Total pages in book: 13
Estimated words: 11696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 58(@200wpm)___ 47(@250wpm)___ 39(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 11696 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 58(@200wpm)___ 47(@250wpm)___ 39(@300wpm)
Though she was mistaken in that, too. When she attempted to stand, her newly-unbound legs refused to cooperate. Brom caught her before she stumbled into an ungainly heap, sweeping her up into his arms.
And he was so warm. The summer night had only just begun to release the daytime heat, yet as he carried Flora away from the roaring fire and into the shadows between the trees, the events of the past hours seemed to settle coldly into her flesh. She began to shiver, her teeth chattering. With a soft curse, Brom gathered her even tighter to his chest, his bare skin like a furnace against hers. Instinctively she burrowed in closer, arms wrapped around his neck, her face buried against the side his throat and her heart painfully swollen.
She’d sometimes fantasized that he might hold her thus. Though not in circumstances like this. A dream come true, in the midst of a nightmare…and all while she was awake.
A few hundred paces into a forest, a quiet nicker greeted them. Flora lifted her head. Brom’s big sorrel stallion waited, his tall and heavy outline barely discernible in the dark. Her lighter gray gelding stood nearby, and relief ballooned through her chest. When the ogres had finally stopped at the clearing and dragged her from his back, the terrified gelding had broken loose and fled into the night—likely heading toward home, so Brom must have come across her horse going the other direction.
Brom paused beside his stallion. His voice was but a rough murmur against her hair. “Can you stand?”
She did not wish to. Flora never wanted to leave his arms. Yet they could not stay here, not so near to the border between her uncle’s kingdom and the ogres’ lands. Brom had killed two of the giants quite handily, but he might not fare so well against a clan.
Reluctantly she nodded, hoping rather than knowing that her legs would support her. Brom slowly lowered her feet to the forest floor. His large hands remained at her waist while she tested the steadiness of her stance—and if Flora hadn’t had evidence of his rejection, she might have believed that he lingered so long for the pleasure of touching her and not merely to make certain she wouldn’t fall again.
But she knew better. “I am well,” she whispered, still shivering, though her teeth were no longer clacking so violently.
His expression was lost to the shadows and his eyes were but a gleam in the night. Yet she thought his gaze must hold that deceptive tenderness as he reached for a pale cloth that had been draped over his saddle. It unfurled into a tunic—no doubt discarded before he’d approached the ogres, since the white linen would have exposed him, whereas his darker skin and leather breeches would not.
“Hold still.”
So that he could pull the tunic over her head. Brom’s scent suddenly surrounded her and she breathed in the strong odor of sweat and horse, with tears starting to her eyes—for that was the wondrous scent of her rescue, of the hours Brom had ridden in pursuit.
Her throat aching with the gratitude that no words could ever fully express, Flora maneuvered her sore arms into the sleeves. Barely had her fingers poked through when Brom pressed a waterskin and a strip of dried venison into her hands.
“Eat,” he commanded quietly. “And stay here. I need my axe and sword.”
In case any more ogres came upon them. Flora nodded, not wishing to be left behind while he retrieved his weapons from the clearing but understanding there was little choice. As she waited for his return, she drank her fill of the water and devoured the salty venison in four ravenous bites.
Just like the ogres meant to do to me, was the thought that came unbidden and she choked quietly on the near-hysterical laughter that the day’s horror had rattled free from the depths.
Her breath was still hitching when Brom returned. She could almost see his frown through the dark, felt his utter stillness when he cupped her jaw in both hands and discovered the tears that had wet her cheeks.
“Flora?” he asked, his voice oddly hoarse. “What made you cry?”
“I am well,” she answered shakily. “It has simply been…a very long day.”
“So it has been.” His thumbs stroked away her tears. “And not over yet. We must ride.”
Flora nodded into his palms. She knew they must away—yet still Brom surprised her when he lifted her astride his stallion.
Immediately she protested. “My horse—”
“Is spent.”
That was true. The ogres had set a brutal pace from the hunting grounds to the borderlands, and her poor gelding stood with his head drooping and exhaustion apparent in every line of his body. He might be able to walk, but it would be a cruelty to ride him.
Yet Brom’s mount had come the same distance just as quickly. “And your stallion is not spent?”