The Loner Read Free

He slipped it onto her good arm and covered her chest with it.
    â€œGood thing you had this cloth wrapped around you,” he said, as he started washing her wound. “I’d have had to tear up my only other shirt for a bandage and you’d have been left naked.”
    Would Black Fox Vann be the kind to take advantage of a woman? She’d never heard anything like that about him. She thought not, and her mind really was working better now that the pain was easing some.
    â€œDon’t even think about it,” she said, as fiercely as she could. “I can wear a bloody shirt.”
    Her voice was so weak she could barely hear it. She must’ve used up all her strength as well as her air when she was trying not to scream.
    â€œDon’t worry,” he said, although his voice was still gruff. “Your virtue is safe with me.”
    His fingers touched her gently, so gently, as he washed around her wound. But that made it hurtlike crazy again. And he didn’t need to try to lower her defenses by saying something kind.
    â€œBut my life isn’t, is it?”
    When she said that, she forced her eyes open so she could see him. So she could challenge him with a look. He didn’t need to think he had all the power. She might as well try to dent his confidence a little. What else could she fight with but words?
    He looked right into her eyes but he said nothing and showed nothing in his face. He was a hard man. And she could not believe he was the one who’d finally caught her.
    The thought was nearly more than she could bear. She wanted to scream then, not from pain but from fear. There was no one to help her. She’d been completely alone for nearly a year and there was no one to come to her aid.
    And here she was, weak as a newborn kitten, so weak she was helpless.
    That thought scared her worse than what he’d said about hanging.
    She clamped her teeth together and stared out into the darkness. Her head was going around in circles. She should get up from here and make a dash for her horse. But she couldn’t even sit up without help and she knew it.
    â€œLeave me alone,” she said. “Go away.”
    He gave no indication he heard her and continued washing the wound. When he finished, he dried it with the tail of the shirt he’d halfway put on her. A thought skittered through her mind: what other man would think of drying her skin before he kept the air off it with a bandage? What man would even know that that might make it blister or petrify the wound?
    For a breath or two, he left her alone and the pain went away.
    Then he started winding the cloth around her shoulder and up over her collarbone on the other side of her neck and back under her arm, winding it very tightly, and the pain started up again with a devilish vengeance—it kept grabbing her lungs and squeezing every drop of air out of them.
    Over and over again it did that until finally he was done and he laid her back down and let her be still. She forced words out of her mouth just to make him talk so she’d have something to think about besides the pain.
    â€œI asked you a question,” she said through her clenched teeth. “Why is my virtue safe with you if my life isn’t?”
    He was standing up now, with his face far, far above her. He jerked his head around to look at her.
    â€œI’m not that kind of man,” he snapped, his voice filled with scorn for the very thought.
    He walked over to the fire, poured a cup of coffee into the tin cup he carried, and started back to her.
    â€œWater,” she said, though her tongue was so thick and dry she hated to try to move it again. “Cold water.”
    Oh, how it galled her to have to ask him for a drink! She could hardly bear it but she had to have water or she thought she would die right there and then.
    â€œAll right,” he said, “but then you’ll have to take some of the coffee.”
    The pain wasn’t