Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel) - By Shelly Thacker Page 0,64
emerald lightning.
She snatched her hand back, her senses and her thoughts scrambled. “You’re awake.”
She immediately felt like a fool for stating the obvious. A blaze of color heated her cheeks. How long had he been awake? While she had held him in her arms? While she had looked at him, touched him? What is the world had she been doing?
He blinked at her, slowly, drowsily.
And the smallest hint of a smile curved his mouth.
A thoroughly devilish smile.
The brigand. The rogue! He had been awake. Perhaps the entire time. And he hadn’t let her know. Hadn’t stopped her. He had let her... let her...
Sam wished the cavern floor would split open and swallow her whole. She started to explain, then realized she couldn’t.
What possible explanation could she offer? She didn’t understand herself. None of her thoughts, feelings, or actions lately were the least bit rational.
Besides which, she seemed to have completely lost her ability to speak.
But perhaps he wasn’t fully conscious yet. Perhaps he was still a bit delirious and wouldn’t remember.
He struggled to speak, said something she couldn’t make out. She leaned closer to hear what he was saying. Hoped it would be something feverish. A nice hallucination would do.
“How... long?” he rasped.
That sounded completely lucid.
Damn.
And she wasn’t sure exactly what he meant. How long had they been in the cave? Or how long had she been holding him and...?
She chose to answer the former. “You’ve been unconscious a long time.” She turned to pick up one of the rags she had used earlier to soak up water, suddenly wanting something to occupy her attention. And her hands. “Three or four days, I think.”
He winced, lifted his head, tried to get up.
“No, don’t,” she said, concern instantly replacing her other emotions. “You’re not ready for any kind of acrobatics just yet. Are you in pain?”
He lay down again, blinking as if to clear his vision. He flexed his left shoulder experimentally. “Not bad.”
Satisfied, she moved away from him, grateful for whatever distance she could get at the moment. Making her way over to the cavern wall on her knees, she repeated the now familiar, painstaking process of gathering water.
When she had enough to fill the cup halfway, she moved back to him. Supporting his head with her hand, she brought the cup to his lips.
He took a slurping, greedy swallow and almost choked.
“Slowly,” she cautioned. “Take it slowly.”
With a low sound of impatience, he drained the cup in seconds then lay back on the bunched-up sheet that pillowed his head. He looked exhausted merely from the effort of drinking. He closed his eyes.
And didn’t ask anything more.
She turned the battered goblet round and round in her fingers. “I took out the stitches and cauterized your wound to stop the bleeding,” she explained. “It’ll make an awful scar, but I didn’t think you’d mind. That is, you have so many.” She barely paused for a breath. “I’m afraid there’s no food left. And hardly any water. Just what I’ve been able to soak from the wall. And I had to use up all the candles. But I kept the fire going with some moss. I know it smells awful, but it burns slowly.”
She was babbling. Why was it suddenly important to fill up the silence with words?
Those dark lashes lifted and he gazed up at her, eyes gleaming darkly in the firelight. “You saved my life.”
He said it curtly, gruffly. No doubt because speaking taxed his strength—not because her saving him had made him feel any emotion. She found that too hard to believe.
Unsure how to respond, she simply nodded.
“Thanks, angel,” he murmured.
She blinked down at him, speechless. He had just expressed gratitude toward her. Gratitude. Thanks was not a word that had found its way to his lips before now.
And that one simple, mundane word, that expression of genuine human feeling, warmed her heart beyond reason.
“I think there’s a way out,” she said brightly. “Maybe just ahead. I saw a bird, a sparrow. It flew that way.” She gestured, turned to search the darkness. “The exit can’t be far. Maybe only a few yards...”
Turning back to him, she saw that he had fallen asleep again.
“... and here I am talking to myself like a fool.”
She blushed profusely. The word fool described perfectly how she felt. Somehow, between the time she had entered this cave and the moment he had awakened to gaze up at her with those jewel-bright eyes, she had been transformed into a flustered featherwit.