Lord of the Wolves Read Free

on their wedding day.
    “Caroline,”
he groaned low, afraid to move, to breathe, for fear of frightening her away. She
had the child, his child, in her arms, and she was smiling. How young she
looked. How vulnerable. Instinctively, he reached out, wanting so badly to hold
her again, to gaze into the face of his son, that he could not stop himself.
    The
movement startled her. She glanced up, clutching the babe protectively to her
breast, and slowly faded, leaving nothing but the vast, throbbing emptiness
that had become so much a part of his existence.
    Torn
between the overwhelming need to quit this place and the intangible force that
bade him stay, Kingston turned reluctantly back to the black bulk of the
hunter’s lodge. The least he could do was to ascertain if the woman inside was
injured or alone—and it was a woman who’d sought shelter within the
decaying structure. A man would have answered his summons in some fashion. With
words or with musket fire.
    But
a woman, even one who was armed, would not be so hasty. She would watch and
wait, weighing her chances, judging her adversary, hoping to avoid a
bloodletting, keeping silent in the hope of hiding her vulnerability.
    And
she is vulnerable. Just as Caroline had been.
    If
only there had been someone to help Caroline, she would be in his arms, in his
life, instead of lying in a lonely wilderness grave.
    For
Caroline’s sake, he could not just walk away and leave the occupant of the
lodge to the return of the wolves. He had to force the woman out of hiding— or
find a way of getting in. “Very well, then,” he said in a clear and ringing
voice. “It is plain that my presence is unwanted, and so I shall leave you to
the wolves.”
    Turning
his back to the cabin, he mimicked the chilling howl of a wolf, projecting the
cry in such a way that it seemed to come from the woods at the rear of the
cabin.
    It
was a trick he had learned as a youth, employed to deceive the enemy, and in this
instance, it proved very effective, for a gasp issued clearly through the
cracks in the cabin walls, followed by the sound of furtive movement. Pressing
his momentary advantage, Kingston sprinted forward, kicking in the door.
    The
tactic caught Sarah off guard. The door came crashing in, and she spun,
uttering a cry of dismay as she raised her makeshift bludgeon to ward off this
unwarranted attack.
    Her
adversary was faster, and before she could beg for quarter, he seized her,
easily plucking the stick from her grasp, imprisoning her in a rough embrace.
    She
wriggled in his grasp, trying desperately to avoid the warm hard masculine form
pressed intimately against the soft curves of her buttocks and back. She had
never been this close to a man, outside her marriage bed, and even then, the
physical contact, the closeness, had been brief. Timothy’s health, which had
always been frail, allowed nothing more.
    Her
captor was anything but frail. The arms encircling her waist were hard as iron,
the hand placed high on her ribs, just grazing the full lower curve of her
breast, strong. He exuded an animal heat that Sarah found at once strangely
attractive, yet terrifying, a heat she wanted badly to escape. “Please,” she
said in a soft, trembling voice. “Let me go. I meant you no harm.”
    “In
good time,” he replied, close to her ear. “Why did you say nothing when I
called out to you a moment ago?”
    Sarah
wet her lips. When she answered, her voice trembled, yet she couldn’t be
certain if her fright, or his nearness caused the reaction. “I was too
frightened to answer. There was the ambush—and then the wolves—and I could not
tell if you were friend or foe, or if you belonged to the Frenchman’s band, and
then there was Kathryn—”
    Sarah
would have rattled on had he not turned her in his embrace and placed the tips
of his fingers over her lips. “You are raving, Madame. Quietly now. Calmly. Tell
me about the ambush, and the Frenchman, and how you came to be here with