“You told us nothing,” he responded harshly. “Certainly nothing to convince me you would not betray us to them if the opportunity arose.”
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to sleep like this!” Emma said sullenly.
“You slept on my back. You have had more rest than either of us already.”
He had a point, but she didn’t think she was nearly as strong as either one of them, and she needed more rest than they did! There didn’t seem to be much point in arguing about it, however. Glaring at both of them, she settled the best she could and tried to find a comfortable position.
Aydin left her, settled on the ground on his side, and appeared to simply shut-down. After studying her a few moments, Colwin wandered off a little ways and settled to watch.
She was more worn down than she’d thought. In spite of everything, she finally dozed off, waking with a start sometime later. Disoriented, she looked around. The moon had set, but her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she could still make out the deeper shadows among the shadows where Aydin and Colwin lay.
Her heart skipped a beat when she realized Colwin had dozed off. He was supposed to be guarding them from the damned king’s men! She was on the point of calling out to him to wake him up when it abruptly occurred to her that she’d been presented with a chance to escape—maybe.
Visit dpgroup.org for more free ebooks uploaded by our generous members
Chapter Four
The thought frightened her more than it comforted her. How could she get along without them when it was clear they were woodsmen and knew how to survive in the forest and she didn’t?
They were near a stream, though, she reminded herself. Every living thing needed water. If she followed it, she was bound to find habitation somewhere along the way. She’d have plenty of water and surely she could find the horrible berries as easily as Colwin seemed to have?
What would staying with them entail? They certainly hadn’t rescued her, even though she didn’t feel nearly as threatened by them as she had by the men they called hoonans. She was inclined to think that they weren’t bad men—maybe a little misguided.
She was obliged to admit after a few moments that the only ‘threat’ was that she found them a lot more attractive than she should have—under
any
circumstances and certainly considering her current situation.
She didn’t even understand
why
she was attracted to them. It was dark. The full moon earlier had made it possible to see them fairly well, to get a strong impression that both men—centaurs—were very well built and handsome, but she knew her perceptions had been limited by the darkness and her distress.
A memory flashed in her mind abruptly, and she realized where that strong impression had come from. The handful of moments when she’d stared at them in the light from the candles in her room had created a still image like a photograph even though she hadn’t realized at the time that she’d noted anything about them beyond the fact that they were going to stop her before she could escape.
That was when she noticed Colwin bore the angry red stripes of someone who’d been beat very badly with something like a stick—or a whip. That was when she’d noticed both men had long, muscular legs—because her gaze had followed the tunic Aydin was wearing to the loincloth and right down his muscular legs to his bare feet.
It was also when she’d noticed both men were handsome, when their expressions had been of surprise rather than anger or grim purpose.
Well! They weren’t men, she reminded herself. They were centaurs and they were enemies to anyone they perceived as hoonans. It was insulting that they could possibly think she belonged to the same race as the people in the castle, but she supposed that included anyone who couldn’t shift into the form of a centaur!
The important thing that she had to keep in mind was that they weren’t disposed to look kindly upon her because they thought of her as an enemy. She hadn’t been in this awful place long, but she’d been here long enough to know they were all barbarians!
She didn’t belong here! She was too …
tame
! She didn’t know how to deal with any of them or how to get along in such a primitive society.
She wanted to go home! She felt horrible about their babies, but she couldn’t change their world from what it was! Even if they used her to free some of them, wouldn’t the hoonans just go back and capture more?
As scary as the idea was of trying to escape—again—from yet another group of barbarians, she thought it likely they were as bad as the others—just different. If she could escape, she thought the chances were good that the doorway she’d fallen through
had
to be in these woods. And it wouldn’t be far from the castle, she reminded herself. She just needed to elude them and search for a tree that looked like the one she remembered.
Glancing from Aydin to Colwin again, she shifted around the tree until she could reach the bindings on her hands with her teeth. She discovered her teeth not only weren’t very dexterous, but using them to pry at the knots hurt. After working at the knots for a few minutes, she settled back to ease the strain and looked around again. She thought when she’d worked at the knots again that she could feel that they were loosening, but she began to feel more and more uneasy, began to think she might still be working at the knots when the two woke up.
Lifting her head, she studied the small tree she’d been tied to and discovered that it was a very young tree. She shoved at it experimentally, but she thought it was very well rooted in the ground despite the fact that it was so young. The trunk was far too narrow to try to climb it even though she could see that even the largest branches weren’t any thicker than the circumference of her thumbs. Shrugging inwardly, she stood up and reached as high as she could to get a grip on the trunk. It bowed slightly when she put all of her weight on it, but it was flexible. She doubted she weighed enough to break it.
Maybe she could bend the top? Deciding it was worth a try, she worked her arms over the lowest limbs, dug her toes against the lower trunk and began inching upwards to get a higher grip on the trunk. Excitement made her heart race when she felt the sapling begin to bend. Trying not to shake the leaves hard enough to wake the men, she surged as high as she could and caught the narrowing trunk a little more than halfway up. It bent and then carried her with it when it swayed in the other direction. Went it bowed in her direction again, she managed to get a little higher hold. That time her weight was enough of a counter to force the tree to begin bending toward the ground. It was still a struggle until she’d worked her way upward along the trunk a little further, but she finally managed to move beyond the point of resistance. The last of the tree with its thin, bush branches, practically leapt away from her, scratching and slapping at her arms and face almost as if it was trying to pull free of her. It whipped away from her with an ungodly loud rattle of leaves. She jerked a glance toward the men, saw Aydin stiffen, and whirled to dart away on her tiptoes.
She might just as well have saved herself the effort. The sapling made so much noise swishing back and forth that she heard the men stir, or at least one of them. One was enough. She poured on more speed, taking the path of least resistance to put more distance between her and pursuit. The moment she heard the thud of hooves against the hard packed ground, though, she plunged off the path she’d been following and into the brush. The urge to hide was nearly overwhelming, but her instincts urged her to run and keep running.
She was running so fast, she hit the bank and rolled down it before she even realized she’d headed straight for the stream. Coughing at the water she’d inhaled when she did a belly flop in the stream, she struggled to her feet, cast a quick glance around to catch her bearings, and plunged deeper. The long skirt tangled around her legs, hampering her efforts to swim, but she managed to get enough movement using both her arms and legs to dog paddle to the swifter current near the center. Allowing it to pull her, she swept the area in search of pursuit and spied Aydin on the bank. Her heart leapt into her throat. Without stopping to consider, she ducked beneath the water and began kicking toward the other side, hoping he hadn’t spotted her, holding her breath until she thought her lungs would explode and she was forced to surface for a breath of air.
Dismay filled her when she discovered he was much closer than he had been the last time she’d gone under the water.
And
he’d spotted her.
And
he looked thoroughly pissed off!
The last discovery galvanized her more than the first two and made her witless. Instead of allowing the river to carry her away from him, she began struggling toward the far bank. Weak from the swim and tangled up in her soaked clothing, she had to fight her way up the other bank when she reached it. She hadn’t managed to gain more than a few yards into the woods when he slammed into her from behind. His weight and speed carried both of them into the broad trunk of a tree. The impact stunned her, knocked the breath from her. Pain exploded through her, but it was hard to pinpoint whether it was from hitting the tree or from being tackled by him.
She discovered when he wrenched her around to face him that he’d taken the brunt of the impact with his arm and shoulder. The scrape from the bark looked like fingernail gouges. He caught her face with one hand, tipping her head back. “Are you hurt?” he asked gustily, his breathing nearly as ragged as hers.
She thought about it, but the pain was already subsiding to faint twinges.
Her head hurt. She thought she’d bumped it. She tried to lift a hand to feel it but discovered her wrists were still bound together and his hand on her cheek prevented it. “I bumped my head,” she managed finally.
She winced when he shifted his hold on her head and stroked his thumb along the knot.
“You are fortunate it was not worse!” he growled. “Do you want to die, woman? First you leap from the window of the castle and now into the river with your hands bound?”
She’d been too afraid of getting caught to spare a moment for considering the possibility that she might not be able to manage it. She’d already been
in
the water. She hadn’t had the chance to make a choice. The urge to cry smote her suddenly. “I just want to go home!” she said on a wailing note. “Why is everybody chasing me? I haven’t done anything!”
Before she quite knew what was happening, he dipped his head towards hers and covered her mouth with his own, sucking lightly at her lips. A jolt of surprise went through her, but the offer of comfort was something she instantly discovered she wanted with desperation. She tilted her head to give him better access, clutching at his chest with her hands.
The moment she did, the almost tentative nature of his touch was transformed. Her senses exploded with the first rake his tongue along hers. She made a whimpering sound of need deep in her throat, sucking at his tongue, trying to get closer to him, to climb inside of him. He pressed closer, wedging her so tightly between his body and the trunk behind her she could scarcely catch her breath, and it still wasn’t enough. She wanted to feel him against every inch of her body. She wanted to feel him inside of her.
She sucked in a sharp gasp of air when he broke away from her lips and gnawed his way along her throat, over her collarbone and down the slope of one breast. Delving a hand into the neck of her dress, he freed the breast and instantly captured the taunt peak with his mouth. She thought she might pass out at the feel of him on her breast. Her knees buckled. It was only his hold on her that prevented her from crumpling to the ground.
She caught at him, irritated that her wrists were still bound and prevented her from exploring him, from grasping his head and drawing him closer, from holding him where he was until she fainted from the sheer ecstasy of the pull of his mouth. She whimpered a complaint that ended in a sharp hitch of her breath when he moved to her other breast and teased it as he had the first.
His touch was laced with impatience, sharp with hunger. It set her blood to pounding with fevered need. She found herself gasping his name in a fervent chant of demand until he silenced her with mouth. The kiss was brief, ravenous. When he broke away, he whipped her around to face the tree, bracing her arms above her head. She shuddered as she felt his mouth along the back her neck, felt the pull of her wet skirt as he dragged it up her legs.
He wrapped an arm around her hips, drawing her lower body back until she was leaning precariously against the tree. She might have fallen if he hadn’t held her bound wrists with his other hand, kept her firmly trapped between his body and the tree. She shivered when he’d positioned her and drove his hand between her thighs, stroking a thick finger along her cleft.
She was wet for him, dripping wet. She felt his satisfaction in the shudder that went through him, in the groan he uttered that vibrated along her neck and sent a rash of goosebumps down her spine.
It wasn’t until she felt the huge head of his cock prying at the opening of her sex that it dawned on her that he was a centaur—and he was still in centaur form. Her heart contracted almost painfully in her chest as that realization hit her. She stiffened, but there was no
backing
out. The moment she tried, she felt his cock overcome the resistance of her flesh with the creamy moisture she’d produced for him.
A strange mixture of fear and excitement went through her as she felt him pump his hips and drive more deeply into her.