Though the fire had burned to embers and the hut was quiet and dark, sleep evaded Logan that night. He lay on his back, staring up at the thatched roof overhead and listening to the soft sound of Helena’s breathing just a few arm lengths away.

His hands ached from clenching his fists, yet he could not seem to release the tension in his body.

The darkness of the past loomed in his mind’s eye, casting a shadow over his heart. He rarely spoke so openly about Mairin’s struggles and his own failings. Only Kirk knew as much as Helena now did. A man could flee his clan, even a whole damned country, but it seemed that he could never truly outrun his past.

But those black thoughts weren’t the only things keeping him awake. The memory of Helena’s soft curves beneath his hands had branded him as sure as fired iron. Every touch, every glance from those leaf-green eyes of hers sent desire licking through his veins.

Now that she had recovered somewhat, she’d lost that ashen cast and her skin was all berries and cream. Her cheeks were no longer sunken with hunger and strain. Her lush curves would fill a man’s hands—or at least his thoughts, as Logan was discovering.

Eventually, both black memories and heated desire gave way to exhaustion. Sleep tugged at his weary mind, pulling him under.

Just as he drifted off, a low moan dragged him partway back to wakefulness.

The sound came again, edged with fear and pain.

He bolted upright, his mind still fogged with lingering sleep. Automatically, he reached for the candle that sat on the mantle, preparing to light it and rush to Mairin’s chamber.

But as the haze of drowsiness cleared, Logan realized the sound was not coming from the back room.

“Nay,” Helena murmured, her voice low and urgent.

She’d said she had nightmares too—of a sort, though Logan wasn’t sure what that meant.

Setting the candle back on the mantle, Logan rose, the cloak he was still using as a blanket pooling at his feet.

“Helena,” he whispered as he approached on soft feet.

“Logan.” At first he thought she’d already come out of the dream, but as he drew alongside the cot, her head thrashed from side to side. “Nay, Logan. Mairin.”

“Helena,” he hissed again, crouching over the cot.

Unease pulled tight in his stomach at what he saw.

Helena’s eyes were wide open, yet her gaze was unfocused and vacant. She moaned wordlessly, her hands clutching the blankets.

He reached out a cautious hand and gave her shoulder a shake, as he usually did to rouse Mairin from her nightmares. She trembled beneath his touch, her delicate muscles pulled taut.

“Wake up,” he whispered, searching her unseeing eyes.

Suddenly she gasped and sucked in an enormous breath as if she’d just broken the surface of an ice-cold loch. With several blinks, her eyes came into focus once more. Yet under his hand, he could feel that she still shook like a dry leaf in a stiff wind.

“Ye’re all right, lass,” he said, brushing loose strands of ebony hair from her face. “It was just a dream.”

Helena shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut. Without thinking, he slipped an arm beneath her shoulders and pulled her against his chest, tucking her head beneath his chin.

Her hands curled into the front of his tunic and she melted against him, some of the tension leaving her body. With her ear pressed against his chest, he was sure she could hear the sudden hitch in his heartbeat.

“Did I…did I say or do aught odd?”

Her voice was muffled by his tunic, but he didn’t miss the shame and unease in her tone.

He thought of the way his skin had prickled with a strange foreboding at her eerily sightless gaze.

“Nay,” he replied, trying to make his low voice reassuring. “Ye called out my name, and Mairin’s, but that was all.”

She shuddered again, and he tightened his arms around her. Guilt swamped him.

“I shouldnae have told ye about Mairin and my past,” he said into her hair. “I shouldnae have burdened ye with such darkness.”

It was bad enough that Mairin had to live with what had come to pass thanks to his actions, but now he’d dragged Helena into it, weighing her with the same terrible knowledge he carried. Selfishly, he’d longed to open himself to her, but now Helena bore the cost of learning the truth.

Damn it all. This was why he couldn’t let himself fantasize about a life, a future, with Helena—or anyone. He left a black trail of destruction and sorrow in his wake, no matter how long and how far he fled from his past.

He’d been raised to believe that a man wrote his own destiny, but now he knew the truth. The past was written in stone, and that stone was tethered to a man’s leg for the rest of his life.

“Nay,” Helena said softly. “I am glad you told me. I understand Mairin better now—and you. The nightmare…it wasn’t about the things you shared with me.”

He wished he could search her eyes in that moment to seek the truth in her words, but he couldn’t will himself to loosen his hold on her and draw back.

“Don’t go,” she murmured into his chest. “Stay—just for a little while. I…I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts.”

Whatever she claimed about her dream not being related to the horrors he’d revealed earlier that evening, something about the nightmare had clearly affected her. His fingers sank into her back as he held her close.

“I willnae leave,” he whispered against her hair. Unthinking, he pressed his lips to her dark tresses, then let himself inhale. She smelled of clean linen and woman and faintly of pine and fresh air from their excursion to the stream earlier.

It was a heady combination, and he dragged in another lungful, letting himself grow drunk on the scent of her.

Before he knew what he was doing, he kissed her head again, but this time, his lips brushed not only her silky hair but also the smooth skin of her forehead.

Helena lifted her face toward him, and in the low light he could see her eyes shining with sadness—and longing. He placed a tender kiss over first one dark eyebrow and then the other, his lips dragging across her velvet skin.

Her fingers tightened in his tunic and warm air fanned his neck as she exhaled.

Blood hammering in his ears, Logan dropped his mouth to hers, but froze when their lips were a hair’s breadth apart.

God, how he wanted this woman. But he feared frightening her with the strength of his desire. Yet from the way her breaths were coming short and shallow against his lips, she felt the same need he did.

Unable to hold back any longer, he closed the distance between them. With the last shred of his control, he kept the kiss as light as the brushing wing of a butterfly.

Her lips were soft pillows beneath his, meeting him and yet melting under his barest touch.

Slowly, he pushed against her, seeking more contact. Her mouth yielded to his as he deepened the kiss. When she arched her back, pressing her full breasts against his chest, hot need shot straight to his manhood.

A distant voice of reason told him to go slow, to savor and explore gently. He knew so little of this woman—what she’d been through, what haunted her thoughts as she slept—and he sensed this moment, delicate as blown glass, could be shattered if he gave himself over to the raw lust gnawing at his insides.

Yet she surprised him by holding him close by his tunic, her mouth opening under his. Slowly, he dragged his tongue along her lower lip, then dipped it inside the heated recesses of her mouth.

He was rewarded with a soft moan. Her tongue tentatively brushed against his, and his hands fisted involuntarily on her back as a bolt of need shot through him. Wordlessly, they moved together in the dark, mouths fused and tongues caressing in an achingly slow dance.

Never breaking the kiss, Logan slid onto the cot beside her, stretching out so that they were both on their sides facing one another. He held her flush against his body, groaning when her pelvis connected with his cock, which strained against his breeches.

His mind flitted back to the night he’d found her. His thoughts had been so clouded with worry for the half-frozen lass in his arms that he’d hardly noticed their shared nakedness. Now he knew that if it weren’t for her shift and his breeches and tunic separating them, he’d be hard-pressed to stop.

But stop he must, lest the fires of desire consume him completely. He dragged his mouth away, and their breaths mingled as they were both left panting.

“Rest,” he rasped softly. “I’ll stay with ye until ye sleep easy.”

Helena settled her head on Logan’s chest and let a little sigh go. Though it did not take her long to turn limp in his arms, her breath falling into the steady rhythm of sleep, Logan’s blood pumped hotly in his veins for what seemed like ages.

At last, he found the willpower to disentangle their bodies and ease out of the cot. He retreated to the hearth and stretched out before the embers, but he knew that he would get no sleep this night—not when Helena’s kiss still singed his lips.