Black Moon Draw

I'm speechless.

He points to the corner nearest the bed.

I look, if only because I want to hide my red face. "Oh, god."

Rags soaked with rusty blood are piled in the corner, knee high and a good two to three feet wide.

That's my blood. I can assume when I hit the ground that I probably exploded or something but to see evidence of it . . . "How am I alive?"

"You are indestructible." He stretches forward to grab the mug tilting dangerously from my hands and sets it on a trunk beside the bed. "You should be grateful I cared for your womanly blossoms and not the squire. His hands are not steady enough."

Could this get any worse? I cover my face. I've been naked with men before, of course, but this is him. The man with the sexiest body on the planet, who's also engaged to someone else, whose hands I've already experienced over every inch of my skin - and loved it.

If only I weren't unconscious when he touched me this time. If that's not the most embarrassing experience ever, then I don't know what is. Did he notice the dimples in my ass in the full light of the room?

"Let me guess. You prefer hairy women," I mumble. I throw off the blankets and walk away to a window that's shuttered. It's locked from the inside, and I fumble with the mechanism to open it, needing air.

"I had not thought of it, so long as a woman is a woman," he says. "The smoothness is pleasant. How came you to have no hair?"

A glance at him is enough to show me he's amused and regarding me with intense interest I find even more disconcerting. I've had the sense more than once since meeting him that he's teasing me.

Seeing the glint in his gaze, I start to suspect I was right. He's been screwing with me subtly. I'm not used to being teased and don't expect someone like him to have a sense of humor at all. I wish he hadn't chosen something so . . . personal.

"It's . . . ah . . . Jesus why won't this open?" I yank at the shutters. I'm fevered and embarrassed, about to cry, because I'm waiting for him to make some horrible joke about the birthmark on my hip or the fact my chubby thighs touch.

I hear him approach but am more concerned about the window. If I can open it, I can breathe, escape, or jump to my death before he says something to hurt my feelings.

"Because you are not calm enough to open them." He rests a large, warm, calloused hand over mine and I freeze.