Page 77 of Captive

“You’re the one touching me in front of everyone,” he says, his tone low, teasing.

Inwardly, I smile as I graze my fingers over him. Feeling him, imagining what it would be like to have him finally bed me. “They cannot see anything.”

He grabs my hip and brings me even tighter, preventing me from moving my hand. “Do you know how to use that hand, or do you merely attempt to provoke me?”

“I know how.” It is a lie. I have never touched a man there before now.

“What about your mouth?” he asks. “Do you know how to use that too?”

“Yes.” I lie again.

Fire ignites inside me as I think of putting my mouth on him in such an intimate manner. He had done that for me. Surely, I could do the same for him.

He speaks near my ear again. “Do you plan to show me?”

A loud cracking sound pierces the air. I gasp when Hale loses his footing and rears up, throwing me from his back. The horse scrambles forward as an enormous crater opens in the lake, swallowing me before I reach safety. I scream the moment I fall into the icy water and plunge into its voluminous depths.

Panic rips through me as I try to react, to yell, but my body is incapable of moving. I fight everything at once. The cold. The pain. The shock.

“Sol, grab the stick,” a muffled voice shouts, piercing through the void.

I kick my legs, fighting with everything in me, to live, to breathe. Over and over, I kick until I break the surface and reach upward and connect with the branch. The moment my fingers squeeze around the wood, it lifts, pulling me from the icy clutches of the lake.

Luc yanks me the rest of the way out and carries me away from the fragile ice. Quinn hurries out of her cloak and wraps it around me.

“T-thank you,” I say through my chattering teeth.

Quinn nods and casts a worried look between Luc and me.

“Where’s Hector?” I cry out, my voice hoarse, choked.

Luc nods behind him.

Relief floods through me as I rotate and locate Hector sitting not more than a foot away, holding his hands to his bloody forehead.

“Hale threw Hector into a rock and you into the lake,” Luc says.

“Is Hale all right?” I ask, needing to know the horse didn’t fall in with me.

Praxis points to the line of trees in the distance. “He ran away.”

Damn horse.

But at least he’s not hurt.

“Let’s go,” Luc says. “We need to get off the lake.”

The Bloodstone barbarians move into action, helping Hector and me onto a different horse and away from the treachery of the thin ice. Then, they make camp in a thick grove of maple trees. The wide limbs embrace the falling snow as it thickens and comes down harder, whitening everything.

Hector’s men work together to raise my tent first. As they move to gathering wood for a fire, Hector carries me inside and places me on a bed.

The cold crashes through me as Quinn brings him wood, and he adds the logs to the fire and turns to observe me.

The moment we’re all alone, I speak. “I could heal you.”

With the blood dried in his hair, it’s not possible to tell how deep the cut is. But I don’t like seeing him hurt.

“It’s nothing.” He grazes his knuckles across my cheek. “Let’s get you warm.”

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