“Thank ye for drawing Mairin out of her chamber.”

Logan squeezed Helena’s hand, which looped through his arm, and was rewarded with a pink blush.

“In truth, I only asked her to accompany me in part to get her outside. I was grateful to have her show me around the camp. She knows a great deal considering she rarely leaves the hut or speaks to the others.”

“Aye,” he replied, leading her on a meandering path through the sun-lit trees. “She’s smart and watchful—always has been. Or rather…” He faltered, a shadow looming over his thoughts. “Or rather she was from what I can remember of her as a lass of five.”

Helena must have sensed the darkness lurking down that track of conversation, for she kept her voice light. “The camp is wonderful. It seems you have everything you need here.”

“I’m grateful for the simplicity. We train, we eat, we sleep—and no’ much else.”

“And no wonder you have so many torn and stained clothes,” Helena replied, giving him a teasing smile. “Your training is most…vigorous.”

They fell into a companionable silence as he guided them deeper into the surrounding forest. Birds flitted from tree to tree overhead. A distant stream trickled somewhere off to their right. Though their surroundings were soothing, Logan was acutely aware of the heat spreading up his arm where Helena’s hand lay against his tunic.

“Niall seems quite taken with Mairin,” she commented after a while. “But she wouldn’t meet his gaze. Is it because he’s English?”

“Aye. Her aversion is worse with English men than it is with women.”

“How did an Englishman become part of the Bodyguard Corps?”

“His family held a castle in the Borderlands for the English,” Logan began.

Abruptly, Helena’s hand clenched on his arm. He glanced at her and found her face pale, but she kept her gaze forward and strode on at his side.

“His sister had been targeted by the Order of the Shadow, so another member of the Corps, Finn Sutherland, was sent to protect her. Finn felt that Niall would do well in the ranks of the Corps.”

This time her feet slowed and she turned to him. “The Order of the Shadow—the organization you worked for. Does that mean—”

His jaw clenched. “Aye. I was sent to kidnap Rosamond Beaumore, Niall’s sister and Finn’s charge—now his wife.”

Bloody hell. Why had Logan thought for a heartbeat that he could share a few light moments of conversation with Helena without the damned evils of his past rising to the surface?

“That is the other reason Mairin doesnae say much to Niall,” he said. “She kens that Niall hates me for endangering his sister. She is wiser than the lad, for she sees that naught could come of any budding feelings he may have for her.”

Her vivid green eyes widened, but instead of commenting, she sank her teeth into her lower lip. Turning, she walked on slowly.

“And Will Sinclair?” she murmured at last. “Is he always in such a foul mood, or was it something I did?”

“Nay,” Logan said. “It was something I did. Or rather, it was something Kirk did, and because Kirk and I are friends, and I a former bounty hunter like Kirk, he casts us in the same pot.”

Logan would have laughed at the twisted, dysfunctional dynamic within the Corps if he weren’t so weary of all the conflict.

“I met Kirk when he infiltrated the Order as a spy for Robert the Bruce. While he was posing as a bounty hunter, he was sent on a mission to bring in Lillian—who was under Will’s protection at the time.” Logan lifted one shoulder. “To take Lillian, Kirk had to take Will’s eye first.”

Helena gasped, turning round eyes on him.

“Will would kill Kirk with his bare hands if he didnae think the Bruce would have his head for attacking a fellow member of the Corps,” Logan went on. “To Will, Kirk and I are the same—we dinnae belong here.”

To Logan’s surprise, a sharp laugh escaped Helena. She shook her dark head in disbelief. “What a tangle.”

Despite himself, he felt a wry smile lift one corner of his mouth. “It truly is a mess. I shouldnae be here at all.”

Her delicate features grew sober then. “Is…is that why you do not wear your clan’s plaid as the others do—because you do not think you belong here?”

Logan’s chest contracted painfully. “Though I bear the Mackenzie name, I am no’ a member of the clan anymore.” He brought his free hand up to his face and traced along the old scar. Sensing that Helena’s searching gaze tracked the motion, he dropped his hand. “I…I didnae tell ye before, but I have an older brother.”

Helena’s brows shot up.

“A half-brother,” Logan continued. “He gave me this scar eleven years past.”

Her lips parted, but before she could question him further, he cut her off. “Suffice it to say that I am no’ welcome among the Mackenzies. I dinnae wish to speak more on the matter.”

“I don’t mean to intrude on private issues,” she said gently, “but it seems as though all the men in the Corps have had their struggles. Surely whatever lies in your past, they could not hold it against you forever. You are here now, after all, devoting your life to the same noble cause they are.”

“I am no’ like the others,” Logan replied. “I didnae want to join the Corps—in fact, I never formally have. I only came here for Mairin. It seemed that training with the men was a condition of staying, and Kirk vouched for me when the others didnae want to trust me, so I took up with the Corps, but I am no’ one of them.”

Helena blinked up at him. “Do you not believe in Robert the Bruce’s quest to secure Scotland’s freedom, then? Or the Corps’ mission to protect the innocent and vulnerable?”

“It’s no’ that, it’s just…” His gaze drifted over the sun-dappled forest floor as he searched for the words to explain.

“All my life, I’ve given my allegiance to other men’s causes,” he said at last. “And yet I keep finding myself adrift. From the moment I was born, my life was pledged to my clan, but when the…troubles arose, I abandoned them. And as a mercenary, I took on any cause that came with coin. By the time I got out of the Order of the Shadow, I made a promise to myself that I wouldnae throw myself into another man’s battle again.”

Eyes trusting, Helena waited for him to go on again. He’d never shared so much with another person before, yet the more he opened up to Helena, the more he wanted to reveal everything—lay his heart bare before her and pray that she could accept him.

“For the first time in a long while, I actually believe in something—I believe in the Bruce’s fight for freedom and justice. But I cannae seem to find it in myself to commit to the cause. What is the promise of a man like me truly worth? Everything I’ve ever pledged myself to, I’ve ended up running from.”

When he glanced at her, he found pain and sadness in her eyes.

“Christ, I didnae mean it that way—I’ll never abandon Mairin, and ye can trust my promise that ye have my protection. And I didnae mean to make it seem like ye were wrong for running,” he added quickly. “I ken ye had yer reasons. I’ll never forget those bruises.”

His arm corded tight where her hand rested as he clenched his fist at the mere memory.

Helena squeezed his forearm gently, coaxing him to release the tension there. “Nay, you misunderstand,” she said. “I didn’t take your words in that way. I am only sad that you are so hard on yourself. You do not see what I see. You left the Order for honorable reasons, Logan. And I do not doubt for an instant that you will never desert your sister. Mayhap…”

Her gaze searched his face, and a small smile softened her mouth. “Mayhap you simply haven’t found the right cause yet. When you do, I know you will dedicate all your strength and honor to it.”

Logan’s chest squeezed again, but this time the nigh-painful contraction was not for his dark past, but for Helena’s goodness.

“I’ve been so long without trusting aught, caring for aught—or anyone,” he murmured, drawing them to a halt once more so that he could face her. “Yet so much has changed in only a fortnight.”

He skimmed his thumb along her jawline, watching goose flesh rise in the wake of his touch. “Ye’ve already helped Mairin in so many ways. And me.”

In the rays of sunlight filtering through the trees overhead, Helena’s eyes were like the finest stained glass, vibrant green and yet translucent, revealing a sea of emotion.

“I helped you?” she breathed, disbelieving. “It was you who saved me from that storm, and you who has protected me, allowed me into your home, your very family.”

 Aye, she slept in his bed and ate every meal with him, yet Logan wanted even more. That was why he’d taken her to this particular spot in the forest—to make sure she knew just what she meant to him.

“Ye willnae recognize this patch of woods,” he said, holding her stare, “but this is where I found ye a fortnight ago.”

She swept the now snowless trees with her gaze, her lips parting in surprise.

“It was under that pine that I first saw ye. I thought ye were a sheep’s carcass at first.”

She made a noise that was half-gasp, half-laugh.

“But when I carried ye back to the hut and ye opened yer eyes for the first time,” he went on, his voice dropping, “I kenned that my life would never be the same.”

Helena’s breath caught. “I felt that, too.”

He stepped closer, so that the thinnest beam of daylight separated their bodies. “I have thought of little else besides our kiss these past several days.”

His hands found her waist, and he slowly began backing her toward a thick tree trunk behind her. Involuntarily, his gaze dropped to her mouth. Her lips were parted enticingly. Her tongue darted out to wet them, leaving them glistening.

“Do ye want this, Helena?” he rasped, continuing his slow pace toward the tree trunk. “Do ye feel the lightning I feel every time we touch, every time our eyes meet?”

“Aye,” she breathed.

Her back bumped gently into the trunk. It was only then that he saw a flicker of doubt cross her eyes.

“We shouldn’t...”

Logan stilled, his hands softening on her waist. Was it some ingrained English propriety that gave her pause? He cared not for rules and decorum, but he couldn’t expect her to shed her reservations so quickly just because she was in the Highlands now.

Or was the root of her hesitation something far darker? His mind skittered back to the bruises that had shadowed her face when he’d first found her. Had a man used her—or even forced her?

The thought nearly made him snarl with rage, but he clamped his teeth down on his ire. He’d promised he wouldn’t push her for answers about her past, but he needed her to know that she was safe.

“Ye neednae ever fear me,” he murmured, holding her gaze. “All ye need ken is that I care for ye and I want ye.”

“It isn’t that,” Helena said, her brows drawing together and up. “It is…” Her mouth worked, but no words came out, and at last she shook her head in frustration.

Slowly, she lifted a hand to his face and ran her palm along the stubble on his cheek. “I care for you and want you, too,” she said simply.

Her desire must have won out against whatever had held her back a moment before, for she rose on her toes and brought her lips to his.

Logan sucked in a breath, getting a lungful of her sweet, clean scent, which made his head spin.

He let her explore his lips gently for a moment, but with each of her soft kisses, his control grew increasingly threadbare.

When he could not take any more, he pressed her back against the trunk’s rough bark and claimed her mouth completely. She yielded to him, parting her lips in invitation. Greedily, his tongue found hers. That first hot, wet caress sent need searing through him.

As their tongues mated, one of his hands slowly began moving up her waist. With every new inch of soft flesh he encountered through her wool dress, his manhood pulsed with insistence.

His fingers swept along the underside of her breast, drawing a moan from her. God, as much as touching her drove him wild with need, it seemed to have the same effect on her. Like a glutton, he craved more from her—more of those noises of pleasure, more contact, more.

Slowly, his hand rose to cup her breast. Its softness overflowed his big palms.

Helena shuddered with a wave of pleasure, her breast rising and falling rapidly in his hand as her breaths came shallow.

When his thumb found the pearled peak of her nipple through the layers of wool and linen, she jolted against him and gasped. But then she melted like warm honey as he matched the rhythm of his tongue to the slow swish of his thumb.

Distantly, he realized that he’d been grinding their hips together. His cock pushed against the front of his breeches nigh painfully. Yet Helena was matching his movement, making slow circles with her pelvis against his in a maddeningly erotic rhythm.

Desperately, he tore his mouth away from her. “Christ,” he hissed. “I want more of ye. I want all of ye, Helena.”

She gazed up at him, her eyes hazy with pleasure and her lips swollen and red from his kiss. “I…I am innocent.”

Relief crashed through his brain. He wouldn’t have cared if she weren’t a virgin—hell, he was certainly no innocent. But her words confirmed that at least his worst fear—that she had been forced by the man who’d hurt her and made her scared enough to flee to Scotland—was proven false.

Her virginity cooled his blood enough for him to think clearly for a moment. Just as he’d reminded himself during their first kiss, he needed to go slow, to show her the depth and breadth of his desire without overwhelming her.

“Without taking aught from ye, I can still give ye pleasure,” he rasped.

She nodded slowly, holding his gaze. “Aye.”

One hand still covering her breast, he lifted the other to her hair. A groan rose in his throat as his fingers sank into her raven-black tresses. Lowering his head, he claimed her mouth once more in a searing kiss.

Her hands clutched his shoulders desperately as she surrendered to his kiss. His fingers tightened in her hair, drawing a gasp and a moan from her. All the while, he thumbed her nipple in an agonizingly slow rhythm.

When her breaths came ragged and she arched off the tree trunk, he knew she was ready.

The hand in her hair dropped to her skirts and began dragging them up. She shivered, but he wasn’t sure if it was from the cool air brushing her legs or from his continued attention to her breasts.

The smooth softness of her inner thigh made his cock ache with longing. He trailed his fingers higher until he reached the apex of her legs. He let one finger pad brush along the already-damp seam of her sex.

Even as she sucked in a hard breath, he let one go as if he’d been punched in the stomach. His legs began to tremble, the price of his slow, controlled movement and his determination to hold his raging desire in check.

He parted her with his finger and slid along her lust-dampened womanhood. With a jerk, she broke their mouths apart so that her head could loll back against the bark.

“Oh, God,” she breathed, for he had found that perfect spot of a woman’s pleasure above her opening.

He stroked her there in slow, torturous circles, mirroring the motion of his hand on her breast.

His hungry gaze locked on her upturned face. Her eyes were shut. Her lips, rosy and wet from his kiss, were parted, and each breath that passed them was a ragged moan.

That was his undoing.

“I need to taste ye,” he ground out.

Like lightning, he scooped her into his arms and lifted her away from the tree trunk. Turning, he drew them both down to the forest floor.

Go easy, the last shred of his sanity whispered. As he lowered her back onto the moss and leaf-strewn ground, he found her lust-hazed gaze.

“Do ye trust me?”

“Aye,” she said without hesitation.

He pulled back and lifted her skirts once more, pushing them up around her waist. Her knees trembled as he slowly drew them apart.

Lowering his head, he placed a kiss on the pale, smooth skin of her inner thigh. She jolted and gasped.

He could not hold back any longer. His mouth moved to her sex and his tongue touched where his fingers had been a moment before.

He caressed and teased her, his ears ringing with her moans of pleasure. The scents of earth and woman and sharp piney air overwhelmed him, making his head spin and his cock throb with frantic need.

As he worked his mouth over her, he brought a single finger to her entrance. So slick with lust was she that he slid inside her tight heat easily. Just as he entered her, he felt her whole body contract. Her breath hitched and she cried out, arching her back and clawing at the leafy ground.

When she began to drift down from the heights of pleasure, Logan rose up and pulled her skirts over her legs. He stretched out on the forest floor beside her, propping himself on one elbow so that he could gaze at the beautiful pink flush on her cheeks. He would remember this moment perfectly when he took himself in hand later to relieve the painful ache in his bollocks.

Her dark lashes flitted open, and suddenly he was drowning in pools of vibrant emerald.

Tenderly, he brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, letting his fingers linger on the silky lock.

“What…what do we do now?” she murmured at last.

“I dinnae ken,” he said, reality at last intruding on this perfect moment.

For so long, Logan had never thought more than a month or two into the future. But things were different now. He would not abandon Mairin when the winds of fortune changed—nor would he abandon Helena.

“Ye will keep helping Mairin,” he said softly. “And I’ll keep training.”

“And…this?” Her eyes were so unguarded that he could see every vulnerable emotion that lay behind them. Longing. Hope. Uncertainty.

“This,” he said, skimming a hand down her cheek, “is perfect in every way. But I hope our feelings dinnae stay as they are now.”

Helena blinked and sat up. He rose above her and extended his hands to help her to her feet.

“You don’t?” she asked, her voice faint.

“Nay,” he replied, looping her arm through his once more and heading back toward the camp. “I dinnae want them to remain the same—for I hope they grow stronger and stronger.”