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“Careful, Little Ghost.”

I raised an eyebrow, delighted. “Was that jealousy, Sheriff?”

“That was a warning that my patience is not infinite.”

“Neither is mine.”

He leaned down until his mouth hovered beside my ear, and his voice came out low enough that I felt it more than heard it.

“Then we are both going to have a very difficult evening.”

We did.

Night came in over the ridge, and I banked the fire, and for the first time in two days I did’nt make myself a bed on the floorboards across the room.

I sat down on the bed beside him with my back against the headboard, and after a while my head found the hollow of his shoulder and stayed there. He gathered up the ends of my locs and ran them slowly through his fingers, with no particular purpose, and the fire burned down low while the rain started again soft on the thatch.

It was quiet and domestic and dangerously close to something real, and I let it, because I was tired of standing guard over my own heart.

“What happens when you leave?” I asked.

His fingers went still in my hair. “Do you want me to?”

“No.”

The answer was out of my mouth before I could stop it, which is how I learned it was true.

He turned his head toward me. “Then I suppose we’ll have to find another arrangement.”

“You’re the Sheriff of Nottingham.”

“I’m aware.”

“And I’m an outlaw.”

“Painfully aware.”

“Your king wants me dead.”

His expression darkened.

“Then your king and I are going to have a disagreement.”

“Your king,” I corrected.

He shook his head. “Not if he means to hurt you.”

I lay there against his shoulder and understood that the man was not simply attracted to me. Attraction was cheap, and I had been on the receiving end of enough of it to know the difference. He had read the record of my father’s murder, found Fitzwalter’s name on it, ridden alone into my forest. Now he was lying in my father’s bed telling me that if his king came for me, his king would have a problem.

He was choosing me.

He hadn’t finished doing it, and the cost had not come due. But he had started, and I could feel the whole weight of what it would take from him sitting there in the dark with us.

For three years, Guy Bisbane had hunted me through Sherwood Forest.

I’d stolen his shipments, burned his traps, pinned notes to his wagons, and laughed out loud every time he swore he would put me in chains. Not once in all that time had I feared the Sheriff of Nottingham.

I wasn’t afraid of him until the moment he pressed his lips like pink flower petals against my own.