Page 119 of Bound

“Wren,” he tried, bending over her, her skin too cold, her entire body soaked. She wore a coat, but the clasps had fallen open, revealing too-thin linen.

She didn’t answer him. Did not move.

He picked her up. There was little he knew of healing, but he needed her close, needed her warm.

Needed her to be alive.

He rushed back into the house. He’d tried to be so polite, tried to keep her from growing nervous with his stares, so he hadn’t allowed himself to inspect her home too carefully. Her bed upstairs was wet and cold, and she needed the fire, needed the warmth. It was down to embers, and even those were cooling too quickly, and he muttered his apologies as he placed her onto the hard wood of the table before adding wood and kindling—anything to get a proper blaze as quickly as possible.

His hands were shaking. He wanted to strip her out of her wet clothes and hold her close to the hearth. Wanted his heart to stop pounding so fiercely in his chest, and surely that would fix it.

Help it. Nothing would be right again until she was awake. Until she looked at him in that accusing way and doubtlessly banished him out of her kitchen for having come uninvited.

The wind pushed at the tarp high above their heads, almost as if the house itself was breathing in. Then out. Over and over. While he stood impotently and...

Warmth.

Blankets.

Not the wet things from upstairs.

“I am sorry,” he called as he opened trunks that he had no business looking in, searching for anything dry and suitable. “If you would awaken, you could tell me where to look.”

But she didn’t.

Another bed. Below the loft, larger than the one he’d so briefly seen upstairs. Her mother’s bed?

With quilts stitched by hand, neatly made and...

No mother would object to a mussed bed. Not when her daughter was in need.

He pulled off the blankets and tucked them onto one of the kitchen chairs before he set about removing her wet things. The boots were simple—except that the laces had swelled and the knot along with it, and his own fingers were clumsy as he fought for the calm she claimed to envy.

Had her brow moved, or had he imagined it? He paused a moment, studying her face closely for sign of... anything at all.

The fear made proprieties seem less than important.

He brought his hand between the fabric of her coat, beneath the sodden shift that had turned transparent during her misadventure.

He laid it on her chest and pressed. Waiting. Hoping. That he might feel her breath, feeling her heart—anything at all.

There.

Subtle, but present.

A flutter. A slight pressure as her breath drew inward. Then out again.

He wasn’t imagining it. He wasn’t.

She lived. Or... would. If he knew what to do. Which he didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured to her, wishing he wasn’t chilled through, that his hands and his whispers might bring her some sort of warmth.

With a growl he shed his own coat. The boots. Chucked them all haphazardly before the fire, taking greater care with her own things.

He wanted to leave her shift. To allow her some measure of modesty that—in truth—that garment did nothing to provide.

He’d known she was beautiful. Every impulse was to stare at her, to enjoy the way she moved, the graceful turn of her neck, the slim wrists and hands as they tended to perfectly ordinary tasks.

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