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“Stop that,” Iona said. “I’ll put ye on the floor.”

“Then I’ll take ye with me,” Alasdair said.

He kissed the inside of her knee. Her laugh caught, and stopped. He went higher, pushing her shift ahead of his mouth, until her breath came short and her fingers knotted in the sheet.

“Should I stop?” he asked.

“If ye stop now, MacVey,” she said, breathless, “I’ll never let ye hear the end of it.”

He laughed against her skin, and did not stop. He set his mouth to her, and the laugh went out of her in a cry. He held her hips down with both hands and took his time with her, slow and then not slow at all, until she had both hands in his hair and was saying his name to the rafters. It took her with her heels dug into the bed and her back arched clear of it, and he held on to her through all of it.

She lay a moment, catching her breath. Then she caught him by the shoulders, hooked her leg over him and rolled him onto his back, and sat up astride him with her shift fallen off one shoulder and her hair everywhere. She took his hands and laid them on the pillow above his head, and leaned on them with her good hand.

“Ye told me once I’d beg ye for it,” she said.

“I remember,” Alasdair said.

“Say please, MacVey.”

He could have broken her grip without trying. They both knew it. He lay under her and looked up at her face, flushed and laughing and fierce, with the morning light coming through her loose hair, and he wanted her more than he wanted to win.

“Please,” he said.

She stopped laughing. She lowered herself onto him slowly, watching his face, and he heard his own breath break out of him.

She set the pace, and she made him wait for every bit of it. She rose on him slowly and sank slower, and watched his jaw clench. When he strained up toward her she held still and smiled. When he lay still she moved, rolling her hips until the breath hissed out between his teeth.

She pulled her shift over her head and flung it off the bed. His eyes went over her, her breasts, the flush running down from her throat, the dark red hair spilling over her shoulders. He swore under his breath and pulled against her grip.

“No’ yet,” Iona said.

She leaned down until her breasts brushed his chest and kissed him with her mouth open, hungry, and went on moving. Every slow stroke drew a sound out of him he could not keep in. She dragged her nails down his chest. He groaned into her mouth, and she laughed, low and wicked, and did it again.

He was saying her name through his teeth now, and she was saying his. He freed his hands at last. He took her by the hips and drove up into her, hard, and she met him stroke for stroke. Her nails dug into his shoulders and her head went back, and his mouth found her breast and closed on it.

He felt the heat climb in her, felt her tighten around him, and lost what was left of his patience. They went over together, her forehead dropping to his, her laugh and her cry tangled into the one sound against his mouth.

Afterward she lay sprawled on his chest with her cold feet tucked between his calves, and he did not complain.

“Yer mother is coming out to the walled garden this morning,” she said into his neck.

He went still. “My mother hasnae set foot out of doors since they brought my father home.”

“She’ll set foot out today,” Iona said. “I asked her. Ye’ll give her yer other arm.”

“She’ll no’ come,” he said.

“She’ll come for me.” Iona raised herself on an elbow and looked down at him. “And ye’ll come for her, and stop telling me what she willnae do.”

• • •

She came.

The walled garden lay at the back of the keep, behind the chapel, out of the wind. His father had planted the apple trees in it for his mother. The beds had gone to seed. Windfalls lay in the long grass, and the wasps were at them.

His mother stopped in the gateway with her hand on Iona’s arm and her other hand on his. The sun came over the wall and fell on her face. She shut her eyes against it, and her fingers dug into his sleeve, and for a moment he thought she would turn and go back to her chair.

“It’s warm,” she said, as if nobody had told her the sun could be.