Wounded Cowboy

Uncommon Cowboys Book Four.

Luka is dying. He survived captivity and abuse from the brutal pack that killed his family, holding out because of dreams of a man with big, gentle hands. When Charlie Danvers finds a beautiful scarred man with long silken black hair and feral green eyes, naked and freezing in an April snowstorm, he takes him home to his lonely cabin and will do anything to heal him.

At first, Luka is afraid, even of Charlie. He has nightmares and can’t sleep in a bed like a normal person and he can’t even figure out how to use a knife and fork at Charlie’s table. But Charlie’s patience is rewarded as Luka slowly comes out of his shattered pain, helping Charlie take care of the other wounded creatures on his nature reserve.

Characters from the previous stories made a brief appearance in Wounded Cowboy continuing the theme of werewolves finding and claiming their human cowboy mates. Jan Irving’s Wounded Cowboy exhibits a blend of exceptionally arousing romance along with a precarious dilemma for the community--Chocolate Minx, Literary Nymphs Reviews.

Available in ebook here from Total E Bound.

Excerpt from Wounded Cowboy

Luka was dying. Pain radiated from his back. Slow tears trickled down his face and dropped into the patches of snow underneath him.

At least he was alone here. Sometimes when the nightmares came, more and more often, he thought he was back with them.

Whimpering, he curled into the foetal position. The wound on his back pulled and oozed more blood. He hugged himself like he had done so many nights.

He needed someone.

He should be hungry. He hadn't been strong enough to hunt for some time. But his belly was sunken, just another tight pain like the rest of him.

He groped for his knapsack, the only thing he’d been able to salvage when he’d abandoned the old blue truck. He had to sit up to squint at his journal in the harsh light, flipping through pages, his fingers cramped and swollen. As much as he needed to express himself, he didn’t think he could manage it anymore.

Pages and pages of drawings, all of him, Luka’s dream man, his healer.

He’d started dreaming about his healer when he'd been a captive. He remembered the first time he’d tried to draw him his fingers had been crusted with his own blood, but when he managed a part of the man’s face, scratched into a cedar wall, he’d forgotten his swollen lip, his broken ribs.

He’d stared at the man in the light of the single candle he saved for special occasions, feeling something... He wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t pain, though it made his chest ache.

Now looking at that face he could lie down again, feeling familiar peace. He only had a pencil, so he couldn’t fill in colours, but Luka knew his vision had grey eyes with squint lines at the corners and had rugged features, bronzed by the elements. His hair was brown and shaggy with threads of white at the temples. He had big hands, gentle hands, healing hands. Sometimes when Luka was really sore, when just turning over made him whimper from pain, Luka would picture those caring hands on him.

He'd never experience that. The late April snows had taken him by surprise, and he had no camping gear, not after the way he’d escaped. When he'd been hungry, he'd roamed as the wolf, finding game. More and more he'd spent time as the wolf but a bullet wound from a hunter’s rifle had creased his back and the pain had fractured his ability to change.

Now he lay naked and shivering under the canopy of a pine tree, its boughs weighed heavy by the last snow of winter. The wind cut under the branches, ice pellets striking his exposed flesh.

Dempsy had told Luka over and over again he was barely worth keeping alive. He knew he had only one use. He squeezed his eyes shut as he remembered what that was. Dempsy’s rough hands on him, his breath hot against the back of Luka’s neck as he—

No. He was going to die out here, he knew that, but he was going to die a free wolf. He wouldn’t think of the pit anymore, of watching his father and brothers and cousins go down.

It wasn’t so bad anymore. He was getting warmer, as if something kind had touched him when he surrendered. He didn’t have to fight anymore, or hide, or be afraid.

* * * *

Charlie Danvers shook his snowshoe, trying to free some of the ice that encrusted it so he could continue his solitary tramp through the still, crystalline forest. Here nothing was between him and his maker, as his pa used to say.

He smiled. He missed the old man though he’d been gone since Charlie was twenty, fifteen years ago. Now he had no one to share the work with, the small triumphs, the crushing sadness when he failed to save one of his rescue animals. His grandfather had founded a small nature reserve on Danvers Peak way back when most people didn’t think this land was good for anything but cattle and logging. Charlie strove to protect the slice of pristine wilderness.

It was lonely work. When the sole cowboy working his land had passed away from a heart attack two years ago, Charlie had been left badly short-handed. Since then he’d made do with the help of volunteers. He knew he had to hire someone on, but the work required a special affinity for the wild.

He sucked in a breath that felt like cold fire deep in his chest. Directly ahead of him was a foot, sticking out from underneath the shelter of a pine. What the hell?

His heart jumped and he crawled under the branches as quickly as he could. He found a man lying half-covered with snow, naked, his arms, chest and legs exposed to the brutal elements.

Charlie ripped off his glove and put his fingertips against the stranger’s neck. At first he only felt cold damp flesh.

The man’s eyes snapped open. Dark green. Jungle green. Feral and wild.

Charlie caught his breath, an icy trickle working down his back.

“You found me!” The stranger’s lips cracked and bled as a beautiful smile illuminated his face, like a warm candle in the midst of the frozen land.

Charlie knelt, suspended in the moment, heart again thumping in his ears. The man’s eyes shut and his breath whispered out of his chest as though it was his last.

“No. No!” Charlie yanked off his thermal coat, pulling the young man up and wrapping it around him. On his back a long wound oozed blood and pus. Shit, it looked like a bullet wound. Someone had shot this man!

Charlie stared at his face... He was a stunning man, but one side of his face was marred by thick scarring, the flesh looking melted as if it had been burned. The mark was as big as Charlie’s fist. “Jesus, fella,” Charlie growled. What the hell had happened to him?

Charlie didn’t waste any more time speculating because there was no time to waste. He managed to drag the stranger by the feet from under the tree, then hefted him into a fireman’s carry. Only the fact the man was so thin made it possible for Charlie to huff his way back in the direction of his snowmobile.

Halfway there he fell, snow getting under the collar of his sweater. Charlie shuddered as it melted against his skin. The man didn’t react and Charlie was too scared to see if he could find a pulse. Limp in Charlie’s arms, he wasn’t looking good.

“Don’t you give up,” he said. “I got you now, so don’t you give up.”

Copywrite: Jan Irving

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