Chapter 22
“Stop.”
The word came out rough, scraped from his throat, and still his feet would not obey it.
Maxwell crossed the length of his chamber again, boots striking stone too hard, too fast. The fire had burned low, the shadows long and restless, and the decanter on the table was lighter than it had any right to be.
He did not remember pouring the last glass.
He only knew it was in his hand, hanging uselessly from his fingers, amber liquid trembling inside.
The letter lay unfolded on the table where he had left it. Hunter’s hand. Hunter’s recklessness. Hunter’s life balanced on the edge of a blade that Maxwell could not reach fast enough.
He dragged a hand through his hair and turned sharply, as if expecting the walls to argue with him.
“They’re amassing,” he muttered to no one. “He says it plain as daylight.”
The door opened quietly.
Maxwell did not turn. He knew the sound of that step. He felt it before he heard it.
“Maxwell.”
Her voice stopped him more effectively than any command.
He closed his eyes once, slow, and forced himself to breathe before he turned.
Ariella stood just inside the door, wrapped in her nightgown and a light robe, hair loose over her shoulders, eyes dark with worry. She looked like she had come straight from sleep and found none of it waiting for her.
“Ye’re awake,” he said.
“So are ye,” she replied softly.
“This is nae —” He cut himself off and laughed without humor. “I am nae good company.”
She stepped further into the room anyway and shut the door behind her. “I didn’t come for company.”
He watched her cross the chamber, every movement careful, as if approaching a wild animal that might bolt or bite. She stopped in front of him, close enough that he could smell her. Clean linen. The faint trace of lavender. Home.
“Why are ye pacing?” she asked.
“I told ye,” he said, sharper than he meant to. “It’s nothin’.”
Her brows drew together. “Ye are terrible at lying.”
He huffed. “So I’ve been told.”
She reached for him before he could turn away. Both hands came to rest on his forearms, warm and steady. The contact sent a jolt through him, startling in its immediacy.
“Stand still,” she murmured.
“I daenae —”
“Maxwell,” she said, firmer now. “Please.”
He let the glass slip from his fingers onto the table. It sloshed but did not spill. His arms were still tense beneath her hands, cords of muscle drawn tight with restraint.
She moved her hands slowly, deliberately, up and down his arms, as if smoothing something rough back into place.
“Breathe,” she said quietly. “With me.”
He resisted for exactly one heartbeat. Then his breath stuttered out, and he drew another in, deeper this time.
Again.
Her hands did not stop moving.
“What happened?” she asked, voice low and calm in a way that made his chest ache.
He swallowed. “Hunter wrote.”
Her fingers paused, then resumed their slow path. “Is he hurt?”
“Nay,” Maxwell said at once. “Nae yet.”
Her jaw tightened. “But he’s in danger.”
“Aye.”
The word tasted like iron.
“He’s on the border,” Maxwell continued, the words spilling now that the seal was broken. “With the bordermen. He thinks O’Douglas will move soon. He’s right.”
Ariella’s eyes never left his face. “And ye think he’s putting himself in harm’s way?”
“I ken he is,” Maxwell snapped, then immediately gentled his tone. “He always does.”
Her thumb brushed over a vein in his wrist, and he shuddered despite himself.
“If something happens to him,” Maxwell said, voice dropping, “there will be nay undoing it.”
Ariella stepped closer. Their bodies nearly touched now. “Ye willnae let that happen.”
“I cannae be everywhere,” he said, frustration bleeding through. “I cannae fight every battle myself.”
Her hands slid higher, over his biceps, grounding him. “Ye daenae have to.”
He scoffed softly. “That is nae how this works.”
“It is now,” she said simply.
He stared down at her, searching her face for doubt, for fear, for any sign that she did not understand what she was offering.
There was none.
“How did ye ken I was like this?” he asked quietly.
She smiled, small and sad. “I didnae. I just felt… unsettled.”
His chest ached, sharp and sudden, like he’d drawn breath the wrong way. And he ignored it.
“I am glad ye found me,” he said, the admission scraping free.
Her hands stilled. “I will always find ye.”
The words landed like a vow.
The room seemed to tilt. The fire popped softly. Outside, the wind pressed against the stone.
“Ye’re nae alone,” she continued. “Nae anymore. Whatever comes, we face it together.”
He should have stepped back.
He should have said something measured and careful and safe.
Instead, the scent of her hair as she moved filled his lungs, and his body responded before his mind could catch up. Heat coiled low and insistent, driving away the cold fear, replacing it with something fierce and alive.
He groaned softly, a sound he did not recognize as his own.
Her hands were still on his arms, still grounding him, but now there was awareness there too. A question.
He reached up, fingers brushing her jaw, thumb tracing the line of her chin with reverence that surprised him.
“Thank ye,” he said quietly.
“For what?” she whispered.
“For this.”
And then he kissed her.
Not hurried. Not uncertain.
It was deliberate, full, as if he were trying to pour every word he had swallowed into the space between their mouths.
His lips moved over hers with intention, learning, claiming, lingering until her breath stuttered and her hands tightened in his tunic as though it were the only thing keeping her upright.
Ariella answered him without hesitation.
Her hands slid from his forearms to his chest, fingers spreading wide as if she needed to feel his heart beneath her palms, to be certain it was truly there.
He felt the tremor in her touch, the way her breath caught when he deepened the kiss, hunger and relief tangling together until he could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.
“Maxwell,” she breathed against his mouth, the sound of his name softened and broken.
He answered by drawing her closer, his hand firm at her back, pressing her into him until there was no mistaking how much he wanted her. Her body fit against his as though it had always known the shape of him, as though it had been waiting. Everything else fell away, not gently, but all at once.
Her hands found the ties of his tunic, undoing them with quiet urgency, fingers brushing bare skin as she pushed the fabric aside.
He hissed softly at the contact, a sharp intake of breath he did not bother to hide.
Her touch was cool and curious, reverent in a way that undid him far faster than force ever could.
“That’s enough,” he murmured, though his voice betrayed him, rough and strained.
Her mouth curved, breathless and knowing. “Ye daenae sound convinced.”
He wasn’t.
He lifted her then, easily, the movement drawing a startled sound from her lips that went straight to his blood. He carried her to the bed as if there were no other place in the world she could possibly belong, lowering her carefully, reverently, like something precious he had nearly lost.
His hands slid beneath her thin gown, not hurried, not clumsy, but certain. He explored her with patience that felt like a promise, learning the places that made her arch toward him, the subtle changes in her breathing, the quiet sounds she tried and failed to suppress.
He watched her face as his hand slipped lower and watched how her body reacted to his touch, memorizing the way her lashes fluttered closed, the way her lips parted when sensation overtook thought.
“Look at me,” he said softly. His fingers soft and sure as he encircled her slowly, feeling the rhythm of her body as he guided her to her climax.
She did, eyes dark and shining, full of trust and want and something dangerously close to devotion. The sight struck him low and hard.
He held her there, suspended on the edge of herself, until her hands clutched at him, until her body betrayed her need, until her breath broke into pleading little gasps she did not try to disguise.
“Maxwell,” she whispered again, not a name now but a surrender.
“Good, lass. So good,” he murmured, his fingers steady, unrelenting. “Daenae look away from me.”
Her body answered him, tightening, arching, her breath shattering as release claimed her in a way that left her shaking beneath his hands. He did not move away. He held her through it, grounding her, murmuring low praise that made her cry out again, overwhelmed and unguarded.
The moment stripped something bare in him.
She reached for him at once, pulling him down, his lips landing on hers.
What followed was not gentle.
It was desperate in the way only two people who had been holding themselves apart for far too long could be. His hands lifted her gown over her head letting her warmth soak into his skin.
She welcomed him without hesitation now, without fear. Her mouth traced the scars on his shoulder as if she were memorizing them, as if tomorrow were uncertain and tonight had to be enough.
He paused just long enough to make her breath hitch.
Maxwell hovered over her, his weight braced on one arm, the other hand cradling her hip as if committing the curve of her to memory. His forehead rested briefly against hers, breath warm, unsteady, as though this moment mattered more than he had prepared himself for.
“Ariella,” he murmured.
She arched instinctively, a soft moan slipping free wrapped around his name as he filled the space between them, slow and sure, claiming her with a reverence that made the sensation burn deeper. Maxwell groaned at the sound, his control fraying as her body welcomed him without hesitation.
He stilled for a heartbeat, as if grounding himself, then moved with her, finding a rhythm that drew breath from both of them. Ariella clung to him, nails pressing into his shoulders, every sensation heightened, every movement deliberate and consuming.
“This is mine,” he whispered against her temple. “Ye are mine.”
“Yers,” she echoed softly.
The world narrowed to heat and breath and the steady proof of him inside her, binding them together in a way neither of them could deny, no matter how hard they tried.
The rhythm they found together drove thought from his mind.
The sounds she made broke something loose in his chest, something he had locked away and labeled dangerous.
He moved with her, driven by instinct and need, by the way her body responded to his, by the quiet, broken way she said his name as though it were the only one that mattered.
He lost himself.
In her warmth. In her voice. In the way she clung to him as if he were the only solid thing left in the world.
The tension that had been choking him all night shattered, replaced by a rush so complete it left him dizzy, breathless, undone.
He pinned her wrists above her head with one hand. His free hand hiked her knee high, opening her wider as he slammed into her harder. Ariella clenched around him, fluttering with building tension, and he ground against on every plunge.
Sweat beaded on her skin and Maxwell released her wrists to grip her hips firmly, thumb pressing in just enough to make her gasp, her eyes locking on his with wild abandon as she came undone beneath him, body bowing off the bed as her orgasm ripped through her, walls pulsing in rhythmic squeezes that dragged him along.
He followed with a roar, vision blurring, and breath constricted.
When it was over, when the world slowly stitched itself back together, he lay beside her, drawing her against his chest, her head tucked beneath his chin. She fit there perfectly, as if carved for the space.
His heart was still racing.
Her breath slowed first.
They lay in silence, wrapped together, the fire casting lazy shadows across the walls. For the first time since the letter arrived, his mind was quiet.
He closed his eyes.
Sleep took him hard and fast.
Morning came too soon.
Maxwell woke with a start, the weight of dread settling back into his chest before he even opened his eyes. The room was dim. The fire reduced to embers.
Ariella’s naked body lay beside him, entangled in sheets and limbs, warm and glowing in sleep, unaware of the storm gathering just beyond the walls, and the one he no longer trusted himself to contain.
Memory stirred, blurred at the edges.
He frowned.
He remembered her coming to him. Her hands on his arms. Her voice pulling him back from the edge.
He remembered the bed. The heat. The way she had held him as if he were the one who needed steadying.
The rest was a haze of sensation and relief.
He swallowed.
Something felt off. Unsteady. Like standing on ground that might shift without warning.
Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the shutters.
O’Douglas.
Hunter.
The borders.
The storm was still coming.
Maxwell lay there, holding his sleeping wife, torn between the warmth in his arms and the cold certainty in his gut that whatever peace they had found last night would not last.
He pressed his forehead briefly to her hair, breathing her in, and vowed silently that no matter what came, he would not let it take her.
Even if he had already lost more control than he dared admit.