Free Shana Abe by The Promise of Rain Page B

eye level to her. If they turned their heads toward her even a fraction, she would be caught.
    They moved so slowly. She was afraid to breathe, her body was screaming to move, to run in panic, and she had to close her eyes to erase the sight of them, pressing her cheek against the roughness of the bark. She heard one of the horses snort in alarm, and had to bite her lip to fight the whimper that wanted to come out.
    “Here now,” said the man on the horse, “what’s gotten to you, boy?”
    She opened her eyes and the soldier was close beside her. And he was turning to look around.
    “Her horse!”
    The cry came from far ahead, bless Auster, and immediately drew the attention of both of the men.
    “What was that? Did he say he found her horse?”
    “Aye, that’s what it sounded like to me.”
    As if to confirm it, the call came again, and then more cries from the soldiers scattered about. The two men pushed ahead into the fog, leaving her alone again in the whiteness.
    The whimper came out now, unbidden, this time signaling relief. She waited, listening carefully, but all the sounds were up ahead, where they should have been. She began to climb down the tree, one step, then another, searching carefully with her foot for the next hold.
    “Where would you have gone, I wonder, if you had escaped?”
    She couldn’t stop the little scream that came out; her hand missed its grip on the branch she had been reaching for, plunging her off-balance. It was too late to stop herself from falling.
    The branches bent or broke beneath her, scratching her, ripping her clothing, and then she landed hard on something that grunted and collapsed to the ground under her.
    A shower of pine needles drifted down in her wake, a pin-sharp snowfall.
    Her wind was gone, her head was spinning. She couldn’t move as Lord Strathmore grunted again and shifted her off of him. He leaned over into her line of vision, examining her curiously. The memory of the turquoise look merged with the present, only now his eyes were brighter, and almost laughing. None of the anger she might have expected was reflected in that look. Instead a sort of mischief glittered there, the end result of that resignation she had heard before, an I-told-you-so boyishness. A lock of his golden hair curled down against her neck.
    Kyla blinked to get the spots out of her vision.
    “Well,” Roland said, slowly breaking into a smile. “We seem fated to keep meeting under the most unusual of circumstances, my lady.”
    And then he lowered his lips to hers.

Chapter Five
    H er lips were soft and succulent, even better than he had imagined them to be, and he had been imagining quite a bit since he met her.
    She tasted warm and spicy, yet the mist had cooled her skin, a delightful contradiction that pleased him in some whimsical way. He reached up a hand and cradled her cheek, marveling at the smoothness, rubbing his thumb through the thin film of moisture left by the fog.
    She seemed stunned, immobile, those gray eyes large and startled as she looked up at him. He drew back his hand slightly and passed it over her eyes, gently, just enough so she would close them. Then he closed his own, deepening the kiss this time.
    Her mouth opened beneath his. Perhaps she was just jolted from the fall, but he took advantage of it and touched his tongue against hers, and now she did gasp—but he used his other hand to stroke her hair, running his fingers through the silkiness of it, encountering the leaves and twigs left from her run, smoothing around them to find the line of her neck, her jaw.
    He knew this was a serious breach of conduct. He was shamelessly taking advantage of someone in his personal care, a woman who had no other refuge. He should stop. It was wrong.
    But it felt so good.
    The hunger inside of him that had been born that night atthe inn had not abated, no matter how he rationalized it, no matter how he sought to dismantle it through logic, reason, or honor. The hunger had