Honor Bound(22)

"I'm sorry." Before she could prepare herself, he ripped the remaining sleeve away. "That's the best way. I'm sorry," he repeated.

"It's all right. I know you had to." Her eyes filled with tears, but she didn't let them fall. He seemed momentarily entranced by her eyes, or was he merely watching to see if an Anglo woman would surrender to pain and cry?

Then, abruptly, and with the same kind of detachment he had shown as he unbuttoned her blouse, he angled her forward in order to remove it. For an infinitesimal second, Aislinn leaned against him, her breasts grazing his chest.

Myriad sensations flocked to her mind like fluttering birds. How fragile her nipples felt against the solid wall of muscle. How his chest hair felt both crisp and soft as it tickled her skin. How warm he was.

They pretended not to notice the brief contact, though his jaw was clenched tighter than ever when he eased her back into the corner of the seat.

The reopened scratch, which ran the entire length of her arm, oozed blood. Greywolf tossed her blouse aside and reached into a paper sack. He took a box of sterilized cotton and a bottle of antiseptic from it. "This is going to burn like hell," he said, uncapping the bottle and pouring some of the liquid onto a wad of cotton. "Ready?" he asked.

She nodded. He lifted her arm and applied the cotton to the wounded skin on the underside. Her knees jack-knifed; she gasped; tears spurted out of her eyes. Quickly he dabbed the entire scratch from wrist to armpit, then went back to press the soaked cotton to the places where the nail had plowed deeper.

"Oh, please," Aislinn moaned, squeezing her eyes shut against the fiery pain.

He hurriedly recapped the antiseptic and set it aside. Lifting her arm again, he began to blow gently on the scratch.

Aislinn opened her eyes and was dismayed to find his dark head bending so low over her. One brown hand was wrapped loosely around her wrist, holding her arm up. The other was splayed open just behind her head bracing him above her.

She watched his cheeks beneath the blade-sharp ridge of his cheekbones. They ballooned in and out as he cooled her skin with his gentle breath. His lips hovered scant inches above her arm. His head moved higher as he worked his way up her arm until his mouth was even with her breast.

His breath touched her there. Warm and balmy and soft. Responsively, her nipples reacted. They beaded to the size of small, perfect, pink pearls.

When he saw what had happened, his head made a jerking motion, as though he was going to raise it. But he paused. Lowered his head. Blew on her again. More gently this time, but directly over the tip of her breasts.

Then he became perfectly still. Raw hunger made his eyes look bleak as his gaze became fixed on her. He swallowed. He strained toward her, but, as though an invisible leash were around his neck, he refrained from touching her.

Aislinn was afraid to move, though she was tempted to. She fell victim to an almost irresistible urge to thread her fingers up through his hair and draw his head down to her. A forbidden and unaccountable tenderness for him overwhelmed her. It was unlike any emotion she had ever experienced before. She longed to grant him the use of her body. She wanted to use his. She should hate him and yet…

Why hadn't he deserted her at the service station? Why had he wasted his precious time getting aspirin and medicine for her scratch? Was there more to this man than met the eye? Did he have a capacity for human kindness after all? Was his austerity only a reaction to the injustices he had suffered?

Her expression conveyed her bafflement and made her appear extremely receptive and vulnerable. When Greywolf looked up into her face, the fire in his eyes went out instantly and he growled a warning. "Don't look at me like that."

She shook her head uncomprehendingly. "Like what?"

"Like you've forgotten that I've been in prison. Do you want to know if I desire you?" he asked harshly. "Well I do." The fingers encircling her arm became a manacle. "Yes, I want you. I want to touch you all over. I want to feel your breasts. I want to take one in my mouth and hold it there for a long, long time. I want to be so deep inside you I can feel your heartbeat. So unless you're ready to take an Indian between your thighs, I suggest you don't give me that come-on look again, Miss Andrews."

Outraged that he could so grossly misinterpret her expression, and furious with herself for giving him the benefit of the doubt only seconds before, she shielded her breasts with her free arm. "Don't flatter yourself," she hissed. "I'd die first."

He laughed shortly. "I'm sure you would. At least you'd want to die before having your pure Anglo body tainted by an Indian. But at least you won't bleed to death. Not if I have anything to do with it," he said bitterly.

She averted her head and didn't deign to look at him while he bound her arm with gauze he had taken from the sack. Once that was done, he gathered together the first-aid supplies and stuffed them back into the paper bag.

Her eyes widened with alarm when he picked up the knife, but he used it only to cut the sleeves from her shirt, much as he must have his own. He wielded the sharp blade viciously, making jagged cuts in the material until the job was done, then tossed the ravaged garment to her.

"Put this back on. We've wasted enough time here." He got out and went around to the driver's seat. In broody silence, Aislinn stared at the back of his head. While the car made the best of the pockmarked highway, she devised a dozen ways to overpower him. Each one was eliminated before she could even think it through. She thought of making a garrote out of one of her sleeves and strangling him from behind. But then where would she be? Out in the middle of nowhere without a map or water. The gasoline in the car wouldn't last forever. Should she succeed in physically besting Greywolf, her chances of surviving in the wilderness were remote.