He halted as soon as he saw her, startled to stillness.
“Elena.”
“Jacob.”
Neither of them smiled.
His brain raced ahead of his surprise. “Where are ye going?” he asked. “Nae outside the gate.”
“I was only meaning to get a bit of air,” she replied. “I had nae intention of straying too far from the wall.”
“I would advise against it,” he said, already tugging the second glove free and gathering both in one hand.
She hesitated, studying him more closely now. There was a faint scrape along his temple she had not seen before, a thin line half-hidden in the shadow of his hair.
“Ye were out all yesterday,” she said quietly. “My father said only that it was done.” Her eyes lifted to his. “What happened?”
His mouth set, the way it did when he chose his words carefully. “What needed doing,” he said. “They willna trouble anyone again.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s all ye need to ken.”
She nodded, accepting what she thought a pointless boundary, but her gaze went back to the thin mark near his brow. “Ye’re hurt.”
He held her gaze. “A scratch,” he said dismissively. “Barely worthy of discussion.”
Still, neither of them had moved. Elena realized that she had just spent the last thirty minutes walking and talking with Thomas, trying to imagine a life built on little more than his agreeable manners and the fact that he obviously thought her bonny. She’d made an honest attempt to do that, to discover whether she could marry him and live content with it, but what she really wanted to know was whether there was anything here, with Jacob, anything worthy of investigation, or if she had only built up that feeling out of fear and gratitude and closeness in those three days.
She wanted—needed—to know whether anything real lived between them, or if it was only in her heart, but not his.
That knowledge would cost her something. She understood that clearly. It might end the possibility forever, and prove that what she carried was hers alone. He might refuse her, dismiss the idea entirely, say he harbored neither affection nor hope, and it would be finished. It could finally be laid to rest.
She moved toward him without hesitation, not rushing but also not faltering. Each step was deliberate, as though she had already crossed the line in her mind and her body was simply catching up. She didn’t blink but held his gaze intentionally.
Jacob’s shoulders went rigid beneath his tunic. His eyes darkened, pupils widening slightly against the brown. The muscle in his jaw twitched once, then locked. He stood unnaturally still, like a man balancing at the edge of a precipice, aware that even the slightest movement—a single exhale, the flex of a finger—might send everything tumbling into the abyss below.
“Elena,” he warned.
She gave him a fleeting, apologetic glance that belonged to a girl who knew she was about to set something irrevocable in motion, but did not stop until the hem of her skirts touched the tip of his boots. She held his gaze, refusing to flinch or look away, as if daring him to contradict the truth she now wore openly on her face. Slowly, she reached up—her hand trembling with neither cold nor hesitation—and pressed her palm, fingers splayed, flat to the center of his chest. The heat of him shocked her, pulsing through layers of wool and linen, and she felt his heartbeat hammer itself against her hand.
His breath caught. The muscle along his jaw flexed, then slackened. Something raw surfaced in his eyes—fear, longing, hunger, she could not tell, but it was not indifference. Every inch of him vibrated with the effort it took not to move, not to sweep her up and devour her. He looked down at her hand, then at her face.
For the first time, Elena understood her own power, its fragility and its danger. It was a power born not of beauty or wit or rank, but of daring to reach for what she wanted, even if it shattered her in the end. She could take it back, could laugh or withdraw or pretend it was a jest—but that would be the end as surely as a slammed door. So she left her hand there, daring him to deal with it.
He stared at her, eyes glacier-cool as he covered her hand with his.
“Elena,” he said again, yet a warning, a last request to retreat.
Elena didn’t move but to angle her chin upward.
Jacob’s hand clamped over hers, his grip ungentle. And then, she saw it in his face, the exact instant his legendary discipline shattered. Some long-restrained instinct detonated behind his eyes. His breath left him all at once. With no further hesitation, he seized her by the waist, yanking her into him, the world contracting to the heat of his body and the smell of grass and stone and sweat. She made a sound, something between a gasp and a laugh, entirely unlike anything she’d ever voiced before.
Sweeping her hand aside, he locked her in place with both arms. One hand splayed at her lower back, pressing her close, while the other mapped its way up her arm, gentle for a flickering second and then rougher, anchoring itself along her jaw, so her face tilted up more, lips parted in surprise.
His mouth crashed onto hers, fierce and hot, as if he meant to consume her, to brand her with the certainty of his longing. Elena’s mind emptied, a candle snuffed; her body blazed instead, every nerve lit with the thrilling shock of him, the way he tasted of wind and hunger and the wild freedom of the woods.
She’d spent countless hours—half her life—imagining what it would be like, and every version paled beside this. For all his strength, he was not careful. His hands shook as they bracketed her, and he made a noise at the back of his throat that felt like a plea and a curse tangled together. It should have frightened her, the intensity, the suddenness, the rawness of it. Instead, it clarified everything. The hollow ache was not her own, the way she came alive in his presence was not exclusive to her, the yearning she’d tried to dismiss was real.
