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Her hand fell from his arm, her body giving up.
For one long breath he was frozen in time, frozen above her, unable to move for the horror of finding her here like this.
Theodora barked, nudging her cold nose into his neck.
He sucked in a breath and bent over. Sliding his hands deep into the snow under her legs and back, he picked her up, clutching her to his body.
“I got ye, Karta. I got ye.”
{ Chapter 3 }
Her feet. Warmth pressing into them. Heat where there was none. So stark against the cold her muscles revolted, pain shooting through them until the warmth overcame.
Again and again, the flesh of her feet bending, twisting into the swaddle of heat.
The sensation so odd, it pulled her mind from the blackness that had ensconced it.
Fire was near her. Warmth on her left cheek. The scent of smoke filling her nostrils.
Heaviness on her body, weighing her down—her arms, her torso, her thighs. But not her feet. Her feet were in the air.
Karta opened her eyes, instantly realizing that the ice that had formed on her lashes was now gone. The cold was gone. It had set deep into her bones, still freezing her from the inside out, but all around her was heat. Not cold.
Her eyes blurry for a moment, she had to concentrate hard on the figure by her feet. She squinted, her vision clearing with several blinks.
No. Not possible.
She squinted harder, the bright white of his lawn shirt hurting her eyes for the darkness they had just been drowning in.
“Dom?”
The head on the figure turned to her. “Aye.”
His voice.
But he couldn’t be real. She glanced around her. Fire to her left. The back of a long, blue upholstered settee to her right. Hefty wooden beams above her. Layers of heavy blankets atop her—too many to count. She wasn’t at the dower house.
Domnall’s hands—his hands on her bare feet were causing the most oddly wonderful sensations about her toes.
A dream. This was a dream.
A dream she wanted to stay in.
Or maybe a nightmare.
Her gaze landed on him. “Are you real or is this a dream?”
“Real, lass.”
Her look drifted from him to stare at the white plaster between the heavy beams above. What sort of cruel world had she fallen into where she was alive in front of a fire with the one man—of all the countless people in the world—that had broken her heart long ago?
A man she hated.
She stifled the urge to yank her feet from his hands. Not that she could move a muscle at the moment.
Calm.
She needed calm. Needed to figure out what was happening.
