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“You’re bleeding,” she said.
Finally, he dropped the lead rope, and she knew that it was not a gift, but rather he was trying to teach her a lesson. She snarled to match the growl he had given her earlier and went toward the stables. She took the horse’s saddle and blanket off him. His bridle. She checked his hooves for stones, then patted his flank as she set him back into the stall.
“You see,” she said. “He tolerates me just fine.”
“A very brave lass.”
“Perhaps he likes everyone, Cameron, it is only that no one else has ever been here.”
And much to her surprise, his ruined mouth twisted upward into a smile. “I cannot argue with that, though I might try.”
“I have a feeling you might try to argue with anything. You are extraordinarily hardheaded. I asked to see you two weeks ago. Another two weeks until you claim we are to be presented as husband and wife.”
“We will not just be presented as husband and wife. We will marry.”
“You thought that hiding your face from me was the only way to do that?”
“I had thought...” He cut himself off, and then his voice went hard. “I thought it best you know me first.”
“I do know you now. Except, I don’t, do I? Because the moment that I saw you face-to-face, you showed me an entirely different side of yourself. Your anger. You ruined all the monitors in your office. And to what end? To frighten me? That was a silly thing to do.”
“It is not for you to decide whether or not my actions are silly,” he said.
“And yet I have. I refuse to be a prisoner. Not anymore. We are partners in this endeavor. In your protection of me, and in my aid of you. But I am not your prisoner.”
He gripped her wrist again, moving closer.
He smelled of sandalwood. Of the moss here in the Highlands. Of clean skin.
He was incredibly tall. Powerfully built.
There was a strange hint of something... Power? It reminded her of someone, from long ago, but she couldn’t quite say who. Or how or why.
It made her mouth dry and her heart pound heavily.
“I am angry. That is why you saw my anger. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I keep myself away from the world. I do not know how to have a partner.”
“You said you had a friend... Apollo.”
“Yes. But if Apollo had met me now, we would not be friends.”
“Apollo could not have met you now. Unless he fell asleep in a hobble in the woods and you carried him to your castle.”
He growled. Releasing his hold on her.
“You still cannot have access to the internet.”
She was right back to being frustrated with him. But the awareness of his presence didn’t ease.
“Why?”
“You will... You will find things about me.”
“Things that you don’t want me to find?”
“I simply wanted us to find one another first. Our own rhythm. I wanted you to know me without knowing who I was before.”
“How can I know you when I had never seen your face?”
