Page 23 of The Iron Earl

She gulped in water, her legs kicking. Kicking. Kicking.

Her toes searched, not touching anything.

It hadn’t looked this deep. This torrential a current.

Her arms flailed, reaching up.

The tips of her fingers breached the surface to touch air. Just a fleeting touch.

The current yanked her down, pulling her deeper. Deeper.

More water down her throat. Filling her lungs. Sinking her.

With the last of her strength, she pushed her right hand up through the water, grasping, grasping at air, at anything.

A brutal clamp locked onto her wrist and she was yanked upward. Upward to the air. To the land of the breathing.

Her head crested the surface and in a blur of water stinging her eyes and Lachlan’s body banging into her, he dragged her to the river’s edge and flung her onto the rocks.

The impact of a large rock into her belly sent her rolling onto her side, the gulps of water that filled her lungs expelling as she gasped for breath. Water out. Air in. Water out. Air in.

Heaving, she collapsed on the bankside, her body spent, her mind spinning, pulling her to darkness. The rocks that had been chilly to kneel upon five minutes ago were now warm stones against her frozen cheek.

“Dammit all to hell, Evalyn.”

Her body lifted, flying through the air and her stomach landed hard on Lachlan’s shoulder. It sent another wave of water spewing from her lungs, and she fell into a fit of coughing exasperated by her chest banging against the back of Lachlan with every step he took.

She couldn’t speak, couldn’t yell, so she slammed her fist into his back, trying to get him to stop, to set her down.

His hold across the back of her thighs and her sopping skirts only tightened.

Five more weak hits and she realized he wasn’t going to set her down.

Her coughs ceased and the true state of her humiliation washed over her.

She was being hauled back into the encampment like a felled deer. Backside high in the air. Her head pounding for all the blood pooling in it. Her body so frozen she could barely move.

All noise, all conversation stopped the moment Lachlan broke through the woods and walked into camp.

Lachlan didn’t slow, didn’t say a word.

Evalyn curled her face into his back, eyes shut tight. She didn’t want to see their faces. Didn’t want to hear the jeers.

He stomped through the camp, bent, and in the next moment she was flipped off his shoulder, tossed to the ground in his tent. She landed on her backside, her fingers setting into the wool of the blanket covering the ground.

She leaned to the side, flipping away a long strand of wet hair that had fallen across her face, blocking her view. Her glare instantly found him.

He stared down at her, his breathing heavy—or seething. Yes. Definitely seething.

With her body no longer draped over the heat of his, the cold attacked and she tried to battle away the frozen shards taking a hold of her limbs.

It didn’t work. The shaking started almost instantly, her muscles trying to warm themselves against the freezing wet cloth of her dress.

“Now will you get out of your damn dress?”

Her arms pulled inward, clamping against her torso as her legs drew under her. “I…I…”

His eyes narrowed at her. “If you say no again, I might just throw you back into that river.”

---