"At least I've rendered you speechless," he commented, his tone echoing his smile. "Is it such a shock? I made my intentions clear before this. I invited you into my bed, after all. You knew of my desire."

I found a way to parry that one. "Yes, but that's hardly a declaration of . . . deeper feelings."

"Won't even speak the word in my presence, I see."

"Look at Jepp and Brandur," I persisted, feeling a bit trapped, needing to break out of this corner. Rebalancing, I angled myself so I could step out of his reach as soon as I gained my feet. "Their liaison is hardly an emotional one."

"True, but you are not her, are you? And I am not him. You and I are much alike in that. We are not people who take 'liaisons' casually."

"I'm certainly not. I don't know about you, Captain."

"Harlan," he rumbled, shifting his weight and edging into my reach. He'd know that I'd feel the pressure of his proximity. Deliberately making me feel cornered.

I refused to budge, to give him the satisfaction. Sometimes reaching a detente with an enemy required refusing to be the loser. Until we tested each other, either of us might be the winner or loser. I could never beat him strength to strength. My best strategy lay in speed and surprise. Which I could not exercise in my current position. For the moment, I'd have to rely on bravado. "I know your name."

"Then use it, Ursula. This conversation is between you and me, not our roles in the world."

"See, that's where you don't understand me at all, mercenary. You have a profession, which you may do very well, but you do it for pay. I am my role in the world. There is no separation of selves. I can't escape that, even if I wanted to. You may be a man first and a mercenary second, but I'm the Heir to the High Throne and because of that a warrior for my kingdom and only incidentally a woman. The last is the least important."

"Only because you don't put the woman first," he countered.

"What you don't understand is that I don't care to."

"Then explain it to me." He leaned on one elbow. "We have time and a place now."

"Yes, you certainly made sure of that."

"I did. So if you care to condemn me for it, I'll accept the sentence on those terms. But first I want my prize. What I did this for. Tell me about your other lovers and why they left you so cold."

When Danu raised the moon. "No. And I'm not cold."

Faster than I expected, his hand snaked out and grabbed mine. "Cold," he repeated.

"If that's your seduction technique, it wants improvement." I tugged my hand away, but he simply scooted closer, as if I'd drawn him in. "Keep your distance."

"Which is it, Ursula-do you want my seduction technique or my distance?"

My back hit the cliff wall, Danu take it. "Your distance." I hardened my voice into command. "Don't think I won't cut your throat."

He stayed where he was-far too close-and rubbed his thumb over my palm. "I'm sticking. I need the reason, to understand how you can want me and still refuse me at every turn."

"I don't want you." A last-ditch effort to escape his relentless attack.

A weak one and he knew it, pressing his advantage. "Let's dispense with that artifice. You like what you see when you look at me; you warm and soften when I touch you. That's not the problem. What is?"

"Some of us don't have the luxury of indulging in everything that takes our fancy."

"What's the harm? I'm a simple mercenary who poses no threat to the throne. I won't get you with child. We're alone for the night. I'm bought and paid for." A smile in his voice, he pressed a kiss to my palm, and I shivered before I locked down the response. For an unhinged moment, I entertained the possibility. To touch and be touched in return. To have this sweet warmth run all through me, like a spring thaw.

But I knew where this led.

I yanked my hand away, scrubbing the kiss away on my pants. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"I-" I shifted restlessly, needing to pace. To escape this questioning, which laid my heart open as surely as a flaying knife. "I just can't."

"Are you a virgin?" he asked, careful and quiet.

I laughed at that, jagged. If only. "At my advanced age? Hardly."

"Rape?"

His voice came out harsh enough that before I squelched the impulse, I reached out to touch the hand that automatically went to his sword. "No. Not that. Never think that. I was willing."

"Then what happened?"

I shrugged. Holding off the memory of that night. Making it stay quiescent. "Nothing to speak of. I agreed. I tried it and I didn't care to repeat the experience. Ever."

"Only once?"

"Believe me, once was enough." Enough to keep me awake for years until I learned to set it aside. Where I should have left it. What about this mercenary made me dredge it up again?

"Who was it?" Suspicious anger ran deep in his voice. "Did he hurt you?"

Yes. Oh, yes, it had hurt. And I had broken my rule and wept. Told him to stop, that I'd changed my mind, but he hadn't. I'd come away from that night wounded in some unhealable way, where the blood never dried, broken inside. So strange, the injuries of the invisible self. I'd take a physical hurt over that any day.

And now . . .

Now these questions brought back those memories I'd thought dulled by time, their edges as sharp as the dagger that slices, leaving you bleeding out before you feel the pain.

"I'm not talking about this." My words came out on a gasp, my chest so tight I had no breath. "I have to move. Let me out."

Thank Danu, he moved out of my way and I lunged to my feet, gulping in deep lungfuls of the sweet mountain air. Head swimming, I leaned my hands on my knees, head down, willing my heart to stop its frantic pounding. Forcing the tea to stay down.

A hand on my shoulder made me spin, my dagger in my hand before I knew it, pressing the point to the soft spot at Harlan's throat. He held up his palms in surrender, expression full of some sorrow.

"I'm not the enemy, Ursula," he said gently, as if I didn't hold his life in my hands. "I'm not him."

"He's not-wasn't the enemy either."

"That's a matter of debate. He hurt you. That makes him my enemy."

I sighed. Sheathed the dagger in a slow, deliberate movement. "It's ancient history. Go slay dragons for some other princess."

"How many times must I say it?" He settled big hands on my waist, testing my reaction, then cupping my hips when I didn't protest. I flattened my palms on his muscled shoulders, holding him off as much as I could muster. We stood eye to eye and worlds apart. "I don't want some other woman. It's all about you. I want you."

"Surely even you know we never get everything we want."

"That doesn't mean we give up trying."

"I can't give you what you're asking for. I can't talk about this. Don't ask me to."

He let out a long breath, the sense of strategic retreat palpable. "All right. I'll let it go for now. And I'll take whatever you're able to give. Even if this much of you is all I can ever have."

"Don't make promises you can't keep, mercenary." I tried for a dry tone, but I'd gone breathless again. In a different way this time. My heart pounding another rhythm. The way I'd felt seeing his golden skin gleaming with oil and sweat.

"I always keep my promises." He edged me closer. "So here's one for you: tell me to stop and I will. No matter what. Always."

He leaned in. I readied the words on my tongue, but he did nothing more than brush my cheekbone with a kiss, as light as a butterfly's wing. I held my breath, waiting for the awful to rise up.

It didn't.

Harlan waited, too, then, with a deep hum that I felt more than heard, he kissed my other cheek, at the high point just below the temple. Warmer this time, a tingle of heat that filtered into my bloodstream. Both energizing and comforting.

"Does this hurt?" he whispered, and I realized he meant my bruises. Of course he meant those, not that other, invisible wound.

"No," I breathed, surprised to find that was true of both, that I'd changed my grip so that I no longer held him away, but curled my fingers into his shirt, absorbed in the sweetness of his mouth on my skin.

"May I kiss you?" He'd already trailed several more soft kisses down my cheek, to the line of my jaw, to the corner of my mouth. But he hovered there, waiting for me to decide. He meant more than he had already. A real kiss. Like lovers do. Like I never had.

"I don't know how," I admitted, hating that I had to, certain that I should say so. A concession in that it revealed so much about that other time, that awful night. So many skills I'd perfected, and yet I'd never kissed anyone, mouth to mouth. Amelia had awakened her lover that way, with a deeply sensual kiss that had stabbed me with a strange emotion. At the time I'd put it down to suspicion of Ash's motives. Now I wasn't sure what it was. Envy, perhaps.

More, I'd wanted to know how that felt, if only once.

"Let me show you," he murmured, lips a breath away.

"All right." I braced myself and he chuckled, low and deep, running his hands up my back in that sensual, soothing way.

His mouth feathered against mine, exquisitely gentle, barely there and gone. I sighed out, breath mingling with his, and it seemed we created a web that drew our lips together again, lightly caressing, sweet, almost innocent.

My heart softened, thudding with lulled beats.

"More?" he asked.

"More," I agreed.

He changed his angle, careful of my broken nose, and kissed me again. Deeper this time, lips moving over mine with leisurely heat, opening and inviting me to do the same. Vaguely surprised at myself, I wanted to taste more of him. The inner edge of his lips possessed a velvety texture, a contrast to his man's mouth and the slight scrape of stubble on his face.

Then his tongue touched mine. His hands soothed me before I realized I'd tensed. Another kind of stroking, this. But one that went to the core of me, the hot glide of his mouth on mine. I made a sound, something incoherent, needy, and he pulled away, surveying my face.

"Still okay?"

"I don't know." An honest answer, if an unsteady one.

"Let's sit." He took my hand, lacing his roughened fingers with mine, and coaxed me back to the pallet.

"I don't think-"

"Shh. Don't think." He tugged me down to sit beside him. "Only kisses and only if you want to. I won't hurt you, Ursula."

Taking my hands, he pressed his mouth into each palm, in that place he'd found me to be so vulnerable, and this time I let the shiver take its course. A delightful fire that shimmered through my blood, heating me throughout. He drew my hands behind his neck, then slowly lay back, guiding me to lie atop him, steadying me with his gentle hold on my hips.

"Kiss me, little hawk," he urged. "Your mouth is like the finest wine."

"You can save the flattery and compliments." A line I should draw, though the muscled bulk of his body under mine made me even more breathless. I might as well be some seaside recruit newly arrived to Ordnung's heights, as much trouble I seemed to be having keeping my breath. "I'm not a woman who needs romance."

He brushed my cheek with light fingertips. "On the contrary. I think you need it more than most. You've had so little of it in your life. Kiss me."

I studied his mouth, picked my angle, and settled my lips on his, anticipating now the delicious shock of contact. My breath rushed out in a long sigh, and he swallowed it, hands roaming down my back, never dropping below the line of my hips.

Softening with the sensation, not caring that he'd called me on that very thing, I relaxed against his reassuring bulk, sinking into his scent, taste, and texture. I lost myself in him, in the long, slow moments of tongue glide and sweet caress of lips. Restlessness built in me, like a hunger for more food after a few tastes. Like I wanted to take bites out of him, or lap him up. I shifted, moving to deepen the kiss, and he flinched, making a pained sound.

"What?" I pulled back, seeing nothing, then scanned the moonlit meadow for danger.

"Your sword, darling Ursula." Harlan laughed and moved me off him, pressing a hand to his groin. "The hilt caught me in a sensitive spot."

"Oh." Chagrin cooled me. What had I been thinking? I knew enough of the vulnerabilities of male fighters to have paid attention to that. I unbuckled the belt and set it next to me, edging away as I did so. "I apologize."

"Don't pull back." He caught me by the hand, drew me down by his side, settled me so that my head lay on his muscled arm, the bulge as mounded as any pillow, our faces close together. He brushed the hair back from my temple, then stroked my cheek. "You are so beautiful in the moonlight."

"Because the shadows hide the bruises and swelling, no doubt."

"On another woman, that might be so. But your beauty is of a different sort-in the set of your jaw and the fire in your eyes. You burn with a strong, clear light. Like the stars in the sky. Remote. Glorious. Exotic."

"Don't tease me. I don't need your lies, as poetic as they may be."

His thumb rubbed over my bottom lip, tracing the edge. "This is the truth. I know beauty when I see it."

"So do I. When your younger sister is ten times more beautiful than you are and the youngest ten times more beautiful than that, you quickly learn how such comparisons work. And it's not important to me. I don't need beauty to accomplish what matters most."

"And what is that?"

"Upholding the legacy of my mother and father. The peace that so many sacrificed so much to obtain."

"You don't mention your mother often."

"No. It's . . . painful still. Even after so much time."

"We never stop grieving some people. How old were you when she died?"

Odd that I didn't mind speaking of it right then. The shadows wrapped around us, bodies close together, intimate and quiet. With long caresses, he followed the line of my throat and collarbone, light, chaste touches that I relaxed into.

"I'd just turned ten years of age. Andi was five and Amelia barely born. I was lucky-they hardly knew her at all."

"Lucky to know her. Hardest on you because you did."

Maybe so.