“Ye could have fooled me,” he said, his voice calm. “Ye dragged me back here with yer beasts and yer wee performances. Ye wanted me eyes on ye. Now ye have them, wife.”
“Idragged you back?” she scoffed. “You leftmewith silence. I simply just put something in its place.”
“Really?Something? Ye filled it with chaos,” he countered.
“Youleft,” she shot back. “I do not think any argument needs to be had after that. How I choose to mend myself after you left is my business.”
Their words climbed over each other, and the kiss slipped to the side.
It was no longer about the heat between them anymore. No. This was about who would set the terms. Every time he used that amused tone, a part of her wanted to shove him away, while another part wanted to grab his shirt and pull him in.
He moved that last half step, his presence a weight in front of her. “Ye are playing, Emma,” he said. “Ye poke, ye push, ye want me to chase. ButIdecide the rules of this game, nae ye.”
The desk pressed into her legs. There was nowhere else to move.
“Again, not a game.”
If she let him keep talking like that, she knew where it would end. She would laugh when he expected it, treat it all as flirting, let him decide how close they stood and when they stopped.
Her heart hammered high in her throat. If she stayed quiet, she would lose. If she spoke, she might lose in some other way, but at least it would be hers.
The words came before she could smooth them.
“Now that you keep leaving even before you produce an heir, what do you plan to doafteryou produce an heir? Or worse, when I’m pregnant?” Her voice thickened. “Are you going to leave as well, knowing very much that I could die?”
The room seemed to shrink as the fire crackled. Logan’s breathing sounded loud. His expression shifted in a way she had never seen. The lazy look vanished, and for a moment, there was only shock, bare and clean.
“What in God’s name do ye mean by that?” he asked. “Why would ye say ye would die? Why would ye think I would leave ye if ye carried me child?”
Emma’s back went rigid. Now that the fear was out, she wanted it back. She hated the feeling of standing open while he prodded at a sore place.
“A man would not understand,” she huffed, lifting her chin.
His jaw flexed. “Daenae do that. Daenae throw that at me and then tell me I have nay right to ask. I would expectmewife to understand me.”
The wordwifesounded different this time. Emma heard the unsaid part under it. That very few people had tried to understand him at all. Including her.
He did not move from where he stood. Even if the door was wide open, she doubted he would have stepped aside.
“I understand plenty,” she said. “You owe your men. Your ships. Your sea. I am somewhere at the bottom of that list.”
“Ye daenae ken what I owe,” he shot back. “Ye see a ring on yer finger and think the whole thing ends there.”
“Then tell me,” she pressed. “What do you owe that matters more than the clan that looks up to you? More than the marriageyouyourself agreed to.”
His mouth twisted. “I didnae drag ye here. Ye came of yer own will. We both ken that.”
“I came because you needed a wife and I needed a husband,” she said. “That is not charity. That is a bargain.”
He gave a mirthless sound. “Ye think this place gave me charity?”
His shoulders had tensed. The sea was never far from him, but now Emma could tell the ship felt close too.
“Every soul is worth the same.” He sounded like he was repeating something he had told himself over and over. “A man on a ship, a man on land, it is all one. But I cannae forget what some of the people here did. How theywatched.”
“Oh.” Emma swallowed and stared at the fire. “I did not know there was something.”
His eyes flicked to the fire and then back. “The clan didnae stop it,” he rasped. “They let me be taken. It was the pirates who kept me alive. Fed me. Made me what I am.”
