The Silver Fox and the Red-Hot Dove Read Online Free PDF Page B

from the sink to plaster against the terrible wound, and hunching over with pain. Elena followed him in tormented silence. “Call my people, the first chance you get,” he urged, his voice a rasp. “Use the card … I gave you. May be your only … hope.”
    With impressive strength and determination he left the house and strode between the clumps of saw grass in the sandy backyard. Her conscience on fire, Elena stood on the porch steps and stared after him as he disappeared down the trail under a dense canopy of moss-draped trees.
    Her guilt warred with self-preservation. He’d be all right. He’d go to his boat and call for help. She’d have time to take Mrs. Nilly’s little fishing skiff and leave from the opposite side of the island. She couldn’t risk her future for him. He wasn’t going to die if she didn’t help him.
    She sank to the steps and sat there for several minutes, her hands knotted into fists of emotion against her face. Even from the porch she could see where his blood had spattered the sand. A fierce, unrelenting thought tore at her.
The arrow hit an

artery. He may bleed to death before his people can reach him
.
    Her fingers burned with energy. Every instinct that flowed from her gift urged her to do what she was meant to do, to use the wonderful power that had never been perverted, not even by Kriloff. Crying, she shook her fists and looked toward heaven. “All I wanted was to be free!”
    She leapt from the steps and ran after Audubon.
    He woke with his head in someone’s lap and his legs in the ocean. A shadow made his face feel cooler than his arms. He could feel the sun on them as well as on his bare chest and stomach. He could feel the softness of the thighs beneath his head. He could feel the strange, tingling heat against his side.
    It was all very pleasurable, and suddenly he realized that none of it would have felt so good if he were dead. He opened his eyes quickly and stared up into the faded cotton flowers covering Elena Petrovic’s chest. She was bent over him so deeply that he inhaled the soap-fresh scent of the fabric and the sexual, feminine scent of her body. With ease he could have lifted his head and nuzzled the mounds that pressed downward against the thin cloth. Hibiscus had never looked so interesting before.
    He was in a languid mood, as if half-asleep. Slowly he tried to remember how he’d gotten this way. His last memory was of sinking to his knees in the surf, too weak and dizzy to climb into the dinghy he’d left on shore. It had floated away, taking his last bit of consciousness with it.
    Now energy was flowing back into him through the puzzling sensation beneath his rib cage. The wound! He tilted his head up in a hurry to see what was happening, but instead mashed his upper face into the lovely upside-down hills covered in hibiscus.
    Elena leaned back, taking her shadow with her. Sunshine flooded his eyes and he turned his head to one side, blinking, his mind and eyes beginning tofocus. He disliked the helpless feeling, which reminded him of the time he’d been wounded in Vietnam. But when Elena ran her hands up his chest, bringing the comforting, energized glow with them, he exhaled with delight.
    Her hands flattened over the center of his chest; his heart seemed to be drawn to them, to her. He was liquid inside, responding to the pull of her elements. It was like nothing he’d felt before, like nothing any other woman had made him feel … or want. “What are you doing to me?” he asked.
    “I applied pressure to your wound.” Her voice sounded drained, hollow. “Nothing mysterious. It stopped the bleeding. Sheer luck.” Her hands fell from his chest, cupped his head, then lowered it to the sand as she slid from under him.
    Audubon raised up on his elbow and looked at himself. The surf ruffled over his lower legs, taking away red clouds of blood that had soaked his trousers on the side beneath his wound. His shirt hung open, the ends trailing red