Chapter Seventeen
Pre-dawn light crept through the wooden shutters, casting pale gray streaks across the chamber. The fire in the hearth had burned down hours ago, leaving only embers glowing beneath the ash. Propped up on his elbow, Brody gently brushed the hair off Emmy’s face and watched her sleep.
He’d not been able to sleep, or had scarcely been able to, some part of him fearful that he would wake only to find it had all been a dream.
Emmy slept deeply, her breath slow and even, her dark lashes fanned across her cheek. Her hair, loose and wild, spilled over the pillow, like silk against the rough linen. The sheets had slipped slightly, revealing the bare curve of her shoulder, the delicate line of her collarbone.
Brody’s chest tightened.
She was here. Warm, real, within reach. A quiet, unfamiliar sense of peace settled over him, something he hadn’t felt in years—perhaps ever. It was strange, this feeling of having something to hold rather than just something to fight for.
But was he getting ahead of himself? She’d said she needed connection, that she wasn’t asking for a promise beyond the moment.
Though he’d never spared a thought for domesticity—or for taking a woman to his bed as a mere escape from the burdens that weighed on him—he allowed himself to wonder if this could be more. Since returning from war, his focus had been on Dunmara, on survival, on rebuilding what had been broken. The struggles of his clan, the weight of leadership, had always overshadowed any need for his own comfort, his own release.
And yet, this— her —felt different. Even after only a single night, he knew it had been more than just physical.
Still, he was eager but then reluctant to hope for more, even as he suspected that what had happened between them last night had been more than just shared desire. That maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t merely passing through his life, the way everything else always seemed to. But doubt gnawed at the edges of that thought, shadowing the quiet, nebulous hope that had taken root in his chest.
If what she’d told him was true—if she truly came from another world, another time —then he was forced to wonder if this, now, their time together, was only something borrowed. A temporary dream fated to end.
Would she wake one morning, restless, tired of the limits of this world, this life, of him?
Or worse—would she simply vanish, as mysteriously as she’d appeared?
He let out a slow breath, running a hand through his hair. He wanted to believe her tale, or at least, part of him did. But another part clung stubbornly to logic, to reason. Time didn’t bend, and people didn’t move through it the way she claimed. He frowned, staring at the slow rise and fall of her chest. He didn’t realize how tightly his hands had fisted in the sheets until she stirred, shifting onto her side, closer to him.
Brody stilled, waiting.
Emmy sighed in her sleep, her lips parting slightly, her body nestling instinctively against the warmth of his.
His throat tightened. God, how he wanted to hold onto this, to her.
Was he foolish to hope?
She was here. Now. She was bonny and clever, and her kiss was intoxicating, her touch the sweetest and most exhilarating he’d ever known. He’d be a greater fool, he decided, not to embrace what was right here before him, in his bed. Carefully, he shifted on the mattress, lowering himself against her, drawing her soft body against him. He rested his chin on the top of her head and slept finally.
***
That evening, Brody sat at his desk, reviewing the parchment before him, a letter from a neighboring chief, Tiernan MacRae, though he’d barely absorbed a word. His quill lay idle in his hand, his thoughts restless, straying again and again to her —to the memory of her warmth beside him, the way her body had fit so perfectly against his. The previous night had left him aching for more, yet uncertain of what more might mean between them.
The soft creak of the door broke his reverie. He glanced up, realizing how late it had grown, expecting Ailis. Instead, it was Emmy who entered his chamber, framed in the firelight, a tray balanced in her hands.
His pulse sped up, his body instantly alert.
“Is Ailis unwell again?” he asked, straightening slightly in his chair.
Emmy shook her head, her lips curving into a small, uncertain smile as she crossed the room while holding his gaze. Did he only imagine it, that she moved with a different sort of grace now, that her eyes held a depth and sparkle that made it impossible to look away?
“Ailis is fine,” she said softly. “I...um, I thought... well, if you were here alone, and... hungry...?”
Brody felt heat coil low in his stomach, his mind already leaping to meanings beyond supper, as she no doubt intended. God above, she was stunning, and somehow, more so than she had been just a day past.
Never had he met a woman so wondrously, provocatively bold, even as the slight hesitation in her voice suggested that such boldness did not come easily. It took courage for her to stand here now, to offer herself so freely—despite whatever doubts she might still hold. He liked that about her. That she could be shy and daring in the same breath.
“I am here,” he said, his voice thick with something he realized he didn’t mind revealing, “alone and, aye, verra hungry.”
Her answering smile was dazzling, full of something triumphant and pleased. “Whew,” she exhaled, stepping forward and setting the tray carefully upon the desk. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
His eyes followed her every movement, the gentle sway of her hips, the flicker of firelight against the delicate curve of her neck. He had never wanted anything more than he wanted her.
Brody pulled his arms away from his desk, sitting back in his chair. He glanced toward the bed as Emmy came around his desk. When he made to stand, Emmy put a hand on his shoulder, keeping him rooted to the chair.
“We made great use of that bed last night, didn’t we?” She asked, setting his blood on fire. “But we haven’t used this chair yet,” she added, lifting his hand, placing it on her hip as she lifted her leg and straddled him, sinking into his lap until they were face to face and her lips only inches from his.
His body clenched in response, muscles locking against the sheer force of his need. He waited, very much enjoying her little game. He lowered his hands, smoothing them along her thighs, bared as her skirts had risen as she’d spread her legs over him.
Emmy smiled at him. “Stop me now if you haven’t thought all day about being inside me again, or don’t want this now.”
He had no words. For all the cool indifference and unapproachable persona he’d mastered so well, he felt now like an untried lad, utterly undone by the woman before him.
Emmy’s boldness was unlike anything he’d ever encountered, a deliberate seduction that sent fire racing through his veins. He barely breathed as she lifted a hand to his chest, warm against his tunic, her fingers featherlight as they traced the hard planes of muscle. Brody swallowed hard, his pulse thundering.
God’s bluid, but she was magnificent.
She wiggled her bottom against him.
Brody let out a low growl, his restraint snapping like a bowstring pulled too tight. His hands moved, gripping her bottom, dragging her flush against his rapidly growing erection, his lips crashing against hers with a hunger that had been building from the moment she’d stepped into the room. He opened his mouth against hers, his tongue exploring ravenously. He smoothed his hands up over her ribs and then forward until his palms glided over the fullness of her breasts. His fingers found and teased her nipples, which stiffened beneath his urgent touch.
He stopped abruptly. “Bluidy hell, Emmy,” he growled, his scowl intense. “The way I go at ye—I dinna want ye to ken it’s always so...but Jesu , ye rile me.”
Emmy took his face in her hands, smiling serenely at him even as her breath was ragged from their kiss. “Oh, good. That was my first attempt at blatant seduction—riling you was exactly the result I was after. The way you go at me is possibly the greatest compliment you could give me. There’ll be time for tender, for soft and sweet, but this...this is new, and I want all of you, Brody, all at once. I really hope you don’t mind,” she said, another grin curving her gorgeous mouth, a knowing grin.
Emmy reached between them, working blindly at the laces of his breeches, actually fumbling a bit while Brody pulled her skirts upward, until she was completely bare from the waist down. The moment his thick, iron-hard shaft sprang free, it met with her hot, wet center. He raised his hips and Emmy obligingly shoved his breeches and braies downward.
“ Jesu ,” he breathed.
He gripped her hips, lifting her, positioning her over his eager cock. She was warm and moist already, just as eager as him, prompting him to wonder if she’d planned this little adventure, mayhap well before she entered his chamber. Slowly, he lowered her body over his in a gradual, sensuous slide downward. Brody closed his eyes as sensations, awareness, and all the pulsing energy between them engulfed him. He gritted his teeth. Emmy’s wondrous sigh opened his eyes. For a moment, they stared at each other, until she showed him a slow and provocative smile and moved her hips, grinding into him, up and down in a way that nearly made him forget his name. Brody couldn’t think of a single damned thing he’d done in his entire life to deserve this, to have been rewarded as he was, with Emmy Carter and this moment.
He laid his hand over her breast, kneading her taut nipple through the layers of linen. Emmy arched her back, moaning. With his other hand, he held firm her bottom as he lifted his hips, thrusting into her faster and faster, savoring the feel of her velvety heat against his turgid shaft. He lowered the hand at her breast, delving beneath the fabric bunched at her waist, sliding his hand upward against her soft, warm flesh until his hand closed once more over her breast, flesh to flesh now. Emmy’s responding moan was louder, needier. She bent her face to his, trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses along his jaw until their lips joined again. She thrust her tongue against his and sucked his lip and desire flowed through him like rushing water. She bounced wildly on him as her need increased, as her climax drew closer. Her gorgeous abandon was intoxicating and Brody pumped harder until Emmy cried out, her lips going still in a gasp against his, her short fingernails digging into his shoulder. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he thrust again and again.
He tensed, blood roaring in his ears, and then climaxed with a deep and slow grunt, lifting his hips one last time into her descending thrust, seating himself high and tight inside her. Pleasure he’d thought unimaginable, unattainable, coursed through him for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, the release so profound he felt momentarily incoherent. He closed his eyes, his mouth open against hers, whispering her name as she tightened around him. After a moment, Brody flexed his hips again and Emmy slowly stopped rocking against him. They sat, forehead to forehead, their breaths heaving.
Brody moved both hands to her hips, squeezing possessively.
When the ability to form thoughts and words returned, when his chest wasn’t heaving so dangerously, he kissed her lips and said, “Lass, I fervently hope there’s more of the same on the menu tomorrow evening.”
She’d laid her head against his shoulder a moment ago and he felt now the ripple of her laughter against him.
“Let’s hope the time-traveling gods or witches don’t decide to suck me back to the future before then,” she murmured lightly.
And yet the weight of the words sat heavily between them.
Brody sighed and closed his eyes again, drawing her tight into his embrace, wrapping his strong arms snugly around her. Before he might have stopped himself, he spoke what was in his heart. “Ye belong here. With me.”
Dinna ever leave me , he thought but did not say.
***
The courtyard was unusually warm for late winter, the first promise of spring in the air. Patches of snow still clung stubbornly to the edges and shadows of the yard, but the sun was stronger today, casting a bright light over the keep.
Emmy adjusted her grip on the empty wooden buckets as she crossed the courtyard, heading toward the row of barrels in the far corner of the courtyard outside the kitchen door. She set down both buckets and lifted the lid off the nearest barrel, setting that aside.
As it had been for two days and two nights, her mind was elsewhere as she watched the clear but dark water ripple when she submerged the first bucket, and even as the shock of the cold water poured over her hands.
She wasn’t thinking of collecting water for the kitchen at Maud’s request—she didn’t even pause to wonder how clean this water or this barrel actually were. Instead, her mind sifted through delicious memories of Brody and his touch, sending a flush of warmth up her neck. Good Lord, but she had never felt so alive, so completely consumed, as she did in his arms. Even now, her body hummed with the lingering echo of last night and the one before, the way he had kissed her like the world was ending, as though nothing mattered but the feel of her against him.
And yet, along with that seductive heat came a small, insistent voice at the back of her mind, whispering doubts.
What have you done? Don’t you want to go home?
She’d existed in this century the last few weeks with one goal, to get home. Was she really going to abandon all hope of that...for Brody? For anyone? She was a woman out of time, a ghost in a story that didn’t belong to her.
And yet...
Her hands slowed, her fingers trailing in the water, watching the sunlight ripple across its surface.
Brody.
And now she just wasn’t sure anymore what she wanted.
She didn’t want to leave. But to spend the rest of her life in the fourteenth century...?
A shadow passed over her, pulling her from her thoughts. Emmy set the filled bucket down beside her and looked up.
“Aye, ye’re being watched.”
The MacIntyre captain, Duncan, approached. His grizzled beard, streaked with silver, barely hid the smirk playing at his lips.
Emmy straightened to her full height, in her unsuitable heels an inch or two taller than the middle-aged man. “So I see. Should I be flattered or worried?”
He shrugged, his deep blue gaze studying her intently, even as he sounded relatively nonchalant. “They got ye hauling water now, I see.”
Emmy cast a glance at the bucket, then back to him, raising an eyebrow. “I have to do something while I’m here. I can’t just sit around looking pretty all day.” She flashed a smirk. “That’s your job, I assume?”
Duncan let out a bark of laughter, loud enough to make a passing soldier glance their way. He sobered quickly, though. “While ye’re here,” he mused. “And how much longer will that be? Ye’ve plans yet to get to that place ye mentioned yer first day here, Pitlochry?”
She sensed much less nonchalance now, the question seeming very pointed.
“I’m not sure,” she answered vaguely and then reminded him, “Neither you nor the laird seemed to know where Pitlochry is.” With this truth and in light of her fruitless visit to Fenella, Emmy had begun to believe that returning to the twenty-first century simply wasn’t possible—at least not without some serious magical interference. At the moment, in light of what had transpired—what had shifted so dramatically in the last few days—Emmy supposed she might actually be pleased, relieved even, that the choice, to stay or to go, wasn’t really hers to make.
“Nae, I dinna,” Duncan admitted, “and I pride myself on knowing every inch of these parts.”
Emmy shrugged, feeling a little defensive. “Then I guess I’m stuck here. Brody—the laird, that is—said it was all right that I stayed on.” She smiled again, trying to lighten the mood, to turn him away from his suspicions. As far as she knew, Duncan had no idea of her time-traveling truth. “So, while I don’t have a particular skill set suited to medi—this place—I am trying to be helpful.”
“What is it ye are suited for, then?” Duncan asked, overlooking her odd phrasing.
It was an honest question, and one Emmy had been asking herself since she’d arrived. She hesitated, then shrugged. “I’m still trying to figure that out, but I’m learning something new every day about myself.”
Duncan grunted. “Mayhap that’s all ye can do,” he allowed.
Emmy tilted her head, considering him. She’d always been a people-watcher, and Duncan intrigued her. The man had an air of someone who had seen much, fought much, and yet carried it all without complaint. Maud had mentioned once that he’d been a loyal retainer of the MacIntyres for decades, that he’d seen more battles than any man inside Dunmara, maybe all of them combined.
Impulsively, she asked, “What about you? I mean, I hear you’re the great warrior of Dunmara, Brody’s right-hand man. But how does one... I mean, did you always want to fight? To be a soldier?”
Duncan’s response was immediate, given without hesitation. “Lass,” he said, “wantin’ to fight and needing to fight are two verra different things.” He set his hand on the edge of the open barrel. “I was born to a crofter’s family, youngest of five. Had nae land to inherit, nae trade to learn. So I learned the sword. Was that or starve.”
Emmy studied him, trying to read beneath his tone, to know if he was frustrated by this or proud of how far he’d come. Her thoughts shifted then. “Brody, likewise, had little choice, I imagine?”
Duncan shrugged. “Was a time his mother wanted him to join the church. The old laird was against it, though. He dinna want a priest in the family, nae so much as he wanted leaders, fighters, and grandsons.” He frowned thoughtfully. “He were raised different than his brother, of course, being the second son. That did ‘im nae favors. Had to learn with steel in hand, in the midst of the fray, his only choices stand or fall.”
“Brody would never fall,” she said with assurance. “Not easily, not until every other option and every last breath had been exhausted.”
Duncan eyed her, his eyes narrowing a bit. “Seems to me ye’ve got some strong opinions about the laird.”
The dramatic shift in her relationship with Brody was still new—wonderfully so, exhilarating in its intimacy—but they had not made it publicly known within Dunmara. Brody hadn’t expressly said they should keep it secret—truthfully, they hadn’t discussed it at all—but Emmy sensed it was his decision whether, or when, to reveal it to others.
Still, she wouldn’t lie to Duncan, pretending only some hazy interest, suspecting he cared very much for and was very protective of Brody, someone he’d watched grow up no doubt. “I just think he deserves more credit than even he gives himself.”
“Hm,” was Duncan’s response as he continued to regard her with a thoughtful expression. He then seemed to shake himself of whatever thoughts or suspicions drifted through him, offering politely to fill and carry the buckets for her.
“That’s very kind, Duncan,” she allowed. “But I don’t mind earning my keep.”
With a nod that was courteous but not much else, Duncan ambled away.
Emmy watched him go for a moment, but wasn’t sure what she should make of their conversation, or even if she should ask Brody about it. Recalling her chore, she reached for the second bucket and dunked that into the barrel, filling it until it was three-quarters full.
A thundering of hooves then drew her gaze toward the gates, just visible from this back corner of the courtyard. Once again, she watched Brody ride into the yard on his destrier. With the buckets on the ground at her side, and the lid in her hands, she paused, watching as he dismounted near the stables, closer to her now, and handed the reins off to an old man who came shuffling out to meet him. Brody turned, meaning to head toward the hall, but paused as he caught sight of her.
He stopped and stared, his dark hair tousled from his ride, his broad shoulders draped in the familiar MacIntyre plaid. His gaze found hers and softened, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
It wasn’t just a casual smile. Emmy thought it carried some weight and meaning. Her heart twisted. She returned the smile, something warm and joyful blooming in her chest.
He started toward her, slow and steady, his eyes never leaving hers.
For a fleeting moment, everything felt perfect—like they were suspended in some quiet pocket of time, just the two of them, alone in the world, no past or future, no questions or doubts.
Emmy shifted to put the lid on the barrel, wondering if he would kiss her in the courtyard.
The water, previously calm and clear, was stirred into a small whirlpool. Her lips parted as she frowned over this. Imbued with a striking curiosity, almost as if it wasn’t voluntary, she lowered the lid to her side and reached to dip her finger into the water. The cold struck her like a bolt of lightning, racing up her arm and searing through her body. The courtyard seemed to tilt and spin, the air crackling around her with an almost electric hum. Her breath caught in her throat, and she tried to pull her hand back, but the water clung to her skin like a living thing, refusing to let go.
"Emmy?" Brody’s voice cut through the sudden chaos, fierce and urgent.
Her face and eyes flew to his, panic blooming in her chest. "Brody!"
The world around her blurred, the sunlight dimming, the courtyard fading into shadow. She felt herself being pulled, dragged backward, downward, by some unseen force.
"No! Wait!" she cried, her free hand grasping at the barrel, desperate to hold onto something—anything. She sent another frantic glance at Brody, mouthing his name.
He surged forward, his boots pounding against the ground, his eyes wide with fear.
The water seemed to explode in a burst of light, enveloping her completely. Her last thing she saw was Brody’s face, twisted with shock and confusion, fright even.
And then everything went black.