Freya drew one leg over the side of his waist that didn’t pinch and, pulling him closer to her, drew him tighter with every thrust. It was then he noticed her tensing around him. She whimpered - a hungry, desperate sound - and then cried out. Her body clenched around him again and again, squeezing until he could hold the dam back no more and his lust poured from him in a great roaring groan.
He drew her beside him and lay her head over his chest. Their bodies were slick with sweat, which quickly chilled in the cold. They would need to dress soon or suffer the consequences. He slid a hand down the narrow dip of her waist and over the swell of her hip.
“How's yer wound?” Freya asked.
Damn. He'd forgotten about that. How had he not even felt it during their lovemaking? She sat up and looked down at his waist.
He sighed and got to his feet. “The last thing I feel like thinking about right now is my wound.”
“It looks fine,” she said softly. Her cheeks were bright red, as were her lips, swollen from his kisses. She drew her sark over her head with trembling fingers. Ewan frowned. Why were her fingers trembling?
He glanced down and saw that while his waist appeared fine, evidence of blood appeared on another part of him. A more telling part of him.
And suddenly it all made sense - the sharp gasp when he'd entered her, the way her hands shook now, the amount of attention she placed on his waist.
Freya Campbell, owner of a famed brothel in Edinburgh, who sold sex to feed her family and keep her farm, had been a virgin.
***
Freya quickly yanked her clothes on. If she didn't bring it up, he wouldn't notice. If he assumed she was the kind of woman who would readily pull a man into a barn and have him there where anyone might happen upon them, he would never suspect—
“Ye were a virgin.” Ewan's voice came out airy with wonder. He turned to her and his brow furrowed. “How is that possible?”
She shrugged as if it were a non-issue. For it wasn’t an issue. “It's nothing.”
“It isna nothing. I just...I just took yer maidenhead.” His jaw clenched and he glared at her.
Glared at her - as if he were angry over it when it was her virginity.
He tugged on his leine and belted his plaid.
“Mind ye dinna reopen yer wound,” Freya snapped.
“If I dinna tear it minutes ago, I willna do it now.” He frowned, softening. “Ye should have told me.”
“If I did, ye wouldna have lain with me.”
Ewan looked away, and she knew she was right. He wouldn't have. The warm glow in her body was beginning to chill.
Ewan ran a hand through his hair. “I wouldna take a woman's maidenhead. I'm no' that kind of man.”
Freya scoffed. “It means more to ye than it does to me.”
Ewan caught her hand, his touch tender. She looked down. His long, tapered fingers all but made hers disappear beneath his. Powerfully large hands which had been so gentle, so enticing when he'd touched her. Her nipples hardened at the thought.
Perhaps the warm glow was not chilling after all.
Ewan met her stare, his blue eyes warm with the same affection they'd held when he was inside her. “I would have been gentle.”
“I dinna want gentle.” She pulled her hand from his. “Truth be told, I'm glad to be done with it and no' have my virginity hanging over me like some burden.”
“Burden?”
“Aye, burden.” She pulled on her cloak and fastened it under her chin. “Do ye know how foolish it is for a bawdyhouse owner to be a maiden?”
“I dinna understand how...” Ewan's voice dropped off.
“How I'm a virgin?” She smirked.
“How ye even owned a bawdyhouse.”
She strode from the stable. The bitter winter cold had begun to settle into her bones. She wanted to go into the house where a fire would be burning and there might be a kettle of warmed water for tea. She wanted to be away from this conversation and the hurt puppy expression on Ewan's face.
“We had a running hay farm. My da managed it, but then he died.” Her fingers found the cool metal of the pocket watch in the folds of her dress. To think she could now speak of his death with such ease when the very mention had once rent a searing tear in her heart. “As I mentioned, I tried to run the farm on my own, but it dinna work.”
Ewan's footsteps scuffed behind her and she knew he followed.
“We dinna have money - no' for our servants’ pay or food,” she continued. “So I did what any able daughter with a bit of knowledge would do; I went to Edinburgh to become a lady's maid. Only they dinna make much money. Certainly no' enough to run a household.”
They left the shadow of the large barn and Freya squinted her eyes against the brilliant sunshine, grateful for the way it warmed her skin. So long as the wind didn't blow, the weather was quite pleasant.
“Several other girls realized how little money a lady's maid position paid and turned to whoring.” She continued on in the direction of the house as if she were speaking of the weather and not prostitution. “Only many of them couldna deal with the more difficult parts of exacting payment and speaking up for themselves. So I stepped in to help. I’ve no’ ever been shy. The ladies started to give me a cut of their wages for my aid. After a while, I built up enough to no' only help my family, but also help the ladies have a place to go - to get them off the streets. I set up Molly's - no' just for whores to be safe, but for women to come when they fall on hard times, to educate them to be ladies and have any job they wanted.”
“There really was no other way?” he asked from beside her.
She stopped and turned to him. Heat blazed in her cheeks at his ignorant statement, and in that one moment, she wondered how she'd even allowed him to kiss her. “Apparently, ye've no' paid much mind to the jobs open to a woman. Judge me if ye want - for owning a brothel, for selling sex, for being a virgin who peddles whores, but I never meant for any of this to happen. And I’m damn proud of what I’ve done.”
She stepped toward him and pushed her finger into his hard chest. “I imagine ye thought deserters of the military were awful sinners before you became one yerself. The black and white of the world is harder to see when your own life blurs into gray.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she strode onto the porch and into the house, her steps sharp on the wooden floorboards. She slammed through the front door and marched over to the fire to warm her cold, red hands. Her fingers shook where she held them to the heat.
In fact, her insides quivered as well, lit by the force of her defense, the true understanding of what had transpired between them, the power of her emotions swirling through her. Excitement, anger, fear, elation, attraction, frustration - an overwhelming mix of everything conflicting.
Her gaze wandered to the closed door. It did not open.
She had expected Ewan to wander in and come after her with an apology. She stared harder at the door, willing it to open, willing a stubborn man with too much moral fortitude for any one person to walk through it and call out to her with a much-deserved apology.
It remained closed.
She crossed the room in a petty huff and looked out the square pane of glass to the gray, dead world of winter outside. Her heart went heavy and dipped low in her chest. Ewan was gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN