“But I am taking you out of here. It can be as easy or hard as you wish to make it.” He took one more step, reached for her—
The dog sprang forward and seized his hand with vicious teeth.
Pain flared.
Deeper, deeper, until his fingers were wet with blood, even as he pried the animal off him. He combated the dog’s second attack with his foot. One kick, then two until—
“Stop it!” The girl arose from her shadowed corner and snapped her fingers. “Merrylad, down.”
Whimpering, the dog scuttled behind her.
Then she faced him, shorter than he’d realized in the woods, with hair that draped well beyond her elbows. She said nothing. Only waited.
More than ever, he didn’t want to touch her or frighten her.
But he had no choice.
With his bleeding hand curled at his chest, he grabbed her forearm with the other. “Leave the dog here. We haven’t room for him. I’ve a horse tethered out—”
She drove her foot into his shin. Twice. Then she twisted, her fingers groping for his face—but he never let go.
Instead, he jerked her into his arms and darted for the door. He fumbled with the latch as her nails clawed at his cheek, as the dog charged again and seized his ankle.
Fierce fighters, these two.
Something else he hadn’t expected.
He threw the animal off and raced outside as the girl kicked and pounded him with her fists. He swung her onto his saddle.
Only then, when he’d climbed behind her and spurred the horse away from the cottage, did her shoulders finally cave. The dog’s barking faded in the distance. One small, stifled sob escaped into the night air. A bothersome sound.
If anything less was at stake, he would take her back.
As it was, he had no choice.
No, no, no.This couldn’t happen.Captain, no.
She was lost in another nightmare. Deep blackness, coldness, the need to run but the inability to move her legs.
She was trapped.
Again.
Only this time, it was real. Captain wasn’t next to her, framing her cheeks with both of his wrinkled hands. “Hush, love. Ye’re only dreaming again, see?”
How quickly the terror always dissipated under his warmth. The strange things would go away, the shadowed faces, the leering voices—half human, half beast. She would escape the suffocating devils of her dreams.
But there was no escaping this.
Because a devil had her in his arms, trapped against his chest, with his bloody hand the only thing she could fix her eyes on. She didn’t dare look up. Not even when the veil of blackness lifted, when the first shafts of morning came darting between the trees.
Please, please.Soon the trotting horse would reach the edge. The boundary she’d never crossed. The line between everything she knew and everything she didn’t. Why couldn’t she move? Why couldn’t she fight her way free?
She’d done it a hundred times. How often had she been kidnapped by villains and ruffians and desperate madmen? There was always fog, screams, and that one quick moment when she triumphed against her oppressor and broke free.
Nausea swirled in her stomach. Captain was right. She pretended too much, and what good had it done her?
She was weak. She could no more break free than she could bring to life Captain’s tales.
