Free Judith E. French by Moon Dancer Page A

her lips with her tongue and tried to open her eyes. Her lids seemed to be made of lead; they were too heavy. She lifted a hand and let it fall. It brushed against bare skin. Questions rose in her mind, but forming them was too difficult. Asking them would be impossible.
    Gentle fingers ran through her hair.
    The chanting was closer now ... it was all around her. The timbre of the voice brought tears to her eyes. The pull of sleep was intoxicating. By sheer will Fiona struggled to stay awake. And lost.
     
    A warm hand caressed her naked back.
    She exhaled softly and snuggled her face against a broad male chest. Her eyes snapped open, and she gave a little cry of alarm.
    “Hush, Irish. You are safe here,” Wolf Shadow murmured.
    She pushed frantically away, tangling her legs with his long ones. “Oh!” Fiona rose to her knees and stared at him in shock.
    He lay inches away, stretched out on their shared bearskin, his left hand casually supporting his head, one knee slightly flexed. She swallowed hard. Wolf Shadow was stark naked, his skin glistening in the flickering light.
    Fiona’s mouth went dry as her gaze dropped from his dark, hypnotic eyes to the wide expanse of his powerful shoulders. Muscles bulged beneath the silken skin of his broad chest, accented by the copper bands that encircled his massive biceps. His torso was long and lean, his belly flat, his hips smooth and sinewy.
    Here and there the faded scars of old wounds cut the surface of his golden skin, but they did not detract from his male beauty ... they made his physique even more breathtaking. Her eyes widened as she took in the bloodred tattoo of an animal’s pawprint on his muscular left thigh. Her eyes rose to meet his. In that fathomless, amused scrutiny she read an unmistakable challenge, a dare she could not let pass.
    Trembling, she forced herself to look at his naked body again. Her cheeks grew hot, and a curious tingling began in the pit of her stomach as she stared at his hairless chest and the smooth, bronze planes of his waist and loins. She had never seen a man with such an absence of hair on his body, but the sparse nest of dark hair above his manhood seemed as natural as the length and fullness of his erect shaft. She couldn’t tear her eyes away until she heard his soft chuckle.
    Fiona gasped, realizing that she was as unclad as he was. Quickly she pulled the tanned hide up to cover her nakedness. Fear and confusion filled her, and the fingers of her right hand knotted in a thick, silky animal pelt as memories of what had happened at the stream came flooding back. She shrank away from him, knowing that there was no place to run—that she was at the wolf-man’s mercy. “Who are you?” she managed weakly. “What are you?”
    He chuckled. “You asked me that before.”
    His words were slow and reassuring—the same tone he had used with the mule when it became bogged in the snow, she thought. But he’d cut the mule’s throat, suddenly and brutally and without reason. As he’d killed the two Indians. Murdered them and defaced their bodies ...
    “You’ve nothing to fear from me,” Wolf Shadow repeated. “This cave is a secret place. They won’t find us here.”
    Fiona couldn’t stop trembling. How could he lie there as naked as the day he was born and talk to her so calmly? The firelight reflected in the depths of his coal-black eyes. Was it compassion she read there, or madness? “You ... you drowned that man,” she began. “You murdered him ... and now ...” Her voice trailed away under the force of his gaze.
    The thought that she had looked on his nakedness curled in the back of her mind. Not only had she looked, but she had taken pleasure in the sight of his terrible beauty. She forced the damning thoughts away. She couldn’t face them now. She stiffened. “Now do you mean to rape me?”
    “Pah.” He rose and stalked to the far side of the fire. “I expected more of you, Irish.” Anger made his speech hard and