Shaking his thoughts, he raced over the rocky slope until he reached the softer ground and then shifted, charging after the pair, who were rapidly approaching the forest. The moment Colwin heard the thud of his hooves, he, too, shifted.
* * * *
Emma’s palms were burning. She was in such a state of panic it was only peripheral pain, however, and she wasn’t certain whether it was from sliding down the rope she’d made from her bed hangings or landing on the rocky ground below the wall. Her knees hurt. There were twinges of pain from other parts of her body, as well, too numerous to count, but minor enough she didn’t think the injuries they recorded amounted to much. Most of her focus, though, was on running—no particular destination in mind beyond eluding the two men that were after her.
Huffing for breath, half blind from the darkness despite the full moon overhead, completely unfamiliar with the area, and driven by blind panic, it was little more than instinct driving her on. Her legs churned almost of their own accord while wild, random thoughts pelted her from every direction.
Naturally enough since she’d never seen a castle before in her life, she’d never climbed out the second floor window of one. She’d never climbed out
any
window, if it came to that, and certainly not one that required a rope. She didn’t know what her bed hangings had been made of beyond the fact that it had felt like silk and she’d thought it must be strong enough to do the trick.
And it had been. She just hadn’t counted on the slickness of the damned material! She’d thought she would climb down! She hadn’t anticipated sliding down the damned make-shift rope at a speed that was almost as hair-raisingly fast as if she’d simply jumped! She’d thought her heart would beat itself to death against her chest wall before she hit the bottom and splattered.
If that was anything like sky diving, she thought that was one experience she’d pass on!
She’d convinced herself she could escape with no one the wiser before morning, damn it to hell! She’d thought, once she scaled the rope, she would be home free, have plenty of time to put distance between herself and the lunatic that called himself King Bart. She didn’t know who the two men were who’d come in before she could get out the damned window, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t the physicians King Fart had promised/threatened when she’d thrown up all over him. They hadn’t
looked
like they could be physicians. They hadn’t looked like guards either, and she didn’t think she’d made enough noise to alert the damned guards anyway!
But what did she know? She’d fallen down the rabbit hole and woke up in Looneyville! There shouldn’t have been a castle, knights—any of the things she’d encountered since she’d blacked out and woken up here—where ever here was.
She’d been trying to convince herself that it was all a hallucination, or she was having the most bizarre nightmare she’d ever had in her life, but she’d found that impossible. Hallucinations, she was convinced, would have had a drugged-like feel about them and none of the things that had happened did, and she’d never had a nightmare that was so real it affected all of her senses. Her nightmares had always been like out-of-body experiences where nothing was really substantial and changed like mist. She’d never been able to see, hear, feel, taste, and smell.
She’d cried in her sleep a few times, but vomiting was sure as hell a new experience!
She’d always had a fairly delicate gag reflex, however, and King Fart had to be
the
most disgusting creature she’d ever had such a close encounter with! She thought she would’ve been alright despite the stench if he just hadn’t kissed her! The slime of his wet, wet kiss on top of the smell and the rancid taste of his mouth had just been too much!
Lucky her! He seemed to be a germaphobe! A damned strange one. How anybody could be that damned nasty and that damned fearful of catching something was beyond her.
Unless he thought the filth he was carrying around was some sort of shield from outside germs?
The urge to puke again washed over her. The sharp breath she sucked in to combat it was almost her undoing. She swallowed convulsively a few times and glanced around frantically for a place to hide when her ears told her the two men were still in hot pursuit, feeling her heart jerk painfully with fear in spite of its pounding rhythm from excursion.
A wall of darkness rose before her. Dimly, she could make out the branches and trunks of trees and realized she wasn’t far from a thick forest. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have seemed like a haven to her, but she knew it was pointless to look for a cop!
She’d begun to think she was actually going to make it to the tree line and find a burrow to crawl in to when she abruptly heard the thundering of horse hooves behind her. Her mind went perfectly blank for several moments while it tried to assimilate that, tried to figure out why she hadn’t heard the horses before and how they could be so close when she hadn’t. A fresh surge of adrenaline went through her, however, and her legs began to churn more rapidly without any conscious order.
Goosebumps erupted and raced up her spine to lift the hair on the back of her neck as the realization sank in that the riders were virtually upon her. She began to dodge and weave, also instinctively. The hand that suddenly snagged her flying hair nearly wrenched her hair from her scalp. She would’ve screamed if she’d had the breath for it.
The fingers tangled in the fabric of her bodice, but since he was racing forward, too, it was more like getting hit in the back than getting grabbed. The jolt finished her off. Her knees, already like rubber from the fright and the flight, gave. She stumbled, went flying toward the ground and landed so hard she tumbled and skidded onto her back as if she’d been thrown from a moving car.
There were hands all over her before she even came to a full halt. Lightheaded from the disorientation of the fall and the fact that she couldn’t get a decent breath of air, she kicked and slapped at the hands ineffectually. Gritting her teeth, she wrestled to pull free of them.
“Be still, woman!” a male voice growled.
Like she was going to!
The sound of tearing fabric and the pull that told her it was part of the gown she was wearing were enough to send another surge of adrenaline through her, but it was a pitiful spurt and not enough to counter the exhaustion already pulling at her. Her mind screamed rape, but she didn’t have the strength left to fight. Gasping for breath, she wiggled and writhed and flailed her arms. He caught her wrists, rolled her onto her belly, and dragged both arms behind her, binding her wrists. When he rolled her onto her back again, she tried a last ditch effort to bite her way to freedom. He used that to wedge a piece of fabric between her jaws, and she felt the sting of pulled hairs as he tied it around the back of her head.
She went limp as the fight went out of her, struggling to keep from throwing up.
Through her lashes, she caught glimpses of the shadowy figures bending over her. Recognition clicked in her mind that it was the same two men she’d glimpsed just before she dove out the window and nearly broke her neck—one dark and one fair. She was sure it was even though very little had registered in her mind beyond the long, flowing black hair that one of them had and the long, pale golden the other had.
She was hoisted to her feet. She wavered there while the man shifted his hold to her waist and then lifted her and through her across the back of a horse—or pony. She wasn’t that familiar with horses but there certainly didn’t seem to be much room across the back. That reflection was fleeting. As soon as her weight settled on her stomach, she was waging a war with her stomach and lungs and balance. Already nauseated from the memory of the horribly kiss she’d endured at the hands from the king and the running, the pressure on her stomach was almost agony. Unable to catch her breath through just her nostrils, the weight on her lungs forced her closer to unconsciousness and beyond that, she had no way to hold on or balance.
The horse took off. She managed to remain where she was for all of two seconds and slid off backwards. Her feet hit the ground with a jolt, then her ass. Fortunately, she pitched to one side and rolled onto her belly. Otherwise, she thought the fall might have broken her arms, or at least her wrists.
She lay stunned, panting for breath.
“Well that didn’t fucking well work worth a shit!” one of the men growled.
“She jumped off,” the other responded. “The little hellcat!”
Indignation swelled within Emma’s breast despite her state. “Fell!” she mumbled against the gag.
She felt someone pulling on her wrists. The binding loosened, and then she was jerked to her feet again.
“I’ll tie her to my waist,” the first man said. “We’ve wasted enough time with her. I’ve no mind to join you in the damned hoonan’s dungeon!”
That time, she was hoisted astride the horse’s back. Someone grabbed both her arms before she could even orient herself. She fell against a bare back and felt the wrench to her shoulder joints as her arms were wrapped tightly around the man and her wrists tied again. There was no saddle, nothing to help her keep her ass centered on the horse’s back. Someone grabbed her ass and slid her to the center of the horse’s back and then the horse launched into a teeth jarring run.
She didn’t particularly want to plaster her face against the man’s bare back, but she was too weak from her ordeal to manage anything else. She slumped against him, still fighting her gag reflex and trying to steady her heart and lungs before they failed her. Thankfully, it all proved to be just too much for her system to handle. She passed out despite the jarring ride.
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Chapter Two
Aydin was too furious for a while to really be aware of his burden beyond the fact that she
was
an encumbrance, an uncomfortable, unwanted weight on his back. As the certainty of imminent capture began to wane, however, and it finally occurred to him that, as angry as Colwin’s impulse had made him, it had transpired to be a stroke of unexpected luck, his seething fury abated. Not that he was about to congratulate Colwin on his stupidity! It was just sheer dumb luck that the other prisoners had ended up being a diversion that had helped
them
get away.
Bad luck for them, he thought with disgust, feeling guilt begin to creep into him that, by allowing himself to be distracted, their bid for freedom might well have cost them their lives—almost certainly had for some of them.
He shook it off. He’d come for Colwin. He hadn’t risked his neck for the others. He’d done what he could, more than anyone else had. He had no reason to feel guilty, to feel as if he’d failed them. They weren’t his responsibility.
Colwin wasn’t if it came to that. He was a man full grown, not a foal any longer! Not even a colt! It didn’t matter that he still thought of Colwin as his little brother. He had twenty and four winters under his belt! He’d had plenty of time to work his youthful foolishness off and assume the responsibilities of adulthood!
How ironic was it that Colwin was as wild and reckless as
his
father, Teagan, instead of the responsible brother, Chandler, who’d sired him?
Mayhap he’d grow out of it—if he lived long enough!
It was unfortunate that such thoughts didn’t occupy him long. Almost the moment his anger began to wane, mayhap even before that, he began to notice things he would’ve preferred not to notice.
Like the soft breasts pressed against his back like firebrands.
And the hot, moist cleft at the juncture of her thighs that rocked back and forth across his back with the rhythm of his movements.
He tried to convince himself that he was imagining it even though he had a firm mental picture of what she’d looked like beneath the volumes of fabric when he’d tossed her skirts up and torn pieces from her under skirt to use to bind her. The bright thatch at the apex of her thighs was an even brighter scarlet than her hair and that was like the heart of a fire—a deep, rich color that had caught his attention even before he’d noticed the little heart shaped face it framed.
Or the bountiful breasts threatening to spill out of the neckline of the dress she was wearing.
He had the distinct feeling her breasts, or at least one, actually
had
fallen out of the neck of her dress.
Unless that was a button he felt digging into his back and he certainly couldn’t recall buttons any where near the neck of the dress.
The suspicion that she was deliberately provoking him didn’t last more than a few seconds, unfortunately. She felt as limp as a ragdoll, and he didn’t think she could feign that—particularly not at the speed he was going. It was clear if she hadn’t been bound to him she would’ve fallen off. Even so, he had to reach back every few minutes and adjust her weight.
He slowed a little to catch his breath, motioning for Colwin to do the same, and listened for any sounds of pursuit. It didn’t particularly ease his mind that he didn’t hear any. That only meant they weren’t on to them yet—either hadn’t discovered they’d lost their prize or hadn’t figured out the direction they’d taken yet. He had a very bad feeling the king wasn’t going to be very happy about them making off with his bride, however.