Tristan

Chapter 1

There was a naked girl in the woods.

Tristan squeezed his eyes shut. Was he so hard up for a woman he'd sunk to imagining one when none was there? Or maybe the problem wasn't his ballocks but his head, and the cold had finally gotten to him.

He rubbed his lids with his fists and blinked the snowflakes from his lashes. Nope, no luck. The girl was still there, sprawled out face down in a drift of snow, naked as the day she was born. And despite the wintry morning air, Tristan wasn't all that cold—in fact, he was sweating under his heavy coat and too many layers—which meant the girl was really there.

Shite. Double shite.

Hurling more swears under his breath, Tristan jumped down from his horse and trudged over to the girl's prone form. Snow swirled in the air around them, whipped up by an unforgiving wind, settling on the girl's blue-tinged skin and forming clumps of white in her tangled mass of black hair.

She was dead, surely. She had to be. No one could survive this weather without any clothes for protection, not for long, and Tristan hadn't seen a living soul for miles. How long had she been here? How had she gotten here? And why was she bloody naked?

With another muttered curse, Tristan bit off his right glove and let it fall to the ground. He brushed her hair over one shoulder, grazing her skin with his fingertips. Cold as a block of ice. Futilely, he pressed his fingers to the exposed side of her neck, certain he'd get nothing but frostbite for his efforts.

Under his touch, a fluttering pulse beat, so soft and sluggish at first he thought he'd imagined it, until he felt a second and then a third. His own heart galloping, Tristan carefully turned her over so that she lay on her back. Her chest moved up and down in shallow, labored breaths. His gaze caught on the nasty gash between her breasts. The wound was deep, but it must have missed hitting anything vital, and the cold had stopped the bleeding. By the grace of the Gods, she was alive, somehow. Unconscious, but alive. Only not for much longer, not if she stayed out here.

Tristan located his errant glove, tore off the other and shoved them both onto her frozen hands. Then he stripped off his cloak and draped it over her like a blanket. The girl was slender, but tall, his coat leaving her ankles and feet uncovered. It would have to do for now. With a grunt, he lifted her up easily enough, cradling her limp body to his chest, and strode with her to his horse, who gave him and the bundle in his arms a baleful look. Whoever had named the horse Blossom had a strange sense of humor. She was pretty as you please, with a golden palomino coat accented by a cream-colored mane and tail, but a grumpier mare Tristan had never met.

"Behave, or no lump of sugar for you," Tristan told Blossom sternly, not that she would listen. None of the females in his life ever did. True to form, the mare stomped her hoof and tossed her head, as if to say, no way am I carrying you both.

Well, that was too damned bad. Sending a brief prayer to the Gods his bumbling about wouldn't hurt her further, he slung the girl up over his shoulder, arse up, and awkwardly clambered onto Blossom's back. Once he was settled onto the saddle, he lifted the girl off his shoulder, careful not to jostle her overmuch, and arranged her limbs on either side of his legs so that she sat astride him. He tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder with one hand, and with the other, wrestled with his cloak until he had it wrapped around them both, more or less. Her bare feet remained exposed to the elements, but it would have to do for now.

"You'd better live after all this," he told the unconscious figure cradled against his chest. She didn't stir, but pressed so close, he could feel the fragile intake and exhale of her breath. She wasn't dead yet. Good enough for him.