The words settled into the quiet, heavier than any vow. Isolde felt them not on her skin, but in the marrow of her bones, a seismic shift in the world’s axis. His hand on her stomach was no longer just possession; it was an anchor, tethering them both to this new, terrifying reality. The warmth of him at her back was the only heat in a world that had just burned its old maps.
She lay perfectly still, her scar tracing a faint, familiar path under her own fingertip. The silence stretched, a living thing between them. She could feel the steady thump of his heart against her spine, the slow expansion of his ribs with each breath. He hadn’t moved. He hadn’t spoken. His arm was a solid, heavy weight across her waist, his palm splayed possessively over the flat plane of her belly.
“Rowan.”
His name was a crack in the quiet. It sounded different in her mouth now—not a title, not a target. Just a name. The hand on her stomach flexed, his callused fingers pressing slightly into her skin.
“Don’t.” His voice was rough, sleep-thickened, but the command was there. A low vibration against her back. “Don’t think. Not yet.”
But she was thinking. The vengeance that had been her compass for seven years lay in pieces around this bed, as tangible as the discarded shift on the floor. She saw it clearly: the careful network of lies she’d woven at court, the documents she’d planned to forge, the whispers she’d meant to seed. All of it was ash. The hollow truth was that she could walk out of this room and still enact it. The warmer, more terrifying truth was that she no longer wanted to.
He shifted behind her, his nose brushing the nape of her neck. He inhaled deeply, as if memorizing her scent—vanilla from the court soap, the salt of their sweat, something darker and uniquely her. His lips touched the knob of her spine. Not a kiss. A point of contact. An acknowledgment.
“I have a council meeting in an hour,” he murmured into her skin.
The ordinary statement was a grenade. It spoke of a world outside this room, of duty and politics and the throne she had sworn to undermine. Isolde closed her storm-grey eyes. “Then go.”
His arm tightened. “No.”
He rolled her onto her back before she could brace. The morning light cut across the bed, gilding the olive skin of his shoulders, catching the amber in his weary eyes. He loomed over her, his weight settling between her thighs. He was already hard again, his erection pressing against her inner thigh. A fresh, slick heat answered him deep in her core, a traitorous pulse that had nothing to do with strategy.
He looked down at her, his gaze tracing the line of her scar, the fall of her raven hair across the pillow. “Tell me to leave.”
Her breath hitched. She could feel him, the thick length of him nudging at her entrance. Her body arched, a silent, shameless plea. Her nails dug into the hard muscle of his arms.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
He took her.
No more words. No command. His hips drove forward, filling her in one deep, claiming stroke. Isolde’s back arched off the bed, a sharp cry torn from her throat. It was different this time—no resistance, no strategy, just the raw, shocking truth of him inside her, the stretch a perfect, devastating fit. Her nails scored down his arms as her body clenched around him, a wet, hot welcome.
Rowan groaned, a low, shattered sound. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his breath scalding against her skin. He didn’t move. Just held himself there, deep, his entire body trembling with the effort of stillness. The morning light caught the sweat already beading along the line of his spine.
“Isolde.” Her name was a prayer, a curse, a breath against her pulse. He said it again, his lips moving against her scar. “Isolde.”
Then he began to move. Not the punishing, driving pace of before. This was slower. Deeper. Each withdrawal an agony, each thrust a homecoming. He set a rhythm that felt less like taking and more like learning. His callused hands slid under her, lifting her hips to meet him, angling her so every stroke brushed a place inside her that made her vision blur.
She couldn’t look away from his face. The stern prince was gone. In his place was a man stripped raw, his amber eyes holding hers with a terrifying openness. Every time he sank into her, his eyelids fluttered, his breath catching. She watched the control fracture in real time.
Her own control was ash. Pleasure coiled, tight and hot, low in her belly. It built with each deliberate roll of his hips. Her legs locked around his waist, her heels digging into the muscles of his back. She was making sounds she didn’t recognize—whimpers, choked gasps, his name on a broken sigh.
He shifted, bracing on one forearm. His other hand came between them, his thumb finding the slick, swollen heart of her. The touch was electric. Precise. He circled once, twice, his gaze locked on hers as she shattered.
Her climax ripped through her, silent at first—a white-hot wave of sensation that stole her breath, her sight, every thought but the feel of him pulsing inside her. Then the sound followed, a ragged sob that he swallowed with a kiss that was all tongue and desperate heat.
His own release overtook him moments later. He tore his mouth from hers, his head thrown back, the cords of his neck standing in stark relief. A guttural, broken noise wrenched from his chest as he drove into her one final, shuddering time, spilling himself deep. His weight came down on her, heavy and complete.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing mingling in the sunlit air. The scent of sex and sandalwood soap. The slow, slick slide of him still inside her. His forehead rested against her collarbone, his dark hair damp with sweat.
He finally shifted, withdrawing gently. He didn’t roll away. He gathered her against him, her back to his chest once more, his arm a familiar, heavy band across her stomach. His lips pressed to the top of her spine.
Somewhere in the palace, a bell began to toll the hour. His council meeting. Rowan went utterly still behind her. His hand spread over her belly, fingers splaying wide. He let out a long, slow breath that stirred her hair. Then he rose from the bed without a word.