“Then come in.”
“Hanne.”
“I told you I want you?—”
“Hanne.”
I sucked in a harsh breath between my teeth.
“I don’t want to rush this.”
“I’m not a delicate flower that will wilt at the slightest touch. I’m a grown woman who is capable of making her own choices. And this is my choice.”
“I also have a choice—and my answer is no.”
I’d only been with him once, and it was the most passionate night of my life. More passionate than the books I’d read. More passionate than my dreams and my imagination. And then it was taken away from me. “Why?”
His eyes found mine again.
“I asked you why.”
No answer was forthcoming, his stare hard and guarded, no cracks in the surface.
“Can we at least sleep together?”
“I can’t.”
I had a man in my life, a man I wanted to be with every night, and there was an invisible block between us. A block he refused to move, even though he was the one who’d put it there.
“I almost crossed the line last time, and you deserve better than that.”
“I deserveyou, Morco.”
He seemed resolute in his decision, the way a mountain refused to bow to the wind and the rain. Only an earthquake from deepwithin could shake his foundation. “We’ll get back to work in the morning.”
“Can’t wait.” It was the first time I was angry with him, angry that he wouldn’t just give me what I wanted. That I was barred from intimacy because I’d never been touched, and he didn’t want to be the first one to do it.
He didn’t rise to my anger. Just turned around and walked off, the bow across his back, the bundle of arrows in his grasp.
I watched him go and hoped he’d turn around, change his mind, and come back to me, but when he disappeared, I knew he wouldn’t return. He would sleep alone in his cabin—and condemn me to do the same.
I was dead asleep when I felt it.
The sudden cold. My sheet had slipped off my body and onto the floor, and the air was cool on my skin. The fire in my hearth had died out, so I had no heat or light. I absent-mindedly reached for the sheet, my hand snaking over the edge toward the floor.
A hand gently grabbed my arm and urged me back.
My heart clenched with hope at the warmth. Morco had changed his mind and come back to me. His hands moved to my bottoms and started to pull them off. I instinctively lifted my hips to help him get them off.
“Fuck, Blue.” He pulled off my pants and underwear.
I was still in the haze of sleep and hope, but my mind sharpened when I heard the voice that didn’t belong to Morco. When Iheard the nickname, knowing Morco didn’t have a nickname for me.
He started to move over me, folding and forcing me into position, not gentle the way Morco had been. He slid his hand into my hair, not in a tender embrace, but in a tight hold so I couldn’t move.
My mind finally broke through the ceiling of fog, and I knew I was in danger. “Help—” My words barely made it out of my mouth before a hand covered my lips and sealed the words behind its palm.
He dropped the front of his pants so he could enter me.
