Unwilling Read Online Free PDF Page B

she had to do was find the river Tay and
could follow it east to Benmore. 
    Her wrists hurt like the devil
now.  The rough cords of the rope hadn’t been tight enough to be painful or
cruel, but with all her struggling and pulling, she’d rubbed the skin so raw it
bled in some places.  That gave her the idea that maybe if she produced enough
blood to make her slim wrists slippery, she could wriggle out of the knots and
be gone before her captor returned. 
    It didn’t work.  Now the stinging
and burning caused tears of frustration and pain to spill down her cheeks.  As
she shifted on the ground, something hard dug into the flesh of her thigh.  It
was a small piece of shale but had a jagged edge to it.
    Aye!   Fate finally smiled
upon her.  Lindsay quickly went to work on the rope, clumsily sawing back and
forth.  Her wrists protested as her movements caused the coarse fibers to bite
into her wounds, but she didn’t care, she could taste freedom.  To her dismay,
the rope was well crafted and took longer to fray than she’d hoped. 
    It was almost completely dark in
the cavern when she heard muffled hoof beats on the soft earth outside. Lindsay’s
hopes fell and despair threatened to choke her.  No.  It didn’t matter; she’d
hide the rock and wait for him to fall asleep, then she’d make her escape.
    She gave him her back when he
strode in, burrowing in his cloak and refusing to look at him.  But her ears
tracked his movement as he set to building a fire at the opening of the crevice.
 Soon the spark flared and threw her shadow against the stone wall.  She hadn’t
heard him strike tinder, and yet the brightness grew as peat and kindling
caught flame.  The light bloomed brighter as he added larger, dry logs.    
    She tracked his flickering shadow
as he approached her.  How did a man so large move so silently?  His nearness
made her uneasy, and she shifted within the cloak, painfully aware that she was
naked beneath it.  Adjusting the hem to cover her more fully, she heard his
sharp intake of breath. 
    “Why do I smell blood?" he
demanded in his cavernous brogue.
    “I know not,” she replied tartly,
her heart thudding in her chest.  “Maybe it’s all the blood you’ve spilled coming
back to haunt you.”
    He lifted her bodily from where she
sat on the ground and parted the folds of the cloak to examine her wrists. 
    “Good God, lass,” his voice was a
tortured whisper.  The pupils of his eyes rippled and then began to grow,
overtaking the iris and spreading into the white.  “What have ye done?”
     

Chapter
Seven
     
    Lindsay watched, stupefied, as man
was replaced by creature.  His muscles swelled and pulsed with blood.  Granite
black, humiliatingly familiar to her, encompassed his eyes.  Lips pulled back
from teeth that seemed to sharpen.  She hadn’t noticed that about him before. 
    He’d traded his black tunic and
trews for a clean linen shirt and a deep blue and red tartan.  The MacLauchlan colors. 
Somehow, the black had suited him, and had reinforced her idea of him as a
demon.  Now, dressed like a proper highlander, he seemed more terrifying
somehow.  More dangerous.  Because she knew he was really a man, a MacLauchlan
highlander whose soul melded with a monster or was possessed by a demon. 
Despite his claims to the contrary.
    He didn’t drop her wrists, but held
them up as though to show them to her, his features sad and accusatory.  An
animalistic sound of distress emitted from deep in his chest. 
    “You’re the one who tied me up,”
she defended her actions.  “You’re a fool if you thought I would stand for it. 
I’d be a worthless ninny if I didn’t at least try to escape capture.”
    In this form, at least, he had the
decency to look ashamed.  He rent the ropes and tossed her bindings into the
fire, then turned to examine her wounds. 
    Lindsay could only stare at him. 
What had he just done?  Those ropes had been two fingers thick, at