Matylda wasn’t like the other wives.

Zavier was forced to admit that surprising truth—and the related, unpleasant fact that it unnerved him—pretty quickly into the trip home. Which could have taken a quick three days, had he wanted to get there as fast as possible. But instead, calling on the wily behavior of the raider king he’d refused to serve across the sea after his shithead of a father had been rightly cut down, he’d spent years leading hapless women around for a week to ten days in the extreme alpine wilderness, just to see what they were made of.

Not much, he usually found. A lot of tears and too much whining, more often than not.

Zavier’s problem was that he’d been raider bred. A son of Donovan, a true raider king, no less, and raised to take his place in his clan’s warrior brotherhood. And he might have left the eastern islands—and his clan and family and the brotherhood—a few years after Wulf had risen up and cut the old man down, but he kept looking around these soft mountains for a version of a raider woman. Someone he could trust to do what needed to be done without all the coddling the soft women here seemed to need. Coddling Zavier couldn’t—wouldn’t—provide. He kept waiting for a tough one, with her own backbone and no fear. The kind of woman who could handle the hard, lonely life out on the frontier.

Not to mention an ex-raider son of a bitch like him.

He’d given up. Raider women were exclusively raider-bred, he’d concluded, and he had to make do with whoever the douchebag lords sent him in their annual attempt to appease him. To solicit his cows and encourage him to keep his dangerous ass away from their cushy estates downhill. He didn’t expect any better from some pansy lord who hid from the weather and the reality of the world in the ancient castles that dotted this part of the battered, drowned earth. A woman with raider tendencies would kick a lord’s ass.

A real raider woman would take over the whole of the Apennines.

Most of his wives freaked out the first night, right about the time he told them to prepare him some food. That was usually after a long, tense ride in terrible silence, during which he knew they made themselves sick worrying about his sexual demands. Because none of them had ever done what Matylda had, and taken that edge off right there in town. The more stoic wives dramatically endured the first night, acted as if they were handing over a very sad tithe until he made them come all over him the way no tithe ever had before, clearly. Either way, there was always weeping for days. He was always left to cajole them and comfort them, except his versions of both were not exactly what the average lowland female was looking for. Apparently. After about a week, the women were either so submissive they melted into useless puddles at his feet and shook when he spoke, or they tried to minimize his bossiness and general overwhelming approach by nagging and picking and muttering beneath their breath.

Zavier was not a big fan of either.

He’d learned over time that the first week to ten days of camping was a little glimpse of what the winter would be like. There would be slight variations, but what he saw in those first days was always, always what had him delivering his latest bride for a trade-in come the March equinox.

But Matylda did none of those things.

At first he thought he was just a little edgy after a grim winter on his own out there, thanks to the last trembling flower who’d refused to get off the bus last fall, and therefore too susceptible to the fact he had access to some new pussy.

Matylda fucked him, whenever and wherever he wanted it. She seemed to want it as much as he did, even before he worked his magic on her. That alone was enough to distinguish her from her predecessors. She was lusty and open. She didn’t hide or pretend to be asleep or act as if she didn’t want him because he wanted more than the “normal” amount of tithes per week and it made her feel dirty to enjoy it. None of that typical lowland female shit.

He’d woken that first morning in their tent with her soft, naked body draped over him, and he hadn’t actually meant to introduce her to the joys of morning sex. Not just yet. A man liked a head-clearing fuck before he rolled out of bed to face a day of hard labor, sure, but that hadn’t always been possible with the fragile little creatures who cried when he looked at them and required a much softer and careful touch to get where he wanted to go.

Not this one.

Matylda had murmured something against his skin when he’d tested the shape of her round little ass in his hands, and he’d been surging into her before he knew what he was doing. She’d come awake slowly, her green eyes sleepy and heated and maybe the prettiest thing he’d ever seen.

“Ride me,” he’d ordered her hoarsely.

And she had. She’d pushed herself up, her red hair falling everywhere and making him crazy. Her plump tits had bounced and begged for his hands, and she’d rocked them both straight off the edge, making no attempt to muffle her cries when she came.

That was his introduction to his first full day with Matylda.

Each day after that was even better. She cooked gamely enough and more astonishing, seemed to enjoy it. She talked to him as if she didn’t find him terrifying, and didn’t cringe away like a kicked pit wolf if he snapped at her. Instead, she either replied in kind, which never failed to make him hard, or leveled one of those steady gazes at him that made him want to put his hands on her.

And the sex was so good. Too good. She didn’t only welcome him into her whenever he reached for her, she also initiated the way she had back in the village. Zavier hadn’t realized how much he missed that, a world away from the women of his clan and their easy acceptance and lusty pursuit of their own desires. He was antsy to get her back on his land, so he could see how she handled the lonely reality of life that far out in the frontier.

Because that would be the telling part, he told himself. It was one thing to like a camping trip in the mountains, where she was the primary focus of his attention. That wouldn’t be possible back home, where he had more shit to do than he could ever fit in a day and would leave her alone for long stretches whether she liked it or not.

Whether he liked it or not.

Most of his wives hadn’t liked him all that much, but they really, really hadn’t liked all the solitude. Or that his solution was to shrug and suggest more sex when he was actually there. His surprising redhead might have the only libido in these mountains to match his. Zavier liked that a whole lot more than was probably smart, but that didn’t mean she’d handle the loneliness well.

They never did.

Not that he was going to keep her, he told himself when he shaved a few days off the trip and headed straight for the protected valley he called home, in the remotest section of the mountains most fools thought were impassable. Of course he wouldn’t keep her. The thing his temporary brides apparently failed to mention to the dumbasses down in the milder foothills was that, sure, Zavier booted them out the moment he could by law. But more importantly, they wanted to go.

It wasn’t as if he was anyone’s idea of a perfect husband.

Zavier had long since stopped imagining that was something he could change, or even counter.

He’d abandoned his clan. He’d turned his back on the elite brotherhood he’d fought to join, and he’d done it for the dumbest of reasons. He’d had a fight with his new king and took off before Wulf could deliver him the smackdown—or more likely, the death sentence—he’d known full well he deserved. Zavier had known that his bullshit came with extra weight because he was one of Wulf’s predecessor’s sons, and he’d done nothing to combat that the way his own blood-brother Marcus had—ingratiating himself with Wulf and the new regime, trying to prove himself and whatever else.

Zavier had opted to get in Wulf’s face and then compound his bullshit by stealing a boat from the harbor. Then he’d fucked off into the unforgiving sea.

It was the act of the hotheaded little asshole he’d been back then. There was no going back from that, and in truth, Zavier didn’t want to go back. He assumed everyone in his former life thought he was dead, and for all intents and purposes, he was. He was a living ghost. Old man Esteban had taken him in and taught Zavier his trade, and Zavier had taken to the quiet, demanding life in these hills. He liked being alone. He liked answering to no one and spending the bulk of his time outside. It was good, honest work with very little bullshit. And as a bonus, when rustlers and thieves turned up every now and again, he could kick some serious ass.

He’d gained the attention of the lowland lords, who he suspected knew exactly what he was and where he’d come from, but they didn’t give a shit as long as he stayed settled and up in the hills. And didn’t raid their lands the way his brothers would in a heartbeat.

Zavier didn’t understand why he couldn’t find the sort of woman who would take to the life, but then, not everybody was built the same. He’d told himself years ago that he’d come to peace with that.

And would remain at peace with that, he told himself, when Matylda was nothing more than another memory from long ago, like all the others.

* * *

Zavier’s home was tucked into the hills, complete with its own bell tower and a view over what she imagined would be sloping green hills once spring finally came in. She squinted, trying to imagine all that color and flowers besides.

“This looks like a church,” she said when he drove up to the front of it and stopped the truck she’d grown much too comfortable in over the past week.

“It was a church a long time ago,” Zavier said gruffly as he put the truck into park. “The old man who left it to me said his grandparents restored it from rubble.”

It was hard to imagine that it had ever been rubble, because it not only looked sturdy, but like it was a part of the sweeping, glorious landscape. Inside, it boasted a comfortable kitchen with a couch nestled beneath the windows, a huge living room with appealingly creaky floorboards that was furnished in what Matylda thought of as an eclectic masculine style. Or maybe that was just Zavier. Books on shelves and huge, overstuffed couches that looked like they could withstand Zavier’s size. A big screen in one corner with stacks of very old discs, the kind that Matylda had only ever seen in the community room of the boarding house where she and Nicoline lived. Thick rugs, a huge fireplace with a bathing tub set to one side, and everything anyone could need for a cozy winter.

And on the far end, a working bell tower with actual bells that rang, should Matylda ever be strong enough to pull that heavy rope, and no space set aside for tithes.

Off the living room was what Zavier called his office, another room that stood empty of anything but abandoned craft projects and things like canning supplies, a cold water bathroom, and finally, Zavier’s massive bedroom. It boasted an iron bed that Matylda doubted an earthquake could dislodge, and weapons attached to the walls on every side.

“I’m not sure what statement that’s supposed to make,” she said when he showed it to her. “It’s very . . . violent for a bedroom, surely.”

That corner of his mouth—the one she lived for—crooked up and sent warmth spiraling through her.

“It’s a simple message, sweetheart.”

“Submit or die?”

His blue eyes gleamed. “Fuck me. Don’t fuck with me.”

Matylda laughed. He loomed there over her, big and broad and terrifying, and that was simply an objective assessment of the man. “Who would dare fuck with you? In your bed, no less?”

But the longer she stayed in Zavier’s house, the more she came to appreciate the weapons on his walls. Because most of the time, she was alone in that church high up in those hills, and the wind played tricks on her. Was that an intruder in the other room or was it just a draft? The answer was always the latter, but Matylda felt a whole lot better about exploring the creaky old house with a blade in her hand.

Weeks bled into each other. There was a hint of spring, but then the snows came back, storms battering the church walls and making Matylda want nothing more than to huddle in front of the fire. But Zavier had fashioned a line from the back door to the barn, allowing him to make it to the livestock no matter the weather, and that meant Matylda needed to have hot bath water and a hearty meal ready for him when he got back. It made her feel good to take care of him, she discovered. More than good. It made her feel alive.

But she kept that revelation to herself.

Aside from the odd storm, Matylda’s life settled into a kind of routine. She liked a routine. She’d always preferred a decent life where the expectations were clearly defined, because then she could dedicate herself to surpassing them, which was far better than the uncertainty of trying to figure out what the hell they were. And Zavier might have been big and scary, but he had very distinct expectations, preferences, and needs, and was not the least bit shy about telling her exactly where and how she fell short of meeting them. Matylda appreciated that. She was never in any doubt here. With him. That made it easy to attack the learning curve of the first few weeks.

Zavier woke up before the sun, there in that massive iron bed of his. Matylda had no idea how he knew exactly which dark moment was the right one to wake up in, but he always did. He reached for her then, naked and curled up next to him. Matylda usually half-woke to find him sliding into her, either face down against the pillows or rolled beneath him. He was little more than a shadow then, so dark and commanding and half a dream. She was almost always wet anyway, forever in the state of near-arousal she seemed to live in around this man, and it never took more than a single deep, determined thrust to bring her fully on board.

She came to crave that first thrust, when her body wasn’t quite as ready. That little scrape that began to feel like a necessary scratch against the constant itch she felt for this man. Her little wake up call into this brand new life of hers.

Zavier took her like thunder, there in the dark, and always left her sobbing out her need into the soft pillows. She normally lay there a while, wrecked and panting, as he dressed and prepared to head out to do his first round of chores. In their first days together he’d rifled around in the dark.

“You can light the lantern,” she said after the third early morning, her breath still coming in pants. “I’m already awake. Obviously.”

He only grunted at that, but that was Zavier. A man who would be the first to tell her how dangerous and difficult he was, but then fumbled around in the dark rather than light a lantern—something that could only be a gesture of courtesy to her.

But she knew better than to point that out.

By the end of the first week, Zavier not only lit a lantern when he rolled out of bed, but Matylda had taken to laying out his clothes on the bench at the foot. Then he didn’t need to fumble about and make decisions about such things when it was so dark and cold and still.

Every early morning she laid there a bit as she listened to him move through the house and then head outside. But she didn’t go back to sleep. She crawled out of bed a bit later, dressing quickly in the cold bedroom and then hurrying out into the living room, where Zavier always left the fire going. Then she started the hot breakfast he preferred. While the stove was heating, she tended to the chickens in the yard and gathered eggs, then came back in and started the hot drink he liked to go with his food. When he came in with milk from the cows she strained the milk into the containers while he washed up in the water she’d heated for him, and then joined him at the table to eat.

That was usually where he fucked her again, hard and greedy and intense, before he went out onto the land.

And then Matylda had the whole house to herself. The whole valley to herself, depending where Zavier had headed. When the weather started to relent and spring poked through, she spent some time out in the vegetable garden next to the house.

“Whose garden is this?” she asked when Zavier showed it to her. “I thought none of your wives stayed past March or turned up before the end of September.”

Zavier had eyed her for a moment. “I like vegetables,” he’d told her shortly.

And she knew, by then, to hide her smiles. Or pretend to, anyway, so he could pretend not to see them.

Because it was very important to Zavier that she be afraid of him on some level, or act as if she was. That was the fiction that kept everything between them humming along, with all that fire that sparked between them and all the glorious ways they let it burn. Why would Matylda want to change it?

The fact was, she thought as April wore on, fragile blue weather sometimes seeping into bright, sunny days that whispered of the summertimes no wife of Zavier’s had ever spent with him, she liked it here. A whole lot more than she’d like her life in the city, if she was honest.

The work was hard and relentless, but she rather liked that too. There was always something to do. Milk to let sit, then churn into butter. Meals to plan from the stores she assumed Zavier had put in over the summer, though she couldn’t imagine when he’d had the time.

Unless it was what he did with all that energy he didn’t use to have sex when there was no woman here. Which was a hell of a lot of energy. No wonder he was always so cranky.

Matylda spent her mornings tending to the house and the garden. The cleaning was overwhelming at first, but once she’d cleaned and organized the whole house to her liking, she developed a system to keep things that way. She swept and she scrubbed according to her schedule until it was time for lunch. Depending on what Zavier had planned for the day, she’d either sent him off with a meal when he’d left in the morning or she drove one out to him in the old truck he’d taught her to drive.

She much preferred it when she went to find him. When the sun was out, the views were spectacular, soaring from mountain peaks down to the waiting sea. It made her want to get out spin around in all that dizzy mountain air, sweeter and brighter as April came and went, around and around until she fell down.

And she would find Zavier out there, usually stripped to the waist and doing something remarkably physical, like fixing fences. Which meant he’d be gleaming in the light, so male and stunning, that it was all Matylda could do to sit still and keep her hands to herself.

Luckily, after his meal, Zavier usually wanted her hands all over him.

Depending on the mud and his mood, sometimes Zavier had her kneel there in the sweet, new grass with his cock in her mouth. Sometimes he spread her out like dessert and buried his face in her pussy. Sometimes he fucked her in a kind of fury on that same bench seat in his truck and other times it was slow and fierce, a glittering thing in his gaze that Matylda felt like an ache deep in her heart, long after they both shuddered and fell to pieces.

“These skirts get in my way,” she told him once when she was helping him with the cows.

Zavier had shrugged. “Wear trousers,” he said, as if that wasn’t shocking. Women wore skirts, always. But of course, Zavier didn’t care about things like that. Zavier cared about his land—and sex. Because he grinned in the next moment. “But only to work. The rest of the time I want access to that sweet little cunt of yours.”

And she wanted him to have access too. The more they had sex, the more she wanted to have sex. When he’d rattled off his preferred sex schedule down in the village, she’d thought he’d grow bored . . . but she’d never imagined that she’d want more. And more still. Zavier was creative and single-minded when it came to his sex, and it turned out, Matylda was too.

She was tempted to think she might actually make it here. That he might actually keep her.

After she brought him his lunch and got a fix of him to tide her over, she headed back to the house. There was always more to do. If it was a laundry day she fetched water from the well and heated it on the open fire in the living room because it was faster than the stove. If the weather was fine she hung it outside to dry in the sweet, crisp air. Some afternoons she looked through the books all over the house, some in languages she couldn’t understand, looking for hints on ways to do the things she couldn’t remember her mother doing. But she remembered a great deal of what her mother had done in that long-ago cottage. She made soap and candles the way her mother had. She ground wheat berries into flour. She mended Zavier’s clothes, and her own, and made new ones. She made herself trousers to work in and skirts that she could tie up to keep them out of her way, and found herself gravitating to the skirts because he preferred them.

It made her happy to please him. A deep, abiding kind of happiness she’d never felt before. A kind of happiness she thought had a specific name—but she shied away from that word. It was too . . . big. Permanent.

Sometimes she would look up from whatever she was doing, her heart beating a little too fast, and take a moment to look around and marvel. She loved Zavier’s house. She loved their life. If it wasn’t for Nicoline’s situation, even if he sent her away at the end of June she’d have declared these the best months of her adult life.

She tried to imagine going back to the boarding house. Or even sharing a room with her sister again when she’d adapted to a house that was hers to clean and arrange as she saw fit and a bed she shared with a man who brought her extreme pleasure, often, and encouraged her to sprawl all over it and him as if she owned both. How would she go back to making clothes for strangers she’d never meet, always at the foreman’s direction and never what she might have the urge to make on her own? How would she work the hours she was allotted with no input or voice? Or worst of all, subject herself to the inexpert fumblings of the tithes in the bell towers now that she knew exactly how much better sex could be with Zavier?

These questions always made her heart beat harder. And they never had any answers.

When the shadows began to lengthen, Matylda would start dinner. The stove took forever to light and heat, so she usually started it early and prepared something that would take a while to bake in the oven and then could sit, in case Zavier was late coming home. She experimented with old, half-remembered comfort recipes her own mother had made. Fish pies when Zavier brought her fish he’d caught. Other meat from the animals he hunted, and still others from those he slaughtered. Fresh vegetables when they came in. Everything they grew and cared for and made themselves.

It was incredibly satisfying to sit down at a table and eat food she knew she’d had a part in creating. And even more satisfying to have that meal ready for Zavier when he came in from his long, long hours tending the land. He would wash up while she piled the food high on the table, and then they would eat in a happy sort of silence, broken only by occasional conversation—usually about the land and the livestock.

After dinner, Zavier tended to whatever equipment needed fixing before morning while Matylda tidied up the kitchen and got the following day’s breakfast ready to go. That was when she turned down their bed and set out Zavier’s clothes for the next day, a small task that made her feel sunny, deep inside.

It made her happy to take care of this man. She didn’t know where to put that. She’d taken care of her sister for years, but Nicoline hadn’t exactly appreciated it—and look what Nicoline had gone and done. If she cast her mind back, it reminded her of the way her mother had used to sing as she tidied the house and did many of these same tasks for Matylda’s father. As if she took pride in making her man’s life a little easier.

That was what it was, Matylda knew. Pride.

She didn’t want to lose that again. She didn’t want to give it up in June and go back to what she’d had before, which was a whole lot of labor and no quarrel with it, but no pride in it either.

Zavier was supposed to be a difficult man, but she liked him. She liked this high mountain life. She liked how rewarding the hard work was here. And she loved sharing the sweetness of it, tucked in between the unrelenting nature of it and its harshness, with a man who she knew appreciated it too.

He might not say much, but she knew he did. He grinned more. That corner of his mouth got quite a workout.

The evenings were dominated by the fire in the living room and whatever took Zavier’s fancy. Some nights he watched one of the old movies on his screen. Other times he poured himself a drink and stared into the fire. Sometimes he read a book, or toyed with an instrument he was building and only occasionally played.

Still other times, he got a particularly intent look in his cool blue gaze and softly ordered her to strip, and those were the nights she could remember every detail of. The games he liked to play. The scandalous things he liked to do to her, until she was sure she screamed loud enough to bring down the mountains.

On nights he didn’t want to play games in the living room, he made up for it in their bed. They never stayed up too late, given their long days and early starts, but Zavier was always last to bed. When Matylda started yawning he tipped his head, his order to get to bed, and he checked the house one last time before following her. She was always naked when he climbed in, and no matter how tired she was, he laughed and took his fill of her. And her of him. Sending her right off into her dreams with a smile on her face and a huge, dangerous man wrapped all around her.

Some nights she faked her yawning earlier, to hurry them both to bed, because she was greedy for him. So greedy that some nights it was all she could do to sit quietly in her chair next to the lantern and pretend to read, or sew, or whatever else she was using to fill her time until she could touch him.

May was edging into June, and she didn’t know what she’d do if he sent her back. And her shame was that she knew that had far less to do with Nicoline than it should have.

Tonight she was reading one of the small journals she’d found on the crowded bookshelves, written in tiny, cramped handwriting that told of life in this very same house a generation or two ago. Zavier was lying lengthwise on the couch opposite her, frowning at one of the thick books he preferred. The only sound for at least the past hour had been the crackle of the fire.

Matylda didn’t know what made her look up, but when she did, Zavier had put his book down on his chest and was studying her with his usual intensity.

“Is it time for bed?” she asked, and then smiled. Maybe a little too brightly, the way she did more and more, because this was her favorite time with him. These long evenings felt like a kind of glue, and the things that happened in their bed before they fell asleep felt like honey. And she wanted both. Desperately.

“You make everything easier,” he said in his rough, low way. “No other woman ever did that for me.”

Something flipped over inside of her and glowed.

“Good,” she said, her smile deepening. “I’m glad it’s me.”

And for a moment she thought the heat between them might overpower the fire.

But then Zavier shifted, lifting himself to sitting position and then swinging around to face her, and something cold trickled down her spine when she saw he was frowning.

“You won’t be here past the solstice,” he told her, his voice harder than before. “Don’t succumb to any fantasies about that.”

She pulled in a breath. “That seems unnecessarily cruel after a compliment,” she said softly. No matter that her stomach was in a knot. “If I make your life easier, isn’t that the point? Why not let me keep doing it?”

“Matylda.” She didn’t want to meet that intense blue glare filled with warning, but she did. Because there was something in her that wanted to obey him. That needed it. That felt safer when she did. Zavier’s mouth flattened. “Whatever you do, don’t fall in love with me.”

But, of course, he was much too late.