Instinct guided her—a rolling rhythm that she found by following the pulse of heat building low in her belly. Each rise drew a hiss through his teeth, each downward stroke pressed him deeper, and the angle of it sent pleasure radiating outward in waves that made her thighs shake.
Ragnar’s mouth found her breast again, sucking and teasing as she rode him. She arched into his mouth, her fingers gripping his neck, pulling him closer.
“That’s it,” he rasped against her skin. “Take what ye need, make me yers.”
Isolda moved faster—chasing the building wave with an abandon she hadn’t known she possessed. His hands gripped her hips, meeting her rhythm, lifting her and pulling her down with a controlled strength that made the friction between them unbearable and perfect and not nearly enough all at once.
“I’m close,” she gasped.
“I’ve got ye.”
Her body clenched around him so tightly that his hips jerked upward and his groan tore from him like something pulled from the marrow of his bones. She cried out his name and felt him follow her over the edge seconds later, his arms crushing her against his chest as his body shuddered beneath hers.
For a long time, there was nothing but the sound of ragged breathing and the distant murmur of the sea the narrow window. Isolda’s forehead rested against his shoulder, her lips pressed to the damp skin. She pulled back to look at him. His blue eyes soft in a way she’d never seen, and there was a bitemark on his shoulder. He looked utterly, magnificently undone.
“Thank ye,” she said quietly. “Fer showin’ me this room. Fer trustin’ me with it.”
His thumb traced the line of her jaw. “There’s naethin’ I wouldnae trust ye wi’.”
Ye’re the family I never kent I needed.And I’ll fight fer ye the way ye’ve been fightin’ fer me.
She closed her eyes. Beyond the narrow window, the afternoon light was already beginning to fade, and somewhere below them, the keep carried on. But there, in that small, stone sanctuary everything was perfectly, impossibly still.
She kissed him once more—softer now, the urgency banked to glowing embers, and in the quiet of that hidden room, surrounded by the words he had fought to learn—Isolda MacGregor understood one thing with absolute certainty.
This is what it means tae belong.