were black in the firelight, and wild.

Then he cleared the desk.

The quill went, and the brass candlestick, and the ledgers, and a letter half written, all of it crashing onto the boards behind her. The inkpot spun off the edge and smashed. Iona heard it go and could not care.

He put his hands at her waist and lifted her onto the desk as if she weighed nothing. The wood was warm from the fire. Her skirts rucked up over her knees. He stood between them, and she felt the heat of him through the brown wool and gasped.

“Somebody will come,” she said.

“Let them knock,” Alasdair said.

“Ye’ve ruined yer desk.”

“I’ll buy another.” He kissed her throat, under her jaw, where her pulse was going wild. “I’ll buy a new desk every day ye’re in this house, if this is what it’s for.”

“It’s for yer letters,” she said, and her voice broke on the word.

He laughed against her skin. She felt the laugh go into her and turn into heat.