Raven was awakened by a hand clamped over her mouth. She struggled to rise, but a heavy weight bore her down. It was pitch black, and there was nothing to tell her who her captor was. Only she knew. From the musky smell of him. From the size of him. From the harsh sound of his voice when he spoke.
“Don’t scream,” Cale said as he slowly removed his hand from her mouth. “It’s just me.”
She’d run away, and he’d come after her. And caught her. He was likely furious. Men, she had discovered, did not like to have their will thwarted by women. And this man was a stranger to her. She had no idea what form his revenge would take. She tensed in his arms, ready to fight him if he tried to take what she was not willing to give.
“Take it easy,” he crooned. “I’m not going to hurt you. But I’m not going to let you go, either. We had a deal.”
“My father made a deal. I did not.”
“Nevertheless, I’m holding you to it. You’ll be coming back home with me.”
Raven thought of the knife she’d tied to her thigh before she began her flight and reached surreptitiously through the slit in her skirt, gripping the weapon tightly as she pulled it free. This man, who sought to keep her captive, would soon learn she had a mind and a will of her own.
“I don’t know what I have to do to convince you you’re safe with me,” Cale said.
His voice was soothing, as though he were calming a wild animal caught in the steel jaws of a trap. But going back with him was a trap. He did not know it yet, but she was fully capable of fighting like a cornered wildcat
Raven took a deep breath, and in one swift movement, stabbed her knife toward Cale’s heart, knowing she wouldn’t get a second chance. She heard his grunted “Oooff” as the knife caught on something.
“Beast!” she hissed. “I hope I’ve killed you!”
She felt the sticky wetness of blood on her hand as he collapsed on top of her. Raven shoved against Cale’s shoulders, but she might as well have been an ant trying to shift a boulder. She bucked with her hips beneath what she believed to be his dying body, hoping to get free, but he was too heavy.
He moaned, and she realized with horror that he wasn’t dead, only wounded. She drew in a sharp breath, drawing all her resources together to face his certain retaliation for her attack on him.
To her relief and astonishment, he grunted once and rolled off her onto his back.
She clambered to her feet and stumbled backward several steps to put some distance between them. Raven wasn’t sure why Cale wasn’t raging against her, since he obviously wasn’t wounded badly enough to keep him from striking back, but she wasn’t going to give him a chance to change his mind. The night air was frigid without the striped wool blanket she had wrapped herself in. She felt, rather than saw, the clouds that formed as she panted, drawing explosive breaths into starving lungs. She’d already begun her escape into the darkness when he spoke.
“This wound needs tending,” he said in a surprisingly calm voice. “Build up the fire so you can see what you’re doing.”
Raven wanted to run, but if the mountain man had found her once, he would find her again. And it would be a lot harder to surprise him with a weapon the next time. She hesitated only a moment before she dropped to her knees and felt for the stones she had laid in a circle to keep the fire from spreading. She stirred the ashes and found a glowing ember to which she added some dry grass and a few twigs until it burst into flame. In that tiny, orange light she saw Cale Landry’s face for the first time since she had left him fighting Ribbon Jack.
His eyes gleamed in the dark, like some beast of prey. His teeth were bared in a grimace of pain. His fingers, shiny with blood, framed the hilt of her knife. It was clear that the bearskin coat had taken the brunt of her thrust. Only the mere tip of the knife was imbedded in his skin. She was disgusted to see that she had only caught his shoulder, missing his heart by several inches.
“Go ahead and pull it out,” Cale said. “I’d do it myself, but it’s at an awkward angle for me to reach.”
Raven’s lips flattened in distaste. The sight of blood made her sick. She had learned, out of necessity, to swallow her gorge and to work with her head averted from whatever animal she was slaughtering for supper. But she would need to pay attention to what she was doing in order to pull the knife from Cale’s shoulder without doing him further injury. Not that she would have minded if he suffered further, but she feared hurting him again would only provoke him.
The big man made no sound as the knife came free in her hand. She stared at the tip darkened with blood, both fascinated and nauseated. She had started to sway dizzily when he plucked the knife from her fingers and put it down out of sight.
“There’s water in my canteen to clean up this blood. Have you got anything you can use as a bandage?”
He was sitting up now, slipping the bearskin coat off his arms so it created a puddle of fur around his hips. Raven had never seen Cale without the coat, and she was surprised to discover that it wasn’t the fur that had made him look so big. He was big, with shoulders as broad as an ancient tree. It was equally apparent there wasn’t a shred of fat on him. His body narrowed to a slim waist and his legs were long and muscular.
She approached him with the canteen she had taken from where it hung on his saddle. “Perhaps, since your shirt is already covered with blood, we could use it to wash your wound.”
Cale looked at the long john shirt that was soaked with blood at the shoulder. He made a disgruntled sound and started to draw the shirt up over his head. He hissed in a breath of air as he jarred the knife wound. He handed the shirt to Raven.
Raven forced her eyes away from the sight that now greeted her. The mountain man was an awesome being, half-naked as he was. The promise of strength she had seen when he dropped the coat was fulfilled in the man sitting before her. It surprised her to discover that, although he had a patch of dark hair in the center of his chest, he was not the hairy beast she had suspected. A thin line of black ran down into his buckskin trousers. She resisted an urge to see if it was as soft as it looked.
Raven lifted her gaze guiltily and found herself staring into lazy, hooded black eyes that seemed to laugh at her.
“See anything you like?” he asked.
Raven was grateful for the dark that hid her flush of embarrassment. “Lean back,” she said curtly, “and I will clean your wound.”
Cale obeyed, and Raven dabbed at the wound with the dampened long john shirt until most of the blood was cleared away. She kept swallowing her gorge, hoping she wouldn’t humiliate herself by losing the contents of her stomach before she had finished.
“It needs to be stitched,” she said when she could see the extent of the wound.
Cale pursed his lips. “There’s a needle and thread in my pack.”
Raven used the excuse he gave her to get away. Once her back was turned to Cale, she took several deep breaths to clear the stench of blood from her nostrils. It was the smell, the coppery, oily odor of blood that was the worst. Sometimes, she would tie a bandanna around her face to avoid it. But she wasn’t willing to display her weakness to this man, at least not so soon in their relationship. She would have to use the other remedy she had found that sometimes worked. She would put herself in another place, doing something else, and not think about the blood.
She remembered a time when her mother had taken her to the river to swim. The water was icy cold, and they had laughed as the trout nibbled at their toes. The sun had sparkled on the water, and the wind had soughed through the firs in a haunting cascade. It was a nearly perfect day, a happy day. Now, the only image of her mother that remained was a look of tenderness in a pair of dark eyes and a sweet, gentle smile.
Raven focused on that memory as she opened Cale’s packs, searching for the needle and thread. With Cale directing her where to look, she found what she needed. Raven took her time threading the precious steel needle, then settled on her knees at Cale’s side, where she would have access to the wound. She took a deep breath and thought of sparkling water and the heady scent of pines.
“This will hurt,” she warned him.
“It won’t be the first time I’ve been stitched,” he said. “Do what you have to do.”
It was only after he mentioned it that she realized there were more than a few scars on his upper body. She had been so overwhelmed by the whole of him, she hadn’t looked at the parts. She noticed a round, smooth scar near his collarbone that appeared to be from a bullet. There were three stripes that she realized had been left by the claws of some wild animal. She reached out tentatively to touch them and felt Cale flinch.
Raven glanced up and was caught by the look in his eyes. His gaze seemed soft, almost tender. She quickly lowered her eyes to the unusual scar, but not before she felt a peculiar warmth flood her body.
“Cougar?” she asked as she softly traced the marks.
“Grizzly,” he replied.
His voice was husky, and the sound lifted the hairs on her neck. “Big brute I’ve come to call Three Toes, seeing as how he lost the rest to a trap I laid for him.” Cale touched the striped scar with his fingertips. “He repaid me for the insult. We’ve had a war going ever since.”
Raven couldn’t help respecting a man who was willing to face down a grizzly. She shuddered at the thought of confronting one of the huge animals. Her only previous encounter with a grizzly had resulted in the loss of a childhood friend who was mauled to death. She had developed a deathly fear of bears.
“You going to stitch me up, or sit there thinking about it some more?”
Raven felt a flash of resentment. He was lucky she was willing to help him. But she had learned from past experience to hide the temper that sometimes flared and got her into trouble. Instead she said, “I don’t want to hurt you.” She added in a taunting voice, “Do you want to drink some whiskey before I begin?” She would soon see just how brave he was.
“No,” he said. “Just get it done.”
Raven took a deep breath and let it out. She swallowed hard, then stuck the needle into his flesh.
He didn’t make a sound.
She looked into his eyes and saw the pain he hadn’t expressed. She worked quickly, pulling the flesh together with tiny stitches, careful not to pucker the skin, keeping it flat so it would heal cleanly.
“This is the last stitch,” she said.
“Damn good thing,” he muttered.
As she tied the last knot, she realized there were beads of sweat on his forehead. His hands were clenched into fists. She had thought he must not feel pain quite as other men did, but now she saw he had only endured it well. She could not help admiring him for it. It was the Indian way to act stoically in the face of suffering. She compared her father’s howls to Cale’s silence and found herself wondering in what other ways he might be different from other men.
Cale shivered, and she realized he must be cold. The air was frigid, and he was naked to the waist. Without saying a word, she threaded the needle through the shoulder of her buckskin dress so she wouldn’t lose it, then stood and reached for the bearskin coat to draw around him.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Are you hungry?” Raven had asked because she knew from experience that a man with an empty stomach was more troublesome than one who had eaten. If she were to tame the beast, she had best keep him fed.
“I need sleep more than food. Let’s get some shut-eye. I want to get an early start in the morning.”
Raven felt Cale’s eyes on her as she cleaned the needle and returned it to his pack. She rinsed the blood from his long john shirt as best she could, then laid it on a bush to dry. Finally, there was nothing else to do. Unfortunately, he was sitting on her blanket. When she started to pull it out from under him, he stopped her.
“Uh-uh. You’ll be sleeping here, where I can keep an eye on you.”
“I will not run,” she said in a breathless voice.
He snickered. “You’ve been too much in your father’s company for me to trust you. Come here, Raven. I want you beside me.”
“You promised—”
“I’m not going to touch a hair on your head,” Cale said irritably. “Just get your tail over here so I can get some sleep.” He lifted an edge of her blanket, making it plain that he expected her to roll up in it and sleep within his arms.
Raven again debated the wisdom of running. He would be weaker with the wound she had given him. But the look in his eyes convinced her he would never let her go.
She lowered herself onto the blanket with her back to him and felt him circle her with both the wool and a bearskin-clad arm. He pulled her snug against him, so her bottom spooned into his groin. She tried shifting away from him, but to no avail.
“Lie still,” he said. “It’ll be warmer if we sleep this way.”
She couldn’t deny that. In fact, a fierce heat had suffused her body. Her heart thumped a brisk tattoo and her whole body was wired taut with a strange tension.
“Raven,” he whispered against her ear. “You’re about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in the mountains. And that’s saying a lot.”
Frightened by the sensual tone of his voice, by the delicious tickle his mouth created, she shook her head as though a fly had buzzed her ear, catching him in the nose.
He grabbed one of her braids and wrapped it around his fist. “Be still,” he murmured. “Be still.”
His other hand flattened against her stomach, pressing her back into his groin. He was aroused. She could feel the length and hardness of him. Her breath came in shallow pants. Her heart thundered in her breast.
Raven was aware of each fingertip splayed across her belly. Of the warmth of his breath in her ear. She felt dizzy, almost as if she were going to faint. She resented Cale touching her but was forced to admit he wasn’t hurting her. She was ready to fight him, tooth and claw, if he tried to do what it was clear he was primed and ready to do.
Only, to her dismay—disgust, displeasure, delight—the next thing she heard from Cale Landry was a long, stertorous snore.