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Alasdair crossed the last of the floor and gathered her in. She did not fight him. She hid her face against his chest and held on to his shirt with both fists and sobbed, great tearing sobs that hurt her throat, until she could not get her breath between them. “I have ye,” he said, very low, into her hair. He put one hand at the back of her head and the other flat between her shoulders, and held her up.

“He asked for me,” she said into his shirt.

“Aye,” Alasdair said. “He did.”

• • •

She did not know how long they stood. At some point he lifted her and sat down on the edge of the bed with her across his lap, and she let him, her cheek on his shoulder and her eyes shut.

When she opened them, his shirt was wet through where her face had been. His hand was moving on her hair, slowly, over and over.

“I’ve soaked ye,” Iona said.

“I’ll dry,” Alasdair said.

She raised her face from his shoulder and looked at him. He was very close, and there were marks under his eyes she had not seen this morning, as if he had not slept either.

“Ye held him,” she said. “All that road.”

“I did,” he said.

“And ye’ve carried it alone, and let me hate ye for it.”

“Ye’d every right.” He wiped the wet from her cheek with his thumb. “I’d sooner ye hated me than hated him.”

She could not speak. She laid her palm over his heart and felt it going hard and fast.

He took her face in his hands and kissed her.

It began gentle, with nothing in it to win, and that undid her more than anything he had ever done. She opened her mouth under his and slid her hand up into his hair, and felt him breathe out against her lips, unsteady. Then the gentleness broke. His fingers pushed into her hair and he kissed her harder, deep and hungry, as if the whole long morning of not knowing where she was had caught up with him at once.

He tore his mouth away long enough to look at her.

“Tell me no,” he said roughly, “and I’ll only hold ye.”

“I dinnae want to be held,” Iona said. “I want you.”

He stood her up between his knees and dragged the brown gown up over her head in one pull, and her shift with it, and threw them both at the floor. Then she stood bare in the firelight in front of him, with her bound arm and her wet face, and he looked at her as if he were starving.

“God, Iona,” he said.

He pulled her in and closed his mouth on her breast. She gasped and caught his head against her. He used his tongue and then his teeth, gently, and his hands went everywhere, down her back, over her hips, spread wide on the backs of her thighs to hold her where he wanted her. She had thought she wanted him gentle. She found she wanted this more.

She dragged at his damp shirt until he hauled it over his head, and then she had her hands on him: the hard warm breadth of his shoulders, the ridges of his ribs, the line of dark hair down his belly. She pulled at the ties of his breeches, and he swore under his breath and helped her.

She took him in her hand. He went rigid against her, and his forehead dropped onto her breastbone, and he groaned her name into her skin as if she had hurt him. She had made him make that sound. She did it again, slowly, to hear it.

“Lass,” he said hoarsely. “Ye’ll finish me before I’ve started.”

He pulled her down onto the bed with him and rolled them onto their sides, face to face, her leg drawn up over his hip. His hand slid down between them, between her thighs, and found her already wet. He stroked her there, slow and then faster, watching her face the whole time, until her hips were moving against his hand and she was clutching at his shoulder and could not keep her eyes open.

“Look at me,” he said.

She looked. His eyes were dark and fierce in the firelight, and everything he felt was in them.

“Aye?” he said.

“Aye,” Iona said. “Please.”