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CHAPTER TWELVE

FREYA

It’s barely an hour later when I jerk upright with a start. My body aches, but it’s so sweet. Rolling to my back, I push myself up in bed. It’s the middle of the night, and he’s gone. The place where he slept is cool.

There’s a neatly folded flannel shirt by the bed. I pull it on and pad across the floor to the window. Down below, I see the barn, the driveway, the gates in the distance. To my left, I see a rectangular shed that’s halfway built into the side of the hill. The door is open and light spills out. Smoke rises from the chimney.

My toes curl, cold on the floor. I should go back to bed and leave him to his own devices, but part of me wants to see who he is when he’s alone. I press my hand to the window glass, checking the temperature. It’s cool but not cold.

Downstairs, the puppy sleeps by the glimmering fireplace. I push my boots on and step onto the porch. The wind is cool and it smells like autumn. My stomach flips as I hurry past the shadows creeping beneath the pale half-moon. The grass is drenched in dew. I leave wet boot prints up the path to the shed.

Silently, I slip into the doorway and pause .

My stomach swoops. It’s a blacksmith shop, bigger on the inside because it’s built into the hill. The ground is made of huge, square stone blocks. The walls are red brick. At the back is a forge, burning bright. On the other end, to the left of the forge, is a long table with an assortment of iron tools. At the center of the room is an anvil. Working at the anvil, soaked in sweat, forehead creased in concentration, is Deacon Ryder.

The firelight glints. It cuts a dark shadow down one side of his body. There’s a pile of what look like large nails, almost like a smooth tipped railroad spike, on the floor below the anvil. I recognize them—they’re stakes used for fence repair.

The thick walls of the shop buffer the sound from outside, but once I’m in the doorway, I hear it: the heavy crackle of the fire, the clang of his hammer, the heavy scrape as he draws a thick, iron rod from the furnace.

Sparks shower in the dark. He’s lost in what his hands are doing, like a meditative practice.

I wonder why he’s here, why he isn’t asleep.

He freezes, and the hammer goes still. He lifts his head and his black eyes fix on me, so intense, I feel myself shrink back. There’s a short silence. He sets the hammer and iron down on the table and holds out his palm.

“Come here,” he says.

My heart picks up. Feeling like a field mouse approaching a cat, I duck into the shop and go to him. He slides his hand around my waist. It covers almost the entire right side below my ribs.

“What are you doing?” I ask, voice husky.

“Working,” he says.

I look down at his tools. “On what?”

“Stakes. I use them to repair and hold down the fencing,” he says.

“Why tonight?”

He sighs, running a hand over his forehead, but doesn’t answer. Finally, he beckons me and sits down by the table, spreading his knees so I can stand between them. Both hands go around my waist, fingers knitting over my spine. He looks up at me, and I sink into his chest.

I can’t help but trust him. His gaze is a different shade of darkness at night. During the day, it glitters like obsidian. At night, it’s soft like velvet.

He makes me wonder about so many things. How did he end up here? Why build a big house with nobody to live in it? Why does he wake and go out to look up at the sky? Why is he soaked in sweat, pounding iron at three in the morning on a cold night?

I reach up and touch his temple where he has a scribble of faded ink.

“Why aren’t you sleeping, sir?” I whisper.

“Because you’re here,” he says simply. “Don’t want you to go, sweetheart.”

My heart flutters faster. My mouth tastes dry, a bit like fear, but not the kind I’m used to. Not the kind that I feel from my stepfather and brothers, or the men who whistle at me in the street.

The fear Deacon sparks in me is sweet, almost like desire, but dark. If I crushed it between my teeth, it would spill into my veins like a drug, addictive enough to get me high and keep me coming back.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I met you,” he says. “Can’t stop thinking about tasting you.”

I’m breathing hard. I know he feels it. He has me in his arms.

“I don’t know you,” I whisper. “I’m scared to know you.”

His grip tightens. “Why?”

Into my head pours a stream of memories: unsavory ones, holes in drywall, nights spent curled up in a fetal position trying to cry silently. I know men and what they are capable of when angry. I’ve conditioned myself to survive them.

But I don’t know men like Deacon. He’s uncharted territory.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” I gasp out.

“Sweetheart,” he says, voice guttural, “I want everything.”

His words break with desperation. I squirm in his arms, but he wraps one iron forearm around my body and holds me tight. I press against his chest, twisting. He takes my wrists and holds them tight in one fist. My stomach sinks—I don’t even have a fraction of his strength.

Our eyes lock, and the tension is thicker than the heat from the forge.

“Trust me, sweetheart,” he says, voice low and grating like iron on iron.

God, I think I might.