South of Surrender (Hearts of the Anemoi) Read Online Free PDF Page A

hand against the rail. She hissed. Holding her palm up close to her face, all she could see was red, not the specifics of her injury. Her wounds needed to be cleaned and treated, but no sense revealing just how much they hurt. She dropped her hand, ignoring the stinging, and tried to look him over.
    She was used to the limitations of her low vision by now, but sometimes it was so frustrating not to be able to see more than a pinpoint of the world at a time, her brain putting the whole together like a slow computer loading the pixels of a high-resolution image. Blond hair. Longish. Angled jaw. Muscled shoulder. Bare muscled shoulder.
    Laney gasped and cut her gaze away, half of her afraid of what else she might see if she continued to scan her gaze over him, and half of her dying to know.
    “What?”
    “You don’t have a shirt on.”
    “Uh, no.”
    “This is so crazy,” she whispered to herself. She cleared her throat. “Please tell me you’re not naked.”
    “I’m not naked.”
    Laney looked. Scanned. Jeans. She released a long breath. “Good. That’s good.”
    “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, his tone strained and raspy, like it took effort to speak.
    “For what?” Adrenaline flooded through her, along with a healthy dose of fear. She wasn’t sure what scared her most. Whatever he was about to apologize for? That her impossible Pegasus didn’t exist after all? That she’d woken up with a strange and equally impossible man? That she’d apparently imagined the events of last night?
    “For scaring you.”
    “Well, I’d say it wasn’t your fault, but it kinda was.” Still, there was something about the well-worn regret in his voice that made her want to comfort him, touch him, know him. It was just all so crazy.
    “Do you always say exactly what you mean?”
    Laney frowned, confusion still making her head spin. “As opposed to saying something I don’t mean?”
    “I guess when you put it that way…”
    “Look, not to be rude, but who are you and what are you doing in my barn?”
    He sighed. “It’s a long story.”
    One she was determined to hear, given the eleventy-billion questions she had. “I’m sure I can follow along.”
    “It’s not that—”
    “Then what? Huh? I could use a little help reassuring myself I’m not going insane.”
    She could hear his little movements against the flooring. Soft scuffs, like he was barefooted. “You’re not. It’s just that I don’t remember all of it, and what I do remember isn’t going to make any sense.” The gold light moved in front of her. “We should take care of your cuts first.”
    Truth be told, her leg and palm burned like hell, but fear that her senses had let her down so magnificently vibrated panic through her veins. Her senses were her independence. Her survival. Without them, she’d lose everything. “Nice try. Talk.”
    His sigh resembled more of a groan. “I got in a fight.”
    Huh? “And…”
    “I got my ass kicked.”
    Memories from last night washed over her. The gash on the horse’s forearm. The ruined feathers on the wing. Stop it . Clearly, this man wasn’t that horse. Still, the fact remained that there was a hole in her ceiling, and he was here. “Are you hurt?”
    “I’ll live.”
    “Do you always speak using the fewest possible words?”
    There was a long pause. “Let’s clean you up. You got a sink around here?”
    “Yeah, because that wasn’t an obvious change of topic at all.”
    “Sink?”
    “I’ll get cleaned up inside. It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine, but he didn’t need to know that. Like she wasn’t vulnerable enough. Fingertips on the rail again, she took a step. Gritting her teeth, she put weight on her injured leg. Man, did that smart.
    Much as she hated to admit it, Laney needed help. And that brought one person to mind. Seth . He was going to flip his shit when he saw she’d been hurt. She went for her phone in her pocket— Empty. Damnit ! She must’ve dropped it in the stall.
    Just