She closed her eyes and shook her head in mute denial.

But she couldn’t even use the excuse that Rionna was her friend. Friends didn’t turn their backs. And no one ever had to know.

Just one night.

Was it possible?

Alaric wanted her. He’d make that plain enough. And Keeley wanted him with every breath she breathed. She wanted him so much that it was a physical ache.

What would his hands feel like on her flesh? His mouth against hers?

Aye, it would hurt to walk away from Alaric. It would hurt to have him but for a short tryst, but she was beginning to believe that he was right. A taste of sweet was better than a lifetime of bitter regret. And right now she’d regret going to her cold grave a virgin still.

For so long she held her virtue tight. So tight that naught else mattered. It was her only proof that she wasn’t the whore she’d been labeled. And yet it hadn’t brought her justice. There was no one to stand for her. There would never be anyone to stand for her. Only she knew the truth, and that’s how it would stay.

How much comfort did the truth bring her on cold nights?

She nearly laughed at the lengths her mind went to in order to rationalize her desire to indulge in an affair with her warrior.

Her warrior. Always hers. But not. In her heart, though, there was no other. There never would be.

“Do stop being so dramatic and fanciful, Keeley,” she murmured. “The next thing you know, you’ll be throwing aside the furs covering the window and threatening to hurl yourself onto the snow-covered heath.”

She would laugh, but tears stung her eyelids and she swiped at them to alleviate the burn.

Nay, now was not the time for silly and idyllic dreams. She needed to be a realist and decide what was acceptable to her. No one else. For once, she would place her own wants and desires above others. For if she didn’t see to her happiness, no one else would.

One night in Alaric’s arms.

Once spoken aloud in her mind, she couldn’t push the thought away. It consumed her. It tempted and tantalized her as nothing else ever had.

She’d never even been kissed until Alaric, save the brutal mouth of the laird and she didn’t consider that a kiss. A kiss was something given, and the laird had taken. She had never given him anything willingly.

She pressed her palms to her eyes and plunged her fingers into her hair.

It was too late for her to turn back. It had become more than some hopeless dream. The idea had taken root. It burned so brightly in her mind that she knew she couldn’t go another day under the unbearable strain that existed between her and Alaric.