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“Come here.”

He doesn’t move.

For a long moment, we simply look at one another from opposite sides of the room, the fire crackling between us while shadows shift against the stone walls.

Something shifts in his expression. I see it the instant it happens. His eyes widen. His breathing changes. He grips the back of the chair beside him until his knuckles begin to pale.

Recognition.

He knows.

He knows exactly what I’m thinking.

He shakes his head before I’ve even taken another step.

“No … no, please.”

The fear in his voice lands somewhere deep inside me, and instead of extinguishing the need that’s been building all evening, it only feeds it.

His gaze darts toward the door. Toward the window. Toward anything that might offer an escape.

“I just want to leave.” He rushes through the rest before I can answer. “I’ll go. I’ll leave. I’ll go back.”

Back.

There’s nothing waiting for him beyond these walls except a storm powerful enough to bury the mountains beneath several feet of snow.

“I’ll brave the weather,” he says desperately. His chest rises and falls too quickly. “I’ll walk if I have to.”

I stalk toward him, close the distance between us in two quick strides, grab his wrist, and yank him against me hard enough to draw a startled yelp from his lips.

“What are you going to do?” he gasps.

I lower my head and trace the line of his jaw with the tip of my nose, breathing him in slowly. He smells incredible. Like my soap. Like my castle. He tries to jerk backward, but I tighten my hold before throwing him onto the bed.

Then I climb on top of him and hold him in place.

He lifts his hips, trying to dislodge me, but the effort is futile, and from the frustration tightening his features, I think he knows it. What I can’t get over as I stare down at him is how incredibly beautiful he is. All softness layered over unmistakable masculinity, even if he doesn’t possess anywhere near the strength I do.

His chest heaves, sweat beads along his brow, betraying nerves he doesn’t have to voice, and his wrists twist repeatedly in my grasp as he tries to pull himself free.

“You’ve been with a man before, yes?” I release his wrist and pop open the button on the slacks he’s wearing, watching his expression change so quickly that he looks like he might be sick.

His hands are shaking so badly that when he grabs my wrist and tries to keep me from lowering the zipper, all I have to do is bat them away. The silence that follows answers my question before he ever opens his mouth.

“A virgin?” I ask, dumbfounded.

He sniffs and turns his face away from me, both hands pressing hard against my knees as he tries to throw me off. I grip his chin firmly and force his face back toward mine.

“Are you?”

“Yes,” he says miserably, his answer followed by the words he seems far more desperate for me to hear. “And I don’t want to do this.”

Possessiveness flares through me so quickly that it consumes everything else.

He’s all mine, for however long I want to keep him.

I hook my fingers into the waistband of his pants and pull them down the length of his legs while he bucks, twists, and squirms. I have him naked from the waist down before he manages to move even an inch. The material bunches tightly around his calves, effectively trapping his legs together for me despite his continued attempts to move.