by Snow, Wylie
“Why am I tied up?” It came out WhyamItiedup.
“Hey, relax.” He stood and circled the fire pit. Only then did she notice her clothes, spread on the ground close to the dying embers.
Cleo felt violated at the thought of him peeling her wet leathers off. Of course it was to keep her from going into hypothermia—she’d have done the same were the roles reversed—but her natural fear of outsiders kept nudging her across the border of rational thought right into terrorville.
“How about a little gratitude?” he huffed as he leaned over to snatch up her leathers. In falsetto voice, he mocked, “Oh, Mr. Knight in Shining Armor, thanks for risking your life by jumping into that freezing river to save my skinny little ass.”
Manners. Right. They seemed to be tied up, just like her hands. But for the sake of her grandmother, her moral compass, she struggled to push the words thank you from her lips. They wouldn’t come. Certainly not while his hands skimmed over her clothes, down her pant legs, squeezing, patting. It was too distracting, too personal.
Should she be grateful? Should she push her fears aside? What if she misjudged him? He didn’t look mean. He had a great smile.
But just because he’s attractive doesn’t mean he won’t—
He would have done it already if he meant to harm her.
Maybe he already did, while I was unconscious. Maybe he’d keep me, bring me to others, then kill me…
Something deep inside of Cleo started to unravel. If his intentions were benign, why did he truss her up? She was naked, wounded, alone. So very alone. There was no reason a man would tie up a woman unless—
“Untie me!” She strained her neck as she lifted her head off the ground. The covering, silver and light as air, slid from her shoulders down to the rise of her breasts. Horrified, she slammed back down. “Untie me now!” Her demand sounded like pleading.
Her quickened breathing made her pendant roll off her chest. The raging river that took everything else of value that she owned had spared her prize possession. Just knowing her mother’s crystal remained close to her heightened her resolve to survive.
Instead of answering, her captor threw her leathers across the clearing. Cleo flinched, but they landed in a stiff heap on the ground next to her. He speared her with a curious look, the light in his eyes gone, along with his quirky smile.
He continued mocking her, ignoring her outburst, “And that mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, those chest compressions,” he said with a dry, humourless tone. “Where ever did you learn those handy little tricks?”
She averted her eyes. He had saved her skinny little ass.
She tried to swallow the lump at the base of her throat but it wouldn’t budge. Their eyes met as he pulled on a tattered grey shirt. Not that her judging-people skills were honed, but he didn’t look dangerous or mean. Just wary. She didn’t see anything in his pale eyes except a measure of disgust, which made her feel worse.
“Thanks,” she croaked through a constricted pipe. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Thanks for pulling me out of the river, for giving me CPR, for holding my hair while I puked.” There. That wasn’t so bad. “Now untie me.”
One of his eyebrows shot up.
“Please.” Grandma would be so proud.
“Are you gonna do something stupid?” His approach was guarded, which struck Cleo as rather ridiculous considering her current state.
“Define stupid.”
“Bite me, scratch me?”
“What do you think I am, an alphakitten?”
“I don’t know what to make of you, darlin’. You were ready for a fight last night.”
“And I’d have kicked your skinny little ass if I hadn’t hit the ground again.”
His widened eyes preceded a deep throaty chuckle. “Of that, I have no doubt.”
Cleo braced as he approached. Maybe she wasn’t being fair? He hadn’t threatened her. Yet. But her head throbbed and she couldn’t think straight, couldn’t get an accurate read on him.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Really.” Common sense said she had every right to fear him. But his cautious approach made her wonder if he was more afraid of her. “Here’s the deal, Mr. Knight. I won’t attack you if you don’t attack me.”
“I realize you’re disoriented after what you went through, but I did jump in after you. Do you have any idea how hard it is to drag a water-logged corpse from the bottom of that river? I hardly went to all that trouble if I meant harm, don’t you think?”
Unless you intend to use me first, like they used my mother.
Before another bout of panic could render her stupid, she buried those thoughts under a ton of here and now. He carried no weapon, his expression remained guarded but focused, and she watched his eyes for any tell-tale flickers. The eyes almost always gave away an intended attack.
“It’d be easier if you could slip your hands out the side of the blanket,” he said, dropping to his knees next to her.
“Just give me a knife and I can do it myself.”
He shook his head. “Not this time.”
A girl had to try. She rolled sideways and slipped her arms from under the covering.
“It was dark. Real dark,” he said without looking at her. “You needed to get warm.”
Cleo looked him up and down while he worked the knot. How should she play this when he, clearly, had the advantage? Instead of cooperating, the only thing her reanimated brain could focus on was him. This outsider. His broad shoulders and flat abdomen, the way the muscles down his arms flexed as he deftly worked the thick clump of polycord. The faint pulse throbbing on the side of his neck.
Clearly, she still suffered from some kind of hypothermic delusions. He was an outsider, not to be admired, not to be trusted. He was big, with ripped muscles, and she was completely and helplessly alone, naked, and, for the moment anyway, completely at his mercy.
Cleo prided herself on her ability to keep a cool, logical head in challenging conditions, but her current situation had her thoughts as scattered as autumn leaves. Maybe he didn’t intend to hurt her. Maybe he was just being kind. But what was he doing in the Taiga? Recruiters wouldn’t dare venture this far north, and sightseers tended to stay close to the Trading Post for safety.
Though he travelled alone, he definitely wasn’t a Banger, that much was obvious—those poor wretched creatures were more beast then man—and Drifters usually travelled in packs and hung around the walled towns in Lower Amerada, living off the scraps of civilization. Her self-proclaimed knight was too well fed and well behaved to fit in either category.
“I didn’t mean for them to be so tight,” he said, his gaze flicking to hers for a split second before the black polycord fell from her wrists.
Cleo’s fingers tingled as the blood rushed through. He took her hands and rubbed the circulation back into them. Her instinct was to pull away from him or deck him, but…it felt nice.
He could be a soldier with a build like that, but the Lower Ameradan Army knew better than to cross the Cut into the protected lands. She could count on one hand the times they’d tried to do that in her lifetime, and it never ended well.
Where the devil had he come from? She could ask him outright but sometimes, pretending to be a stupid female was the best defense.
“You were thrashing around in the night,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “I didn’t want you to hurt yourself.” He tried to smile but only one side of his mouth went up, and damn it if it didn’t give him a charming appeal. “Or me.”
The skin on his hands was soft, almost slippery, as if the top layer had been sanded smooth, or worn completely off, but his grip was strong, his touch warm.
She made a decision. He wanted to be a knight, so she’d act the naïve, vulnerable female-in-dire-straights. He would underest
imate her and she’d find a way out of her current predicament and get on with her mission.
“I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble,” she said, adding a good dose of humble. It helped that her voice was scratchy. Made her sound pitiable.
“That you did, darlin’.” He let go of her hands and pushed her clothes toward her. “Do you need some help getting into these?”
“No. Thank you.”
Crouched on his haunches, his hands casually resting on his knees, he studied her with a look of bemusement. His eyebrows knit together over an intent gaze, like he was trying to solve a mental math problem. An angular jaw lay under a day or two of stubble, his lips pressed into a thin line. “You got quite a bruise on your cheek,” he said matter-of-factly. “Right above that birthmark—”
“Scar,” she blurted. “It’s a scar.”
He canted his head, staring openly at the garish slash mark. Most people had the courtesy not to gawk. “Some animal claw at you?”
She flashed him a look that instantly killed his curiosity.
He rose abruptly and walked away. “Go ahead, get dressed. I won’t look.”
A little late for that.
As soon as he started rummaging through his backpack, she pulled the leather halter over her head and tightened the laces that criss-crossed her back, bringing the ends around to the front to tie. Her fingers were still stiff and tingly, making the process a bit of a challenge.
“So what happened?” she asked, pretending the situation wasn’t weirdly uncomfortable. “How did you happen to be at the falls the moment I needed you?”
“Just one of those crazy things, you know?” he laughed.
“If the story’s that funny, I definitely want to know the details.” Death generally wasn’t a laughing matter.
He didn’t reply. Cleo wondered if he’d even heard her. He seemed distracted by something in his backpack. She was about to repeat the questions when he spoke.
“I’m not sure you do.”
“Oh, I do. Right down to the last giggle.”
“Fine. Just remember, you asked.”
Silence thickened as she waited for him to begin. A beam of sun cut through the trees and caught his hair, turning it to gold as he raked it with his fingers. “I’d just finished making camp and went to the river to clean up before dinner.” He paused, cleared his throat. “I uh…I was taking a leak in the river when I thought I heard a scream. I looked up and saw a dark shape fall over the falls. It took me a second to realize it was a body. It was fair dark, so if you hadn’t screamed when you did, I would have completely missed the show.”
That didn’t explain his nervous laughter. “Tell me again about the funny part.”
“I uh… I jumped in as-is,” he said. “Without…you know…doing up my armor.”
“I’m not seeing the humor.”
“Yeah, well,” he mumbled, “I reckon it’s guy humor. I have a few friends back home who’re going to love it.”
Cleo rolled her eyes and wrestled the unyielding hide over her sore legs. It would take a few hours of wear and movement to soften and stretch back to a comfortable shape.
There was an unmendable tear from the knee down on the right side that matched the bandage on her leg, but closer inspection of her injuries would have to wait—she wanted to dress as quickly as possible in case he got bored sorting through his things. She tugged the laces that ran up the outside length of each leg, loosening them as quickly as her fingers could fly. She lay back on the air cushion—a lightweight bag of nothing—shifted her weight onto her good leg, and hauled her trousers up over her hips.
“Ow!” A quick sharp poke had her wondering if a bee hadn’t got into her pants.
“You okay?”
“Yeah…I think so,” she said, rubbing the sore spot on her right butt cheek. She craned her neck to see over her shoulder but could see nothing; no bee, no burr, and from what she could feel with her fingers, no scab, no cut, nothing to indicate the origin of the pain. “I think maybe I bruised my backside coming over the falls. Or some nasty bug bit me in my sleep.”
She lay back, exhausted from the effort, leaving the side laces on her pants loose for the moment. She’d worry about tightening them up once she regained her stamina. “Then what happened?”
“Excuse me?”
“After you jumped in. What happened next?”
“I had to dive down a couple of times before I found you—you were pretty limp by then. I dragged you out and started CPR.”
Cleo turned her head to the side and watched him zip up the various pockets on his pack.
“And at what point did you put everything back in place?”
“Oh, that?” he laughed. “I don’t recall. I reckon during one of the dives, otherwise my pants would’ve fallen off.”
“Good to know,” she said, not bothering to hide the smile in her voice. She closed her eyes, a wave of exhaustion making her feel drowsy and light-headed.
The Taiga, vast and great, was ninety percent unpopulated, so the chances that anyone would be within a hundred miles of her at any point in time, especially when she needed help, must have been divine intervention. In hindsight, his story was rather amusing. Such a boy-thing, peeing in a river, probably seeing how far he could splash—
Don’t trust outsiders.
She fought against her heavy lids and caught him watching her with a calculated expression. He replaced it with friendly openness before she could fully blink away the haze.
“You can go back to sleep if you want. I won’t leave you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” she replied, sitting up, the leather straining against her hips and abdomen. “I don’t understand how I survived the fall. How did I not get smashed to bits? The pool at the bottom has more rocks than water. Explain how my bones are still intact.”
“Don’t ask me, darlin’,” he said with a shake of his head. “I thought I’d be pulling up a bloody corpse. Even questioned my own sanity for bothering to try, especially in the dark. I couldn’t see shit. When I got you ashore, you looked pretty intact, so I decided to see what you tasted like.”
“Tasted me! What’s that supposed to mean?” She may have sounded indignant, but for the love of all things fishy, she was shocked at the images his choice of wording invoked. She could feel a blush rush up her chest.
“Whoa now. I only meant that I gave you mouth-to-mouth, banged on your chest and tried out those life-saving techniques I learned in Ranger Boys.” Wolfish eyes raked her body. “But if you want me to be literal, I don’t reckon dead girls have much of a taste.”
Cleo turned her flushed cheeks away and tried to focus on her lower leg. “Thanks. Thanks for doing that.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught his smirk.
She should assess her wound, figure out what kind of first aid she’d need, but as her hands worked to undo the sloppy, blood-encrusted bandage, the only thought in her head was, he has nice hair.
She heard his feet scrape the ground as he came over. The smirk was gone as he crouched beside her. “I did what I could, but I was too wet and cold to do much more than make sure you didn’t bleed to death.”
Cleo unwound the strip of material, exposing a six-inch gash. It wasn’t critically deep, but she would have benefited from a few stitches. The tender, swollen skin had jagged, torn edges. Lovely. Another attractive scar to add to her collection.
Had to have been caused by hitting a rock. Dark purple flesh surrounded the wound, a bruise so sensitive, her own prodding caused her to hiss with pain. A thin trickle of blood oozed through the encrusted lesion. Feeling a tad wobbly, she straightened her spine and placed her palms on the comforting firmness of the ground.
Blood loss. Had to be. Because a
little scratch like this wasn’t enough to make her queasy.
He bent down next to her, invading her space, so close, she could smell him. “You okay?”
“Sure.” She waved her hand dismissively. “I’ve had worse.”
He leaned over her shin, scrutinizing the gash while she studied the profile of his squared jaw. “Two inches toward the front and whatever you hit would have snapped your shin like a twig.”
Just like that, the world began to spin at the same rate as her stomach.
“Zhang hell, not again.” She felt his arm go around her shoulder. Warm, strong, supporting. “Hang on, Cleo. Deep breaths.”
Lacking the strength to pull away, she sagged against him. “I… I…” Her mouth suddenly filled with saliva. She swallowed and willed herself not to retch. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
No, I’m not. “I will be. Just give me a sec.”
“You want a drink?” He lowered her gently back down into a prone position. “I’ll be right back.”
Cleo closed her eyes until her head steadied, embarrassed by her weakness.
Think! Clear the mind, regulate the heart rate, and think.
She had to get away. Had to continue her mission. Yes—concentrate on the goal. She couldn’t go very far on that leg without risking infection. She had to stay put for a day or two.
But Jaegar might not have a couple more days! Think, think, think…
It was so hard to focus with a head that refused to stay attached. It floated like a spectral above her, floating, refusing to stay in the moment.
Calm, focus on breathing, remember the training. I am a warrior, trained to fight, to defend, trained to lead, trained to…