TO CATCH A WOLF By Susan Krinard

Had she not restored the boundaries between them—the high walls of money, temperament, and belief? Did those walls not reach far higher than even the strongest wolf, whole of limb, could leap?

And why should she think he would ever wish to scale such barriers? He wanted no part of them.

Yet… You are not alone, her heart insisted. And neither is he.

She rapped her hand on the arm of her chair and turned hard away from the window. Sleep was what she required.

A good night’s rest cured so many ills, purged a multitude of unproductive thoughts. Most especially thoughts of what she should not want and could never have.

She bit her lip and frowned at the bed. Ordinarily she would call for Fran to assist her in moving from chair to bedstead, but it was pure selfishness to drag Fran out of her own cot at such an hour. Was it such an insurmountable gap, those few inches between her chair and the bed? Her arms were strong enough. The tiny ember of rebellion that had disturbed her of late, nursed along by the day’s events, sparked into a flame.

Setting her jaw, she wheeled the chair as close to the bed as she could, aligning them side by side. She took a firm grip on the iron railing that ran the length of the bed, designed to keep her from falling out.

Perspiration broke out on her forehead, though the room was cool. The muscles in her arms already ached with the effort to come.

You can do this. You are strong enough. Alternately pushing and pulling, she began to transfer her weight from the chair to the bed rails. Her arms screamed in protest. She clenched her teeth and dragged herself up and over to the gap in the rail.

The chair rolled a few inches away. The space between it and the bed grew accordingly, widening into a chasm. The hem of her dressing gown caught on the arm of her chair. A stab of very real pain shot down her spine and lodged at its root.

She did not cry out. She would win, or they could find her on the floor in the morning. She made another laborious effort, and her dressing grown ripped and then slid from her shoulders.

For a moment she hung suspended between bed and chair, her upper half almost… almost… flat on the coverlet. Then some movement of her body shoved the chair another precious inch away. The dead weight of her lower half pulled her down, down, like grasping hands reaching from perdition.

She tumbled. Her elbow struck the bed railing as she fell, shooting pain into arm and shoulder. Far, far worse was the slow, ignominious slide to the floor.

She lay on the carpet, her nightdress bunched up about her useless knees and her elbow numb from the blow. Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes. She let them fall. No one would see them tonight. But in the morning…

Rolling onto her stomach, she pushed up on her arms. It might take hours, but she could make it back to the chair or the bed. If one was not possible, the other must be. God forbid that Niall should find her like this.

A faint noise came from the direction of the stairs: footsteps ascending, so soft that she had to strain to hear them.

Morgan Holt had made her more aware of the keen senses she had always taken for granted. She knew the step of every member of the household, from Fran’s light patter to Niall’s purposeful thump. But this was not a tread she recognized.

Her skin began to prickle. Instinctively she reached for the hem of her nightdress and tried to tug it down over her knees. The movement set her off balance, and she fell back on her sore elbow just as the footsteps came to a halt outside her door.

It swung open. A familiar, disturbingly fascinating scent blew in with biting October air. The doorway filled with a lean and powerful figure.

Morgan Holt had come to return her call.

Morgan knew, when he opened the door, that Athena Munroe’s alluring scent had led him to the right room. But she was not where he expected her to be.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *