fists tight against his pectorals, and she instinctively dug her heels against the wooden floor for purchase. This allowed him the unexpected and pleasant comfort of a cradle of soft thighs covered in silk as a resting point for his hips.
He found it strangely provoking, the way she shook so hard and gasped for breath beneath him. The push of the gown she wore accented the extraordinary symmetry of her rising and falling breasts. That scent, that sweet and innocent aroma of tender flowers and springtime warmth arose from her skin to envelop him. To his astonishment, he realized for the first time that this truly was a real woman he held trapped beneath him. This was no wraith, no Lost soul only. She felt of soft flesh and heated blood, as alive and vital as he was…for the time being. He held her helpless and vulnerable, despite his own weakening stamina, and there was something indelibly primal to that understanding that sent shockwaves of stimulation racing along the surfaces of his flesh.
The thought was actually sexual, Trace realized with a stunned inner laugh at himself. Of all the times! Here he was, on the brink of mortality, and all he was thinking of was how delicate and helpless this little blond mouse was…and how undeniably provocative she was because of it.
His goal in pinning her to the floor had been to scare her to death so that she would run away screaming and leave him to drop dead in peace. But his desires changed on the fly, and suddenly he was heavily distracted by the bright white and gold of her hair. He reached up for it, fondling one of the silky soft curls between his fingers.
“It never ceases to amaze me how this color seems to glow even in the dark and dim,” he murmured, also finding the texture to be supernaturally refined, almost as delicate as cobwebs.
“Please…d-don’t hurt m-me,” she stammered in between chattering of her teeth. “I…I can help you!” Her fear was both perplexing and bemusing, but even more so was her offer of help in spite of it. Trace supposed she was bargaining with him, offering him something to make her of value to him so he wouldn’t want to do her harm. It was actually quite clever of her.
“What do they call you?” he demanded suddenly, the hardness of the command in total counterpoint to the fingers still gently stroking her hair.
“Ashla,” she said obediently.
Her compliance mystified him. Had she been a Shadowdweller woman, he’d be nursing a few choice bruises by now, not to mention having his ears rung with tart insults. Trace wasn’t used to a woman like this. She seemed fragile enough to break. Small like a child. And yet…
“Ashla. You must leave this place. Do you understand? It is not a safe place to be right now.” Perhaps for more than one reason, he mused. The possibility that Baylor had arranged to meet companions did exist, and they could turn up at any time, but Ashla’s threat might be more immediate than that. Trace pressed a palm to the wooden floor, making to push himself up but succeeding only a little. Still, it was enough to allow him a long appraisal down the length of her curving side.
By the Dark, he groaned inwardly, I must be losing my mind. An effect of blood loss. Something. Anything. What else could explain this hard surge of predatory need pumping through him? The force of it on his already drained system made him light-headed, and he could feel the room beginning to spin.
“You need to go,” he rasped, using one last effort to roll his weight off her. The last thing he wanted was to trap her beneath him as he fell into dead weight and then eventually death. The little Lost rabbit wouldn’t be likely to survive such a gruesome and endangering experience.
He sprawled over the floor to her right, closing his eyes when everything around him lurched and spun wickedly. Damn, he thought bitterly, this is an annoying way to die. Never mind the anticlimactic resolution to his fight with Baylor and the fact that he couldn’t warn his regents of bubbling trouble, but to never have a chance to figure out what it was about this woman that so tantalized and intrigued him, that felt like the true tragedy.
Ashla wanted to obey his command to leave with all of her heart. She wanted to run fast and hard until the entire world fell away from her and snapped back into the normal, sane place she was used to and craved so very badly.
But despite all of that, she couldn’t find it in herself to leave him like he was. He was obviously injured, and very badly at that. There weren’t many things she could count herself any good at, but she had the potential to help him if she had to.
“I’m not going to leave you here without any help,” she said with a firm bravado they both knew she didn’t feel. She lifted her chin and met his eyes, hoping this would make her determination more convincing.
He chuckled, a dry, breathy sound that went eerily well with the amazingly faceted darkness of his eyes as he looked at her. “There is no help. You’ll learn that soon enough,” he said.
His defeatist words slid past her barely noticed. She was caught up for a moment in the wondrous way his irises nearly matched the black depths of his pupils, except there was something like starlight in those dark centers, and the black coffee color surrounding them gleamed like painstakingly cut precious stones. She found it impossible to look away until his long, sooty lashes fell over them with his waning consciousness.
Ashla shook herself to the ready.
“Who knows, you could be right,” she muttered as she leaned over him. “For all I know, that’s because you went around chopping all their heads off. And me being the idiot I am, I’m going to try and help you so you can get strong enough to lift your scary sword again and…and…”
The implication was clear enough. She didn’t need to voice what she clearly couldn’t. It shouldn’t have affected Trace one way or another, what a wraith thought of him, but for some reason the taste her remarks left on his tongue was deeply bitter.
“Look,” he growled on labored breaths, indignant emotion fueling him for the moment, “I said I’m not going to hurt you.”
“That’s what the bad guy tells every stupid woman in all those stupid movies, and she always ends up dead or worse. Which I guess makes me really, really stupid.” She peeled back the fabric of his torn shirt and turned extraordinarily gray right before his eyes as she took in the scope of the cuts and slices he’d received from both Baylor and the plate glass he’d come through. “Oh, God, I…” She gagged low in her throat and reflexively went to cover her mouth, but an inch short of the mark her eyes focused on the blood from his wounds that was soaking her palms and forearms and the movement screeched to a halt. The rusty smell of fresh, abundant blood must have hit her a second after that because she flung herself away from him and vomited violently.
But to Trace’s surprise, she turned back to him as soon as she had minimally composed herself. She began grabbing clothing from nearby tables using them to wipe away the blood on his chest. She then applied pressure to the worst of his visible wounds, all the while, continuously weeping huge, silent tears. It was as though the emotional woman and the physical one were acting completely independent of each other’s reactions. He was compelled to reach for one of her slim wrists, grasping it and holding it firmly even when she startled hard in his hand. Tears rained off the slopes of her cheeks as her worried eyes flicked up to confront him.
“You do not have to do this. You have every right to be afraid in this strange world you no doubt have little understanding of. And anyway, these wounds are nothing. The mortal blow was in my back, and there is nothing to be done for it. These others are incidental. Listen.” Trace squeezed the remarkably small hand he held gently, overcome with the idea that he could shatter her small bones if he pressed too hard. Strange he should think so. The women in his world were strong and powerful, sturdy
