My Soul to Keep by Sharie Kohler Page A

cold-bitten face … deliberately forgetting the fact that he was charged with destroying her … that Darby had predicted Sorcha would destroy him.
    Turning away, he added several logs to the dwindling fire, vowing to stay on guard. Letting her live was one thing, letting his guard drop so she could kill him another. He didn’t know this new Sorcha and he would do well not to confuse her with the girl of his past.
    He jerked back around at her sudden gasp—like the first sharp breath you take when emerging from a great pool of water. Sorcha’s body arched off the rug like a taut bow. Air hissed between her teeth as she resurfaced and ran full force into the agony of her injuries. With eyes wide, her gaze darted wildly within her ravaged face. Then, as if the pain were too much, she squeezed them shut again.
    She groped the air with clawing fingers, as if searching for purchase, an escape from the overwhelming pain. He dropped down besideher and grabbed one of her scrabbling hands, cradling it in both of his.
    Garbled speech tripped from her feverishly moving lips, the words indecipherable.
    â€œIt’ll pass,” he soothed gruffly, setting to work removing her ruined clothing. What he couldn’t remove with ease, he simply cut from the wreckage of her body.
    Firelight gilded her, made the blood appear redder, brighter, on flesh as cold as marble. The little skin that wasn’t stained crimson glistened as golden as a peach and he muttered an obscenity for noticing, for seeing her as anything other than the child he once knew.
    He left her for a few moments, searched the kitchen until he found what he needed. Soon he was back with a basin of water and washcloths. He cleansed the blood from her. As much as he could anyway. The angry red wounds had ceased to bleed, but the ragged flesh still gaped horribly. In places the white of her bones lay exposed.
    She moaned against his attentions, fighting his efforts to help her.
    He could simply leave her alone and she would heal in her own time. He knew that from experience. She didn’t need him to hold her hand. He was charged with stopping her from destroying a demon witch. Charged with killing herif necessary. He’d been prepared to do that. Nothing required that he tend to her.
    Nothing except the twinge of tenderness he felt deep in his chest. Nothing except that, years ago, she was the only one who had penetrated the thick walls of his heart.
    He told himself that it wasn’t that. He told himself that it merely wasn’t in him to stand by as someone suffered so horribly. He wasn’t a sadist.
    He shook his head. Rising to his feet, he wrenched the thick down-filled comforter from the bed and tossed it over her naked body, his movements jerky, angry.
    She arched her spine beneath the fabric, fighting her body’s torment. Her head tossed from side to side, eyes opening and closing as if she could not decide between sleep and consciousness. Life and death. He smoothed a hand over her fevered brow, hoping to ease her.
    At last, her eyes drifted shut and her head rolled to the side. He breathed a small sigh of relief, glad she’d escaped from her pain in sleep.
    Frowning, he watched her, studying her face, appreciating her beauty, seeing the Sorcha he remembered in the delicate lines … and someone else. Someone he wasn’t certain he wished to know.
    He was accustomed to beautiful women. He’dhad his fill of them over the years. He was no saint, and at times he needed to lose himself in a woman’s heat. He needed that brief moment when he could forget that anything bad or evil existed, when he could forget that he belonged to that unnatural order of the world, where it was kill or be killed. Females flocked to him, drawn to whatever it was his nature emitted. Some sort of animal pheromone, he guessed … the animal part of him that functioned as a predator. Lycans possessed the same ability, could almost