Ecstasy: The Shadowdwellers. Jacquelyn Frank

      Ashla wanted to obey his command to leave with all of her heart. She wanted to run fast and hard until the entire world fell away from her and snapped back into the normal, sane place she was used to and craved so very badly.

      But despite all of that, she couldn’t find it in herself to leave him like he was. He was obviously injured, and very badly at that. There weren’t many things she could count herself any good at, but she had the potential to help him if she had to.

      “I’m not going to leave you here without any help,” she said with a firm bravado they both knew she didn’t feel. She lifted her chin and met his eyes, hoping this would make her determination more convincing.

      He chuckled, a dry, breathy sound that went eerily well with the amazingly faceted darkness of his eyes as he looked at her. “There is no help. You’ll learn that soon enough,” he said.

      His defeatist words slid past her barely noticed. She was caught up for a moment in the wondrous way his irises nearly matched the black depths of his pupils, except there was something like starlight in those dark centers, and the black coffee color surrounding them gleamed like painstakingly cut precious stones. She found it impossible to look away until his long, sooty lashes fell over them with his waning consciousness.

      Ashla shook herself to the ready.

      “Who knows, you could be right,” she muttered as she leaned over him. “For all I know, that’s because you went around chopping all their heads off. And me being the idiot I am, I’m going to try and help you so you can get strong enough to lift your scary sword again and…and…”

      The implication was clear enough. She didn’t need to voice what she clearly couldn’t. It shouldn’t have affected Trace one way or another, what a wraith thought of him, but for some reason the taste her remarks left on his tongue was deeply bitter.

      “Look,” he growled on labored breaths, indignant emotion fueling him for the moment, “I said I’m not going to hurt you.”

      “That’s what the bad guy tells every stupid woman in all those stupid movies, and she always ends up dead or worse. Which I guess makes me really, really stupid.” She peeled back the fabric of his torn shirt and turned extraordinarily gray right before his eyes as she took in the scope of the cuts and slices he’d received from both Baylor and the plate glass he’d come through. “Oh, God, I…” She gagged low in her throat and reflexively went to cover her mouth, but an inch short of the mark her eyes focused on the blood from his wounds that was soaking her palms and forearms and the movement screeched to a halt. The rusty smell of fresh, abundant blood must have hit her a second after that because she flung herself away from him and vomited violently.

      But to Trace’s surprise, she turned back to him as soon as she had minimally composed herself. She began grabbing clothing from nearby tables using them to wipe away the blood on his chest. She then applied pressure to the worst of his visible wounds, all the while, continuously weeping huge, silent tears. It was as though the emotional woman and the physical one were acting completely independent of each other’s reactions. He was compelled to reach for one of her slim wrists, grasping it and holding it firmly even when she startled hard in his hand. Tears rained off the slopes of her cheeks as her worried eyes flicked up to confront him.

      “You do not have to do this. You have every right to be afraid in this strange world you no doubt have little understanding of. And anyway, these wounds are nothing. The mortal blow was in my back, and there is nothing to be done for it. These others are incidental. Listen.” Trace squeezed the remarkably small hand he held gently, overcome with the idea that he could shatter her small bones if he pressed too hard. Strange he should think so. The women in his world were strong and powerful, sturdy and bold. He hadn’t thought he would even know how to treat a female who might be so delicate, not to mention overly sensitive, as this one surely was. “There’s nothing you can do here.”

      She was already shaking her head in vehement negativity. The defiant stubbornness it signaled simply floored him. What was she thinking? She spoke truth of logic, that from her perspective she had no way of knowing which of the fighting males had been the more just and honorable, that she was likely setting herself up for trouble. She was plainly scared to death to be near him and wanted absolutely nothing to do with his bloody, gored body, and yet she would not take the surcease he offered to her. She wouldn’t leave him.

      The woman was clearly an idiot.

      Chapter 2

      Ashla was completely convinced of her own stupidity as she remained firmly by the injured man’s side. On the plus side, his kind attempt to release her from obligation had helped her to control her remaining weeping, ratcheting the infernal weakness down to a series of sniffles. As she did so, she began to think more clearly. Ashla slid carefully to Trace’s side and bit her lip a moment as she inspected her choices.

      “I have to roll you over to see your back. It’s going to hurt.”

      “Yeah. It is. Look, I already told you…”

      “Well, just humor me! It’s not as if you’re late for a date or something.”

      Trace watched her shove at her hair in her pique, her fingers streaking blood through the fair gold strands. He didn’t point it out to her, not wishing to potentially bring back her nausea, and simply braced up a knee to help her roll him onto his right side. He didn’t need to hear her gasp to confirm what he could already feel. She peeled off the remainder of his shirt to see a river of blood oozing in swift, pulsing rushes down the span of his back. The hole Baylor had left behind was probably an inch or better in width. While the other ’Dweller had been only a fair swordfighter, with his weapon of choice, the dagger, he had always been an absolute killer. The proof being that six inches of steel in Baylor’s hand had killed Trace long before Trace had managed to kill Baylor in return.

      Ashla bit her lip hard, trying not to react to what she was seeing any more than she already had. The knifing was bad, it was true. It poured out his life in rapid pulses. But just as shocking was the evidence on his back that this had been far from his first such fight or injury. She had uncovered a canvas of scars. Or what should have been scars. They looked strangely smoothed and without texture where they should have been jagged and ridged. They were scars nonetheless, ripped bright pink and pale through the palette of his dark skin, tearing a path up the length of his spine as if some animal had clawed him over and over again. There were other marks as well, a testament to the abuse he had subjected himself to.

      But she had to ignore all of that dramatic history and focus completely on the most recent damage. Ashla probed the bloody wound with unsure fingers, gritting her teeth against the feel of the fluid that so quickly became tacky to her touch. She drew a shuddering breath as she realized he was not exaggerating. The wound was horribly mortal. Just the amount of blood he was losing in those few moments told her as much. No medical degree required. She could even feel the warmth