Outlaw (Medieval Trilogy 3)

A tiny hole ripped in her heart, but she pretended it didn’t exist and went about her work as if she felt no pain, as if his words didn’t have the strength to wound her.

When she was finished and the boy was resting, she glanced up at Wolf. “Now, what about you?”

“I’m fine.”

“I think not. Lift your tunic.”

“What? I’ll not—”

“Lift your tunic, Wolf, for you are the leader of these men and they depend upon you.” She motioned to the crowd of his followers, who were lingering in the room. “Yea, even I am forced to rely on you, though I detest it.”

“Do you?” he said, his eyes narrowing as he lifted his tunic, and she saw his wounds, not as deep as Robin’s, but nasty gouges from the swipe of a tusk. The slashes across his skin from the day were not his first. Scars of all sizes cut across his dark skin.

“You’ve been in your share of fights.”

“More than my share.”

“And flogged as well,” she guessed.

His mouth curved into a half-grin that caused her stomach to tighten. “More than once.”

“Why?”

“I’m not good at taking orders.”

“And what of this?” she asked, running a finger along the cleft of his brow.

“A gift from Tadd of Prydd, so I forget him not.”

“ ’Twas then that you met Holt.”

“Aye,” he said, his voice sounding far away, as if it were in a cavern, and his face turned fierce, the way it always did whenever Holt’s name was brought up.

“Sit,” she ordered, and with only a slight hesitation, he did as he was bid, glaring at his men as if he expected some of them to make comments about him taking orders from a woman.

“One of you stay with Robin. Two others—Dominic and Heath—go and retrieve the boar from the other side of the river,” Wolf commanded. “It lies near a small knoll in a thicket of oak and ferns. The rest of you have work, do you not?”

With a few glances cast among them, the men took their leave, and she was alone with him again, aside for the still-unconscious Robin. She cleaned his shoulders, abdomen, and back, washing each cut and scrape, sewing only a few stitches in the largest of the claw marks, trying not to notice the ripple of his muscles when he moved or the dark hair spanning his chest and arrowing down to the band of his breeches. Beneath her fingers, his skin was warm, his muscles hard as stone, and his eyes, smoky blue, watched her beneath half-lowered lids. “ ’Tis true, you know,” he said when she’d bitten off a length of thread.

“What?”

“Half the men are in love with you.”

“They just haven’t had a woman in their midst,” she said, feeling her cheeks turn a hot scarlet hue.

“They want me not to ransom you.”

“And you, Wolf, what do you want?” she asked, her voice breathless.

He stared at the floor, then studied his hands for a second. When his eyes found hers again, there was regret in his gaze. “I have no choice in this, Megan,” he said. “ ’Tis out of my hands.” His lips were blade-thin. “You are wed to Holt.”

She choked back a cry of desperation, for she realized then that she was beginning to care for this rogue with his tortured soul and seductive gaze. She’d known from the first time she’d seen him and he danced with her that he could be dangerous to her heart, and later admitted to herself that she was attracted to the demon, but now her feelings had deepened. “As I said, I—I love him not …”

“Then you should not have spoken the vows.”

“And had I not, I would never have met you.” Proudly she lifted her jaw and tossed her hair off her shoulder.

A sad smile touched his lips. “ ’Twould have been better for all.”