by Fiona Brand
"I'm all right, Gray – I'm…" She gasped, struggling for air.
"Shh, don't talk," Gray said, trying to keep his voice low and soothing. Trying not to transfer his panic to Sam. "I'll take care of you, baby, just—" She tried to roll away from him, impeded by the rope tying her wrists and ankles. "Dammit," he muttered, incensed. "Lie still!"
A button flew off, then another. He tore the shirt open and found … nothing. Nothing but gleaming white skin, tinted a pinkish shade in places where the blood had seeped through the shirt.
"I'm only winded," Sam gasped.
Gray stared at her in disbelief. He ran his hands feverishly over her torso, pulled her into a sitting position, untied her hands and stripped the shirt off altogether. Not satisfied with that, he unclipped her bra and tossed that aside. Her breasts were full and round and perfect, the centres peaking in the slightly chilly air, her flesh deliciously soft and cool against his hands.
Sam was still breathing jerkily. Her hair was a wild tangle, her cheek smudged with dirt, her eyes dark and faintly gleaming in the moonlight. "Find anything interesting?"
"Yeah." His hands tightened on the silky perfection of her breasts. He still couldn't believe she was unharmed. "I was sure he'd shot you."
"He didn't shoot me." Sam reached out and touched his arm, and the clammy wetness of the blood streaming down. "You're the one who's bleeding."
Chapter 17
Sam untied the rope at her ankles, slapping Gray's hands away when he tried to help. She surged to her knees. "Let me see," she demanded.
Gray barely glanced at his bicep, where a bullet had ploughed a raw furrow. "It's just a scratch."
Just a scratch. Sam's jaw locked up as she gently pulled his arm around so that the glow from the embers illuminated the wound. It was ugly, but the bleeding was already slowing. "Can you use your arm?"
"Of course I can use it." He pulled free of her grasp to demonstrate. "I'll tend to it later. We need to go. If Harper keeps blundering around in the bush like he is, with our luck he'll probably run in a circle and end up back here. And I'm pretty sure he's still got the gun."
"We're not leaving until I've bandaged your arm."
Gray ignored her, moving to get up.
Sam caught hold of his shoulders and hauled him back down into a kneeling position. "Are you deaf? Don't move until I'm finished!"
He resisted. "You can bandage it later." Then, more gently, as if he'd only just noticed her distress, he said, "I'm all right, Sam."
"Says who?" Picking up her shirt, she put the material between her teeth.
"What are you doing?"
She jerked at the cloth, starting a tear, then ripped the whole arm off. She did the same with the other sleeve. "I'm finishing the demolition job you started on my shirt."
"Sam—"
"Shut up!" she said fiercely. "You saved my life twice today, and Harper shot you. Just a few more inches to one side and he would have killed you." She folded one sleeve into a pad. "Hold this over the wound."
Sam bound the pad in place as firmly as she could, then sat back to survey her handiwork. The bloody furrow was neatly covered by the ruins of her shirt. Abruptly the adrenaline that had bucked through her veins when Harper had aimed that gun at Gray's chest faded. She began to shake.
"Ah, Sam…" Gray pulled her close, pushing her face into the dark, muscular curve of his neck, banding his arms around her naked back, his arms and hands searingly hot in contrast to her skin.
Sam wrapped her arms around his waist and sagged against him, soaking in his heat, which she suddenly needed desperately. She was cold and exhausted. Shivers wracked her, rising from somewhere deep inside and rolling outward in deep, shuddering waves. Gray held her closer, rocking her gently, pressing on the small of her back and forcing her closer still, letting her absorb his heat. He felt and smelled delicious, hotly male, sweaty and alive. She could scarcely believe they were both alive.
She lifted her head, seeking his gaze. "I couldn't let him shoot you."
"So you tried to make him shoot you instead."
"I was distracting him. There's a difference."
"And you won't do it ever again. Not that I'm going to give you the chance," he muttered, easing her away from him, hands cupping her shoulders. "That's twice today you've nearly got yourself shot. Lady, you draw trouble like a magnet draws iron filings. Once we get out of here, I doubt I'll ever let you out of my sight again."
He jerked his T-shirt over his head and began dressing her in it as if she were a child and needed his help. "We need to go."
"What about your arm?"
"My arm feels fine. Now that you've bandaged it, I can hardly feel a thing."
"Liar."
"Yeah," he murmured, tilting her head back. "It stings like hell, but I've had worse." He bent and brushed her mouth with his, the touch soft and oddly sweet. "C'mon, baby," he coaxed, "on your feet. Harper left his pack behind. With any luck, he left you a candy bar."
*
Before they left, Gray did a quick search of the camp site, just in case Harper had dropped the gun. No such luck, although Gray did find Sam's bra. He picked up the delicate lacy garment, slipping it into his pocket before going to fill the water container in the stream. While he was about it, he washed the blood from his arm and rinsed his torso and face, ridding himself of dried blood and sweat and soothing his hands, which were still swollen and awkward. The wound on his arm was still seeping, but Sam's bandage had stemmed most of the flow.
His jaw tightened when he remembered the way she had flung herself at Harper's back in a desperate attempt to save him. Fury at the way she had risked herself mixed with disbelief and awe that she had done so. When he got her out of here, he wasn't sure what he would do to her first, shake her for giving him one of the worst moments of his life, or shackle her to his side so she could never scare him like that again. The breath hissed from between his teeth. As panicked as he had been, he had still noticed the way her breasts had looked in the moonlight, how they had felt against the rough skin of his palms.
Who was he trying to kid? he thought as he recapped the container and picked his way back up the bank. When they got out of here, there was only going to be one thing on his mind: holding Sam close and never letting her go.
Sam had laid the contents of the pack out next to the almost extinguished fire. Evidently it hadn't belonged to Harper but to the driver of the van, Billy, who had left it behind in his rush to escape with the briefcase, which had no doubt held a small fortune in cocaine. There was a driver's licence, a lighter, a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a grubby cell phone. There was also one candy bar left.
Gray tried the phone, then shoved it back into the pack. "We'll have to go higher before we can get a signal."
Sam split the chocolate bar with Gray; then he strapped the small pack in place, and they started cautiously into the night.
"Hold on to the back of the pack," he told Sam softly. "I don't want to lose you in the dark. We'll be going slowly. The last thing we want to do now is break our necks tumbling into a gully."
Gray could feel Sam's grip on the pack as a light resistance against his shoulders. They had only walked a few metres beneath the canopy of the trees when the transition from moonlight to darkness was complete. Gray stopped, reaching a hand back to steady Sam when she bumped softly against him. He could hear her breathing, still a little fast, and abruptly remembered those moments when they were stuck in the elevator. She had been frightened by the dark, but she hadn't said a word, simply endured.
He found her hand and squeezed it; she squeezed back. "Move closer to me," he said in a low voice. "We'll stay here until our eyes adjust."
She shuffled closer, slipping her arms around his waist and leaning into him. Gray remained motionless, waiting for his night-vision to kick in, using the time to listen for any sound that might indicate that Harper had somehow found his way back to them.
He didn't think it would happen. Harper had b
een barely capable of sustaining his two-handed grip on the Sig; Gray doubted his capacity to do more than stumble blindly through the bush, but he would leave nothing to chance.
The clarity of his senses increased until they were animal-sharp; outlines became visible, but he could have done with some night-vision goggles. It was as black as sin, and twice as dangerous. If they tumbled down into a steep gully, or walked over the edge of one of the sheer granite cliffs he had seen from the logging skid, it was game over, no matter what Harper did.
An hour later they stopped. They hadn't covered more than half a mile since leaving the skid site, but it would have to be enough. Gray sat down, propped his back against a tree, using the pack as a cushion, and pulled Sam down between his legs and in close against his chest. "Try and sleep. We'll stay here until it gets light."
Sam's breathing gradually slowed, evened out. Gray felt it the moment she went to sleep, the warm slackness of her body pressing against his. A rough wave of tenderness swept him, and he cuddled her closer, trying to ease her awkward position so she would sleep better. They had made love, but they hadn't actually slept together yet. This was a hell of a place to start.
The almost forgotten intimacy of sleeping with a woman – with Sam – enfolded him, making him forget all his aches and pains, making him forget Harper was wandering, armed, through the forest, half-crazed from his cocaine addiction and as likely to shoot a tree as anything living.
With a distant feeling of incredulity, he felt himself sliding toward sleep, utterly seduced by the warm weight of Sam's head on his chest, the silky brush of her hair on his bare arm. As he drifted, lost in the relaxed, meditative state before true sleep, he became aware that something that usually happened right about now wasn't happening.
Relief shuddered through him. The stark images that had haunted these moments before sleep for years, making his muscles cord and his pulse pound, hadn't come. Instead his mind was filled with other images: fiercely protective blue eyes with a cat-like gleam; a delicately sensual face smudged with dirt and lit with a cool courage any soldier would envy; a sultry, stubborn mouth that only hinted at the passionate, stubborn woman inside. He should have taken note of that mouth seven years ago, because he knew now that it was going to drive him crazy in all the ways that mattered.
His final thought as he let his head rest against the rough bole of the tree was a pleasant one; if he was going to be haunted by anything, he couldn't have chosen a more alluring demon.
*
They moved on at first light, stiff and cramped, but surprisingly rested. Breakfast was cool water from a stream and a hurried wash.
An hour later they stopped for a drink on a rocky outcrop that offered a breathtaking view of the valley they had just walked through.
While Sam sipped the brackish water, Gray tried the cell phone again, grunted with disgust then slipped it back into the knapsack. "We'll have to go even higher to get a signal."
"What about Harper?"
A cold grin bared his teeth, and Sam suddenly had the sensation of time shifting, time lost. In the primeval bowl of the valley, they could have belonged to another, much more ancient, time. The sun slanted down, lighting Gray's torso with a radiance that burnished his skin to hot gold. With the makeshift bandage knotted around one gleaming bicep, the battle scars scoring his flesh, he looked both powerful and wild, and completely at home in this environment.
"Harper will keep. He won't be moving higher. He'll be panicking and walking in streams, trying to get out. When I can get a call through to Blade, he'll be able to pinpoint our position by triangulating our signal with the nearest repeater. All I have to do is keep the channel open and hope that our 'friend' Billy kept the batteries charged."
A few minutes later, Gray got a call through.
An hour later, the sound of a helicopter beat rhythmically, receded, then grew stronger.
Gray paused, his head up. "They're in," he said coldly.
An eerie silence fell, as if even the birds were waiting for the drama unfolding to reach its deadly conclusion. Time passed as they trudged ever higher. Finally they stumbled out onto the raw dirt road. A cooling breeze dispersed the building heat of the day and blew Sam's hair around her cheeks. Gray stood, silent and remote, a grim sentinel standing watch over the hunt below.
Sam sank wearily to the ground. Her legs felt like pieces of limp noodle, and her heels burned like fire. "You could have left me and gone after him."
Gray turned, and the controlled remoteness of his expression made her flinch. He did want to be hunting Harper. Maybe he still would.
Weariness washed through her. There was no maybe about it. Gray had been hunting the man for seven years; why would he give up now, when Harper was so close and so vulnerable? The hut was only a short distance away. Once he had her safe, he would go.
His gaze dropped to her feet; he studied them as if they fascinated him. "Take off your shoes," he said softly.
Sam blinked, for a moment unable to understand what he had said, because the words didn't fit what she had expected him to say.
Gray went down on his haunches beside her and gently unlaced and removed her shoes. She couldn't prevent herself from making a small noise as the first sneaker came off, rubbing her abraded heel. He held up first one foot, then the other, surveying the raw patches. He was silent for so long that she began to think he wasn't going to say anything. Finally, he asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"
"You didn't complain about your arm."
He was silent again – ominously silent, she decided.
Abruptly he swung her up into his arms, leaving the shoes where they lay. "Why should I expect you to tell me anything?" he muttered, seemingly to himself. "You were so damned quiet, I should have guessed something was wrong."
"It was only bl—"
"I don't care if it's blisters," he cut in, silkily soft. "I don't care if it's a broken nail. From now on, you will tell me everything that happens to you."
Sam eyed the square set of his jaw. "That could mean a lot of talking."
He drew a breath that sounded strangely impeded, almost strangled. "I should have carried you the whole damn way."
"I'm too heavy."
"One more word, Sam," Gray said from between clenched teeth.
*
Sam examined the cabin, which, according to the notices on the wall, belonged to the Department of Conservation and was now used as a goat culler's hut. There was a large flat area outside, with a windsock and ground lighting, which was obviously used as a helipad. No doubt that was why Harper had wanted the place as a hideout. The hut itself was small and compact inside, only one room, which contained four built-in bunks, a dusty table and chairs, and a crude counter with a large, chipped enamel basin that served as a sink sitting on top. There were no taps. Outside, next to the hut, Sam found a water tank with a tap at its base.
Gray had taken a cursory look inside, then strode back out to stand on the edge of the rough outcropping, staring across the valley. His eyes had been curiously blank, his expression, once again, remote. After his outburst on the road, Sam was confused. He was brooding and taciturn, snapping at every word she said, and she'd had enough. If he wanted to go after Harper, she wished he would just go.
After opening several cupboards in the kitchen, Sam found various kitchen utensils, tin plates and mugs inhabited by dead insects, an odd assortment of freeze-dried and tinned food – obviously left behind by various inhabitants of the hut – a selection of can openers, a tiny solid fuel cooker and a rusted first-aid box.
She had just finished dressing her heels when a shadow darkened the door. She eyed Gray coolly. She hadn't expected him to come back inside; he had been so focussed on what was happening down in the valley.
"If you sit down," she said briskly, "I'll clean your wound."
To her surprise, Gray sat. Sam untied the bloodied bandage and peeled it gently from his arm. She drew a sharp breath. In the light of day, the bloody gouge on
his biceps looked even more painful.
Gray's voice was infuriatingly calm. "It looks worse than it is."
Sam opened the first-aid box with a snap and extracted a miniature bottle of disinfectant. "Then you won't mind if I use some disinfectant."
He followed her movements warily. Sam decided to tip the disinfectant directly over the wound. She didn't want to risk introducing any more foreign tissue into the raw welt.
Gray's breath hissed from between his teeth.
Sam recapped the bottle and returned it to the box. "Since it's just a scratch, I won't attempt to stitch it."
His startled gaze connected with hers.
Sam eyed him levelly. "What's one more scar among so many?"
"You're angry," he said neutrally.
Her hands shook as she applied a dressing. "That man was going to kill you."
"He didn't succeed."
She fastened the bandage and stepped back to survey her handiwork. The white bandage glowed against the sleek copper of his skin, adding a dangerous edge to all that steely control.
"You can go now," she said abruptly.
Gray flowed to his feet. If he was in pain from his arm, he didn't show it, but instead of shouldering the pack and walking out the door, he came to stand in front of her.
"What do you mean, go?"
She gestured toward the door of the hut. "Out there. Where he is."
"Trying to get rid of me so soon?"
An incandescent rage filled her. She wanted to stop Gray, but she didn't know how. She didn't know what she had to offer that was more exciting than the cat and mouse game he played with death. She didn't know if what he felt for her had the strength to overcome that remote core of grimness that was such a part of him. He had brought her to safety, but he had done so out of duty; every step of the way, his attention had been on Harper. She understood his obsession; she even approved of it, despite the fact that it hurt her, hurt Gray, so much. "It's what you want, isn't it?"
His jaw shifted, and his expression darkened until she felt she was being drawn into him, drowned in black heat and loneliness. "No. That isn't what I want."