Dark Warrior: To Tame a Wild Hawk (Dark Cloth) by Lenore Wolfe Read Free Book Online Page B

surprise to see his frown.
    She looked away, staring at the room around her. She stood in Doc’s clinic, in front of Hawk’s bed. She shook her head, gathering her senses. “How long . . . I mean . . . how are you awake ? I saw the doc give you the dose of laudanum myself.”
    He started to move, but seemed to think better of it. With a wince, he relaxed into his pillow. His lips pressed together for a moment, belying the depth of his pain. “He only did so for the sheriff’s sake.” He breathed through the discomfort. “He knew how I’d feel if he really gave me any of that . . . .” He scowled at the bottle of laudanum sitting on the table beside his bed.
    Mandy shifted. His cold expression toward a harmless medicine left her little doubt about why any man would want to run if he were truly riled—then her mouth dropped open. “You know the doc?” She shook her head.
    Hawk tried again to sit up, and then fell back, biting back a groan, his lips white around the edges. “Where were you, Amanda? You were in danger. I could feel it rolling off you. Where were you?”
    She stood for a moment, not hearing him.
    His deep voice pulled her back. “Mandy?”
    The room seemed somehow disjointed. Her body unraveled. Several things came together in her mind all at once. She stood there, fighting his question and his uncanny ability to see right through her. “How long have you been awake?”
    She gasped at him—realizing—a slow shock settling deep inside her. She could hide nothing from him. Where did that leave her?
    “Come here, Amanda.”
    Her feet seemed to move of their own accord. “Over here, where I can see you,” he said, when she would have stopped.
    She moved to stand near him. When she reached his side, his hand snaked out and grabbed her wrist, giving her a hard yank and throwing her off balance so she landed, hard, on his chest. He winced in pain, but his hand moved to hold her there with gentle, yet unmovable, bands of muscle.
    She was caught, and she didn’t want to explore that idea too much.
    “Where were you? His unusual green eyes were mere inches from hers. His breath fanned her face.
    She could feel her heartbeat, mingling with the beat of his. Her pulse raced. Her own heart was beating an erratic rhythm in her breast, and she was sure he could feel it—and that it told him everything.
    “Tell me, Mandy,” he whispered.
    She went weak. A delicious headiness stole over her, curling in the pit of her stomach. A soul-deep need she couldn’t name coursed through her veins.
    “Tell me about the vision you were having.”
    “Tell,” she licked her lips, “you?”
    That was her undoing, or maybe it was his. He crushed her lips to his in a powerful kiss. Light exploded in Mandy’s head. She could feel the heat from his body coursing through her own. With a sigh, she opened her mouth to him. He immediately plundered her soft sweetness, tasting her, sipping from her as  if she were nectar.
    Fully possessing her.
    His hands moved over her back. One broke free and teased at her ribs before stealing around to stroke the sensitive flesh of the underside of her breast, and Mandy’s defenses were stripped from her. She only knew of the intense feelings he was creating in her.
    The sound of someone clearing his throat caused them to jump apart, and Mandy stood quickly.
    Hawk groaned.
    Mandy bit her lip. She did not want to turn around and see who had caught them in such a compromising position.
    “Bloody hell,” Hawk growled.
    Mandy stared down at him, fractured. Doc loved that English expression. He had everyone in town saying it. Yet that thought was lost as her face went up in flames, and it took every ounce of strength she had to turn and face Doc Mallory.
    But he only chuckled. “Maybe I should have given you the laudanum after all,” he directed at Hawk.
    Mandy wished she could fade away, right there—or even faint—but she had never fainted in her life. Hawk, hurt as he was—and