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It wasn’t her arm. Not her arm.
She screamed. Trying to brush it—scratch it—off her limb, trying to scrub the thick, tough scars from her skin. They didn’t move.
“Get it off. Get it off. Get it off.”
The screams came one after another, her fingernails digging into her scar tissue, trying to rip it from her body, rip it away. It wasn’t hers. It wasn’t her arm. Not her arm. Not her skin.
No matter how she dug into the mangled flesh, it didn’t release. Her screams out of control, swallowing her whole, her look flew frantic to the flames.
Burn it away. She could burn it away.
On her hands and knees, screams still deafening and raw in her throat, she scrambled to the fire. Lifting her left arm, she thrust it out toward the blaze.
The tips of the hungry flames licked out and the instant before the heat singed her, she was slammed backward.
Hurled—sliding across the room until she hit the foot of the bedpost. Crumpled on the floor, she twisted, looking back toward the fireplace.
The man. The man from her dream. Reiner.
He stood between her and the flames, shirtless, only partially buttoned trousers covering his lower half. His arms curled out from his body, limbs of steel with his hands clasped into fists. His chest raged in heavy breaths. An angry Greek god of chiseled stone, except he was alive and breathing with flames of hell flashing behind him.
She looked down at her left arm. “It’s still there.” Shrieks she couldn’t control flew from her mouth and she started clawing at her arm again.
A hand landed across her mouth, stifling her screams.
His other hand clamped down on her right wrist, yanking it from ripping away her own skin.
Her left hand found a target on his chest, connecting hard, and with a grunt, he sank down next to her, twisting her into his arms until she was on his lap, clamped to his body. He even wrapped a leg around hers to lock her into place.
She wasn’t able to move and she knew it. But still she struggled, her body contorting against his chest, trying to free herself.
She struggled for minutes until she realized she wasn’t going to be set free. Not under her own power.
She stilled. What would her brothers have her do?
Lachlan—he’d have her fight, fight with everything she had.
Except twice now, that hadn’t worked.
Jacob—he’d have her stifle her rage and ask calm, common sense questions that gave no hint as to what she was thinking.
That, she hadn’t tried.
Her gaze on the fire, her body stayed still as she tried to ignore the humiliation of being tangled in this heathen’s arms.
A full minute passed before his hand dropped from her mouth and locked around her chest.
A slight cough to loosen the screams still lodged in her throat and she opened her mouth. “What did you do to me?”
His arms twitched and he tightened his hold. “Why do you insist I did all of this to you?”
“I was at Vinehill, and now I’m here. With a lump on my head that is shooting hot blades into my skull and an arm that is shredded and shriveled to monstrous proportions.” Her head bowed, and she had to close her eyes against the swatch of mangled skin on her arm she could see peeking past his straining muscles. The breath she took stayed in her throat, not sinking into her lungs. “What happened to me?”
“That’s exactly what I would like to know, Sloane.”
“Why do you think I was trying to break into your home?”
“You were found just below the window to my chambers, unconscious. It appeared you were trying to climb vines to gain entrance into my castle.”
