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His hands went under her skirts, up her stockings to the bare skin above, slow, as if he had all morning. Her breath stopped. She grabbed the edge of the desk on either side of her and held on. He pushed the brown wool up to her hips, and looked at her, and the look alone set her skin burning.

“Alasdair,” she said.

She did not know if it was a warning or a plea. Then her hand found his shoulder and pulled him closer, and that was answer enough for him.

He went down on his knees on the boards in front of her, in the spilled ink and the scattered ledgers, the laird of the MacVeys kneeling at a Dunmore’s feet, and put his mouth on her.

Iona cried out. Her hand flew to his black hair and gripped it. She had not known. Nobody had ever told her that a man could do this, that a mouth could be so hot and so patient at once, that it would feel like being undone a thread at a time. His tongue found the hidden heart of her and circled it, slow and wet and merciless, and her hips came up off the desk to meet him. He held them in his hands. She could have pulled away. She did not want to. Her thighs trembled against his shoulders and fell wider apart for him. Her heels found the edge of the desk.

He was taking his time. He was doing it on purpose. She knew it the way she knew his smile, and she could not even hate him for it.

He slowed when she strained toward him and quickened when she tried to hold still, until she understood that he was learning her, every sound she made and every place that made her gasp, the way he had learned the sword. One of his hands slid up under the bunched wool to her belly and spread there, warm and heavy, holding her down to the desk while his mouth undid her. She had never felt so watched, or so wanted, or so far out of her own keeping.

“Ye cannae,” she gasped, and her fingers tightened in his hair to keep him exactly where he was. “Ye cannae just…”

He did not stop. He only lifted his eyes to her over the brown wool, grey and dark and pleased with himself, and went on.

The heat built and built until she could not breathe through it. Her fingers knotted in his hair. Her head fell back and struck the shelf behind her, and she did not feel it. Then it broke over her all at once, shuddering up from her belly to the roots of her hair, and she heard her own voice cry his name into the room, loud, without shame, while the whole of her came apart in his hands.

She came back slowly. The ceiling was there. The fire was there. Her pulse was still racing, and her legs lay loose and heavy, as if they belonged to someone else.

Alasdair rose from his knees. He stood between them again with his hands flat on the desk on either side of her, and his breath was coming as hard as hers. His mouth was wet. His eyes were burning.

“Ye screamed my name,” he said, low. “And there wasnae a knife in sight.”

The heat went up her face so fast that she could have wept with it. He remembered. Of course he remembered. He had promised her on that hill, and he had kept it, and now he would never let her forget.

She opened her mouth to curse him, and nothing came.

• • •

He kissed her again. She could taste herself on him, and she did not know whether to be shamed or glad, and her body did not care. Then his hand closed at the back of her neck, under her plait, and he drew back far enough to look at her.

“Hear me now,” Alasdair said. “If Seumas, or any other man in this keep, so much as lays a finger on ye, I’ll run him through. I’ll do it in the yard, in front of all of them, and I’ll no’ wipe the blade after.”

Her heart lurched. “Seumas filled a cup.”

“Seumas touched yer wrist.”

“I touched his,” she said.

“Aye.” His thumb moved on her nape. “And I’ll no’ forget it. Ye’re my wife, Iona. Ye said so yerself, standing on my ink. Nobody else puts their hands on what’s mine.”

“I’m no’ a horse ye’ve bought, MacVey.”

“No,” he said. “A horse does as it’s told.”

He kissed her once more, slow and deep and certain, and she felt what he meant by it: the upper hand, taken back, his mark set on her the way he had set it in the chapel. He thought he had her now. He thought she was soft as butter on his desk with her skirts at her hips and his name still ringing off the walls.

She bit his lip.

She bit it hard. She felt it give under her teeth, and tasted blood, and he jerked back with a hiss and put his fingers to his mouth. They came away red.

For a moment there was no sound but the fire.

Then Iona slid down off the desk and shoved her skirts down over her knees with hands gone clumsy and cold. Her legs nearly went from under her. She locked them and stood.

“Now ye hear me,” she said. “Ye paraded those women through this room to make me burn. Well, I burned. Ye’ve had yer sport.” She stepped in until she was under his chin. “But if ye ever take one of them to yer bed, if ye ever so much as keep one in the glen, I’ll ride to the King myself. I’ll petition him on my knees for an annulment, and I’ll tell him why, and I’ll tell every laird at his court.”