by Ava Devlin
She approached the base of the staircase, squinting up at the path to the second level. If she walked slowly and tested each step before putting her full weight upon it, surely she could reach the top without issue. It was doomed to collapse eventually, and surely it would be a horrible waste not to recover whatever might remain up there.
She put one booted foot forward, gripping her hand against the exposed and blackened bricks, and leaned forward. The pained creaking was ominous, but the stair held, even when she set her full weight upon it. The relief she felt that even this one step may still retain its strength was enough to wrench a strangled sob from her throat. She squeezed her eyes together, willing away the hot tears that sprang to the corners of her eyes, inhaled deeply, and set another foot forward.
She let out a yelp of surprise, not from the floor giving way but from a strong set of arms that appeared from the ether, wrapping around her waist and lifting her full off her feet, toes dangling. She squirmed, her breath caught in her throat, and as soon as her boots touched the charred ground, she spun around with fury in her eyes to confront her assailant.
Callum Laughlin looked exasperated, his dark eyes narrowed on Heloise's face. Before she could demand an explanation, he was already speaking, his voice a hiss of frustration. "What the hell are you doing?" he snapped. "Do you want to fall to your death?"
"It's none of your concern!" she gasped, indignity flooding her every limb. "How dare you handle me so!"
He scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief. "I've handled you quite a bit more thoroughly than that, Heloise. Let's not pretend otherwise. If you had fallen through that staircase, you could have been seriously injured, and no one would have known. You could've broken a leg and frozen to death, all by yourself out here."
"Obviously not," she retorted, pushing her hood back in frustration, her cheeks burning. "Since you were following me for some ridiculous reason!"
"It is extremely obvious when you are up to something," he said, crossing his arms over his broad chest. "You're lucky it was me that spotted you and not one of your brothers."
She huffed, dropping her hands on her hips to prevent herself from attempting to strangle him. "My brothers respect me enough to allow me to make my own choices!"
He didn't respond, though the flat line of his mouth spoke volumes regarding his belief of that statement. After a beat of tense silence, he sighed, dropping his arms to his sides, and glanced up at the staircase he had plucked her from. "What do you need up there?"
"Whatever has survived," she replied. "Anything at all that can be recovered would make a world of difference."
He inhaled deeply, setting his jaw, and glanced around until his eyes landed on a particularly solid beam of wood, just thin enough to be held in his hand. He crossed the room, coming close enough to her that she felt a stirring of air, and retrieved it, then gestured to the staircase.
"I will go first," he said, holding out the stick. "My weight will test each stair. Then press on it with this before you attempt to stand on it yourself. Understand?"
She snatched the wood from him, the uneven grain biting into the soft flesh of her palms. "Fine. Just go!"
His eyes lingered on her a moment, glittering against the slats of sunlight that invaded the destroyed room. It was clear he had many thoughts that he'd like to voice in that moment, but none of them came forward. Instead he turned on his heel and approached the staircase, beginning an ascent that Heloise thought was damn near identical to the one she had been attempting.
She followed behind him, faithfully testing each step with the wooden stick before putting her weight upon it. Only one stair was unsafe, its foundation splitting with a crack that made her jump something fierce as Callum's boot went through it. His only reaction was a click of irritation and a wider step onto the next level, with barely a pause to indicate that he might have easily hurt himself if he'd gone too quickly.
At the top, a gap had formed between the staircase and the loft platform that made up the floor of the upper level. Callum's wide stride made easy work of it. After a few well-placed stomps around the area of the loft floor, he seemed satisfied with its integrity, and he turned, holding out his arms to Heloise to assist her across.
As much as she wished she could reject the gesture and simply vault herself across, she knew that she ought not to risk it. She gripped his forearms, her fingers as light as possible against the bandages on his left arm as his hands came around her waist. She held her breath against the lurch of emotion in her throat as he swept her from the top stair and set her safely down on the loft floor.
They looked at one another for a moment, each one still holding on to the other. Heloise dropped her arms first, muttering a thanks as she stepped away from his grip, his calloused fingers sliding away from her hips and down to the sides of his body.
She forced herself to swallow, turning her back on him and blinking rapidly in an effort to quiet the emotions roiling about within her. How was she going to survive having him so close again? He had been vexing enough when it was only his shade at her side.
Focusing on the room didn't do much to calm her. Her careful catalogue of useful herbs and compounds was a demolished wreck. The bottles and jars lined up so lovingly upon the shelving on the walls had collapsed, leaving nothing but charred stems and shattered glass. Months of work gone, as though it had never existed at all.
A few glimmers of silver beneath the wicked shards of broken containers perhaps hinted at the possibility of a few salvageable tools, though she wasn't sure how much use they'd ever be again, spoiled and coated in soot and glass.
For the first time in a long time, she felt utterly powerless. Defeated. She stood as listless and useless as a child, looking upon the remains of the life she had built, of the love she'd chosen after he had left her all alone, this thing she’d built from the ruins of despair after her dreams had been dashed. Tears stung at her eyes, which she could not seem to tear away from the remains of her last hopes for the clinic.
What legacy would she have for her daughter now? What comfort would she have in the night, alone forevermore in her cold bed? Even if there had been one solitary pinch of her medicines, one sprig of her herbs, but no ... It was all gone. This thing she'd built and nurtured and grown had been just as fragile as anything else she'd ever believed in, anything else she'd ever taken pride in or trusted. She wanted to crumble to the same ash that coated the ground outside.
"Heloise," Callum said, his voice softer than before, and closer than she realized. He set a hand upon her shoulder, warm and solid and whole, perhaps the only thing on this frozen earth that could penetrate the chill in her skin. "It will be all right."
She let the air from her lungs, her eyes squeezing shut and releasing hot streaks of misery down the sides of her face. She should have gone home, she thought. She should have just gone to sleep. It would have been better not to know. How would she ever find oblivion now? How would she ever breathe again?
"Hel ..." he murmured, that damned voice still so deep and delicious, so familiar and tempting.
How was she meant to bear it? All of it. How could the universe throw so much at one woman and expect her to remain upright?
An indignant anger bubbled in her chest at the injustice of it all, at the cruelty of it. Sadness fizzled away under the heat of her rage, warming her against the cold, suffocating the misery in her heart in favor of red-hot indignation.
"Shut up," she whispered, spinning on her heel to face him. "Just ... please, Callum."
She gripped his tattered shirt in her hands, pulling her body up against his. She held her lips just a whisper from his own, turning her green eyes up to meet his black ones. She could feel his heart thundering in his chest, could feel the way his breath hitched at this sudden closeness. His body was so gloriously warm, radiating a heady aura of something that sent glorious, thawing heat into her blood.
“Heloise,” he choked.
She lifted herself up onto her toes
, pushing her mouth against his, desperate for the bliss of being overtaken by anything but the horror that had fallen upon them in the last several hours. She knew it was wrong. She knew it was a mistake. Perhaps that's why it was so effective. "Please," she said again, against his lips. "I need you."
He ceased to hesitate in returning her kiss, releasing a soft, helpless groan against her lips as one big hand came around her waist and the other dug itself into her braided hair, spilling tresses from the messy plait to fall around her face. He kissed her ravenously, like he had wanted to do nothing else for all his life.
The sensation of it tore through Heloise like a flame, demolishing all the nagging thoughts and distressed emotions that wished to freeze her blood and render her helpless. In his arms, there was nothing else but the relief of coming home again and the surge of pure desire that can only be born of long-suffered neglect.
Her fingertips traveled down his chest, over the taut muscle of his stomach, to the waistband of his trousers. She did not care for seductions nor propriety. She wanted all of him right now, immediately. She wanted what she had been so long denied.
He made a sound as though he might protest, perhaps out of concern that they would be seen, half-sheltered as they were in a building that had partially collapsed. Perhaps this wasn't how he envisioned finding his way back into her arms. Callum always had been wistful and romantic, and there simply wasn't room for such sentiment nor gentleness in a world that could fall apart so completely so quickly.
He couldn't hide how much he wanted her, not straining as he was against the brush of her fingers as she unlaced his trousers. Touching him even in this sparing way made his body glow with heat against her own, his hold on her becoming more urgent, more fierce.
She loved feeling so very vulnerable in this way. Callum's strength and size were a reminder to her how truly fragile she was, despite the power she felt she wielded in this stolen moment.
She urged him to follow her to the charred floorboards, her skirts and cloak pooling around their legs as they fell to a kneeling embrace. For all his superiority of size and strength, she was the one who held the control. He went happily onto his back, her hair falling in a ruby waterfall around them.
All would be well if only the kissing could continue, if only their connection would not be severed.
The smell of him was enough to bring tears rising up in her throat again. Somehow through the layers of ash, he was still Callum Laughlin; he was still that boy she had loved year after year, season after season. Still the one with whom she’d shared the careless and giddy games of childhood and the misdirected awkwardness following that first blush of attraction. They had grown together, become who they were together. It was no wonder it had all come to its peak during that storm-riddled summer when she was nineteen.
Despite it all. Despite knowing it would never be perfect again, they both knew they had been shaped for one another. They both knew it could never be the same with anyone else.
The charred floorboards were rough against her knees, split and splintered and blackened as they were. It did not matter. She left the luxury of touching him only to work her own skirts higher, to free her tangled thighs from the prison of many layers of winter warmth. She wished they could be skin to skin, but if she stopped to think about how to make that possible, the spell would break, and it would be too late.
"Hel, it's too cold," he breathed, his words a cloud of steam in the recess between them. No matter his warnings, he couldn't seem to stop his big hands tracing down the column of her throat, sliding over her breasts and down to grip her waist. Both of them were trapped in a dance of instinct where logical concerns had no charter whatsoever.
"I'll keep you warm," she assured him in a throaty whisper, lifting her hips only long enough to spread her skirt and cloak out around the two of them, with only one hand still hidden beneath to guide him into her.
There was no need for anything else. She had been slick and ready for him from the moment he'd returned her kiss. Their joining felt as inevitable as breathing, and for all that it was familiar, the absolute rightness of it, the quick gasp of recognition at the way they fit one another was enough to cloud her mind past the ability to think of anything at all.
She could swear she smelled the hayloft, that for a solitary, magical moment they were transported back through time, to that heady summer of discovery and passion. He felt so familiar to her, so perfectly right. She gripped her hands against his chest as she rode him, meeting the thrusts of his own hips. She dipped herself forward to catch his mouth with her own as they pushed one another into raw, primal oblivion.
Her eyes closed against the swirls of ash and snow, against the bleak brightness of the morning, and instead she tumbled through time, curled on his bed by lantern light with the moon streaming in from the slats above, balmy wind stirring their hair as he read to her about the great leaders of the ancient world. Her thighs clenched against his hips and she felt the crackle of gathering clouds, the wind heavy and sharp as they galloped across an endless green moor in search of hidden caves and secret kisses. She could taste the laughter on their lips as he swept her into shadowed corners of Somerton, stealing embraces where he could, until the moon was high again and she might sneak out to be with him yet again.
She didn't know when the tears started to flow down her cheeks again. It didn't matter because she couldn't feel them. She could only feel this and the undeniable demands of her body, driving her to grasp Callum and the abyss of this perfect familiarity. She was almost disappointed when she felt the first shudder of climax thrumming through her, the warning peal before the heavy crash of ultimate pleasure. She felt him catch her, heard his breath, hot and steady as he drove himself upward in quick, precise thrusts.
He must have found his own pleasure while she was still in the throes of her own, for by the time she caught her breath again and the haze had begun to clear, he was already slack beneath her, his eyes closed and his lips parted. His muscled chest rose and fell, his heart beating steadily beneath the warmth of his flesh. She allowed herself to really, truly look at him, to revisit the beautiful lines of his face, the shape of his mouth, the way his hair stubbornly set in a wave just above his brow.
Did he look older? Was he hardened by battle? In this moment, she couldn’t say he was. He was the man who had shared her bed and haunted her dreams all those years ago, and no other.
She couldn't resist reaching forward to stroke his face, to twine her fingers through those snow-kissed strands of hair. She knew it was only a matter of time before the panic must inevitably find her, before she was on her feet and fleeing from him again, but just now, in the glow of satisfaction that followed an unexpected blossom of beauty amidst utter ruin, she couldn't bring herself to hasten its arrival.
He had come home again. He had lived. He was whole. He still loved her.
Another time she might have wept for the relief of it, but all of her tears had been spent.
Instead, she spread her cloak out around the both of them and leaned forward, resting her head into the recess of his shoulder, a place that seemed to have been shaped exactly for the curve of her cheek. She closed her eyes as his arms came up around her, and together they breathed in silence, allowing comfort to simply exist, if only for a moment.
12
They hadn't spoken much, afterward.
Callum supposed it was for the best. Both of them were so physically exhausted and so emotionally raw that nothing coherent could have come from heavy conversation that morning anyhow. Still, for a brief moment, she had given him her trust again. For a single moment, she had given him herself.
That said more than any words possibly could, didn't it?
They'd ridden Boudicea together back to Somerton. Heloise had nestled herself into the curve of his chest, allowing him control of her mare for the journey. Again, that level of trust spoke volumes. The smell of her hair and the warmth of her little body was almost intoxicating enough to dri
ve him back to the place he'd found on the floor of that burnt-out clinic. He knew better, though. He knew that in that moment, what she needed was steadiness and comfort, not passion. Not lust. Certainly not demands.
He held her close and assisted her down when they reached the manor, passing her over to the fretting arms of a maid who ushered her up to her old rooms, murmuring reassurances in her ear. He'd led her mare into the stall he knew belonged to her, and had swallowed an unexpected lump that rose in his throat when Boudicea nudged him with a nicker of recognition, as though to say, "I'm glad you're home too, stable boy."
He made his way into the manor, coming only into the foyer before realizing he had no idea where to go. He did not know where his things had been taken, nor if any of the beds in the servants' quarters were open for a weary body. He was stuck in place, with nothing to do but gaze up at the painting of nineteen-year-old Heloise Somers that sat above the entry to Somerton. The summer it had been painted was the last of the time they had spent together, and it had captured her fire most beautifully. She sat, stroking Nero as a kitten, a mischievous sparkle in her bottle-green eyes and a knowing smirk hovering near the corner of her lips. She was young and vibrant in a gown of brilliant turquoise. Even in this state, well past fatigue, he still found himself in awe of her.
"Sir?" a voice echoed from the halls. "Lieutenant?"
Callum turned, blinking against his fatigue, to see a familiar face making his way toward him.
"Albert!" He felt the ghost of a welcoming smile finding its way onto his mouth. This footman had been the epitome of masculinity to him as a lad, an impressive and debonair fellow that always left the scullery maids sighing after him. "I didn't see you earlier. You look well!"
"Thank you, Lieutenant," Albert replied with cool politeness. He shifted his weight, a distinct look of uncertainty passing over his features. After a moment's silence, he added, awkwardly, "It is good to have you safely returned."
