Blackwolf's Redemption by Sandra Marton Read Free Book Online Page A

Delicate. Pale. An innocent pink.
    A lie. Nothing about her was innocent.
    Jesse knotted his jaw, dragged his eyes from her breasts to her jeans. Getting them off would be a walk in the park compared to getting her out of that shirt.
    Wrong.
    The jeans closed with two small buttons above the fly. The buttons were tough to open because the denim was so wet, but he finally got them through the buttonholes and undid the zipper.
    She made a little sound. A murmur. He looked at her face just in time to see her eyelids flicker.
    “Miss Cummings? Can you hear me?”
    No answer. Okay. Time to finish undressing her. He didn’t know why it was bothering him so much but it was. He’d been trained in first aid. She was probably a victim of hypothermia. He wasn’t a man. She wasn’t a woman.
    But when he slipped his hands under her bottom and lifted her hips toward him, a picture flashed through his mind. Him, doing this same thing. Lifting her to him. To strip away her jeans, yes…
    As part of making love to her.
    His hands stilled.
    He could see it all. Her face, flushed with pleasure. Her eyes, opened and hot on his. Her lips forming his name, her arms reaching for him, the jeans coming down, down, down her long legs and revealing…
    White cotton underpants.
    That was what they revealed. White cotton, as innocent-looking as the sweet pink of her nipples.
    God, she was beautiful. Her femininity. Her face. Her hair, a mass of gold-streaked curls. And he, he was…
    A groan broke from his throat. He was a no-good SOB, was what he was. What kind of man got a hard-on when he was dealing with an unconscious woman?
    Quickly, he laid her back against the cushions. Dumped the now-wet quilt, grabbed another blanket and wrapped it around her. Yeah, but the sofa was damp. No good. He lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bedroom. There were four other bedrooms in the house, but he hadn’t furnished any of them beyond the basics, not after Linda left.
    What was the point?
    He lived alone.
    No woman. No friends. No guests. He preferred it that way.
    His bed was big, covered with a simple black duvet. He folded it back, put the woman beneath it and drew it to her chin. She was starting to stir, her color was back.
    Good.
    Okay. He’d get her a heating pad. A big mug of tea. But first, he’d take care of himself, if only for long enough to get out of his soaked jeans and put on sweats. He’d stayed active, he wasn’t a likely candidate for hypothermia, but he wouldn’t do his uninvited guest much good if he got sick.
    Working fast, he pulled the rawhide from his hair and rubbed a towel over his face, obliterating the stripes of black paint. The eagle talon danced against his chest as he tugged off his wet jeans, then his boxers. He yanked open a drawer, found sweats, stepped into the bottoms, pulled them up—
    Sienna Cumming’s eyes shot open. Jesse breathed a sigh of relief.
    “Good,” he said gruffly. “You’re conscious.”
    Her eyes were blurry. Her tongue slicked over her lips.
    “Who…? Where…?”
    Confusion was common in cases of hypothermia. You lived in these mountains, you made it a point to know these things.
    Jesse sat down next to her, tried to look reassuring.
    “You’re fine,” he said briskly. “You, ah, you passed out. The rain—”
    She turned her head. Looked around her, then looked again at him.
    “Blackwolf Mountain,” she said thickly. “The sacred stone—”
    “Right.”
    “The lightning.”
    “Yes.”
    “Rain,” she said. “And cold. So cold…”
    A shudder went through her. Enough conversation. She wasn’t warm enough yet.
    “Look,” Jesse started to say, “we can discuss this when—”
    The kettle shrieked. She jumped like a doe taken down by a hunter’s bow.
    “It’s the kettle, that’s all. I’ll make some tea. We can talk then. Okay?”
    She didn’t answer. Her gaze was moving over him. He hadn’t had a shirt on when she’d first seen him and he didn’t have one