Blackwolf's Redemption. Sandra Marton

get free of his hands.

      “I said don’t move,” he growled. “Or I’ll have to restrain you.”

      Restrain? What kind of madman used a word like restrain? And wasn’t he already doing that? Questions tumbled through her head. Who was this nut? Where had he come from? For that matter, where was she? Her gaze flew past him, to the mountain that loomed over her, and beyond it, to the blazing sun.

      The sun. The solstice.

      That was it. The solstice. She’d been observing it, waiting for the moment the new summer sun would send a dagger of light between the standing slabs that guarded the sacred stone and then, without warning, lightning had torn apart the sky. Green lightning, zigzagging between the stones.

      A black void had opened before her. She’d felt herself falling into it, spinning inside it…

      And then, nothing. A nothing so cold, intense and empty she’d felt as if her bones might become petrified, as if the emptiness would swallow her.

      But it hadn’t, because she was here, with a man she’d never seen before crouched beside her. A savage with a hard face, eyes as cold and black as obsidian, and a mouth as thin as the slash of a rapier.

      Sienna tried to swallow. Impossible. Terror had leeched the moisture from her mouth. The man watched the motion of her throat, then lifted his eyes to her face again.

      “Are you hurt?”

      Was she? Carefully, she flexed her fingers, her toes, her back.

      “I don’t—”

      “Do you ache anywhere?”

      Why would he care? Still, her response was automatic. “My head.”

      One hand left her shoulder, rose to her head. She jerked away, or would have jerked away, but his other hand came up to cup her jaw and hold her head still while his fingers explored her scalp. His touch was light, almost gentle, a sharp contrast to his face, his body, his voice—but she knew it didn’t mean a thing. She had studied indigenous cultures in which the warriors treated their captives relatively gently until the moment of—

      “Aah.”

      Sienna hissed in pain. The man grunted.

      “You’ve got a lump behind your ear.” His hands shifted, began a slow trip down her throat, along her shoulders.

      “Don’t,” she said, but he paid no attention as he worked his way to her toes. His touch was efficient, not intimate, but that didn’t keep it from adding to her terror.

      “How many fingers?”

      She blinked. “What?”

      “How many fingers do you see?”

      She looked at his upraised hand. “Three.”

      “And now?”

      “Four. Who are you?”

      Carefully, she rose on her elbows, felt the coldness of stone beneath her bare arms.

      He leaned closer. She flinched back. He gave an impatient growl, caught hold of her shoulders and leaned toward her.

      “What are you doing?”

      “Checking your pupils.”

      It was unnerving. Those black eyes boring into hers.

      “My pupils are fine.”

      “Turn your head. Again. Slowly. Good. I’m going to roll you over.”

      “You are not going to—”

      But he did. His hands danced over her, his touch still impersonal. When he was finished, he turned her on her back, slid an arm under her shoulders and sat her up.

      The world spun. There was a kind of buzzing sensation in her head, as if a swarm of tiny bees had found their way inside and set up housekeeping.

      Sienna moaned.

      The man’s arm tightened around her. It was a strong, hard arm, deeply tanned by the sun, muscled and toned by work. She wanted to jerk away from him, but she didn’t have the strength and even if she had, she knew he wouldn’t have permitted it.

      At last, the earth stopped spinning. She took a deep, shaky breath.

      “I’m—I’m okay.”

      He let go of her. She swayed a little, and he cursed and wrapped his arm around her again.

      “Put your head down.”

      “It isn’t nec—”

      “Put it down.”

      She complied. What choice was there when he was glaring at her? The last thing she wanted to do was anger a madman. He was angry enough already. At what? At her? Was anger a sign of psychosis? If only she’d paid more attention to those psych courses…

      “Take another couple of deep breaths. That’s it.” He held her a moment longer. Then he let go and put a few inches of distance between them. “Your name?”

      It wasn’t a question, it was a demand.

      Should she tell him her name or shouldn’t she? She’d once read that violent criminals generally didn’t want to know anything about their victims, which was exactly why some shrinks thought you might save your life by making your kidnapper, your rapist, see you as an individual.

      Your rapist, Sienna thought, and swallowed a wild rush of hysterical laughter. It sounded so mundane. Your hair stylist. Your bus driver.

      Your rapist.

      “Answer me. What’s your name?”

      She took a breath. “I’m Sienna Cummings. Who are you?”

      “How did you get here?”

      Where? She didn’t realize she’d said the words aloud until his eyes narrowed to inky slits.

      “Pleading amnesia won’t work. Neither will avoiding my questions. How did you get here?”

      She looked at him. “Where is here?” she said, in such a small voice that Jesse was tempted to believe her.

      But she’d told him her name. Yeah, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d dealt with enough wounded men to know that there was such a thing as selective memory loss. She might know her name but not anything else.

      Or, he thought coldly, she might be lying through that soft-looking, rosy mouth.

      “Here,” he said grimly, “is my property.”

      “Blackwolf Canyon?” She shook her head. “You don’t own this place.”

      “Trust me, lady. I damned well do. Every tree, every rock, every speck of dirt is mine.”

      “You don’t own it,” she repeated stubbornly.

      Jesse almost laughed. She was damned sure of herself. Did she think she could plead ignorance and get away with what she’d planned?

      He could categorize her easily enough. She was either a hippie who hadn’t accepted the fact that the sixties were gone, or she was a thief.

      There was a big market for relics from the long-gone past. “Sacred artifacts of Native Americans,” the fat, easily frightened guy he’d caught on his land last year, despite the No Trespassing signs posted around his ten thousand acres, had called them, though real Native Americans simply referred to themselves as Indians.

      As for the sacred part…

      Complete, unadulterated crap.

      Yeah, there were those of his people who were suckers for that kind of nonsense. He’d come close, as a boy, but Vietnam had sure as hell changed that. The stones, the glyphs, the pottery shards were nothing but stuff leftover from another time. The ledge didn’t have any kind of woo-woo magical validity