“You are afraid,” he told her, “But you needn’t be. Because I do keep watch. And because you’re quite right. If you’re to be throttled, I shall be the throttler.”
“Laird Douglas, your eloquence with women is unmatched. Please, do feel free to take your seat before the fire, where you so nobly and happily kept watch before I rudely interrupted you with my cry.”
“I was not happy where I sat.”
“A pity.”
“I didn’t wish to disturb your sleep.”
“How kind. Then?—”
“You are no longer sleeping,” he reminded her.
Warmth pervaded her. She longed to tell him that she wished for nothing other than to find the deep solace of sleep again.
But she didn’t think that she could sleep now. Not with the visions that haunted her mind. She wanted to feel the flesh and blood of the living man, lie down with powerful arms around her, in order to shake off the fear of the cold and clammy grave that had settled upon her.
She slid into his arms with a soft, glad cry. For a moment, she felt the sheer comfort and security of his embrace. Then more…
So much more…
His fire burned within her and without her, and when the sweet violence of climax seized them like the shimmering of sparks given off by a bursting log split apart by the intensity of a blaze, she drifted ever downward.
Yet retained his warmth…
He would leave, she knew. Leave by the first hours of dawn, and she would not know where he went.
Only that he continued to see and hear…everything.
She roused, ever so slightly, when he rose from her bed at last. The room remained heavy with shadows, but faint streaks of light were beginning to touch upon the stone of the castle.
She felt the heat of his lips upon her brow, then the warmth was gone. He seemed to disappear, as cleanly as a dream. His touch nothing more than a memory.
She closed her eyes and felt an awful emptiness. She wondered if he could ever really be more than a dream to her.
Sabrina could not sleep.
How long had she tried to ignore the queasiness that had plagued her on the ocean voyage? How long had she tried to pretend that the obvious could not be?
She lay down to sleep, then rose. She slipped a robe over her nightgown and began pacing the room before the fire. Oh, dear God.
Sloan!
She could remember every detail of their first meeting in his hotel room. She was so desperately trying to hide from her stepfather while Sloan was under the assumption that she was the “new” girl, sent from the nearby whorehouse! She couldscarcely explain her position, which had become steadily worse and worse until she…
Well, she had managed to remain hidden from her stepfather. And she was alive, wasn’t she?
Alive and now responsible for another life within her!
“Oh god!” she whispered aloud, shuddering.
The night had been bad enough. Come the morning, he’d known nothing different than what she had told him—nothing. And his assumption had remained that she had come from the whorehouse and…
It wasn’t that he had been horrible or cruel. He had roused her from sleep, and she had been sensually seduced before she had fully wakened. Yet that had been it! One night, one morning! And then, of course, the horror of discovering that he wasn’t only a half-breed cavalryman with a heart and will of steel, he was her brother-in-law’s best friend. Destined to be near her frequently. A single man, confirmed in his bachelor status, accustomed to the company of any woman he chose, white or red. Sloan could be exquisitely charming when he chose and ruthlessly pigheaded when he chose as well. She was obliged to him for his help as well when her stepfather had done his best to hunt down and kill her and Skylar.
Sabrina hugged her arms around her chest. And he was a half-breed. Part of the Sioux Nation, torn by the conflict approaching them. She wasn’t afraid of him, she told herself. She wasn’t afraid of anything.
But she was. She was afraid of the savagery of the Indians, and despite his exquisite manners, she was certain that a fire burned deeply beneath the civilized surface of Sloan Trelawny, as fiercely savage as that within any feathered and painted redman on the plain.