Chapter 24 #2
“I want ye, Isolda.” The confession came stripped of everything but truth, low and rough as unworked stone. “I’ve been half mad wi’ want fer weeks, but I’ll nae touch ye unless ye want me tae.”
Her pulse hammered against her throat. She reached for the laces at the front of her bodice and pulled. “I’ve been waitin’ fer ye tae—”
He closed the distance between them in two strides.
His mouth found hers—not gentle, not tentative, but deep and claiming, his hand cradling the back of her skull while his other arm banded around her waist and pulled her flush against him.
She could feel the heat of his body through the soaked linen, the hard planes of his chest, the barely restrained power in every muscle.
“Ye’re certain?” he breathed against her lips.
“If ye ask me again, I’ll push ye intae the sea.”
His laugh vibrated against her mouth, low and warm, and then his hands were moving with a deliberation that made her skin sing. He unlaced her bodice slowly. Each loosened tie exposed another inch of skin, and he tracked it with his gaze like he was committing it to memory.
The bodice fell away, then the wet shift beneath, peeled carefully from her shoulders. Cool cave air kissed her bare skin and she shivered.
Ragnar went utterly still.
“Tofrandi,” The Norse tore from him like a prayer. His hand lifted, hesitated. “Ye’re...”
“What daes that mean?”
His fingertips traced her collarbone, feather-light. “Ye bewitch me.”
The tremor in his voice unraveled her. Isolda reached for his tunic and pulled it over his head, baring the broad, scarred landscape of his chest. She’d seen him before—in the bathhouse, in glimpses during training—but never like that.
She pressed her palm flat over his heart. It hammered beneath her hand, wild and urgent, betraying every ounce of calm in his face.
“Yer heart’s racin’,” she whispered.
“Aye.” He said, pulling down his trousers. “It daes that around ye.”
He lowered her onto the furs and settled above her on one arm, the other hand tracing the line of her jaw, her throat, the curve of her breast. Ragnar kissed her again—slower now, deeper, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips until she opened for him on a sigh.
His hand drifted lower, callused fingers trailing fire across her ribs, her stomach, the hollow of her hip.
When he reached the juncture of her thighs, he paused.
“Aye?” he asked, his forehead resting against hers.
“Aye.”
His fingers found her slick folds, and her entire body arched into his touch.
“That’s it,” he murmured against her throat, his voice like gravel wrapped in velvet. “Let me see what I dae tae ye, little wolf.”
Her climax built like a tide—slow, inevitable, devastating.
When it broke, she buried her cry against his shoulder, and his arm tightened around her, holding her together while she came apart.
He gave her time. Kissed her temple, her cheekbone, the corner of her mouth.
When her breathing steadied and her eyes found his again, he shifted, positioning himself between her thighs.
“This part may hurt,” he said quietly. “But I’ll go slow.”
She cupped his face between her hands, feeling the tension in his jaw, the restraint coiled in every line of him. “I trust ye.”
The words cost him more than any blow ever had.
She saw it in the way his eyes closed, the way he turned his head and pressed a kiss to her palm.
He entered her carefully, inch by deliberate inch, watching her face for every flicker of discomfort.
The stretch felt delicious and strange at the same time.
Then, came a sting—sharp and sudden, and she winced.
Ragnar froze immediately.
“Dinnae stop.” She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him closer.
He moved again—slowly, controlling each long stroke as her body adjusted, his eyes never leaving her face.
The pain eased into pressure, the pressure into something warm and electric that pulsed outward from where they were joined. Isolda’s hips rose to meet him instinctively, and the sound he made—low, wrecked, barely human—sent a bolt of heat straight through her core.
“Och... Ragnar, I...”
“I ken.” His forehead dropped to hers, his breath ragged. “I feel it too.”
Their rhythm built together, unhurried but inexorable, like the tide against Uist’s cliffs. She clung to his shoulders, nails pressing crescents into his skin, and he groaned her name, raw and reverent, like she was the only word he’d ever needed to know.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice strained to breaking.
She opened her eyes and found him watching her with an expression that stripped her bare in ways the physical act never could. He was open, defenseless, every wall he’d ever built lying in rubble between them.
“Ye’re mine,” The words fell from him. No preamble, no framing, no measured delivery. Just the stark, terrifying truth of it, spoken into the golden light of a cave where a boy with a broken wooden horse had once seeked refuge. “And I love ye, Isolda.”
Her vision blurred. “I love ye too.” The confession came without hesitation, without doubt.
He kissed her again, fierce, tender, consuming—and when they shattered together moments later, it was with a quiet devastation that left them clinging to each other in the aftermath, breathing hard, trembling, wholly and irrevocably changed.
They lay tangled on the furs, the light shifting from gold to amber as the sun traced its path across the sky.
Ragnar’s arm was curved around her as he caressed her, while her head rested in the hollow of his shoulder.
“Ye’re quiet,” she murmured.
“I’m always quiet.”
“This is different.” She tilted her face up. “What are ye thinkin’?”
His thumb stilled. “That it was worth the wait.”
“The fearsome Stag of Uist,” she teased gently. “Made tae wait by a Highland lass. Who would’ve thought?”
She pressed a kiss to his chest, and he pulled her closer, as if the remaining space between them was still too much.
When they were dressed, Ragnar lifted his cloak from where he’d hung it at the cave entrance and draped it around her shoulders.
The walk back was slow, her hand in his, their fingers interlaced.
The village came into view just as the last of the daylight softened into dusk, and Ragnar felt something settle inside his chest that had been restless for eighteen years.
Freyr was waiting by the well, arms folded, one eyebrow raised high.
“Ye’ve been gone three hours.” He looked at Ragnar’s damp hair, then at Isolda wrapped in his cloak, then back at Ragnar. His expression was a masterwork of barely contained amusement. “Must’ve been a very thorough dryin’ off.”
Isolda’s cheeks went scarlet.
“We got lost,” Ragnar said flatly.
Freyr’s mouth twitched. He opened it, clearly preparing something devastating, then caught the look on Ragnar’s face and closed his mouth. “Come on, then. Bjorn’s held supper, and if we keep him waitin’ any longer, he’ll feed it tae the dogs out of sheer spite.”
They walked back toward the castle together, the three of them, while the last light bled out of the sky and the first stars appeared over the headland. Ragnar’s hand found Isolda’s in the fading dark.
Behind them, the sea raged against the cliffs where a hidden cave held a broken wooden horse, scattered sea glass, and the ghost of a boy who had finally, after all these years, stopped hiding.