This time, his mouth was not soft or tentative. He claimed her with his lips and then his tongue, deepening the kiss. She looped her arms around his neck, lacing her fingers through his loose hair.

She could feel his hardening manhood beneath her bottom. His instant and powerful desire for her only made her own lust hitch higher. But this time she knew they would not stop with touches. This time they would join completely, in the most primal and intimate way possible.

All of a sudden, Logan rose from the cot, lifting her as he went. He set her down on her feet gently, but then he stepped back and savagely ripped off his tunic.

Without shame, her eyes feasted on him. In the low light, he was all hard lines and shadows. She moved forward, letting her fingers brush over his chest. His muscles bunched beneath her touch, and goose flesh rose on his skin as she trailed her fingers downward.

He bore so many scars. Some were small, no more than white nicks on his skin. Others were so severe—large or jagged or puckered pink—that she wondered how he’d survived.

She marveled at the rippling muscles of his abdomen. Every inch of him was lean and stacked with strength.

This was a man who had earned his muscles, and his scars. He was a fierce Highland warrior, yet also a loyal friend, a protective brother, and now, to Helena, a lover.

As her fingers slipped to the waist of his breeches, he reached behind her and began working the ties on her dress. He sucked in a breath as her hand dropped lower to cup the hard column of his manhood, but instead of pausing with her laces, he worked faster.

When the ties were loose enough, he pulled the woolen dress off her shoulders. As he worked the dress down her body, she shivered, but it wasn’t from the cool air in the hut seeping through her thin linen shift.

Once he’d pooled her dress around her feet, he rose up in front of her. He grazed his fingertips along her collarbone, his eyes following his touch.

“At last I will get to see ye,” he murmured.

“Aye,” she said. Lifting her hand, she tugged at the ribbon on the front of the shift.

Logan watched, transfixed, as the thread loosened and the linen parted above her breasts.

Even without his hands on her, her breaths came shallow and her heart raced. With the ties loosened, she slid first one shoulder and then the other free of the linen.

Like a whispered caress, the shift slid down the length of her body and landed with a soft whoosh on top of her dress.

Though no fire warmed the hut’s hearth, Helena felt as though she stood before a blacksmith’s forge, for waves of heat radiated from Logan as he swept her body with burning eyes.

“Ye are…” he rasped, “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

An embarrassed flush rose to her face, but she refused to shy away. She did not know if she were indeed as beautiful as he said, but the way he was looking at her made her heart swell against her ribs and sent liquid heat into her belly.

He extended a hand toward her, and she noticed his fingers shook ever so slightly. He placed his palm right at the crook in her waist where her hip flared out. The simple touch made goose flesh race over her skin. Her nipples pulled tight and that spot of pleasure between her legs began to tingle.

As if sensing the humming need in her body, he skimmed his hand up until he cupped one of her breasts. They gasped simultaneously at the contact. Though he’d touched her breasts before, wool and linen had always separated them. Now the warmth of his palm was almost too much, too good.

As he circled one nipple with his thumb, he rained kisses across her collarbone, then the swell of the other breast. When his lips grazed her nipple, she nigh leapt out of her skin. His tongue flicked there, and then the wet heat of his mouth encircled her.

A moan ripped from her throat, and her knees wobbled precariously. When she feared she would topple under his ministrations, he dropped to his knees before her and kissed her in that spot where her pulse thrummed fiercely.

If he hadn’t steadied her with the grip of his hands on her hips, she would have collapsed this time for certain. She let her head fall back as his tongue teased her sex, leaving her gasping and moaning.

Suddenly, he rose up and nudged her backward until the cot’s edge caught her behind the knees and she sank down onto it. He loomed over her, his eyes ablaze and his chest rising and falling with ragged breaths.

Never taking his gaze from her, he worked the ties on his breeches until his manhood sprang free. He shoved his breeches down, and then he stood naked before her.

“Touch my cock,” he ground out, a muscle in his jaw twitching.

She blushed at the crude word, but at the same time it sent a primal thrill through her. She wrapped her fingers around him and he instantly groaned through clenched teeth.

A bold idea came to her. Twice now, he’d used his mouth on her sex to give her pleasure. Would it feel as good to him if she did the same on his manhood…his cock?

Tentatively, she leaned forward and let her tongue flick the tip of his member.

He jerked and sucked in a breath so hard that she feared she’d hurt him, but when she looked up, his eyes were wide—and filled with unguarded lust.

She moved back in, running her tongue along the crown of his cock, then wrapping her lips around it.

He yanked her back by the shoulders with a string of colorful curses. “No more,” he hissed, “or else I’ll spend myself, and I need to be inside ye first.”

He eased her onto the cot. Instinctively, she let her knees fall open, beckoning him forward. He positioned himself between her legs, but when he lowered himself on top of her, he stilled, holding her gaze.

“Ye are sure?”

“Aye,” she said, her body humming with anticipation.

He rocked forward until his manhood brushed her slick opening. Slowly, he eased into her.

At first it wasn’t as painful as Ida had said it would be the first time. But as he drove in inch by inch, the pressure grew until she had to bite her lip against a cry of discomfort. He was a big man. Mayhap this wouldn’t work.

He must have felt her tense, for he froze.

“Breathe, lass,” he murmured next to her ear.

She took one deep breath, then another. When Logan moved again, the pain was still there, but she no longer tensed against it.

With one firm thrust, he drove the rest of the way in. She gasped, the fullness so great that she was caught somewhere between pain and pleasure.

He remained buried inside her, but his mouth found hers for a kiss. Then his hand moved to her breast. As he teased and caressed her, he began to move. Soon, the pleasure chased the pain away until only the delicious fullness and the rising swell of need were left.

When his other hand found that spot just above where they were joined, Helena’s body took over. She rocked in rhythm with Logan’s motions, the pleasure building, that sought-after ecstasy drawing closer.

When the wave of release hit her, she arched and cried out, clinging to Logan as if he were the only thing mooring her to this world. A heartbeat later, his own pleasure broke. He called her name as he drove into her.

When he was spent, he slumped over her, breathing against her hair. Though the cot was narrow, he managed to maneuver such that they lay wedged side by side, facing one another.

All too soon, reality came crashing back. Finn’s words about the people at Craigmoor rang in her ears. They will suffer.

She must have stiffened, for Logan propped himself on one elbow and brushed a soothing hand down her arm.

“What is it?”

She shook her head, swallowing against the sudden tightness in her throat. Here she was, taking pleasure in Logan’s arms, while others could be dying because of her.

“Are ye thinking of Craigmoor?”

“Aye.”

“Tell me.”

She had tried to run from this, to take refuge in the comfort of Logan’s embrace. But she could not escape the truth. Nor had aught truly changed. Craigmoor was still in danger, and there was naught she could do about it—unless she was willing to risk losing everything she’d made for herself here in the Highlands.

“The people there…they are innocent. They are my family.”

“Go on,” he urged.

“My mother’s maidservant, Ida, had served the previous keeper of the castle loyally for all of her two-score years,” she said. “Yet when my family arrived, she devoted herself to us without hesitation. When the illness took my mother, I was an eight-year-old girl, motherless, and in a foreign land. Ida cared for me as if I were her own child.”

Helena fought against the lump in her throat before she could go on. “Ida has four grown children of her own, two of whom live in the village outside Craigmoor’s walls, and two of whom work in the castle. What will become of them?”

“Ye cannae blame yerself,” Logan said, his hand still moving over her arm.

“I abandoned them!” she cried. She sat up abruptly, pulling the blankets over her nakedness.

“Nay, ye saved yerself from de Neville.”

“And left others at his mercy.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I should have stayed. I should have tried to stop him from gaining control of Craigmoor somehow. I should have—”

“Helena.” Logan’s voice was firm. “I’ll never forget the state ye were in when I found ye. Ye were right to leave, else ye might be dead now.”

The words swept over her like a gust of icy air. She would be dead. Though the vision of Geoffrey lighting her on fire had not returned since she’d fled, it still remained vivid in her mind.

“De Neville will be forced to surrender soon enough,” Logan went on. “Robert the Bruce is no’ a man to be trifled with. If he has set his mind to taking Craigmoor, the castle will likely fall swiftly. And though he is a warrior-King, the Bruce doesnae make war on innocents. He willnae harm Ida or the others.”

“Nay, you don’t understand,” Helena moaned again. “Geoffrey will not surrender. He will hold out until every last soul inside Craigmoor is dead.”

She turned to him and clutched his arms. Logan stilled.

“He pretended to be chivalrous and honorable when he came to us after losing his keep,” she said, “but in private, he would fly into fits of rage whenever his control was threatened. The maids were all afraid of him, but my father didn’t see it. He saw only the man who saved us from our attackers. I had my suspicions about Geoffrey’s true nature, but they were not confirmed until…until the night my father died.”

Geoffrey’s cold blue eyes had looked at her with such disgust, such loathing when he’d called her before him that she’d actually tried to escape his chamber. That was when he’d slapped her so hard she’d fallen to the ground.

Helena shivered at the memory. “He will never surrender,” she repeated. “To do so would be to admit defeat, and he cannot do that. His pride is too great, and his ambition. No matter what the cost, he will never give up Craigmoor. He was already willing to kill to make it his.”

Logan’s eyes turned sharp and searching. “Whom did he kill to gain the keep?”

Belatedly, she realized her slip. She’d said too much. “No one,” she blurted. “I only meant…he would have, if I had stayed.”

She flinched. She was making it worse by saying more. Logan was far too perceptive not to notice the oddity in her words.

“Ye are saying he would have killed ye.”

Helena nodded, not trusting her voice.

“Aye, I assumed the same from what ye told me, but now that I think on it, I’m no’ so sure. Why did he hit ye but leave ye alive the night ye fled?” he asked, his eyes watchful on her face. “Why are ye sure he would have killed ye at some point in the future?”

The breath rushed from her lungs. She should have known she wouldn’t be able to keep such a large secret from a man like Logan Mackenzie. He was too astute, his senses too keen.

But the truth was, she didn’t want to keep it from him anymore. She was so tired of the lies, the omissions, the evasions. She wanted Logan to know her—all of her.

Mayhap she would regret this. Mayhap her father and Adam would be proven right—she was cursed, after all. Logan might send her away, or worse, he might look at her with the same revulsion that had shone in Geoffrey’s eyes when he’d learned the truth.

But whatever came, she could no longer carry this weight alone. It was time to tell the truth—all of it.

Helena took a deep breath, and the last wall that remained around her heart crumbled.

“I know Geoffrey was going to kill me,” she said, holding Logan’s gaze steadily, “because I saw it. In a vision.”