Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel) - By Shelly Thacker Page 0,68

a long arc, uttering a sound of derision. “To think I had started to consider you intelligent.”

“Pardon me,” she snapped, sitting up. “I should have guessed. You’re too realistic to believe in anything or anyone but yourself.”

“You’ve got that right, lady.”

“You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? You’re in charge and nobody else.”

“Right again.”

“What you are is arrogant. Too arrogant and coldhearted for a concept like faith. Or even simple human caring.” Her gaze locked on his. “You might give one of them a try sometime.”

He caught that less-than-subtle jibe and purposely let it pass without comment.

When he didn’t say anything, she turned her back on him. The chain pulled taut. Shoulders rising and falling, she fumed silently and stared at the river.

Nicholas knew what she was angry about, and tried to ignore her.

Which was bloody difficult when he couldn’t get more than two feet away from her.

Just looking at her slender back, he experienced the stab of a too-familiar feeling: guilt. He was being a real bastard, taking out his problems on her. He owed her his life. He would’ve died in that cave if not for her.

Alone, he would’ve died.

His time in the cavern was nothing but a blur of pain and heat. He remembered none of it... except her, always beside him, cooling his brow, whispering encouragement, comforting him.

He had been lost, alone, beyond the bleak edge of darkness.

And she had brought him back. She had cared for him, cared about him, in a way that no one else had for years.

And now he was acting as if none of it had ever happened.

He glanced away, looked at the waterfall, told himself there was no reason to feel guilt. Or anything else. Aye, he would not have survived the fever without her. But she would not have survived the whirlpool without him. They had agreed at the start that they would keep one another alive. A fair trade. Simple enough.

At least it had seemed simple, just a few short days ago. He had even thought that he might have to kill her because she could be a danger to him.

And she still could be a danger to him.

But killing her, hurting her in any way, was utterly out of the question.

You’ve got it all figured out. He shut his eyes. Hellfire and damnation, he wished that were still true. He didn’t know how everything had become so blasted complicated. He didn’t want things to change between them, didn’t want to feel anything for her. He had to think of himself, as he always had in the past.

That was the only way to survive. The kind of simple human caring she talked about could prove dangerous to his health.

And so he said not one word to her about what had taken place in the cave. He had told her thanks. What more did she want?

What did it matter to him if she felt angry and hurt? He didn’t care. He did not...

He glanced her way, and somehow the word care stuck in his throat. It got all tangled up with the guilt and almost choked him.

No woman he had ever met in his life had made him feel so confused. No woman had ever made him feel anything at all, beyond simple physical desire.

What the hell was she doing to him?

At the moment, she wasn’t doing anything at all, staring off into the darkness, her spine stubbornly straight, her hair a flaxen cascade that fell to her waist. She looked almost regal, warmed by the golden fire, crowned by silver starlight.

Regal and cool and distant.

But he had glimpsed a completely different side of her in the cave. That he remembered vividly: the sensation of awakening to the soft brush of her fingertips over his ribs.

It had been worse torture than anything else he had endured. There had been curiosity in that touch, and more—the most innocent, tender desire he had ever encountered in his life, awakening before his very eyes. Directed at him. He had watched it happen... and been helpless to do anything about it.

But he wasn’t helpless anymore.

The thought flowed through him like a draught of potent wine. Hot. Tempting. He watched her, sitting only inches away. She might be cool and distant at the moment, but her tentative, curious explorations when she had thought him asleep told him a completely different story. One he couldn’t forget.

She might not be able to put the feeling into words, might not understand it at all, but he