Shawnee Bride by Elizabeth Lane

Author:Elizabeth Lane [Elizabeth Lane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781459251069
Publisher: Harlequin Treasury

Chapter Eleven

What in heaven’s name had possessed her?

Clarissa shook her head in disbelief as she dropped a heated stone into a large calabash of water to warm it. Offering to give Wolf Heart a bath had been the last thing on her mind when she’d walked into the lodge and found him alone. But his words and manner had challenged her, triggering her calamitous temper. She had blundered into her own trap, and now there was no way out.

He watched her in silence, glowering from under his thick black eyebrows as she selected a soft scrap of tanned buckskin, rough on its inner side, to serve as a washcloth. Scrubbing down a wounded bear would be less daunting, she thought. For all his white blood, there were times when Wolf Heart appeared savage to the core. This was one of them.

“You’ll thank me when this is over,” she said, approaching him with the heavy calabash balanced between her hands. “I hope you’ll have the good sense not to struggle. It wouldn’t take much strain to undo the healing of those ribs.”

He glared at her as the words sank home, but he did not move. Wolf Heart was no fool. “You don’t have to do this,” he growled.

“Oh?” Clarissa knelt beside him, dipped the buckskin into the calabash and left it for a moment to soak up the warm water. “And what, pray tell, are my other choices? Listen to you grumble all day because you’re so filthy you can’t stand yourself? Put up with the smell of you night after mght until you’re well enough to leave? No, thank you!”

She wrung out the buckskin and started on his face. At the touch of the pleasantly warm water she felt the resistance easing out of him. He closed his eyes as she wiped down his forehead, his temples, his nose and cheeks, tracing each contour of his powerful jutting bones. His lashes lay as black as the barbs of a crow feather against his golden skin.

Clarissa willed her emotions to freeze, her mind to focus on her task, but his nearness was already doing disturbing things to her. She could feel the quickening of her pulse and the small, warm, jerky flutters low m her body, like an itch in desperate need of scratching. She should try to talk, she thought. Chat about the weather, about the coming ball game, anything. But no words would form in her mind.

Abruptly surprise came to her rescue. Her hand paused. She leaned closer, gazing at his chin in astonishment.

His eyes shot open. “What is it now?” he demanded gruffly.

“You have…whiskers!” she gasped, staring at the minuscule dots of black stubble.

“Of course I do.”

“But I’ve never seen—” She groped for the rest of the phrase, thinking how ridiculous she must sound. “I’ve never seen you shave1”

“I don’t,” he answered calmly. “Most Shawnee men have no hair on their faces. Those few who do—” he gave her a sharp sidelong glance “—usually have it pulled out.”

“And you?” She stared at him, flabbergasted.

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