by Molly Wens
She saw him, looking up with huge, glassy eyes. Her hands flew up in front of her, intent upon defending herself from the attacker in her delirium. “No, John, don't!” she cried out.
The pain in her expression, the horror in her eyes, was nearly too much for Bryce. This was not the same demon—or demons—that had plagued her earlier nightmares. This one was someone she knew. Thinking once again about the scars that snaked across the small of her back, he wondered if this “John” had been the man who had created them. He knew a sudden burning hatred of the man, whoever he was.
"Carissa, I'm not John,” he cajoled. “I'm Bryce, remember?” He watched her eyes as he slowly moved closer, crawling along the floor with the blanket dragging in his hand.
Confusion crossed her face, furrowing her forehead. “B ... Bryce?” she stammered in a quivering voice.
"That's right, Cari, you're safe here."
He was close enough to touch her now but held back, afraid that she would begin struggling again. She did not fight but looked at him, her large eyes still showing her fear as she shivered on the cold floor.
"Where's Alice?” she whispered at the sound of her nickname, still recoiled against the wall.
It was Bryce's turn to be confused. “Who's Alice?"
"My friend,” she said as she glanced around the cabin. “My wolf."
Bryce was startled at her words, remembering the sound of the animal that had drawn him and his dog into the wilderness the night they had found her. As her shivering became more violent; however, he had to shove the thoughts aside and deal with how to get her off the floor and back to bed.
"I'm going to cover you, Cari. I have to get you off the floor before you catch your death."
The woman showed no sign of resistance as he moved slowly closer and laid the blanket over her shoulders, pulling it closed around her front. Her fathomless eyes watched him as he slowly took her into his arms, lifting her and carrying her back to the bed at the center of the wall.
As Bryce bent to lay her upon the mattress, she clung to the front of his shirt, not willing to let him go. He could feel her warm breath flowing through the soft fabric as she moaned her protest. Straightening, he was dismayed at this sudden turn. The woman actually wanted him near, wanted to be in his arms, needed the comfort that he could offer.
That feeling of protectiveness surged through him again as his arms tightened about the frail body. All thoughts of anger and imposition dissolved at the sensation of her heated body against his with her hands clinging to him so desperately. He savored the sweetness of it, that small bit of acceptance this injured woman offered him.
Walking carefully around the end of the bed, he sat down on his big chair, cradling her against him, caressing her hair and back, and relishing the solace, the warmth that only another body can give. She was still fevered, but not to the point she had been earlier, which was some small relief. He would keep her alive, will her to live; she would survive; that he vowed.
Holding Carissa, with Skoll periodically sniffing at her sleeping form, Bryce felt that he could know happiness if she could see past what made him so repugnant in the eyes of the world ... He stopped his train of thought. How can I expect her to look at me? he told himself, furious at the notion. To even allow himself to hope was to set himself up for defeat.
Still, he decided, he could enjoy her now, hold her and feel her soft body pressed to his. Somewhere deep inside a throbbing ache started, spreading its painful tendrils throughout his body and centering in his groin. The problem was only made worse when she stirred on his lap, pressing herself closer to the axis of the issue.
Bryce stifled a groan as her head rolled back, her eyes open, drawing him into their immeasurable depths. She seemed to study him for a long while, though he did not know if she were actually seeing him, or if she were lost in the hallucinations of her illness. His discomfort under such close scrutiny was nearly tangible, but he could not bring himself to look away from her intense gaze.
"I'm sorry,” she whispered.
He frowned down at her, confused by her words. “Sorry? For what?"
"I think I'm sitting on you. Am I too heavy?"
Bryce, at first taken aback by her words, started laughing, a deep rumble that started low in his chest. It was an unfamiliar sound to his ears, and it filled the room with its resonance. Carissa smiled slightly, lowering her head and closing her eyes. She was once again asleep, cuddling close to the hardness of his body.
The giant of a man could not help the lightness of mood that began to wash over him, as he chanced to hug her closer. That hope that he had been trying to squelch began to swell again, and this time he let it win. It was too much to dare to expect her to find any attraction for him, but just maybe, he might find in her a friend, a companion, to see him through the long winter months ahead.
There was a slight shiver, still, in her body as she dozed on his lap. His concern was eased some, though, by her apparent lucidity. It would be a long road to recovery for her, he knew, but he felt that she had a good chance at this point. Running his knuckles over her cheek, feeling the roughness of the abrasions mix with the silky texture of the fine skin, he found that she seemed cooler than before, another reason to feel relieved.
There was a small movement under his caressing hand. The sound of the woman smacking her lips made him search his memory for the last time he had attempted to get some liquids into her. This, coupled with the sound of his stomach growling, brought him to the realization that he should fix some food.
As he laid her enwrapped body on the bed, tucking a pillow gently under her head, he realized that it had been at least two days since he had eaten anything. Skoll took his food from a self-feeder in the back of the kitchen, but Bryce had neglected his own needs. With a crooked smile at the sleeping woman, he turned to see about finding something for them to eat.
Removing a package of dried beef from the cabinet once he had entered the kitchen, Bryce decided that a big pot of stew was in order, just the thing to help Carissa regain her strength. Skoll sat on his haunches at the kitchen door, thumping his tail in agreement until the man finally tossed a piece of beef into the air. The dog lifted his head and caught the morsel with little effort, then trotted back to the front room of the cabin.
Peering around the corner, the man had to crook a smile at the bewildering dog. Skoll had taken up his post beside the bed again, his boulder of a head resting on the mattress near the frail woman. Shaking his head, Bryce returned to his task in the kitchen. Once the beef was bubbling in the cast iron pot on the wood stove, he returned to the front room to check on his patient.
Carissa moaned softly, her curled body twitched in the world of dreams that held her trapped. Her skin was still hot, causing more concern for Bryce as he straightened the covers on the bed. She continued to languish in the fever that weakened her diminutive body. Sitting on the chair with his elbows on his knees, his fingers steepled at his mouth, he wondered if there was anything else he could do, could try that would break the fever and end the illness.
He could think of nothing but the clouds of fatigue that plagued his tired mind. As he ran a hand through his tangled, dirty hair, he leaned his head back on the chair. Closing his eyes for a moment, he was assailed with images of the face of a broken woman, bloodied and pained, her silent eyes begging him for mercy, for release from the suffering.
Snapping his body upright, fighting back the images from the past, he cast his blood-rimmed eyes at the woman on the bed. This woman would not be dying, he would see to that. A twinge of panic stabbed his heart; however, as her moans grew louder. She had managed to throw the blankets off her fevered body in her struggles against the specters in her mind.
Sitting on the bed, he dragged the wet cloth over her face and neck again, her eyes popping open at the shocking cold. As he continued to sponge her fevered body down, his hands trembled at the touch of her fiery bare skin under his caress. The feel of the creamy, satiny skin made t
he ache in his chest—and his groin—all the more acute, and he berated himself for it. How could he allow himself to be aroused by this poor creature who had no defense?
Quick to finish his task, Bryce covered the woman and turned away, taking great gulps of air to steady his nerves. He walked to the kitchen, glad of having something to do that could take his mind off the soft sighs of the ailing woman. Working with his hands had always been a balm for him, even in the kitchen. He tried to think of anything except Carissa as he cut up vegetables and added herbs, watching the pot of gravy bubble the food to fully cooked.
He ladled the stew, now finished, into a bowl and accompanied by a cup of tea that he carried to the bed on a tray. Allowing the thick, rich ragout to cool a bit before trying to wake her, he thought of how she felt in his arms: soft and warm and luscious. She had nestled so sweetly against him, nuzzling his chest and sighing, it was bewitching to think about.
When Carissa stirred on the bed, he was pulled from his musings, nearly blushing as if she could read his wayward thoughts. Her long lashes fluttered open to reveal the magnificent eyes that had so captured his imagination. A wisp of a lonely sigh rushed from his lips as he reached to prop the pillows behind her head. A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as he drew nearer, causing a faint skip of his heart.
Spreading a towel over her quilt-draped chest, he offered her a sip of tea. She lifted a hand as if to take the cup, only to allow it drop weakly on the bed, casting her eyes to his face in helplessness. He held the cup of now-tepid amber liquid to her lips with a large hand on the back of her head, supporting her as she drank thirstily.
When he gently slid his hand from behind her head, her eyes slipped closed again. The effort of drinking had taken its toll on her flagging strength. “You must eat,” he told her as he held a bowl in front of her to catch the drippings of the spoon he held in his other hand. “Please try,” he added with concern in his voice.
She opened her feverish eyes and watched his face as he guided the bite to her mouth. The savory stew settled on her tongue as she closed her mouth before she swallowed.
"It's good,” she whispered, her voice a husky rasp.
One corner of his mouth twitched as he concentrated on taking the second spoonful to her swollen lips. Her eyes never left his—disconcerting, to his way of thinking—watching him as if to find some hidden truth. By the third bite, however, her eyelids slipped closed as she moved her head to the side.
"No more ... I can't,” she murmured hoarsely.
Impotent helplessness furrowed his brow as he slid the spoon back into the bowl, watching as her flushed face expressed the pain she was feeling. Tucking the blanket more securely about her curving shoulders, he settled her more comfortably in the bed, watching as she dropped into a fitful sleep. He lifted the tray from the table and carried it to the kitchen, glancing tentatively over his shoulder at the shivering woman.
There had to be something he was missing, some certain task he could perform that would alleviate her illness. He could think of nothing; he had done all that his training and his common sense dictated. As he dipped a serving of stew for himself, he vowed again that she would live, no matter what he had to do.
He ate as he stood at the old sink, pondering the gentle tenderness in the woman's fevered eyes as she had looked up at him. He knew that she must have a great deal of inner strength to survive all that she had endured, but he was starting to doubt that she had enough left to pull her through this malady. He could lower her temperature but it seemed to always return, higher than before. If it climbed dangerously high again, as it had in the pre-dawn hours, he seriously doubted that she would succeed in surviving a second time.
Old wives’ tales held that fevers tended to rise in the night. If the old wives were correct, and with the dark of the long nighttime hours upon them, Bryce was sure that they were in for a rough night. He tidied up in the kitchen, putting the leftover stew off the fire to cool, and washed the dishes before putting them away.
Fatigue plagued Bryce; he had not gotten much sleep since Carissa had fallen into his private world. He had just put a pot of coffee on the old stove when he heard the first wails of pain and fear from the front room. Running into the room, he discovered Skoll on the bed, licking the crimson face and neck of the woman as she cried out against whatever she saw in her fevered delirium.
Ordering Skoll off the bed, he returned to the kitchen to draw a fresh bucket of cold well water and carried it to the bedside table. He stripped the coverings from the nude woman and began swabbing her burning skin as she struggled to fend him off. No matter how fast he worked to bring her temperature down it continued to climb through the late hours of the night.
In desperation, Bryce scooped a bucket of snow from outside the door of the cabin. He mixed the snow with the water, feeling his hands ache from the cold as he dipped the cloth in time after time. Her screams and moans grew louder, voice calling out to the names of people that she knew, asking for her mother, calling to her wolf, Alice. She recoiled from the shockingly cold cloth as he ran it over her fevered body.
He was just about to fill the tub with cold water again as Carissa abruptly fell silent, her muscles relaxing, her breathing and heart rate returning to normal. A fine sheen of sweat covered her face and body, Bryce noted, and she was sleeping peacefully. He ran his hand over her face, the back of her neck, her torso, confirming what he hoped to find; her fever had broken.
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Chapter 6
The bright sun, its rays filtering through some opening somewhere, was nudging her eyelids open. Something was wrong, she could feel it in the way her body ached and her head throbbed. Carissa was thirsty and hungry, feeling as if she had just crossed some vast desert. She attempted to move, and as she did so, something moved under her, something warm, hard, and alive.
Alarm, shocking her to full awareness, shot through her mind and body, her muscles tensing. Her eyes flew open to find the soft, muted stripes and squares of plaid—flannel plaid—and buttons. To make matters worse, she suddenly realized that she was completely naked, her body pressed to the side of some unknown man, his arm draped casually about her.
With a small cry, she wrenched her body free of his grasp, skittering away across the mattress of a huge bed, a sheet clutched to her breast. A wave of nausea swamped her, the sudden movement causing her head to spin, the room to swing round. Breathing deeply she found that she could not seem to get enough oxygen, the air around her defying her body's needs. Her stomach threatening rebellion, her head dropped forward between her shoulders as she reached down with one hand to steady herself on the mattress.
The man on the bed stirred, disturbed by her sudden movements, bringing her head up again. Raking her frightened eyes from one end of his body to the other, she could see that he was a giant, probably more than six and a half feet tall. His broad chest expanded enormously and fell again as he breathed his waking breaths. His powerful arms rose, reaching upward to his head, the knuckles of his enormous hands gouging into the flesh of his eye sockets.
The stranger raised his head opening his eyes, searching around until he caught sight of her. She moved farther back, drawing her knees up to her chest protectively under the sheet that she gripped more tightly under chin. His head was covered with an uncombed shock of raven-black hair that tumbled over his shoulders, his face hidden by a huge growth of shaggy beard that seemed to have strips of stark white hair in a strange pattern on one side.
As he rose slowly to a sitting position, the full force of his eyes hit her like a powerful fist. They were dark, a smoky gray that smoldered with some secret fire, haunting and foreboding. His left eye was marked by a swath of scar tissue that stretched over the outside corner, down his cheekbone to disappear into a snowy white stripe interlaced with the stark black beard, the contrasting colors of facial hair converging into a mysterious mask. His mouth, what little she could see of it, twisted downward at the corners
as an ominous frown crossed his face. Carissa had the impression of a surly grizzly bear, rudely awakened from hibernation.
Bryce looked at the woman, saw the way she studied his face, knew immediately what she was thinking. She was seeing him for the first time, he knew, now that she was free from the delirium of fever that had taken her to the brink of death. It appeared that she did not like what she was seeing by the expression of fear in her lovely eyes.
He felt the sadness that he knew would come from the devastation of the fragile hope he had held in his heart. He waited for the screams, the accusations, the condemnation that he knew would come as soon as she opened her mouth. Anger, blind and forceful, began to rise in his gorge, making him want to punish himself, to walk out the door into the frozen wilderness and never look back.
"Who are you?” she asked accusingly, swallowing hard against a fresh wave of nausea.
He pulled his sock-covered feet toward himself, drawing his knees up slightly and propping his elbows on them to let his long fingers dangle between his bent legs. “You don't remember?"
Bryce watched as Carissa's delicate brows drew together, her eyes rolling downward as she searched her memory. She seemed almost as if the confusion she was feeling was causing her pain. It was easy to see that she was not yet well by the pallor of her face and the harsh darkness of bruises, so evident on her pale skin, that intensified the hallows of her sunken eyes.
Her eyes met his squarely as she answered. “Should I? I...” her voice trailed off as she continued to study his face in confusion and uncertainty.
He was uncomfortable under that steady, green gaze, tempted to turn his face from her, but forcing himself to remain still. If they were to going to be stuck together, she may as well get used to him right from the start.
"I'm Bryce Matheney. I've been taking care of you."
"Taking care of me?” Her bewildered voice had raised an octave. “It looks like you were taking care of me, all right!"
