His eyes narrowed. “I’m too tired for this.”

She was tired, too. And yet she couldn’t drop her guard with him. If that meant constantly haranguing him with prickly words, then so be it. Perhaps she’d earn his enmity and then he’d leave her be.

“What are you so afraid of?” he demanded.

The question made her chest ache. How did he know she was afraid?

“Nothing.”

You can resist him. Pulling back her shoulders, she strode to the other side of the bed, suppressing her alarm at the sight of how little space remained in the bed beside him.

She pulled back the coverlet on her side of the bed and slid beneath. She lay there for a moment, lacing her hands together atop her chest. She forced her gaze straight ahead, watching the shadows dance over the lighted walls.

“The lamp,” she murmured.

“I’ll take care of it.” He rose and strode across the room. She stared after him, her mouth drying as she appreciated his broad back with its lightly flexing skin.

In moments, they were submerged in darkness. She heard his footsteps and then a slight rustling beside the bed. She waited for the bed to dip with his weight, but nothing—simply more of that rustling noise.

She moistened her lips before speaking into the dark. “What are you doing?”

“Undressing for bed.”

A vision of him discarding his breeches flashed in her mind. “What? You cannot—”

“Unlike you, I prefer to be comfortable at night. I don’t typically sleep in my trousers.”

“Perhaps you could be atypical for just tonight?” she suggested, her heart beating a panicky rhythm. “For me?”

His side of the bed sank with his weight and she resisted rolling in that direction.

He chuckled low, and the sound was like velvet stroking her goose-puckered flesh. “You’re like a nun clutching the bedsheets in fear of a marauding Viking.”

She winced at the description, which struck her as strangely appropriate.

He continued. “How did you ever expect to handle your wedding night?”

“I didn’t,” she muttered so low her voice was barely audible.

And yet he heard.

The bed creaked and she guessed he had propped himself up on his elbow. She felt him above her, imagined him looking down.

“What did you say?”

She made a low, noncommittal sound.

“Did you say, ‘I didn’t’?” He made a sound—part laugh, part groan. She winced. His fingers snapped on the air as though he’d made a grand discovery. “You chose Thrumgoodie because he wouldn’t be able to perform. That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t want intimacy.”

“Yes!” She bolted upright in the bed. “That’s it precisely. Is that so unbelievable? Unlike the other females of your undoubtedly vast experience, I don’t want to submit my body to a man! I may have to marry, but I don’t intend to torture myself through child labor again and again and again with no promise for a healthy child, with no promise that I myself shall even survive.” With no love to make any of it worthwhile.

Silence fell and stretched between them like a wire pulled taut. She held her breath until her chest ached. The air she was holding escaped, sawing raggedly from her lips.

“Well,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion. “That does paint a rather grim picture.”

“It’s reality,” she retorted, blinking eyes that suddenly burned with tears, hating that she should feel so overwrought when he seemed so calm.

“For some women, I suppose, yes. That is a reality they must bear.”

“For some women,” she agreed fiercely. Like Mama. “But not this one. Not me.”

Suddenly she felt the brush of his fingers against her face. She flinched and pulled back from the tantalizing sensation.

“It doesn’t have to be that way.”

“Oh, no? A man can make such a promise?”

“Well, no—”

“Then I’ll take no such risk.”

“Life is risk. Would you rather not live life?”

The question had been there, on the fringe of her mind ever since Jack’s man arrived on her doorstep. Ever since she met Logan and felt the dangerous feelings he stirred inside her. She’d effectively avoided it until now. “I’ll live. But it will be a life of my own choosing.” A life that shall improve the lives of her siblings.

“So no to passion . . . no to love?”

She stiffened. Love? If it were to be believed, if it were real . . .

He went silent after uttering the word and she wondered if he regretted it. Whether he was as shocked as she was at expressing such a sentiment.

“No children?” he asked, his voice suddenly casual, detached. “Sounds infinitely dull, and you’ve never struck me as dull.”

“It sounds wise,” she returned. “Safe.”

“Safety.” He snorted, his voice suddenly hard and unaccountably angry. “My brother and father died on their way home from the Crimea. After surviving three years of war, their carriage lost a wheel and sent them tumbling down a mountain a two-day ride from home. There’s no accounting for when it’s your time . . . or what God has planned for you, and you’re a fool if you think you can plan your life to avoid risk.”

His words deflated her, sapping her of her indignation. She thought of Bess right then—felt the echo of his grief so very keenly. Her fingers itched to reach out and touch him at this confession, but that was just an invitation for disaster. She curled her fingers and sank back down on the bed, struggling to regain her poise.

His voice continued, “I know that you’ve suffered. That you’ve known terrible loss. Maybe more than even I can understand. But I know that you can’t stop life from happening.”

You can’t stop life from happening.

With a gulping breath, she marveled that she had ever judged him shallow. There was more to him than she first thought. He continued to reveal himself to her in ways that made him hard to resist.

He sighed and settled back down beside her, close but still not touching any part of her. “For someone so brave—”

“You think I’m brave?” she asked, her face growing warm at the praise.

“You alone carry your little brothers and sisters to the churchyard following their deaths. Yes, I think you’re brave.

“And for someone so brave,” he finished, “I don’t understand how you can be so afraid.”

“What am I afraid of?” she demanded.

A beat of silence hummed between them before he answered. “Everything, it appears.”

Everything.

Her eyes burned as the word penetrated—as she absorbed that he was right. As he eased into sleep beside her, she held herself still, reeling with the realization of what she had become—a person she didn’t want to be. Yet with her stepfather’s threats hanging over her head, she didn’t know how she could be anything else.

Chapter Seventeen

The pale light of dawn greeted her as she slowly opened her eyes. For a moment, she stared uncomprehendingly at the single window, absorbing the bluish light creeping between the curtains. Her thoughts were fuzzy and it took her a moment to register where she was . . . and even longer to process who shared the bed alongside her.

In that instant it all flooded over her, and her eyes flew wide.

Every sensation struck her full force. The long press of his body against hers. The weight of his arm draped over her. The span of each of his fingers against her belly. His chest was warm and broad—endless at her back. Her heart thudded violently against her rib cage.

Cleo’s thoughts raced, recalling the events of last night.

She was ruined. No mistake about that. Strangely, she couldn’t summon much regret about the loss of Thrumgoodie, and she suspected the reason had something to do with the man pressed alongside of her.

“How long are you going to pretend to be asleep?”

In one smooth move, he rolled her onto her back and came over her. His face was inches from hers, their noses almost touching. His thumb grazed her temple, feathering the tiny hairs there.

Even in the dim light, his eyes shone clear and bright, scanning her face as though he were memorizing it. In all her life, another person had not looked at her with such complete intensity.

Her heart stuttered against her chest so violently she was sure he felt it, too. She waited, her flesh tight and prickly with anticipation. Still, he did not move—didn’t lower his mouth that remaining half inch.

With a faint groan, she surrendered and lifted her mouth, touching his. It was all he needed, and she realized in some distant corner of her thoughts, that he’d been waiting for her to do this very thing.

Their mouths fused together hotly, devouring, consuming with hungry lips and feverish tongues. She held his face with both hands, clinging to him, desperate and needy.

His hands touched her everywhere, sure and firm, molding to her curves, caressing her in places that made her cry out against his mouth. He made short work of shedding her clothes, tossing them to the floor.

He stared down at her for a long moment. Ideally, this should have been the moment where reason returned in a flood, but he looked so beautiful gazing down at her, his eyes glittering and intense, his dark hair falling across his brow. And then there was his body.

Never had she seen such a sight. Lean and hard, his muscles played along his torso and rippled over his ribs. His sinewy arms were braced on either side of her and she wanted to turn her face and kiss every inch of the sculpted flesh.

He lowered down until his chest mashed into her br**sts. The lean line of him aligned with her own n**ed body and the sensation fired her every nerve. She gasped as his narrow h*ps settled between her thighs.

His roughened palms glided over the outside of her thighs and her breath caught as those big hands slid beneath her garments, cupping her buttocks. He positioned himself deeply against her, and there was no mistaking the prodding bulge. She moaned at the sensation. And then he began to move. The hard length of him rubbed against her, sliding between her moist, intimate heat without penetrating.

An ache grew low in her belly, shooting a direct line to where he pressed against her. The friction became unbearable. She became slippery and wet against him.

She thrashed her head against the pillow. “Please, please, Logan.”

He rubbed deeper, moving in a manner that mimicked the act of lovemaking. She shook, trembled from desire, the need so great in her that she at last convulsed in his arms. Her nails dug into the smooth expanse of his back as fiery sensations rushed through her.

It went on and on. Ripples of pleasure crashed over her like a pounding tide.

She cried out his name and he drowned the sound with a blistering kiss. Suddenly he stilled against her, the throbbing length of him no longer moving and creating that delicious friction . . . and she was left with a vague sense of dissatisfaction. A hunger for more.

His arms, braced on either side of her, shook with restraint. She couldn’t help herself. She moved against him, used some wanton part of herself that she didn’t know existed inside her—that she had prayed, for years, didn’t exist within her.

“What are you doing?” he grit through clenched teeth.

The answer materialized in her mind. “Enjoying life,” she returned. “Isn’t that what you said I should do?”

“Stop,” he commanded, his jaw tense as though in pain.

It was wicked of her, she knew, but she didn’t stop.

With an epithet, he slid away from her. She thought he was gone, that she’d pushed him too far, but then his hands were on her thighs again, and she felt him there, his muscled shoulders between her legs.

“What are you doing?” she shrieked.

He splayed a hand on her belly, pinning her to the bed as his head delved between her thighs.