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She wasn’t sure whether she was trying to convince herself more or him. It was hard to say.

Evander certainly wasn’t helping, with his lips kissing a path up and down her neck, his beard scratching her skin in a way that made her want so much more.

“I can do a great many things to ye without claiming ye entirely, lass,” he murmured against her skin, his voice rough and low. “I can command yer body as if it already belonged to me. I can have ye begging for me touch before this night is over, and never break the terms of our bargain. Ye can trust me on that.”

Her breath caught. Freya wanted to find out exactly how he intended to have her begging for his touch before the night was over. Would he touch her where no man had touched her before, other than in her dreams?

Of course, the man she dreamed of was Evander, though she would never tell him that. It would only inflate his ego.

Still, her traitorous body, God help her, wanted every word of what he’d just said to be true, wanted it with an urgency that frightened her more than the men on the road had.

She wanted to press her breasts into his waiting hands, feel his fingers cup the tender flesh and brush her nipples until they pebbled.

“That isnae fair,” she whispered, hating the way her voice and body trembled. “Why do ye never play fair?”

Evander chuckled, nipping at her pulse point. He soothed the bite with his tongue, almost making her whine in desperation.

It was a sound Freya had never thought she could make.

“I never claimed to play fair, wife. Only that I’d win.”

“That’s hardly reassuring.” Her voice had gone thin and unsteady, betraying every word of the protest.

Her fingers found his shoulders, gripping him rather than pushing him away, and she hated how easily her body had made up its mind without consulting the rest of her.

He drew back just far enough to look at her, something dark and satisfied in his expression, as though her surrender, however reluctant, were exactly what he’d expected all along.

“Ye’re impossible,” she breathed.

“Aye,” he agreed, unbothered, and bent his head to her throat again.

His hand slid beneath the hem of her nightgown, slow, deliberate, giving her every chance to stop him. But she didn’t.

She was trembling now, not from fear but from something far more dangerous, something she had no ready name for and wasn’t at all certain she wanted one.

The candle had burned low enough that his face was mostly shadow, all except his eyes, which hadn’t left hers once, watching her the way he seemed to watch everything, as if committing it to memory for later use. He had barely touched her where she ached most, when a thin wail drifted through the wall between their room and the nursery.

Freya wasn’t sure what she was hearing at first, until she remembered the twins only a room away from her. The twins she had been fretting over not long ago.

The twins were the reason she wanted to stay. The reason she was nervous about leaving Evander was that she did not know who would take care of them after her.

Again, the twins were the reason she wanted to stay. Not the infuriating, inconsistent, intoxicating man who’d kissed her with confidence and tenderness all at once. The twins.

They broke apart, both breathing hard, the sound cutting through the haze like a splash of cold water. For a moment, neither of them moved, as if unwilling to be the first to admit how far they’d already gone.

“I’ll go see to him,” she said, her hands dropping to her sides.

It was Archer. She recognized the sound of his cry by now after only a few days on the road caring for him. He cried louder than his sister Amelia, whose wails never reached the volume her brother’s always seemed to.

She left without looking back, because she did not trust her own face to hide what she was feeling, and some part of her feared what he might do with that. Worse, she feared what she might do with that.

Behind her, she heard Evander let out a long, rough breath, as if he were forcing his own body back under some manner of control. She did not let herself turn around to see what his face looked like while he did it.

Archer was wailing up a storm when she entered the nursery. She cooed at him, picked him up, and soothed him as best she could. She glanced at Amelia, who was wide awake but lying in her crib, her face twisted in annoyance.

“Did yer braither wake ye up, sweetheart?” she asked softly, reaching in to brush a stray curl from the girl’s face.

Amelia clenched her fist and pushed it into the air as if to say, Aye, he did wake me up.