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I knew it was just a silly girl’s dreams. Things like that don’t happen in real life. But oh, how I wished they would.

Randal was already hard at work when I arrived. The morning sun warm, with a breeze that cooled my hot skin a I watched him chopping the trunk of a tree into a post, then setting it in the space where rotten one had long ago fallen away. He seemed farther away today, so we worked without much talk. The memory of how his lips had felt against my neck yesterday making me shiver throughout the day, but he kept distance and I wondered if he regretted what had happened between us. Though I knew little of courtship, it was hard for me to imagine a situation in which a man and a woman could get to know each other better than they would working together on a farm, laboring away, solving problems, and enjoying the fruits of all that hard work.

As the day passed, things seemed to shift. He took every opportunity to get closer to me, and I to him.

We stopped our work in the late afternoon only this time, Randal pulled out a stock of ten bottles from his bag. I noticed that he brought the finest cider in all the land, made by the royal orchard itself. It even had the king’s seal on the label.

“Where on earth did you get these?” I asked.

He looked at the bottle and paused. “At the market?”

No market I had ever been to.

He didn’t even sound particularly sure himself. Why did he ask it like it was a question? But cider was one of my few secret pleasures and I was determined to know where it came from.

“In Aramoor City? Which stall?”

He shrugged and grinned in this boyish, charming way he had. “Can’t even remember. I was too busy thinking about you.”

I nearly swooned.

And yet, whenever I tried to send him a hint that my heart actually ached when I looked at him, that I was falling for him, he didn’t seem to notice. I huffed and wondered if I was being too subtle, but I was too modest and inexperienced to pluck up my courage to say exactly what I felt.

“You don’t have to do all this for me,” I said as I bit into a ripe pear which he also brought, catching a trickle of juice on my chin before it ran down onto my chest.

He didn’t answer right away, but smiled at me in a way that I don’t think anybody ever had before. In his eyes, I saw such adoration—and so much affection—that it made my cheeks bloom in embarrassment.

“You’re fucking beautiful, Iris. You know that, don’t you?”

I wasn’t so sure. I was sticky with pear juice and sweaty with work, and whenever I was around him, I felt so topsy-turvy that I didn’t feel very beautiful at all. He reached out and swept my hair from my cheek, tucking it behind my ear. I offered him my pear and he took a modest bite, eyeing me all the time.

Suddenly I was overcome with the desire to feel his lips on mine, to know what it was like for this kindly beast of a man to kiss me on the lips. I had never been kissed like that before. To tell the truth, my interest in the opposite sex hadn’t even been awakened until I saw him in my hall, lifting a thief clean off the ground for daring to set foot near me.

But yet again, my courage failed me, and I didn’t know how to make the first move. I blinked several times in rapid, flustered succession.

“Something in your eye?” he asked, looking at me with concern.

Grateful for the excuse, I nodded. “Must be a little piece of hay.” I blinked again and again. “Do you see anything?”

He peered at me—close, but not nearly close enough. So I leaned in closer to him.

“It really hurts,” I said, grimacing a little.

He leaned down so that his beautiful eyes were level with mine. They were the most beautiful, crystal clear gray-green, like emeralds dropped into the stormy ocean, with a darker edge. “Let’s see.”

He was so close that I could feel his breath on my cheek. His scent was like a forest, dark and alluring. I wanted him so badly that I was growing wet between my legs. He placed his thumb beneath my eye, gently drawing my eyelid lower, while cupping my jaw and cheek with the rest of his massive hand.

Kiss me, please just kiss me.

I couldn’t keep up this nonsense of something stuck in my eye any longer, staring at him with lips trembling.

He narrowed his eyes, smiling a little. “There’s nothing in your eye, is there?”

I shook my head, never breaking his gaze, and the words finally tumbled from my lips. “I was hoping you’d kiss me.”

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