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I held still inside it, braced on my good arm, shaking with the force of it, and she breathed my name into my skin and told me she was all right and pulled me down the last of the way.

After that there was no distance left anywhere.

She set the pace even locked, rocking on the knot, grinding herself through another orgasm while I emptied the last of myself deep inside her. Her hands went into my hair and her heels pressed into the backs of my thighs, and when her head went back I put my mouth to the long line of her throat and stopped at the gland beneath her jaw without touching it.

Every instinct in my body screamed at me, but I didn’t do it. She felt me not doing it. She got her hand up into my hair and held me there, holding me to the choice I had made, and that nearly finished me on its own.

“I know,” she whispered. “I know. Not tonight.”

“Not tonight.”

“Later…”

“God, yes. Later.”

It built until she was past being careful of my ribs and I was long past caring, and she came apart again with my name in her mouth. Her nails dug into my shoulders while my knot continued to pulse, full of me, and I went after her with her face in my hands and her eyes open on mine, which was more intimate by a considerable margin than anything else we did.

I had imagined catching Robin of Locksley a hundred different ways, with soldiers at my back and iron at her wrists and the Crown’s warrant folded in my hand. I had never once imagined it like this, with her looking up at me as though I were the one person in England she trusted to hold her, and with the terrible understanding settling over me that I would surrender every title I possessed before I let her regret choosing me.

Afterward I got up, which I appeared to be alone in thinking was a good idea, once the knot finally eased enough to let me slip free. A thick, messy rush of come and slick followed, soaking the sheets between her thighs once more.

“Where are you going?” There was an edge under it she did not quite manage to hide.

“Twenty feet. Lie down.”

I brought her water from the pail and made her drink the whole of it. I built the fire back up because the sweat was cooling on her and the night had come in cold. I found the quilt where it had got itself kicked down off the foot of the bed, shook it out, and put it over her. Then I checked my own bandage, which had held, because her stitching was better than she’d thought.

Then I got back in beside her and let her settle against my right side, and I moved the damp locs off her face with my fingers and did not say anything for a while.

“You’re being very attentive, Sheriff.”

“Is that a complaint?”

“I’m suspicious.”

“Of what?”

“Your intentions.”

I brushed my thumb across her cheek. “My intentions are becoming increasingly difficult to disguise.”

“Try.”

“I intend to stay here until you’re tired of me.”

She smiled into my shoulder. “That could take a while.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

She was quiet for a bit, and then her hand flattened on my chest.

“I haven’t let anyone do this in six years.” She said it to the ceiling rather than to me. “Not any of it. Not sleep in the same room, not touch me. Not watch me while I’m asleep, certainly not take care of me afterward like I’m something that needs looking after. I don’t know how to be looked after, Guy. I’ve been the one doing the looking since I was eighteen years old.”

“I know.”

“Everyone in that camp needs me to be the Ghost.”

“I don’t.”