Vengeance (The Captive #6)(27)
The warm plume of a horse’s breath blew against her face, providing a brief warmth to her icy skin. She lifted her head to take in the man sitting upon its back. He stared down at her with a furrowed brow and compressed lips. Tempest touched the horse’s nose to assure herself it was real. Her hand had just grazed its velvety muzzle when she passed out in the snow.
CHAPTER 10
William tossed another log onto the fire, stoking it higher when it began to die down again. His gaze fell on the woman lying across from him. She was lying with her back against the wall and her head on her hands. The dancing flames played over her refined, pale features and high, sloping cheekbones. In the firelight, her hair was the color of liquid silver as it tumbled about her shoulders. The slope at the end of her thin-bridged nose gave him the strangest urge to poke it. Her full mouth still had a bluish tint to it from the cold, but a rosy hue had begun to creep in slowly as her body warmed.
Where had she come from? He wondered as he watched her. He hadn’t seen a town in three days. He sensed no indication of anything being remotely close to them, but it was impossible to tell in the tumultuous storm. Somehow, even in the maelstrom she’d been there though, in the middle of nowhere, sitting in the snow. His gaze traveled over the white, patchwork cloak she’d been wearing over her much thicker, black cloak. He focused on the rips and blood staining the sleeves of the white cloak.
He’d pulled off both of her cloaks when he’d gotten her inside the cave and draped one of his drier, heavier cloaks over her. If the lightening of the gray sky was any indication, she’d been sleeping for almost ten hours, with no sign of waking. At the front of the cave, Achilles released a small snuff; his hooves clopped against the stone before he settled down again.
Rising to his feet, William walked to the shadows at the back of the cave where he’d stashed the blood he’d taken from a few deer and fox he’d hunted since leaving Chester. The woman would require blood when she woke. He grabbed one of the canteens and returned to the main part of the cave.
The fire cast shadows over the cave he’d discovered three days ago. He’d decided to use the cave as his base before the storm had started. It had taken time away from his hunt for Kane to gather the supplies, but after what he’d witnessed in Chester, he wasn’t going to take any chances on having nowhere to shelter. He had two maybe three days of supplies already gathered within for the two of them, depending on how hungry she was. It would have been almost a week’s worth of supplies for him.
Almond-shaped doe brown eyes met his when he stopped beside the fire. His eyebrows rose as those eyes surveyed him from head to toe. The look in them suggested she would start swinging if he got any closer to her. He took a step back, hoping to put her more at ease as she placed her hands on the floor and pushed herself into a sitting position. She winced and bit on her bottom lip before collapsing against the wall.
“Are you ok?” he inquired.
“Yes,” she muttered, but the wary look in her eyes didn’t ease.
He took another step away from her. “Where did you come from?”
“Where did you come from?” she retorted.
He gave a small snort of laughter and held the canteen up for her to see. “Are you hungry?” Red flashed briefly through her eyes before she glanced away from him. Her fingers dug into the cave floor; her nostrils flared, but she didn’t look at him again. Walking over to her, he held out the canteen. “It’s deer blood. It will help you.”
Her eyes slid toward him. He uncapped the canteen. “Take it,” he urged, swirling the liquid inside in an attempt to lure her with the smell.
The warm brown of her eyes flashed with red again; she snatched it away from him. Her eyes closed in ecstasy as she gulped down the contents. Turning away, he walked over to sit on the other side of the fire. He watched her as she tapped the bottom of the canteen to get the last drops before finally lowering it again. She wiped the blood away from her mouth with the back of her hand. The last of the blue had faded from her lips, leaving them the color of the blood she’d consumed.
“Thank you,” she murmured before placing the canteen down beside her.
“There’s more if you would like some?”
“No,” she replied and settled against the wall with her legs drawn up to her chest.
Her gaze darted over the cave again like she was trying to figure out where she was. She focused on the exit; he knew she was calculating how fast she could escape.
“When was the last time you fed?” he inquired.
“I don’t remember.”
His curiosity prickled. Had she somehow escaped a town like Chester? “Is there a reason for that?” He tried to keep the gruffness out of his voice, but she glanced at him sharply.
“I was lost in a blizzard,” she reminded him.
“That’s the only reason?”
Her shoulders thrust back, her legs stiffened. “Yes.”
He couldn’t shake the feeling she was lying, but he didn’t think he’d get her to open up to him, not until she started to trust him a little more. “What’s your name?”
She pulled his cloak tighter around her before edging closer to the fire. Holding her palms over the flames, she enthusiastically rubbed her fine boned hands together. The fire danced across her face and lit the pale hair tumbling over her shoulders. When he’d first brought her in here, her hair had appeared white due to the snow and ice encrusting it, but they had melted and dried on the cave floor hours ago. He’d caught a glimpse of her slender body when he’d been taking the wet cloaks from her. The loose fitting, wool shirt she wore emphasized the swell of her breasts. Her wool pants hugged her thighs and rounded hips.