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Page 83

| he began swimming away with her just as the twisted limbs and debris floated past with a loud sucking noise. |

| Tears streamed from Sasha's eyes as she clung to Ashton, his one arm so powerfully wrapped around her, the other taking long strokes in the water. "Ashton, oh, Ashton, thank God you saw me," she sobbed weakly. "Had you not, I" |

| "Don't think about it," Ashton said, glad to be able to place his feet on the bottom of the river at last. He lifted Sasha into his powerful arms and fought the mud at his feet to carry her to dry land. "But what I would like to know is why you were in the river in the first place?" |

| Her hair in massive tangles around her shoulders, loose strands hanging in her eyes, Sasha sighed with the weariness of her fight with the river. "I thought the river had become calmer," she said. "I was the only one left on the opposite shore. I wanted to prove that I could fend for myself as well as any of you men." |

| "And you almost got yourself killed while doing it," Ashton grumbled. |

| He held her tightly to him, looking down into her tearful eyes and at her flushed cheeks. "I came close to losing you," he said thickly. "Promise never to do anything as foolish as that again." |

| "At the time I did not see it as foolish," Sasha defended herself. "The next time I may not either." |

| "I was afraid that's what you would say," he said, frowning down at her. "What am I to do with you?" |

| "Right now I would like nothing more than to stay snuggled in your arms," Sasha said, closing her eyes |

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