Page 4 of Crying Wolfe
“Two.”
The ladder was only a few steps away, hidden in the dark. If she could distract the man, she might make it up the bookshelves and scramble out the window before he even thought to look up.
Upwas where Rosaline had hidden her entire life.
People always looked in closets, cellars, nooks and crannies for missing girls. They never looked on the roof.
“Three.”
Without a second thought, she tossed the pencil over the back of the couch as hard as she could. Once it crashed into something on the opposite side of the wall, she leapt up and dashed for the ladder.
Another shot left her ears ringing, but she grasped the rung one-handed, and fought sweat-slicked palms and a writhing cat to climb.
“What the—”
She didn’t dare look back. Propelled by terror and desperation, Rosaline climbed with all her strength.
A rough hand encircled her ankle and pulled.
Losing her grasp on both Orion and the ladder, she clutched at handfuls of empty air as she fell backward with a frantic cry.
Instead of landing on the ground in a crumple of twisted limbs, she was yanked around the middle by a burly arm that controlled the rest of her descent. He had her turned around and imprisoned against the ladder with his far superior weight before she could take a breath. Both hands tightened on the wood next to her shoulders, locking her arms down.
Where he’d put the gun, she could only guess.
The pallid glow from the city slanted across half his face, painting his features in stark contrasts of light and shadow.
He was exactly like his voice. Male. Hard. Dangerous. Dark. Gritty.
Panic was making her light-headed. Or perhaps it was his scent, both overwhelming and not altogether unpleasant. Something like cedar, stringent soap, and…earth baked too long in the sun.
“Let me go.” The words had been meant as an order but were released like a plea.
“Not until you explain to me how a little urchin like you got all the way the fuck up here.”
Lord but his mouth was foul.
He narrowed obdurate dark eyes at her, his lip lifted in the semblance of a snarl. “What were you after, little girl? Because only whores and thieves sneak around houses like this in the middle of the night, and I didn’t purchase a whore so…” His huge, warm body moved nearer to hers as he leaned down to take her measure.
If he got any closer, he’d find what she had in her pocket.
But the cup wasn’t theonlything she’d hidden there.
Reaching down, she snatched the knife and pressed it against his middle. “Let me go or I’ll—”
“Honey, that’s a bread knife,” he said with a wry, caustic sound as he easily swiped it from her hand. “What did you plan to do, butter me with it?”
Rosaline’s throat went dry. That drawl. Deep and crooked. Lazy almost. Nothing like the crisp tones of her countrymen. It was harsh and weathered at the edges, like the man himself.
His breath stirred in her hair as he lowered his head to say, “You want to tangle with my rough, weathered hide, you’ll need something sharper’n that.”
Something primal and electric sparked through her. It tasted like fear, but without the cold, metallic paralysis. The same thrill. The same tension in the muscles. A similar giddy, hysterical recklessness that screamed at her to run…or react.
React how?
Confused. Overwhelmed. Weak and trembling with cold, Rosaline did her best not to collapse into the warmth of his body. He was the danger. Not the savior.
She was just so cold.
