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“No. Not a problem at all,” I lied.

Just a huge problem. Terrifying and appalling that I should share such close quarters—a bed!—with a man I was vastly attracted to when I knew nothing about this body I inhabited and what wild and dangerous thing it might do next.

He nodded as though satisfied with my response, and we readied for bed in silence.

I slipped beneath the heavy covers, clinging to my side of the bed like it was a raft at sea, hoping I had chosen the side he didn’t sleep on but not about to ask. I didn’t trust my voice not to crack or quiver.

By the time he slid in beside me, his heavier weight dipping the mattress, my eyes were closed and I was doing what I hoped was an admirable job of feigning sleep.

I could see nothing behind the blackness of my eyelids, but I heard everything: every pop and crackle of the fire, every rustle and shift of his big body inches from mine, the slow, even cadence of his breath. I even imagined I heard the steady beat of his heart beneath his skin.

It was a torment.

I waited, my chest clenched and pounding.

I was on fire. A great, devouring pyre.

Every muscle, every line of my body strained, as tight as a white-hot wire, braced for his touch, for the weight of his hand to fall somewhere, anywhere on me, equal parts dread and longing burning through me.

I couldn’t do this.Wecouldn’t do this.

Oh, I knew I would be receptive. There was no doubt. The fire seething in me was for him. I would definitely be into it... into him.

But I didn’t know how my body might react, what I might reveal of myself. There was a cauldron boiling in me just beneath the surface, under the skin, and I feared what might happen if it bubbled over.

I worried that if I was too overcome with emotion, the fire might find a way out, like how water always found the tiniest cracks in a dam. With Arkin, it had been fear and rage that did it. Fear and rage to such an intense degree... I had never felt like that before. I did not know what to expect in the event of lust and passion. Those were new emotions for me, too.

Just being alone and this close to Fell made me feel all sorts of wild and dangerous things, like I was falling from a great height with no idea if the landing would break every bone in my body.

I was seized with the image of the bed on fire. Literally. On. Fire. Fell trapped within, kindling for the flames. Because of me. Bile rose in my throat, and I felt the overwhelming urge to gag at the thought of doing to Fell what I had done to Arkin. No.Never.

I squeezed my eyes tighter until I saw dancing spots within the blackness. There was absolutely no way I could fall asleep like this—this full of want and longing and fear.

That was the last thought I remembered before sleep took me.

WHEN I WOKE,the air was a bruised gray.

I blinked several times, wondering what had roused me. A... feeling. A sound. A movement in the chamber. It was still early. I had been looking forward to sleeping late and not having to drag myself atop a horse at the first hint of dawn on the horizon.

Gradually I became aware that I was no longer clinging to the edge of the bed. I had shifted some time during the night, rolled in my sleep to the center of the bed, dipping toward that heat-radiating body, that beckoning hearth.

Fell’s arm draped over my waist, holding me flush against him. Our legs were tangled, heavy limbs comfortably entwined like braided rope. My mouth rested on his shoulder, fanning warm air against his skin, which might have been why I was acutely aware of the fact that my breathing had changed, coming faster, louder, fogging his bare flesh with moisture.

And his breathing was not a slow and even cadence either. It was a rasp directly in my ear, weaving through the web of strands.

“Tamsyn.” The sound of my name was a rough growl on the air. I felt it like a touch, like the stroke of calloused fingers over my body even though his hands were firmly planted elsewhere—one a burning, throbbing imprint on my back and the other tucked beneath his body in the bed. “Did you sleep well?”

“Like a rock,” I said, my lips brushing him as I spoke, and I couldn’t stop myself, couldn’t help myself from doing the most natural thing. I parted my lips and kissed him there, open-mouthed, tasting the slope of his shoulder, letting my tongue slip out for a lick of salty-clean skin.

His breath caught, and I made a low hum of satisfaction. I lifted my lips from his shoulder to find his face much closer than before. The chamber was murky, but it did not hide the startling frostof his eyes pinned on me. Nor the flare of his nostrils as though he was inhaling the scent of me. Nor the way his lips parted on a breath as though he was on the verge of saying something. Ordoingsomething. Something like—

He kissed me hard.

This moment, his closeness, his smell, his taste. Warm and clean with all the smells of the outdoors, of wind and snow and saddle leather.

The temptation was too much. I opened my mouth with a moan to meet the hot thrust of his tongue.

I let him in. He kissed and took and gave. And I was there for all of it. Devouring him back.