Blackwolf's Redemption

“Are you injured? Does anything hurt?”

The tip of her tongue came out and swept lightly over her lips. She was looking at him, but he doubted if she could really see him; her eyes were blurry.

“Concentrate,” he said coldly. “Listen to what I’m saying. Are you hurt?”

Her gaze sharpened; her eyes seemed to darken. Her lips parted.

“That’s it. Look at me and tell me if anything—”

“Oh, my God,” she gasped.

And then her mouth opened wide and her scream echoed and reechoed through the silence of the canyon.

The scream that erupted from Sienna’s throat was high and thin and filled with terror, but sheer, unadulterated terror was precisely what she felt.

A man was bending over her. He had the painted face of a savage, with black stripes delineating the sharpness of his high cheekbones. His hair was black, too, and long, held back with a strip of something, maybe deer hide. Her eyes dropped lower. An eagle’s talon was hung around his neck, dangling from a narrower length of leather.

Dangling against his—oh, God—his naked, tautly muscled chest.

Fear beat gauzy wings in her blood. There was only one explanation. A lunatic was wandering the Montana high country and she’d run straight into him.

Don’t scream again, she told herself. Do not scream again. Be calm, be calm, be—

“Get away from me!” she shrieked as he leaned toward her. She dug her elbows into the unyielding surface beneath her and tried desperately to scramble backward. No way. The man put his big, hard hands on her shoulders and shoved her down.

“Don’t move.”

His voice was low and rough, and now she was sure he was crazy. Don’t move? Of course she was going to move. She was going to run like the wind, but first she had to get free of his hands.

“I said don’t move,” he growled. “Or I’ll have to restrain you.”

Restrain? What kind of madman used a word like restrain? And wasn’t he already doing that? Questions tumbled through her head. Who was this nut? Where had he come from? For that matter, where was she? Her gaze flew past him, to the mountain that loomed over her, and beyond it, to the blazing sun.

The sun. The solstice.

That was it. The solstice. She’d been observing it, waiting for the moment the new summer sun would send a dagger of light between the standing slabs that guarded the sacred stone and then, without warning, lightning had torn apart the sky. Green lightning, zigzagging between the stones.

A black void had opened before her. She’d felt herself falling into it, spinning inside it…

And then, nothing. A nothing so cold, intense and empty she’d felt as if her bones might become petrified, as if the emptiness would swallow her.

But it hadn’t, because she was here, with a man she’d never seen before crouched beside her. A savage with a hard face, eyes as cold and black as obsidian, and a mouth as thin as the slash of a rapier.

Sienna tried to swallow. Impossible. Terror had leeched the moisture from her mouth. The man watched the motion of her throat, then lifted his eyes to her face again.

“Are you hurt?”

Was she? Carefully, she flexed her fingers, her toes, her back.

“I don’t—”

“Do you ache anywhere?”

Why would he care? Still, her response was automatic. “My head.”

One hand left her shoulder, rose to her head. She jerked away, or would have jerked away, but his other hand came up to cup her jaw and hold her head still while his fingers explored her scalp. His touch was light, almost gentle, a sharp contrast to his face, his body, his voice—but she knew it didn’t mean a thing. She had studied indigenous cultures in which the warriors treated their captives relatively gently until the moment of—

“Aah.”

Sienna hissed in pain. The man grunted.

“You’ve got a lump behind your ear.” His hands shifted, began a slow trip down her throat, along her shoulders.

“Don’t,” she said, but he paid no attention as he worked his way to her toes. His touch was efficient, not intimate, but that didn’t keep it from adding to her terror.

“How many fingers?”

She blinked. “What?”

“How many fingers do you see?”

She looked at his upraised hand. “Three.”

“And now?”

“Four. Who are you?”

Carefully, she rose on her elbows, felt the coldness of stone beneath her bare arms.

He leaned closer. She flinched back. He gave an impatient growl, caught hold of her shoulders and leaned toward her.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking your pupils.”

It was unnerving. Those black eyes boring into hers.

“My pupils are fine.”

“Turn your head. Again. Slowly. Good. I’m going to roll you over.”

“You are not going to—”

But he did. His hands danced over her, his touch still impersonal. When he was finished, he turned her on her back, slid an arm under her shoulders and sat her up.

The world spun. There was a kind of buzzing sensation in her head, as if a swarm of tiny bees had found their way inside and set up housekeeping.

Sienna moaned.