I've survived sieges before. Orphans like me learn to tally losses on dusty parchments, torch shadows dancing over ledgers that keep this castle breathing. No family. No ties. Just my sharp quill and the lie that isolation steels me against wanting more.
Until the defender crashes through my solar door one storm-lashed night. Broad-shouldered salvation wrapped in chainmail grit, eyes like forged steel promising walls that hold. We strike the pact over flickering flames: his body seeding mine for the heir our lord demands. Survival math. Nothing personal. I tell myself his gruff vows of protection are just wind through battlements.
But gods help me, when he hauls me down onto cold stone amid flying scrolls, sweat-slick and unyielding, strategy dissolves. He takes me raw and relentless, hips slamming home until I shatter around him, parchments crumpling under our frenzy. It's not duty driving those thrusts that flood me deep. It's the feral pull I've denied my whole life, his mouth claiming my gasps like territory won.
Weeks later, the first flutter stirs low in my belly, candlelight gilding the swell. He kneels by my pallet at dawn, callused palms sanding cradle wood with a tenderness that guts me. Whispers of names, futures beyond these walls. My tongue stays sharp, spitting defiance to mask how his touch unravels me. Yet every stolen rut against the door risks the gates, my fragile self-rule, this kicking life we forged in haste.
Siege horns wail closer. One breach, and we crumble. One confession, and my heart follows. How long before his seed binds me tighter than any chain, or duty carves us both hollow?
A full-length breeding medieval erotic romance featuring a defiant orphaned clerk and a stoic castle guardian.
