Page 57

I was naked in a forest a hundred yards from an Alpha who could have crossed that distance in six strides, and nothing in me was afraid. Not one part. Six years I had spent making certain no man ever got within arm’s reach of me in a state like that, and he stood up there watching the trees so that I could get the blood off my skin in peace.

That is what undid me. Not the way he had looked at me. The way he refused to keep looking.

I finished what I had started under the water, two more slow, deliberate strokes that left my thighs trembling and my breath short, hen came out, dried off. I dressed in what the chest had kept, because my grandmother packed that cabin years ago and among the folded linen there was one of my father’s old shirts.

It came to the middle of my thighs. I belted it at the waist, left my locs loose and dripping because there was nobody in that forest to hide them from. Then I walked back up the path and into the main room, where Guy had seated himself on the bench by the hearth and taken up his dagger and the whetstone like a man with something to occupy his hands.

He looked up, and he stopped moving entirely with the whetstone halfway down the blade.

He’d seen me an hour ago with nothing on me but spring water. That should have made a borrowed shirt the least interesting thing in Nottinghamshire, and instead it was plainly worse, because now the man knew exactly what the linen was covering and his imagination had been given a map.

I have been accused of many things. I have never been accused of failing to enjoy an advantage.

My nipples were still hard against the thin fabric. The ache between my legs had not eased; if anything the walk back up the hill had made it worse. The heat was no longer circling. It was settling in, low and heavy, and every step reminded me how long it had been since I had let myself feel any of it.

“Something wrong, Sheriff?”

“No.”

“You’re staring.”

“I’m aware.”

“Is my clothing offensive?”

“Not remotely.”

“Then why do you look as though you’ve forgotten how to speak?”

He set the dagger aside, and his eyes came up to mine and stayed.

“Because I’m trying to determine whether you know what you’re doing to me.”

I smiled at him. “Oh, I know.”

“Of course you do.”

“And?”

“And you’re enjoying yourself far too much.”

I crossed the room, and instead of putting the whole width of that cabin between us the way I had every other time, I sat down beside him on the bench.

There was not a great deal of bench. My thigh came up warm against his, and neither of us moved, and we both pretended an accident of furniture had put us there.

His hand rested on the wood between us, palm turned up. It was a soldier’s hand, scarred across the knuckles, big enough to close around my whole wrist, which I had excellent reason to know. Six years I had spent making certain no Alpha ever got close enough to touch me, and the habit had grown roots so deep I had stopped noticing it was there.

I put my fingers against his palm.

He closed his hand around mine, slowly, and that was all. He did not pull me closer or make a single remark, and we sat by the fire holding hands like a pair of fools, and it was the first time either of us had touched the other for no reason except that we wanted to.

“You could have caught me at Blackwater Crossing,” I said.

His thumb moved once across my knuckles. “Yes.”

“You let me go.”

“Yes.”