Blackwolf's Redemption

He might have made this climb just for a look at the carcass of a dead animal. Or an injured one. Hunters might have ignored his No Trespassing signs. Nobody from around here. They knew better. But an outsider…

For God’s sake, you’ve seen what some of those idiots who call themselves hunters can do.

Why hadn’t he thought of that sooner?

A wounded grizzly would be a hell of a thing to find. Well, it was too late to worry about that now. Jesse took a deep breath. One last pull with the powerful muscles of his arms and shoulders and he hoisted himself up on the narrowest part of the ledge.

His heart caught in his throat.

There was something here, all right. And it wasn’t an animal.

It was a woman.

She was unconscious but alive; her face was white as a fish’s belly but he could see the faint rise and fall of her breasts.

A moan rose from her throat. She didn’t have any obvious wounds, but that didn’t mean anything. For all he knew, she might have been struck by that strange lightning. Lightning was dangerous. It might have damaged her heart. Or she might have hit her head and suffered a concussion.

He had no way of knowing her condition.

He told himself she deserved whatever had happened to her. Outsiders had no business here. Still, instinct took over. He had been trained to save lives, as well as take them. He knelt down beside her and took a closer look.

She wasn’t shivering. That was good. He touched his hand to the side of her neck. Her skin was warm. That was good, too. He could see her pulse beating—hell, racing—in her throat.

He put his hand over her heart.

Its beat was strong and steady…and her breast filled his palm. He jerked his hand away and sat back on his heels.

“Wake up,” he said sharply.

She didn’t move.

“Come on, open your eyes.”

She moaned again. Her lashes lifted, revealing irises the color of spring violets.

“Are you injured? Does anything hurt?”

The tip of her tongue came out and swept lightly over her lips. She was looking at him, but he doubted if she could really see him; her eyes were blurry.

“Concentrate,” he said coldly. “Listen to what I’m saying. Are you hurt?”

Her gaze sharpened; her eyes seemed to darken. Her lips parted.

“That’s it. Look at me and tell me if anything—”

“Oh, my God,” she gasped.

And then her mouth opened wide and her scream echoed and reechoed through the silence of the canyon.

The scream that erupted from Sienna’s throat was high and thin and filled with terror, but sheer, unadulterated terror was precisely what she felt.

A man was bending over her. He had the painted face of a savage, with black stripes delineating the sharpness of his high cheekbones. His hair was black, too, and long, held back with a strip of something, maybe deer hide. Her eyes dropped lower. An eagle’s talon was hung around his neck, dangling from a narrower length of leather.

Dangling against his—oh, God—his naked, tautly muscled chest.

Fear beat gauzy wings in her blood. There was only one explanation. A lunatic was wandering the Montana high country and she’d run straight into him.

Don’t scream again, she told herself. Do not scream again. Be calm, be calm, be—

“Get away from me!” she shrieked as he leaned toward her. She dug her elbows into the unyielding surface beneath her and tried desperately to scramble backward. No way. The man put his big, hard hands on her shoulders and shoved her down.

“Don’t move.”

His voice was low and rough, and now she was sure he was crazy. Don’t move? Of course she was going to move. She was going to run like the wind, but first she had to get free of his hands.

“I said don’t move,” he growled. “Or I’ll have to restrain you.”

Restrain? What kind of madman used a word like restrain? And wasn’t he already doing that? Questions tumbled through her head. Who was this nut? Where had he come from? For that matter, where was she? Her gaze flew past him, to the mountain that loomed over her, and beyond it, to the blazing sun.

The sun. The solstice.

That was it. The solstice. She’d been observing it, waiting for the moment the new summer sun would send a dagger of light between the standing slabs that guarded the sacred stone and then, without warning, lightning had torn apart the sky. Green lightning, zigzagging between the stones.

A black void had opened before her. She’d felt herself falling into it, spinning inside it….

And then, nothing. A nothing so cold, intense and empty she’d felt as if her bones might become petrified, as if the emptiness would swallow her.

But it hadn’t, because she was here, with a man she’d never seen before crouched beside her. A savage with a hard face, eyes as cold and black as obsidian, and a mouth as thin as the slash of a rapier.