The Pleasure in Surrender (an erotic historical short story) by Delilah Devlin Page B

separate from my husband’s. I’ll not take a husband I don’t want.”
    “Are you sure this is the battle you wish to fight, milady?”
    Geade was her best friend, but she’d ignored his imploring that she find a husband to rule with her. She’d been blessed the first time with Malcolm. A man who’d left the running of the castle, the overseeing of the harvests, the tallying of the tithes to her while he’d drunk himself to death.
    His excesses had nearly beggared them, and yet she’d managed to hide the extent of their wealth, and had hidden away enough to see them through hard times after his untimely death. Enough to allow her to pay a widow’s pension to Lord Alred to ensure her period of mourning was respected. The fact she’d just made her annual payment galled, seeing his forces aligned behind the Viking’s.
    Edwina didn’t flinch from the sight. Men betrayed women all the time. With a final internal reminder that she was indeed her mother’s daughter, she shook back her hair. “Send the bastard our response.”
    Geade’s lips firmed. She knew he wanted to say more, but he also knew when to keep silent. His cheeks billowed around an exasperated breath, but he nodded, raised an arm, and dropped it. The arm of the catapult parked in the middle of the bailey snapped upward, and the contents held in the scooped arms sailed high over the walls.
    Her own men ducked, faces screwing into ferocious grimaces, but once the contents cleared the wall, they all turned toward the army at the bottom of the hill.
    Shouts rang up and down the line, and arms rose to shield eyes as they stared upward. Edwina smirked as the foul contents of the castle’s jakes rained down on the Viking’s men. “Let the game begin.”
    After a nerve-wracking day that she’d spent supervising meals and finding places inside the bailey and keep for everyone to sleep, she was exhausted. But the moment she’d doused her candle and lain down on her bed, her doubts crowded in.
    She would never allow her people to suffer through a long siege. It being May, they were needed in their fields. No, she had perhaps a week before she’d have to concede. She eased open her fists and drew long breaths. Sleep was what she needed. Perhaps in the morning she would hit upon a scheme to delay the inevitable or plead her case to Alred. She rolled onto her side, tucked her hands beneath her face, and stared into the dark corners of her room.
    Geade wondered about her objection. So did she. Was it only willful pride, tweaked by the fact she had no choice in the matter? It wasn’t as though she didn’t want a man, someday , to share her burdens and her bed. Then she remembered the sight of Grimvarr, so large and fiercely masculine.
    Alone, she admitted a moment’s wild excitement. Malcolm had never made her yearn for his embrace. And yet this Viking had somehow crept into her bed. What would it be like to submit to a man like him? One strong enough to subdue her, one who caused more than a flutter of heat to curl inside her womb?
    A draft brushed her face. She’d closed the door and latched the pigskin curtain over her narrow window. A scuff of a foot had her stiffening, but she heard no more above the pounding of her heart. She wasn’t alone. “Who’s there?” she whispered.
    “I think you know,” came a deep, rumbling drawl.
    She drew a deep breath and came up slowly, scooting to the far side of her bed. Her knife was on her chatelaine’s belt hanging from a peg beside the door. She was weaponless. “My people?”
    “Your man Geade surrendered as soon as he realized the keep was overrun. No one was harmed.”
    “How?”
    “Does it matter? I’ve taken this castle. The only question now is one I want answered: Why did you bar the gates?”
    Edwina shivered at his graveled voice. “I was promised time to grieve before I accepted another husband.”
    “Alred suspected you would grieve until you were old. Did you really think he would defy the