Page 87 of Savage Hearts

“You have a flair for exaggeration. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Yes. My creative writing teacher in college described my aggrandizement of language as incredible.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t a compliment.”

“I got an A in that class.”

“Because he knew if he failed you, you’d have to take the class again. He couldn’t bear to live through that twice. Try the glasses on. I’ll get you something to eat.”

He rises from the bed and goes around the cabin lighting candles while I try on pair after pair, looking for one strong enough. I call out, “Why don’t you have electricity?”

“I do have electricity,” he answers from the next room. “I just don’t like fluorescent lights.”

“So get LED.”

“Don’t like those, either.”

I guess I should count myself lucky that he likes indoor plumbing.

“Oh! I found a pair that works!”

With clear vision, I look around the room in awe.

The walls and floor are made entirely of knotty polished wood the color of honey. Heavy beams run the width of the ceiling. The doors are wood, too, and so is the bed I’m lying in, which looks hand carved. There are several colorful wool blankets on the bed, and a large dark brown fur that I suspect is from a real animal.

A realbiganimal. Maybe a bear.

The furnishings are simple, rustic, and also have that hand-carved feel. There is no computer, television, or clock in the room, but there is a bookcase and a fireplace.

There’s also an enormous stuffed moose head on the wall opposite me, gazing down at me with black glass eyes.

It’s terrifying.

Mal returns to the room, and my terror increases. “Oh my god,” I whisper, seeing him.

His face is covered with the same rust-colored splatter andsmears that are on his hands. It’s dried now, but I can tell from the way it dripped and ran down his jaw that it was once liquid.

Once-bright-red liquid that has turned dark from exposure to air.

“What?”

“You have blood all over you.”

He reacts to that horrible piece of news as if I’ve just told him my zodiac sign: with total indifference.

He sets a tray on my bedside table, shucks off his heavy wool coat, throws it on a chair, then pulls his black Henley off and tosses that on top of the coat. Then he’s standing there naked from the waist up, and I’m sitting in bed with my mouth hanging open, wondering if maybe I’m suffering from a severe brain injury as well as a gunshot wound.

It’s not possible for a human to be that beautiful.

I blink to clear my vision, but all I see swimming before my eyes are acres of muscular flesh decorated by a constellation of tattoos. His bulk is surpassed only by his height, which is surpassed only by the gut punch of thatVthing leading from his washboard abs downward, like a pair of muscle arrows pointing to the goodies in his crotch.

He’s tatted, ripped, and altogether masculine. Devastated, I look away.

I’ve been blinded. He’s seared my eyeballs. I’ll never be able to see again.

He sits on the edge of the bed and picks up a bowl of steaming liquid from the tray, as if all this is completely natural. As if he walks around half-naked with blood on his hands and face every day.

Which, considering his line of work, is a possibility.