LITMIR.BIZ

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      Something about that struck a fire to a store of anger Ashla hadn’t even realized she’d been harboring. Ever since she had awakened to this dark version of the world, she had been unable to escape the feeling of being chilled through. His body warmth was the most comforting sensation she’d experienced in…so very long a time. Even in her terror as she had been trapped beneath him for those few minutes, she had wanted to cry with relief just to feel any kind of human contact again. Perhaps it had helped that his had been a powerful and vital contact, a heated energy and dominance that had soaked right through her.

      Her instinctive fury was only fueled by the logic of knowing that, just her damn luck, he was going to end up dying on her. She would be left all alone again. Not just lonely as it had often been the case in her lifetime, but well and truly alone. Devastatingly alone.

      Ashla had learned to be afraid of a great many things in the world, perhaps even to a degree beyond reason, but the idea of being abandoned in this place again for months or longer…the thought of it propelled her beyond a lifetime of cautions and concern like nothing else could possibly have done.

      She could help him. She knew she could. Or at least she hoped she could. There were so many factors to consider, not the least of which was that so many things didn’t work here as they were supposed to. But how could she not try? How could she allow doubt and questions to stack against the possibility of saving a life?

      Ashla spread her palms against the section of his broad back that housed the wound. Her fingers framed the ugly hole, the nails she had painted a ridiculous violet in her previous boredom looking morbid and garish in that moment.

      Then she closed her eyes and propelled herself back twenty-two years. She couldn’t seem to help herself. It happened every time she did this. She was instantly transported to the very first time she had discovered she could heal with the touch of her hands…

      …and how it had been one of the most horrific experiences of her life, just like every time she had dared to exercise the ability since. The first time, though, that was the one that would never shake free.

      She had been only five years old. It was actually one of those cute stories of childhood. Everyone had them, didn’t they? A story about a child finding a poor, injured animal and that child’s desire to make it better. This in spite of her parents’ blunt warnings that the small baby bunny the family dog had dropped triumphantly at her feet would never survive the shock and fear of being mouthed by the retriever. This was to say nothing of the bloody wound in its foot caused by either a canine tooth or the process of the chase. But like any child in that position, she had simply wanted to fix it. She had wanted it with all of her heart. So she had held the rabbit in her hands, against that heart that wanted so badly to help, and felt the small creature go from a distressed ball of limp, shuddering fur to a warm, living animal full of energy and life. It had been an utterly amazing transformation to her.

      It was the work of the devil to her family.

      Her mother had called her Satan, screamed and wailed as if she was dead, and they had…

      Ashla closed off the memory, her breath rasping and coming short as if metal was closing around her throat to choke her again. She shut it all away, because if she took the time to think about what this man would do to her when he realized what she could do, she would completely lose her nerve. But her life, her pain, all meant nothing when the only other option was to allow herself to become a murderer by neglect. If she didn’t do what she could to save him, she might as well have stuck him with the blade herself.

      Trace lay surprisingly quiet. It was surprising to him because he was in a great deal of pain, and while he was known for his patience in most things, agony wasn’t one of those things. It was probably his curiosity getting the better of him. He was trying to figure out what she was up to as he listened to her mutter under her breath. To him, it sounded like she kept telling herself to stop thinking.

      “Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.” A litany. Over and over again. Then, aloud to him, “Listen, this is going to hurt, but you have to trust me, okay?”

      Frankly, Trace didn’t see a point to any of it, whatever “it” was. However, he couldn’t put up much of a protest with his back to her and weakness weighing down his whole body. All he could manage was a listless, unimpressed shrug of his exposed shoulder. What did it matter? Hell, she could strip naked and tap-dance for all the good it was going to do. At least he’d get some entertainment out of it.

      Or so he thought until she stabbed her finger deep into the wound Baylor had created. Trace bellowed in agony and tried to haul himself off the floor and out of her sadistic reach, but all of a sudden the little blond mouse who shook at every word he spoke had found the strength of a dozen Demons and kept him forcefully in place as she wriggled her finger down as far as she could into his body.

      “By the Dark, are you insane?” he roared, fumbling at his back for her hand. Before he could reach her, however, she yanked it out and shoved him hard onto his back again. He was so heavily occupied with his pained shouts that she climbed up over him without any argument from him that didn’t come in the form of curses she probably didn’t understand. Not unless she had happened to learn Shadese, the Shadowdwellers’ native tongue, in the past five minutes or so.

      On a visual-sensory delay of sorts as information filtered through the haze of his hurt, Trace absorbed her actions as she yanked up the long skirt she was wearing, soaking it with bloody handprints while she threw her leg over his hips and settled herself over him as if she were about to ride him into the ground. The fact that he was in too much pain at first to protest, despite the image she made in her strange, pale sort of beauty, only made him angrier.

      “Get off!” he gasped at last, reaching for the waif with his jellied arms. He was as weak as a kitten, but he would be damned if he couldn’t throw off a sadist bitch no bigger than a ten-year-old.

      When she swatted him away as if he were a pesky fly, Trace was ready to explode with frustrated fury.

      And then she did the oddest thing, the mere shock of it cutting off his torrential emotions at the knees. The peculiar little blonde ran her splayed hands slowly up his bared belly and chest as she leaned fully forward, just until her eyes were gazing down into his, and her lips were touching his mouth by the space of a hair. Trace caught his breath, holding back his reaction merely by the power of his surprise. He stared up into eyes of blue, so unique to someone like him, and felt her breath and its incongruous warmth as it spilled in rapid rushes over his face. He became aware of her scent again, but this was probably because it was everywhere, warm and weighty and pervasively sweet.

      “Trust me,” she demanded of him as all of her weight came to lie against him. “This will help.”

      Trace couldn’t even conceive of how to argue with her about that. Old instincts cursed him for ever turning his back on a woman, even if he was about to die. But older instincts than that were shifting the focus of his attention, helping to curb the lance of pain constantly running through him. As if he had his father’s perceptions and could sense the truth on a higher level, Trace knew that she believed what she was doing could actually help. Ashla was as gentle now as she had been seemingly cruel a moment ago, and the softness of her caressing touch left him off balance and raw with vacillating focuses.

      Wraith or not, she had an intriguing little body tucked into that dress, he realized as she slowly began to reach and glide over him; moving like liquid poured over a polished path, she simply flowed. She stroked, she touched. She found every bit of exposed skin she could and painted it with her special brand of delicate attention. All the while she laid herself along his body, warming him in more ways than one.

      Trace was left with the inane thought that while he’d never been overly fond of the scent of flowers, he might be persuaded to think otherwise in the future…provided he even had a future after this.

      The Lost woman continued running her hands all along his bare skin and Trace was struck by how very much it was like a seduction. Her eyes slid closed now and again, her expression one of deep concentration, while at the same time it seemed as though she were experiencing a

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