Because I need ye where I can see ye. Because the sight of that child feels too much like fate tightening its grip. Because losing ye again means I failed… again. And I especially cannae have that..
He thought quickly, but said nothing of the sort.
“I protect what is mine,” he replied instead, voice low and certain.
She scoffed, a sharp sound that scraped across his patience. Fear flickered beneath her bravado. He saw it in the way her shoulders drew tight, in the way she glanced toward the door where the child’s voice drifted faintly from the garden.
“There is nothing here that belongs to ye,” she shot back.
His brows drew together. Ice settling in his chest.
He stepped forward.
She stepped back.
The dance repeated until her shoulders brushed the wall and she had nowhere left to retreat. The scent of herbs lingered in the small room, mingling with the warmth of her skin and the faint memory of rain and firelight.
He stopped a breath away.
“Is that so?” he murmured.
Her chin lifted. “Aye.”
“Are ye truly going to pretend the child isnae mine?”
Her eyes flickered beyond his shoulder and then back to his gaze, but she said nothing.
He took another step, slow, deliberate.
“Are ye going to pretend ye daenae ken me? That I daenae ken ye?”
Silence.
He closed the distance further, lowering his voice until it brushed against her ear like a secret. “Are ye going to pretend we havenae shared a bed?”
Her breath caught.
The memory surged vivid and uninvited. The tavern fire. Her laugh. The way she had clung to him as if the world beyond the walls could not reach her.
“That I havenae claimed every part of yer body,” he whispered, the words meant more to provoke than confess. “And ye, mine?”
She shivered, though whether from anger or remembrance he could not tell. “I daenae remember what ye speak of,” she said, voice tight.
A delicious lie.
He knew it from the way her voice softened just so at the edges, and felt it in the heat rising between them.
A slow smirk curved his mouth before he could stop it. He leaned closer and brushed his teeth lightly against her earlobe.
“Liar,” he murmured.
Her reaction was immediate.
She lunged forward and bit him at the neck.
Not gentle. Not playful. A sharp, startled claim that made him jerk back with a quiet hiss.
For a heartbeat he simply stared at her.