by Josie Litton
The sight that greeted him made bile rise in his throat. She lay crumbled at the edge of the water against the boulder that had finally stopped her. Tendrils of copper hair drifted on the incoming tide. Another few minutes, and the water would be deep enough to drown her. As it was, her slender form was unmoving. A thin trickle of blood oozed from a wound on her forehead, flowing away into the sea.
Scarcely breathing, Dragon lifted the girl and carried her a safe distance up the sand. He laid her down carefully, then hesitated, momentarily uncertain of what to do. The man who had seen more injuries on the battlefield than he could count, and who had prevented his own death a year before by swiftly dealing with a wound that would have killed him, found himself at an utter loss. She looked so fragile lying there, all the strength and courage suddenly gone from her. Swallowing thickly, he opened the small pack hanging from his belt, drawing from it the supplies that good sense and his sister-in-law, herself a renowned healer, assured he always carry with him. The soft, clean cloth he pressed against the wound on the girl's forehead slowed the bleeding. He left the makeshift bandage in place and quickly checked her limbs, relieved to find none of them broken. In the process, he could not help but discover that the loose boy's clothing concealed a body of strong, flowing curves. Firmly putting that discovery from his mind as best he could, he carefully slid his hands beneath the tunic and, ignoring the odd trembling that inexplicably struck him, confirmed that her ribs were also intact.
With a deep breath, the first in several moments, he drew back and regarded her cautiously. Her only injury seemed to be the blow to her head. She might recover from that completely … or she might never wake and simply slip away into eternal sleep. He had seen both happen with men similarly struck down. Only time would tell.
Fortunately for Dragon's peace of mind, before he could do much more than begin to consider how he might get her to a place of greater comfort and safety, the girl moaned softly. Thinking perhaps he had imagined the sound, indeed had merely willed it into being, he leaned closer and closer still until the soft exhalation of her breath brushed his bearded cheek. His gaze focused on her intently, he watched as her eyes slowly fluttered open.
HER HEAD HURT. RYCCA WINCED BUT HER INSTINCT was to move, to get up, to get away even if she couldn't quite remember what she was fleeing from. She tried to rise only to be pressed gently back onto the sand.
“Easy, sweetling. You had a bad fall. There are no bones broken but you need to take it slowly.”
The voice was a deep rumble, soothing, seductive and … all too familiar. Him. He had done this to her, chased her down, driven her right off the edge of the cliff. He'd damn near killed her and now he thought her helpless, prey no doubt to whatever it was he had in mind.
He had a nasty surprise awaiting him.
But not, unfortunately, until her head stopped spinning. With a frustrated moan, Rycca subsided. Dragon took the sound to mean she was suffering and bent over her in concern.
“Does something hurt besides your head? I checked and you seem to be all right but I could be wrong.”
He had checked. What did that mean? She stared directly into his eyes, which looked like ancient gold suddenly revealed to sunlight. Worse, his voice rippled through her, setting off odd little shivers at the same time as it made her feel strangely content.
His hand touched her brow very lightly. She scarcely noticed, so absorbed was she in his look of tender concern. Not that she was fooled by that for a moment. She knew warriors, had lived among them all her life. They were rough, crude men who took what they wanted with no thought but the satisfaction of their own urges. To have fallen from the heady heights of freedom into the very hands of such a man was worse even than falling from the cliff. That, at least, she had survived.
Long experience had taught her the terrible folly of ever showing fear or doubt. Accordingly, she met the warrior's gaze squarely, ignored the strange fluttering of her heart, and snarled, “Get away from me.”
Dragon sighed. He didn't blame her in the least for being angry with him; she had every right to feel that way. What he regretted was his inability to do as she wanted. “I'm sorry,” he said sincerely, “but I cannot. You've been hurt and you need help.”
Truth.
No, it couldn't be. Men didn't apologize, at least not to women. Nor did they extend themselves to help someone unless they expected something in return. The candor and compassion she felt in him had to be false. And that prompted a sudden thought: The tumble down the cliff might have done something to her strange, unwanted gift. Perhaps she no longer had any greater ability to tell truth from lie than did any other person. For that, she would fall down a dozen cliffs.
Yet was there still the tantalizing possibility that the warrior meant exactly what he had said. She eyed him cautiously. “I need no help. Let me up and I will be on my way.”
Patiently, he shook his head. “It is not safe for a woman to be traveling on her own.”
“I was perfectly safe until you crossed my path.”
“Well may you see it that way, but if I hadn't come along, someone else would have and you could be in great difficulty right now.”
If she hadn't known it would hurt, she might have laughed. As it was, she had to content herself with a grimace. “Oh, you mean I could have been chased over a cliff?”
The warrior reddened, not with anger, which she would have understood in response to her derision, but with what looked very much like regret.
“I thought you were a boy in need of better manners. Had I realized you were a girl …” He paused and shrugged. “I would still have come after you because you really should not be without escort. But I would have tried to take you by surprise so you would not run off and get hurt.”
Truth.
“Yes, well, that's fine, but there is no need for you to be concerned. I am meeting my … my brother just a short distance from here.”
Strictly speaking, Normandy was a far journey. But there were much greater distances to go, all the way to fabled Byzantium or even to the lands farther to the east and south. If that weren't enough, there were tales of a land to the west where mountains ran with molten fury and vast vents of steam rose from the sundered earth. Some of those who claimed to have seen such a place told stranger stories yet of a land yet farther to the west, endowed with rugged coastlines and endless forests. Besides all that, Normandy might as well be the neighboring village. So she wasn't really lying … not entirely.
“Fine,” the warrior said. “I will take you to him.”
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental.
DREAM OF ME / BELIEVE IN ME
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
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Copyright © 2001 by Josie Litton
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eISBN: 978-0-307-48402-4
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