Chained (Brides of the Kindred) by Evangeline Anderson Read Free Book Online

pulled back from him,
breaking the kiss. Her heart was pounding and for a moment, she felt frozen to
the spot.
    The prisoner opened his strange blue eyes
and looked up at her. His tongue traced his lips, as though he enjoyed the
lingering taste of her mouth on his.
    “Why did you stop?” he murmured in a soft,
deep voice.
    “I…Because I…” Maggie shook her head. “We
can’t…we have to get you out of here. There’s no time for this…this kind of
thing.”
    He arched an eyebrow at her. “Afraid
you’ll have to make time. If you’re serious about getting me out.”
    “What…what do you mean?” Her heart was
still pounding so loudly she was sure he could hear it. “I unchained you and
took off your collars and broke the verium barrier. You should be good to
go—right?”
    “I would be…if it wasn’t for all this damn
dust.” He nodded down at his skin which was still coated with the silver-gray
verium. “Need you to wash it off me. Should be able to…now that the verium seal
is gone.”
    Maggie was half appalled, half
embarrassed…and maybe just a tiny bit lustful? Was he actually saying that she
had to wash the dust off his entire, mostly naked body?
    “Can’t you?” she asked awkwardly. “I mean,
now that you’re feeling better…”
    “Still…weak…” He closed his eyes and
groaned expressively. “Please…need your help.”
    Maggie hesitated—she was engaged. There
was no way she ought to be putting her hands all over a mostly naked man. Especially
an extremely hot and mustcular mostly naked man. But in this
case, she decided, she would have to make an exception. There was nothing else
she could do if she wanted to save the prisoner. And there was no point in
coming in here and freeing him from all his restraints only to leave him lying
on the floor, unable to move because she felt too guilty to do what had to be
done.
    “All right,” she said. “Here goes.”
    She started with his face, pouring cool
handfuls of water over his cheeks and forehead and hair. Now that the seal or
barrier was broken, the dust came off easily although it seemed to help when
she stroked the water through his hair and rubbed his skin with her fingers.
She tried using the sleeve of her green dress again but that only seemed to
smear the dust. After trial and error she found it came off best when she used
skin-to-skin contact.
    “Feels so good,” the prisoner groaned
softly as she finished his face and started on his broad, muscular chest. “Your
hands…so soft and gentle.”
    “Thank you.” Maggie could feel her cheeks
getting hot but she continued on, scooping up water from the stream and
brushing it over the broad, flat planes of his chest. “I’m…uh, glad you’re
feeling better.”
    “Felt better the first…minute I saw you.”
He looked up at her again, his eyes holding some emotion she couldn’t read.
“You wept for me…shared my pain. Why?”
    “I don’t know, exactly.” Maggie shrugged
awkwardly. “I just…can’t stand to see anyone being hurt like that. It’s awful.”
    He frowned. “Just felt sorry for me, huh?
Can’t stand to see an animal tortured.”
    “No, not like that,” she protested. “I
just—”
    “I thought…maybe because of the dreams.”
He coughed. “Didn’t know…if you would come back.”
    “I couldn’t just leave you here—especially
now that she has that terrible Hurkon collar. If I would have known what she
wanted to use it for, I never would have agreed to bring it!”
    Maggie finished with his chest and back
and started on his legs. They weren’t as saturated with the silver-gray dust as
the upper part of his body was so it wasn’t too hard to get them clean—although
she did blush when she rubbed water over his knees and lower thighs. Thank
goodness for his loincloth—she really didn’t need to be seeing every single
part of him while she was giving him an impromptu sponge bath.
    “If you hadn’t brought it, you never would
have seen