Finian stopped them on a small rise of land. In the distance, Senna could see occasional glints of silver, as the currents of a small watercourse flowed between trees.

“Up, Senna.”

She looked around. The leaves of the trees were obviously green, but in the night, the branches were more of a dark black mass. “Up what?”

He pointed high, to a small wooden platform set in the upper branches of a tree.

“A deer blind!” she exclaimed.

“One thing I can honestly give thanks to an Englishman for.”

They climbed the rope ladder leading up to the blind. Senna pushed through the hole at the top and scooted backward to make room. His head popped up through the opening in the platform. He pushed the rest of the way through, then pulled the rope ladder up behind and shut the trap door.

It was a wooden platform, about three long paces wide, cut out like a crescent moon around the huge bole of the tree trunk. The leaves rustled every so often on a light breeze. Otherwise the night was utterly still.

He sat at the edge and hung his feet over the side, as the nighttime winds swept over the land like feathers. He looked at Senna, lifted an arm, half curved, and crooked a brow. She smiled and scooted to his side. He dropped his arm over her shoulder and lifted his hand, pointing into the valley below.

“Do ye see those lands, Senna?”

“I do.”

“They’re yer brother’s.”

Her smile faded. “What?”

“Did ye not know he has lands here?”

“No.” She looked over. “Will does not speak of his pursuits, ever. I know nothing of what he has gained. Or lost.”

“No? Well, I do not need anyone to tell me. Yer king took the land, gave it to someone he owed a favor to. Yer brother, in this case.”

They stared at the manor below. The forests around had been hacked back a good league. A tall motte was built up in the center of the clearing, and atop its rounded hump sat the manor house. A spiked wooden palisade encircled it.

A few outbuildings showed here and there, and a few homes and barns—a small village—huddled at the base of the motte. No villagers could be seen at this late hour, but evidence of their existence was in the tipped cart, which was spilling hay, outside a small stable.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Do ye still wish to go home, Senna?”

“Oh.”

“What’s it to be, lass? Run yer business, count yer coin?”

“’Tisn’t like that,” she said dully. It was exactly like that. “What other option have I?”

“Ye could stay with me.”

She knew she must appear shocked, lower jaw dropped, her eyes wide, but she couldn’t hide it. Finian returned the look, utterly impassive. He might have just asked her to pass a plate of bread.

“Pardon?” she managed.

He scooped a heavy swath of hair into his palm and leaned forward to kiss the side of her neck, soft as mist. Whispered, rough-edged, his words came against her skin as he moved down her neck. “Will ye stay with me?”

“I—I—”

He ran the tips of his callused fingers down her neck, stopping just in the valley between her breasts. “Is that an aye?” he asked, smiling.

How shameful, to have all her wits melted like ice by a single Irishman. Stewards from the royal household and chancellors from St. Mark’s Abbey had bent before her negotiating talents. Finian simply said Will you? and she’d practically wept her Yes.

He leaned forward to lay claim to her lips. She poked her index finger into his chest, holding him at bay.

“No,” she corrected. “’Tisn’t, actually. Why are you asking?”

He looked startled. He scratched his forehead. “Why? Ye’re asking why?”

Now here was a phenomenon; an intelligent man laid low by that simple query.

“For certes,” she assured him. “Why?”

“Why”—he looked around incredulously—“because ’tisn’t safe at yer brother’s manor.”

“Then why did you offer in the first place?”

“So ye’d have a choice,” he grumbled. “So I might be a modicum different to ye from other men.”

A modicum. She felt like laughing. He was like a star might be viewed through one of Bacon’s optics, brought close and placed in her palm. It was hopeless—she was in love with someone who had no need for the kind of fumbling attempts at affection she could bestow. Why would he need her?

And therein lay the truth: he didn’t. He might want her, but he didn’t need her, so it was only a matter of time.

She had no words to describe how she felt about him. When he smiled at her, teased her, listened to her with patient regard. And there were no words to describe how she felt when he touched her. When he looked at her with desire and affection mingled. It almost made her heart break.

And now he was offering it to her, giving her the chance to have him hand back her heart, broken anew, each morning, when she woke up and recalled he would never truly be hers. Had he not made it plainer than daylight? Only a fool would believe it wasn’t so.

He might wed, some day, for position and heirs. But it would not be for love. And it would not be to her.

He was distracting her, running his hand up her leg. He bent and brushed his lips over the vulnerable part of her neck, the center of her throat, where every swallow had to nudge by his lips. The blunt tip of his index finger slid over her thigh, and backward, brushing across the top of her buttocks.

“Is this about the dyes?” she asked outright, almost hoping it was. If so, it would be a black mark, a smudge on a man who was, to her, so gleaming bright it almost hurt her heart.

“No.”

“Then why?”

He finished the kiss she’d stopped him from before, and she didn’t stop him again. Up her neck he pressed kisses—small, hot raindrops—every so often followed by the smallest nibble, his teeth holding back their bite, just enough to raise shivers of pleasure across her breasts, hardening them. Then he moved to her lips.

His mouth slanted gently over her, his touch so gentle she felt his warm exhalation more than his kiss. As if they had all the time in the world, he kissed her, like she was a savory, a new taste for his lips and tongue.

He coaxed her mouth open and launched a slow, irresistible invasion, his tongue plunging deep in the wet recesses of her mouth. His hands slid over her hips and, with a confident tug, pushed her leggings down to midthigh. Then he positioned one knee between hers, his sculpted body and hard erection pressing against her groin.

“Staying, then, are ye?” he murmured against her ear—hot, masculine breath.

“You’re muddling my head,” she complained.

“I’ll muddle ye straight through to yer center. Stay with me.”

“Why are you asking?”

He shoved his muscular thigh up between her legs, pressing roughly against everything in her that was throbbing and wet.

“For this,” he growled. He sounded certain. She was. Certain she could not live without him.

He bobbed his thigh up and down and she arched to him, entwining her fingers in his hair.

“For this.” He kissed her earlobe, sending shock waves down her belly. She arched up into it. Shameless, and lost. “And this.”

He fitted his palm into the small of her back and made her arch farther, so only the top of her head and her heels were on the wooden platform. Everything else was pressed up into Finian or supported by his hand on the back of her spine. His other palm pressed into the wood, holding them up, one knee shoved between her legs.

“’Cause I want to watch ye like this, Senna,” he said, almost in a snarl, and bending his head, he took her nipple between his teeth, still beneath her tunic, and bit down, just shy of pain.

She exploded into full readiness, and without realizing how, she was ripping at her leggings with him, pushing them aside. But when he started to push inside her, reality intruded with a hot, raw flush.

She put her hands on his chest. “I’m a bit sore,” she whispered.

Immediately he pulled back, and the hot, long length of him slid out. She was relieved and frustrated, and whimpered her ambivalence.

“’Tis a’right, lass,” he murmured, and went back to kissing her. That was purely unacceptable. If she was choosing the descent into the hell of perfect passion and uncertain futures, she was not about to settle for half measures.

“But I might like to try something else,” she mumbled.

His lips paused on her neck. “Such as?”

“To try what I tried before. To do…that.”

Now she could feel his lips curve into a smile against the warmth of her neck. “To do what, Senna?”

“To do to you…” her voice trailed off. “I never got to do to you…what you did to me. With your mouth.” She was mumbling into her own chest now, she’d turned her face so far down. “We did…other things. But I did want to try…”

“So try,” he said, his voice fierce and low-pitched.

She scrambled off him. Finian propped his back against the tree trunk and Senna knelt beside him. She unlaced his leggings and drew them open, sighing when his erection fell out, hot and heavy.

She slid tentative fingers over the long length of him, over the satiny skin, feeling it move like silk over the hard flesh beneath. His sculpted body shuddered slightly. She looked up.

“Can I—”

“Anything,” he rasped. His spine was propped against the tree trunk, one knee bent, the other leg stretched out. He had a hand gently on her waist. “Ye can do anything ye want.”

She smiled and bent back to him. She breathed deeply, inhaling the warm, almond scent of him. Then she opened her mouth and ran her tongue slowly down his erection.

He let out a long breath, but his hand on her waist did not move.

She grew bolder. Propping herself on an elbow, she bent very low and cupped him with her other hand. The heavy sacks of him, weighted in her palm and against the inside of her fingers, were hot and covered with dark wiry hair. Her hair fell down around her face; she felt like she was in a room alone with his maleness. Impatiently, she tipped her head to the side and ran her teeth against the length of him, very gently.

He sucked air. “Do that again,” he ground out.

She shifted slightly.

“No,” he ordered, his voice taut. He brushed her hair back, lifting it away from her face. “Keep yer head to the side. I want to watch ye.”

Hot shivering ribbons shot though her body. Between her thighs she was pulsing, hot and ready. She ran her teeth against him again, her mouth open a little wider, sliding and tugging at the silk skin with gentle, threatening sharpness. She nudged her tongue behind. His hand tightened on her back.

She looked up. He watched her almost distantly, his body curved deceptively still against the tree. But she could hear his quickened breath, feel the quivering restraint of him, in all the bunched muscles he’d given over to her keeping.

“Like that?” she whispered, loving the feel of such power.

“Nay,” he murmured, but his voice was thick. His dangerous eyes were intent on her, darkened by desire.

She shivered.

“Take me in yer mouth.”

Heat jammed into her womb like a whip, snapping and demanding obedience to the craving.

She opened her mouth and took the wide, rounded head of him in, and then the hand on her back shifted. Pushing her leggings down, confident and certain, he unlaced her in seconds and had his hand between her thighs, slipping his thumb into her wetness, making her whimper. She slid her mouth along his length, up and down, moving her body back and forth, no longer aware of the hard wood beneath her knees.

“Hold yer hair up,” he said, his words low and demanding.

She did, lifting one hand and pushing it back, so he could watch the side of her face as she licked up the length of him.

“Suck on me.”

Hot, trembling desire shot through her body. She knew she was whimpering, rocking on her knees, helpless before their passion. She sucked him into her mouth—her mouth filled with his thick heat, inhaling, devouring the full, hard, pulsing male presence of him.

She felt his wicked hand between her thighs. His thick finger pushed inside her, his thumb nudging just across the slippery circular nub, and she moaned around his erection.

With a low sound in his throat, he suddenly moved. Nudging her aside, he repositioned them so he was lying flat, Senna kneeling beside him. Then he nudged her hips around, toward his head.

“Go back to what ye were doing before,” he ordered in a thick voice. Panting, she bent to him. “And straddle me,” he added.

She froze and looked over her shoulder, shocked. He wanted to be in that warm, tight space between her thighs. He wanted her to kneel over his face.

“Senna,” he almost growled. He brushed his fingers between her thighs again, circling her nub with his thumb, then suddenly pressing in hard. She whimpered and dropped her head to his groin. He slid his hand under her belly and exerted pressure on her far hip, forcing her to shift closer. Then he took one of her knees in his hand and lifted it over him, so she was straddling him.

“Finian?”

“Just enjoy,” he rasped, and, pushing himself up on his elbows, licked along the hot wet curve of her, flicking his tongue.

Her body started humming, cords of fire whipping though her body. She leaned on bent elbows, breathed deep his warm musky scent, and sucked him into her mouth again, thick and full, as much of his hard, pulsing length as she could.

His tongue worked with erotic confidence on her, licking in long, smooth strokes, then flicking fiercely, confident such abruptness would serve. It did. He suddenly sucked her flesh deep into his mouth and pressed the tip of his tongue into her. And again. The rasp of his teeth sliding by her most sensitive spot, danger held at bay, a ragged nip, then he sucked again, harder, pulsing tugs, harder, dragging her down to nothing but need.

The reality of this, imagining just for a second how he must look, on his elbows, face to her, sent her diving into a shattering, explosive climax. She threw her head back, crying out, and didn’t remember anything except the total ecstasy of the sensations he’d mapped out through her body.

When she came back to sensibility, she was cradled in his arms, sitting sideways on his lap, her leggings tossed aside. He had his back to the tree again. She was still shuddering, but he seemed totally still. Rock hard, composed, self-contained, masculine power, his arm around her shoulder.

“Well, I know I did,” she said in a whisper. “But, did you?”

“Don’t ye recall?” Amusement tinged his words.

“Not exactly.”

“No one had a better view than yerself.” His arm tightened around her shoulder.

She almost choked. “I’ll have to pay better attention,” was all she could say.

“I’ll have to impress myself upon ye more.”

She leaned the top of her head against the V formed by his collarbones and mumbled into his chest, “I think you’ve impressed me quite enough.”