Chapter 18: The Lodge

When I let go of his collar, the Ashmoor wolves were looking at the sky.

Rowan's hands had come up to my arms and stopped there, careful, not holding.

"There is a lodge a mile off," he said roughly. "It has a fire and a door."

"Then take me to it."

We rode there without speaking.

The captain posted men at the gate and the road, and none of them looked at me.

The lodge was one big room with a stone hearth, a long table, and a bed heaped with furs.

Rowan knelt and lit the fire.

I stood in the doorway with the cold at my back and watched his shoulders in the light.

For days I had held my whole body clenched.

I had not cried since the mountain.

I wanted to put my mouth on him and stop thinking about anything at all.

I shut the door and dropped the bar.

He stood up.

"Linnea," he said.

"Don't talk."

I crossed the floor and shoved him back against the table, and he let me.

I tore his coat open. I pulled his shirt up over his head and threw it behind me.

His chest was broad and scarred, with dark hair going gray across it.

I put both palms flat against it and felt his heart slam under my hand.

"You said no touching," he said, low. "Not until the judgment's done."

"I know what I said."

"Then say it again."

His eyes were dark and steady and a little cruel.

"Say it, and I'll go and sit on the step until morning. You say the word."

I looked up at him.

"You're taunting me," I said.

"I'm giving you the door."

"Shut up," I said, and I kissed him.

He made a sound in his throat that I felt in my belly.

His hands went into my hair, and the pins fell out. My silver-brown hair came down over both of us.

I pulled my dress over my head.

He looked at me for a long time.

He looked from my mouth down to my ribs, and to the scars on my knees from five years of kneeling on stone.

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