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Caleb reached out and touched my face, his thumb brushing my cheekbone, and I leaned into his hand like a cat seeking warmth. His skin was rough, calloused, but his touch was gentle, reverent.

"Lyla," he said, my name a prayer and a warning.

"Please," I whispered, not knowing what I was asking for, only knowing that I would die if he pulled away.

He kissed me. It was not like the kiss behind the church. It was not clumsy or hurried. He kissed me as though he had been waiting to kiss me since the beginning of time, as though this moment was inevitable as sunrise. His mouth was warm and tasted of tobacco and coffee, and his hand moved from my cheek to the back of my neck, anchoring me, holding me steady while the world spun.

When he pulled back, we were both breathing hard. "This is wrong," he said.

"It doesn't feel wrong."

"It is. You're—"

"I know what I am," I said, and I pulled him to me, kissing him this time, showing him that I was not a child, that I knew my own mind, my own body, my own desires.

He made a sound in his throat, half surrender, half triumph, and then he was lifting me, carrying me to my uncle's empty pallet by the stove, laying me down with a care that made me want to weep. He hovered over me, his elbows bracketing my head, his body a shelter and a promise.

"I'll stop if you say," he whispered.

"Don't stop."

He didn't. He kissed my throat, my collarbone, the hollow above my heart. His hands moved over my dress, learning the shape of me, and I arched into his touch, desperate for more, for everything. When he pushed my skirt up, his hand rough on my thigh, I gasped, not from fear but from the shock of contact, of being touched where I had only ever touched myself in the dark, furtive and ashamed.

"You're sure?" he asked, his fingers brushing the cotton of my drawers.

"Yes. God, yes."

He pulled the cotton aside, and then his hand was on me, touching me where I was wet and aching, and I cried out, burying my face in his shoulder. He stroked me gently, finding a rhythm that made my hips move of their own accord, that made my breath come in short, desperate gasps.

"Beautiful," he muttered, watching my face. "So beautiful."

He kissed down my body, pushing my skirt higher, settling between my legs, and I realized with a shock what he intended to do. I've heard whispers among the married women in the city, giggling conversations that stopped when I approached, but I had never imagined, had never thought—

His mouth touched me, hot and wet and impossibly intimate, and I bucked against him, overwhelmed. He held my hips steady, his tongue moving against me with a skill that spoke of experience I didn't want to think about, probing and sucking at the sensitive flesh until I was whimpering, my hands fisting in his hair, my body wound tight as a spring.

"Let go," he murmured against me, the vibration sending sparks through my nerves. "I've got you. Let go."

I shattered. The pleasure crashed over me like a wave, breaking me apart, dissolving me into nothing but sensation, nothing but the heat of his mouth and the pulse of my own blood. He stayed with me through it, gentling his touch, bringing me down slowly, kissing my thighs, my hips, my stomach, working his way back up to my mouth.

I tasted myself on his lips, salt and musk, and it should have shocked me but it didn't. It felt right. It felt like belonging.

"I love you," I whispered, the words rising up from someplace deep and undeniable.

He stilled. His eyes searched mine, and I saw fear there, and sorrow, and something that looked like hope. "You don't know what you're saying."

"I do. I love you, Caleb. I've loved you since you looked at me across the yard and didn't look away."

He held me then, tight against his chest, and I felt the tremor in his body, the struggle between what he wanted and what he thought was right. "Your uncle," he said finally.

"Is dying. And when he's gone, I'll be alone. Unless you stay."

"I have nothing to offer you. No land, no money, no name."

"You have yourself. That's enough."

He laughed, a bitter sound. "You think love is enough? Out here? Winter's coming, Lyla. Hard winter. Love doesn't keep you from starving."

"Then we'll starve together."

He kissed me again, harder this time, desperate, and I felt the evidence of his desire pressed against my hip, hard and insistent. I reached for him, but he stopped my hand.

"Not tonight," he said. "Not like this, rushed and secret. When I take you, it will be proper. As your husband."

"As my—"

"Marry me," he said. "When your uncle passes. Marry me, and I'll build you a house with my own hands. I'll hunt for you. I'll protect you. I'll spend my life trying to be worthy of what you just gave me."

I wept then, tears of joy and grief mixed together, because I knew even then that happiness was a fragile thing, that the world was not kind to girls who loved too much and men who had nothing but their labor to sell.

But I said yes. Of course I said yes.