Page 73 of Bonetide

“Christ, Iris.”

I am too pleased with myself to speak, even if my hand is a little sticky now with his cum.

“I’m sorry,” he goes on, breath ragged. “I…fuck.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I tell him, grinning. I can’t help myself.

“I wanted to last longer than that for you.”

“I have just been done twice in twenty minutes. Do you think I care?”

He laughs. The laugh is low and rough and a little embarrassed and it makes me smile even more.

Eventually, he gets up on slightly unsteady feet and goes to a small basin on the dresser and he wets a cloth. He comes back. He cleans me, then himself, then the bed, taking his time. I watch him as he does this, the way he kind of can’t believe what had just happened.

Then he undresses, removing his shirt, pulling down the rest of his trousers. His dick hangs heavy and wet between his legs, though it twitches slightly under my gawking.

“You could have gotten undressed earlier, you know.” I say, tearing my eyes away, as if I didn’t just give him a hand job.

He just gets into the bed beside me before I can stare any further. He pulls the heavy quilt up over both of us and tucks me against his side with my head on his chest and his arm under my shoulders, and I am warm and wrung out and safe. Or, at least, the safest I’ve felt in a long time, which is all sorts of ironic that I don’t want to unpack right now.

“Alasdair?” I ask. I shouldn’t, but I do.

“Aye.”

“Did you mean it? About the things I don’t know about you.”

“I meant it.”

I swallow hard. “Are they bad things?”

A long beat.

“They are what they are, foxglove. I would rather you sleep, tonight, and ask me tomorrow.”

I should sit up. I should ask him now and threaten to leave if he doesn’t. The part of me that is sensible should win, but that part hasn’t won in a long-ass time. And like every time before when I feel the questions rising, a fog seems to sweep in over my brain, clouding it into a haze, though I suppose that could also be the aftermath of the orgasms.

I close my eyes against his chest. The fire is low and orange, the candles are burning down. The castle is quiet around us.

You could be sleeping with a murderer, I think to myself. Stay vigilant.

But I drift off to sleep instead, and just hope I’ll be alive in the morning.

Chapter

Fifteen

It takes me a beat to place myself. The pillow beneath my head is thin but heavy, the linen smoother than anything I own. The light coming through the leaded glass is soft and grey. The bed under me is a four-poster with heavy red curtains gathered back at the corners, and the room is warmer than usual.

Because I’m not in my bedroom.

I’m at the castle.

In his bed.

I turn my head on the pillow to look at him.

There is only empty space.