He chuckled, throwing a laughing glance at Aydin. Aydin didn’t seem to find it any more amusing than she did, but he forbore comment. She was nearly unseated when Colwin started off. Worse, the front of her ‘loincloth’ smacked her in the face. She fought it down with one hand, trying to shove it beneath her thighs, and making a grab for a hold on Colwin at the same time.
Aydin’s eyes were gleaming when she shot him a quick look, but he merely bent down and scooped up the bundle he’d made with the remnants of her clothes and followed them.
“You should hold on to my waist,” Colwin commented in a low, wicked voice. “I do not think you can ride me with only your thighs.”
Pervert! She dug her knees into his ribs, but he only chuckled. “If that is the best you can do I may have to tie you onto my back.”
Irritated with his teasing, Emma yielded to the impulse to annoy him in return. Sliding forward, she dug her breasts into his back, looping her arms more tightly around him. “Is this better?” she asked innocently.
He threw a glance at her over his shoulder. “Take care you do not tempt me to ride you a while, little flame hair. I have not been with a woman in a very long while.”
She should’ve felt the remark as a threat. It shouldn’t have sent an arousing flood of warmth through her, but there was no denying it did. Trying not to be too obvious, she straightened away from him.
“Coward,” he murmured, amusement threading his voice again.
Deciding to ignore his comment, she glanced around for Aydin and discovered he’d pulled alongside them. “I don’t suppose we could find any berries?”
“Colwin decimated the patch he found. If we spy another patch, we will stop and gather what we can.”
There didn’t seem to be anything to say to that but, as sour as the berries had been, it had been better than nothing.
Either they lucked up or Colwin and Aydin could ‘smell’ them. Around mid-morning, they came upon another patch of the berries and, as Aydin had promised, they stopped long enough to pick everything that was ripe or nearly ripe. Aydin used pieces of her underskirt to form little pockets to carry them and they started out again.
Emma couldn’t say she was any more fond of the berries than she had been, but she managed to nibble at them enough throughout the day to keep her stomach from feeling as if it was caving in. Beyond the search for berries, they only stopped a couple of times and Emma was starting to feel the strain of her thigh muscles long before Aydin finally decided, near dusk, to stop and make a camp for the night.
To her surprise, he and Colwin gathered wood and built a small fire. Aydin used some sort of stones he had in the small pouch at his waist to get it started and she decided it must be flint, or at least some sort of stone with similar properties.
After tearing narrow strips from the fabric, he wandered off from the campsite, leaving Colwin to watch her. Colwin motioned for her to get up. She helped him gather brush, which they piled a short distance from the fire, and then dig up some sort of wild tubers—which she hoped was going to be more palatable than the berries. When they’d finished gathering, he walked her down to the stream—the first she realized that they’d undoubtedly been following it all day.
He stopped her when they reached the bank, turning her so that her back was to him, and set about loosening the lacing at the back of her bodice. Emma threw him a startled look over her shoulder.
“You can bathe better without this,” he said without glancing at her.
Yes, but did she want to? And did she have a choice?
She
did
want to. Colwin had been right. It was hot and muggy. But did she dare strip naked? And would he consider it an invitation if she did?
And would it be?
Chapter Six
It was a moral dilemma Emma hadn’t ever faced, hadn’t anticipated finding herself faced with. She considered herself a person of high moral fiber—which ordinarily wasn’t difficult at all to maintain. Aside from the fact that she was a teacher and knew it was expected of her and her behavior was monitored and patrolled by parents, other teachers, and administration, and her job depended upon behaving herself, there’d never been much in the way of temptation to lure her to the ‘dark side’. She was hardly a virgin at her age! But she hadn’t had more than a handful of lukewarm relationships.
She certainly hadn’t ever been near two very handsome, very virile and, she didn’t doubt, very earthy males like these!
It made it worse that she’d already succumbed to her baser instincts with his brother! Not to mention the fact that she was as certain as she could be that she was years older than Colwin.
So, was it a seduction? Or was it just what it seemed to be, a bathing practice that he was accustomed to?
She had the feeling it was. She still didn’t know a lot more about this world than she had when she’d woken in it, but Aydin and Colwin seemed almost Indian-like. The loincloths they wore were probably the only practical garment for beings that were shifters and evidently went from human form to centaur and back with regularity, and it still reminded her of her history lessons about the first Americans. In fact, there was a lot of other things that did. The ones they called hoonans lived like medieval Europeans and they apparently considered the centaurs the next thing to animals because they had such a different culture.
Colwin and Aydin seemed at home in the woods—even though Aydin had been clear they weren’t familiar with this particular area.
It almost went without saying that they probably bathed regularly in natural bodies of water and that their women not only did the same, but probably dressed similarly since they were also shifters.
So did that make it alright for her to ‘adopt’ their customs? Or was it a step in the wrong direction?
She dismissed those anxieties when she saw that Colwin had already gone into the water and didn’t appear to be paying her any attention. She was still hesitant. She’d never been particularly comfortable with her body. She thought she had a fairly decent figure, but she was no sex doll, that was for certain. She was far too conscious of her flaws to feel confident enough to be comfortable and her white, white skin was one of her problems. Her red hair was another. Both seemed like beacons designed to draw attention to her when she didn’t particularly
want
anyone studying her!
Maybe she could just take her dress off in the water? It wouldn’t hurt to wash it the best she could.
Of course, that left her with the dilemma of what to put on when she got out again. Colwin had brought a couple of pieces of her underskirt with them—she thought to use to dry off, but she was going to have to wear it until the dress dried if she wet it—or try to get back in to it while it was still wet.
Maybe it would be better, after all, just to keep it on? He’d loosened it. She could reach everything with her hands and it wasn’t as if she had soap.
Sighing, she waded in until she was waist deep. Her skirt, what was left of it, promptly floated to the surface, leaving her bare from the waist down, but that part was underwater. Ignoring it, she focused on trying to pry the bodice away from her skin enough to allow water to flow more freely. She was so intent on her task that Colwin startled the hell out of her when he touched her arm. Sucking in a sharp gasp, she whipped her head upward to look at him.
His expression was hard to decipher. “You are afraid that I will look at you?”
Emma swallowed a little convulsively, feeling her face heat. She sensed that he’d taken her behavior as an insult, that he was implying it was directed at him because he was a centaur and she thought he was beneath her. “I’m not used to bathing naked—outside.”
His dark blond brows rose. “You will not grow accustomed if you do not do it.”
Emma cleared her throat, but she couldn’t think of a response to that.
She tensed when he grasped the bodice, clearly intent on removing it, but after a brief battle of wills, she yielded, allowing him to pull it off over her head. He tossed it toward the bank where it landed with a wet splat.
He settled his hands on her waist, drawing her closer until her breasts were brushing teasingly against his chest. Emma’s heart was galloping so hard by that time she was breathless with it. She almost thought when he released his hold on her waist that he meant to move away and disappointment flickered through her. Instead, he merely shifted his hold, enfolding her in his arms, sliding one upward to cup the back of her head and the other downward to cup her buttocks.
She held her breath as his head dipped toward hers, swallowing with an effort against the sudden dryness of her mouth as he tilted his head slightly and brushed his lips along hers.
There was nothing threatening in his movements despite the intimacy of his hold, in spite of the hard log of flesh he drew her up against as he tightened his grip on her buttocks and pulled her lower body against his. She scanned his face with a mixture of uneasiness and burgeoning desire when he lifted his head to search her gaze—for permission, she thought.
He must have seen what he was searching for. After a moment, he lowered his lips to hers again, nipped at her lips until she parted them in a gusty breath and then covered her mouth. His kiss was practiced, his taste and scent an intoxicating ambrosia. Within moments the heat of his mouth and the rhythmic stroke of his tongue had kindled a fire in her belly and brought every nerve ending in her body to throbbing life.
She didn’t know where to put her hands, didn’t even know when she moved to clutch him, but she found herself gripping his shoulders and then curling her arms around them to hold herself closer to the fire. His arms tightened, he moved his hips rhythmically against hers, drawing her more tightly against his throbbing member until it seemed the most natural thing in the world to lift her legs and curl them around his hips. A moan of pleasure escaped her when the movement opened her body to his and she felt his cock glide along her cleft. For a few moments, it appeased the ache and then the ache moved deeper. She moved a hand between them, grasped his cock, stroking it for several moments and then guided it toward her sex.
He broke the kiss with a sharp inhalation when he felt their bodies connect. Lowering his mouth to her throat, he sucked on it, heaving to exert the counter pressure they needed for full penetration, bearing down on her hips when that failed them. “Gods! Emma!” he growled. “Your tight little channel will defeat me.”
His words, or the sound of his voice, were enough to make her inner muscles clap together and secrete a gush of moisture for him. He uttered a gusty breath when he felt it, the yielding that allowed him to sink deeply into her.
He paused then, leaning away to study her face. She opened her eyes languidly when she felt his gaze. His expression was taut with his need. It sent a shudder through her. Swallowing audibly, he dragged her close enough to cover her mouth with his again, kissing her deeply as he began a rhythmic thrust and retreat that sent spirals of heat through her with each passage of his flesh along hers. She moved with him, struggling to counter his thrusts, sucking on his tongue hungrily as she felt the rise of tension within her. It sent a hard rush through her, sent her over the edge into rapturous convulsions that drew a groan of ecstasy from her.
He shuddered when he felt her flesh convulsing around his, began to move faster to reach his own peak and then stopped abruptly as it hit him, tightening his arms around her as he pumped his seed into her.
It felt almost as glorious to feel him come inside of her, to feel the heat of his seed bathing her womb. For a handful of moments, Emma luxuriated in it until it abruptly dawned on her that she was off the pill, hadn’t taken one since she’d crossed over because she hadn’t had the damned things with her.
She stiffened, trying to figure out where she might be in her cycle, but that was useless, she realized fairly quickly. She had no clear idea of what sort of time had passed or how that might affect her cycle. She didn’t even know what her pills might have done to her cycle.
She was absolutely certain, though, that the pills were only effective when they were taken daily, and at the same time.
“Oh god!” she muttered, feeling weak and faint at the possibility.
She should’ve been worried about stds at the very least! Where had her brain been? She was too old to do anything this stupid!
“What is it?”
Recalled to the present, Emma sent Colwin an uncomfortable look, but she didn’t have the nerve to tell him she’d just realized her birth control, her safety net, was gone. Maybe she could break it gently? Simply mention it and then if, nightmare of nightmares, it actually did happen …? “I … uh … it just occurred to me that I’m not sure where I am in my cycle.”
He frowned, clearly confused for a moment. Abruptly, his brow cleared and a look she couldn’t quite decipher flitted through his eyes.
“You’re … uh … centaur, though, so you couldn’t possibly get me pregnant, could you?” she asked hopefully.
His eyes narrowed. He looked as if he was about to say something but thought better of it. “I have not fucked a hoonan before … and if I had, I would not have stayed around long enough to discover if I had impregnated her. I value my balls,” he said coolly.
Emma gaped at him, blinking while she tried to absorb what he’d said … and what he’d implied. “You’re saying …? They wouldn’t! Would they?”