“I could have.”
“Why didn't you?”
“I wasn't sure how to say it without making you feel you had another obligation.”
She looked at him, surprised.
Caleb's gaze lowered to his scarred hands. “You came a long way to marry a stranger. I figured you had enough to manage without me telling you what you should feel.”
The words made her throat tighten.
Outside, the wind rose sharply, rattling the shutter on the eastern window. Josie startled, and Caleb glanced toward the sound.
“It's only the shutter,” he said.
“I know.”
“It's been loose since the last storm. I'll secure it when the weather eases.”
She nodded, then looked at the space between them.
“Do you always sit that far away?”
“When someone asks me to give them room.”
“I didn't ask you to sit in the chair forever.”
His eyes returned to hers.
For the first time that evening, she saw uncertainty in his expression.
Josie shifted beneath the furs. She had not planned to say what came next, and now that the words were near, she feared they would sound foolish.
“I said it hurt,” she murmured. “I didn't say I wanted you to stop wanting me.”
Caleb's face changed, but he did not immediately rise. He set the poker down carefully, ensuring it would not roll from the hearth, and turned fully toward her.
“Wanting you doesn't give me permission to take you.”
The answer was quiet and direct.
Josie looked at him, her pulse quickening. She had expected him to understand the words as an invitation, perhaps even as a promise. Instead, he had answered the part she had not known how to say aloud: that she wanted to be desired without being controlled.
“I know,” she said.
“Do you?”
She hesitated. “I'm trying to.”
Caleb nodded. “Then we can take our time.”
The words should have reassured her, but they stirred a different kind of unease. She had spent so long bracing herself against demands that the absence of one left her unsure where to put her own longing.
She slipped one bare foot from beneath the furs.
The floorboards were cold, and she drew in a small breath as her toes touched the air. Caleb noticed but did not move to cover her. She looked at him, then at the chair, then back at the bed.
“I don't want you sleeping in that chair forever,” she said.
His expression softened. “I don't intend to.”
“Then why do you keep choosing it?”
“Because tonight you asked me to stop.”
“I asked you to stop touching me.”
“And I did.”
“I know.” She swallowed. “But I don't want you to think I never want you near me.”
Caleb was silent for a moment. He seemed to be choosing his words with the same care he used when handling a loaded rifle.
“Josie, you don't have to make up your mind about the rest of your life tonight.”
“I know.”