Chapter 9: Her Terms

We did not make it to the stairs for a long minute.

Ronan had me against the cold stone of the tower door, one hand tangled in my braid, his mouth on my throat.

"Your room or mine," he said against my skin.

"Yours is bigger."

"Mine has a lock."

"Then yours."

He opened it with his shoulder, and we went through together, and the door slammed behind us.

I pushed him backward until his knees hit the bed.

"Sit," I said.

He sat.

He looked up at me with his eyes gone gold, and his chest heaved under his shirt.

"You're giving orders," he said.

"I'm a ward-weaver. I give orders to walls."

"I'm not a wall."

"No." I pulled my shirt over my head and dropped it. "You're a lot more trouble."

His eyes dropped.

He made a sound low in his throat, rough and hungry, and his hands came up to my hips.

I caught his wrists and pinned them to the bed on either side of him.

"Not yet," I said.

"Catriona."

"I want to look at you first."

I unbuttoned his shirt one button at a time, and he let me.

His chest was broad and scarred, and the fresh stitches ran across his shoulder in a neat black line.

I kissed the end of the line, softly.

His whole body flinched under my mouth.

"Feel that?"

"Yes," he said hoarsely. "Don't stop."

I kissed down his chest to the hard line of his stomach, and he went rigid under me.

I opened his belt and pulled it free.

When I got his trousers open and took him in my hand, he said a word I had never heard a Warden say, and his head dropped back.

He was thick and hot and heavy against my palm.

I stroked him slowly from base to tip, and he shuddered.

"Fuck," he said. "Catriona."

"Say it again."

"Catriona."

I bent my head and took him in my mouth.

He swore again, louder, and his hands fisted in the blanket.

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