“Your beast will not stay appeased for long.” She jumped down and walked closer to him. He took a step back as if the distance might make him better able to deny the passion that flared so easily between them. In her battle clothing of trousers and a small man’s tunic, she was able to stalk after him easily. “I never thought to see the brave Cain Sinclair retreat from a fragile woman.”

That stopped him. “Ella,” he said, bracing his hands against her shoulders as she walked up before him. “Ye bloody hell could die, and…I will not allow that to happen.”

He looked up at the trees above them and took a deep breath. “I think…” He swallowed. “If I was to see your pale, lifeless face, your perfect gray eyes still and unseeing…” He leveled his gaze with hers, and she glimpsed pain. “I would go insane like my da did when my mother died.”

Ella’s heart squeezed, her lips parted as she inhaled and exhaled with shallow breaths. “And I will go insane if you do not allow me to live.” She willed him to understand with her eyes. “Cain, I have not spent twenty-six years surviving my father only to be controlled by a husband.”

He looked up and away, a curse on his breath. She reached forward, letting her hands slide down his chest. “You forbade me to die when I demanded it, so let me live.” She took a step back and unlaced the armor tied around her torso, letting it drop into the bluebells growing at her feet. She grabbed the edge of her tunic, jerking it up out of her trousers.

When she had donned her armor that morning, she had not bound her breasts. With a lift of one arm, she pulled the tunic off, the summer air cool on her heated skin. As her arm came down, she yanked the tie from her braid and ran fingers through the mass of dark hair until it came down around her shoulders. The feel of Cain’s gaze on her made chill bumps speckle her skin and harden her nipples.

“If your mind is running through strategies on what to do and worries about me being harmed, stop it,” she said, untying her trousers. Tipping her hips side to side, she slid them down. When she bent to untie her boots, her ample breasts falling forward to hang, she heard him groan.

“Och, lass,” he said. “Every bloody inch of ye calls to me.” His words made heat wash down through her, a war against the coolness teasing her skin.