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“Any woman,” he said, low. “Ye think I’d have spent my wedding night in that chair for any woman? Ye think I’d have gone on my knees on my own floor for an heir?”

Heat flooded her face, and she let him see it.

“Then tell me what ye do want,” she said. “Say it plain. Ye’re never short of words in yer hall.”

“Ye want it plain?”

“I dare ye,” Iona said.

He looked at her for a long moment. Then he answered her.

“I want ye at my table, putting fat lairds in their place. I want ye in my kitchen giving my cook orders she’ll take from nobody else. I want ye in that bed with yer hair across my mouth in the morning.” His voice had gone rough. “I want ye to fight me every day ye live, Iona, because I’ve never once been bored since ye came.”

Her breath had stopped somewhere in the middle of it. Her heart was pounding, and she felt every beat of it in her bound arm.

“And a son?” she said, but it came out smaller than she meant.

“If God sends one, I’ll thank Him on my knees.” He laid his hand along her jaw and brushed his thumb across her cheek. “But that isnae why I took ye to my bed, and ye ken it isnae. Ye were there. Ye felt what ye did to me.”

She had. It rose in her now, the brace of his arms and the weight of him, and heat pooled low in her belly there in front of the fire.

“Iona,” he said.

Something had changed in his face. The smile was gone, and the anger with it, and what was left looked younger and less sure of itself than she had ever seen him.

“Since the day at the stream,” he said, “when ye looked up at me off that mare with yer hair down yer back, I’ve…”

He stopped.

She watched him stop. She saw his jaw work under the scar, and his throat move, and the words go back down into him. His thumb went still on her cheek.

Then the old smile came back, and settled over his face like a shutter.

“I’ve been wanting to see ye make a fool of a laird at my table,” he said. “And tonight ye did it. Ye were grand, lass. I’ll keep ye.”

“Ye’ll keep me,” Iona said.

“Aye,” Alasdair said. “Like my keep and my black horse. Ye said so yerself on the hill.”

She set her palm flat on his chest. He did not give an inch.

“That isnae what ye were going to say,” she said.

“Ye’d know, would ye?”

“I would.” The words came out raw. “What was it, MacVey? Say it.”

“That ye talk too much,” he said, and pulled her in by the waist and kissed her.

She fought him for it. She had her fist in his shirt to drag the words out of him, and his mouth was on hers, hard and then slow, and her lips opened under it before she could stop them. His hand slid up into her hair and loosened her plait, and his other hand spread at the small of her back and drew her up against him until she could feel every inch of what he wanted.

He drew back a breath.

“Tell me to stop,” he said, “and I’ll stop.”

“Dinnae ye dare,” Iona said, and pulled his mouth back down.

He wrenched at the laces down her back, too hungry to be careful with anything but her arm, and she dragged his shirt free and spread her palms on his bare skin. He made a low sound against her throat. Then he carried her to the bed, and this time there was no fear in it. She pulled him down to her, and he took her hard and sure, and she bit his shoulder to keep from crying out loud enough to bring Agnes running, and did not care if she failed.