Unbridled

Centaur Chronicles:

UNBRIDLED By

Raven Willow-Wood

© copyright by Raven Willow-Wood, Jan. 2008 Cover Art by Eliza Black, Jan. 2008 ISBN 978-1-60394New Concepts Publishing Lake Park, GA 31636 www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

Prologue Teagan anxiously paced the confines of the stall at the rear of the large barn where he and his elder brother, Chandler, hid. The hay strewn about the floor and the hard packed dirt dulled the thud of his hooves, and the sound still wound Chandler’s own nerves a little tighter with each pass. At this rate, they would be fortunate if Teagan did not make their presence known before the captive female, Benny, delivered his brother’s illegitimate offspring, Chandler thought absently, straining to listen to the commotion at the other end of the enclosure where the newest member of his family was being born. The gods had seemed to favor their endeavor thus far. For weeks they’d roamed this strange place without detection, waiting for Benny’s lying in, but the gods were fickle and never more so than when it involved Teagan. They had ever seemed to take a perverse delight in tormenting his younger brother, and it seemed unlikely they had chosen to favor him now. Lifting his arm to brush away the sweat beading his brow, Chandler closed his mind to all else but the sounds wafting to their stall, trying to decide if there was any indication that the waiting was over—or nearly so. He did not regret coming. He could not be sorry that Teagan had confided this mess to him, though he supposed, wryly, that ‘confided’ was hardly the word for it when he had had to pry the information from Teagan. He would not have wanted his brother to come alone to this hostile place and linger among enemies, but he could not quit this place soon enough to suit him. It was a gods bedamned strange place. “Do you think he is almost here?” Teagan queried in a hoarse whisper. Dragging his gaze from the wooden rails that blocked his view of the proceedings, Chandler flicked a glance at Teagan, noting the sickly pall that had leached the color from his normally dark complexion. Absently, he shook his head and returned his gaze to the spot he had been staring at, as if by studying the wood long and hard enough, his gaze would be able to burn through the barriers separating them from the mother in labor and he could see what was happening instead of having to rely entirely upon his ears. His brother’s pallor was telling. Not that he had believed for one moment that Teagan was as indifferent to his son’s plight as he had struggled to convince him. He would not have risked so much in coming to this place so many times in the past months if he had not cared. Mentally, he shook his head. Trust Teagan to get himself in such a mess! Raking a shaking hand through the hair that fallen in his face, obscuring his vision, wondering absently where he had lost the band that generally tamed the unruly black mess, Teagan slid a speculative glance at his elder brother’s harsh features, wondering if Chandler was thinking about the events that had led up to this—as he had

been. He cringed inwardly at the thought, wondering what had possessed him to confess the whole sordid tale to Chandler to start with. He had certainly had no intention of doing so. If he could have wiped it from his own mind as if it had never happened at all he would have been eternally grateful to the gods for even so small a gift after the pass they had led him to. Disgusted with himself, he pushed the thought aside. There was no point in blaming the gods for his own drunken stupidity, as much as he would have liked to lay the blame for his latest disgrace somewhere else. The plain fact of the matter was that he had had far too much of the ceremonial wine. In all likelihood, this was the revenge of the gods for his trespass, for trying to relieve himself on the Tree of Knowledge—not that he had had any clear idea of what he was doing at the time. He still did not have a very clear memory of that night. He did recall that he had gone to the Tree of Knowledge to pray for the gods’ intervention, and he felt his face heat as he recalled begging them to lead him to a female who would favor him. There were none in his own tribe who did, none willing to risk birthing another dark one such as himself. Not that he could entirely blame them. His own life had been hellish. Being the only dark one among the golden tribe had ensured that. The effects of the ceremonial drink had brought his loneliness to the surface, though—a state he generally hid even from himself, and he had sought the favor of the gods—who’d condemned him to start with—prayed long and hard that they would show him the way to find someone for himself, someone who could accept him. And then he had leaned against the trunk of the Tree of Knowledge to take a piss and the next thing he’d known he was standing in this place—and he had seen her—a dark beauty, he had thought, just like him—and he had thought the gods had smiled upon him at last. She had not even struggled when he had taken her. It was not until he had awakened from the drunken stupor he had fallen into after he had expended himself on her that he had discovered the nightmare his actions had flung him into. Beyond being a female, he did not know what the creature was, but it was for gods be damned certain she was no female of some rival tribe, no mate for him. His first look at her horribly deformed face and torso had assured him of that. He had no idea, now, how he had managed to find his way back through the doorway that had brought him to this bizarre place when he had been reeling with shock and horror and still staggering with the dregs of the ceremonial drink in his veins, but he had. Chandler had been searching for him—and found him as he emerged through the doorway on the other side. If he had had time to gather his wits, time to shake off his horror, he would have thought better than to confess the whole to his elder brother. He would have taken the secret to his grave with him. He had been too shaken, though, to think it through. He had told Chandler he had taken a female of some horrible parody of their kind to mate, planted his seed in the womb of a creature that should not exist outside of nightmares. Chandler, he thought, had largely dismissed it. The ceremonial drink had been known, after all, to produce some truly bizarre visions from time to time.

He would have liked to dismiss it himself, but he had found he could not dismiss the fact that he had mated with the thing. He could not rid himself of the notion that his seed might take root. He had returned to assure himself it had not only to discover that he was right—he had impregnated the female. A female the hoonans of this place referred to, strangely enough, as a mare—yet another prime example of the perverse humor of the gods!—that the hoonans of this world had beasts—not intelligent beings, but beasts—and called the females mares as their own tribe did their females! He still could not grasp that he had managed to impregnate the thing. Deep down, he supposed he had come to assure himself he was wrong. That—horror—was not about to deliver his son. As soon as she delivered the foal he would know for absolute certain that he had not, and then he could return home with a clear conscience and forget he had ever presumed to beg the gods for their ‘favor’. He had wanted to forget it the moment he had found that thing was pregnant. Unfortunately, by that time he had discerned that it was not an intelligent being—not intelligent enough to behave with stupidity as he had!—and he could not bring himself to consider the possibility of abandoning his foal to be reared by a creature of such low intellect. If he had indeed impregnated the thing, his foal belonged with him, would be reared among his people. It took an effort not to offer a prayer to the gods to spare him the indignity of it, but the reflection that they were, even now, laughing themselves silly that he had fallen for their latest prank on him killed the urge. Chandler flicked an impatient glance at Teagan as he stopped pacing and began to butt his forehead against the outer wall of the building. “Do you want to give us away— now—when we are within sight of our goal?” he hissed. Teagan stopped at once, turning his head to stare at him blankly for a moment before dull color crept into his swarthy cheeks. “The waiting is driving me mad,” he muttered after a moment. Chandler’s lips tightened. “It can not be pleasant for the mare,” he retorted dryly. “I am fair sure that she is far more anxious to be done with it than you are.” Teagan sent his older brother a look of resentment but refrained from voicing his thoughts on that subject—that he very much doubted the damned mare intelligent enough to have any thoughts at all on the matter. He did not doubt that she was in pain, though. The whimpers the beast managed from time to time grated on him almost as much as the waiting. How much worse would it be, he wondered, if it had been a true mating? If that was his mare struggling to birth his son? He shook the thought off, wondering where it had even come from. He had no mate. He would never have a mate, he thought morosely. He should count himself lucky if he had a healthy son—or even a filly—out of this mess to ease the misery of his solitude. Then he cursed himself, and the gods, roundly that he had even had the thought, ashamed that he could wish a life such as he had had on an innocent. It was bad enough that the tribe barely tolerated his presence among them. It flickered through his mind that his brother was golden haired and there was a possibility that his own off-spring might take after his brother instead of being dark like

he was, but he tamped the brief hope, knowing it was not likely. He had been a disgrace to his mother, to his entire family, from the time he was born. It had taken him years to figure out why, but then he had seen the hoonans, and he had known instantly that it was not just his dark hair that his fellow tribesmen despised. It was the probable source of it—the hoonans, their most hated enemies were dark haired as he was, and it was clear his mother had been forced to lay with one of them when they had captured her. It had never spoken of—no one had. They had not had to. It was no small wonder that his ‘sire’ had never looked upon him with anything more than barely concealed dislike, for he was a constant reminder that the hoonans had despoiled his mate. “Teagan,” Chandler said softly, his voice quiet but strong as he laid a hand reassuringly on his brother’s shoulder, “you are not the first to father a child. All will be well.” Suddenly, they heard the mother-to-be struggling loudly with her labor. Both men stilled, their bodies straining with pent up tension in the dimly lit stall as they waited to hear the baby cry out into the night. A soft feminine voice carried faintly to their pricked ears through the enclosure, “That’s it, Benny. Your baby’s almost here. It won’t be much longer.” The voice distracted both men. Chandler wondered if it was for the same reason. He suspected it was. Hoonans owned this place, but like the strange creature currently struggling to give birth, they weren’t like any of the hoonans he had ever seen, not exactly, anyway. Their hair was the color of fire, their skin pale—unlike the pale golden brown typical of his tribe or the swarthy skinned hoonans he was all too familiar with. He had thought when he had first spied them, in fact, that they must be of a tribe closely related to his own because of their paler skin—except that he had seen with time that they held the form of the hoonans. They were not capable, he was certain, of shifting between the two forms as his people were. He put his fascination with the one called Sarah down to that—mistaken identity. He would certainly not have had any interest in her, however exotically beautiful she was, if he had realized from the beginning that she was hoonan. Unfortunately, his body had not caught up to his mind. The sound of her voice alone was enough to stir heat inside of him. He dismissed it with an effort, focusing on their strange accent in an effort to understand what the two females were saying. They were fortunate that there would only be two witnesses to deal with, he thought grimly, two hoonan sisters. He had gathered that one of them owned the land they were on and the female his brother had impregnated, and the other was the healer who was handling the birth. He had found it strange that two of their kind had no men about, that they would live in this state of vulnerability, because he had always known their kind to travel in packs, to live together…to hunt together. But then everything about this place was strange, and he would not ignore this blessing from the Gods. He would embrace it, for it made their task far easier than it might have been. ****

Sarah turned to her younger sister who had finally arrived with more blankets and water. “She’s having a lot of trouble. I don’t want to alarm you, but this is the biggest baby I’ve ever delivered. And….” She paused. Should she tell her? There was something strange about the baby. She could not be sure what it was until it was born and she had a look for herself, but something was different. It was probably best not to be an alarmist and say anything premature, she finally decided. “She’s very young and strong. I’m sure everything will be just fine,” she ended with a smile she hoped was comforting, brushing the hair from her eyes with the back of one wrist. Diana nodded, still puzzling over Benny’s pregnancy when there wasn’t a stallion within miles that she had been able to discover. “I know she’ll be fine. We have you.” A noise in the back of the barn caught Sarah’s attention, and she turned away from Benny and Diana and looked briefly into the long dark hall of the barn. The rays of the sole lantern they had above their heads weren’t strong enough to penetrate the eerie gloom of the barn on this moonless night. An uneasy shiver skated down her back. Diana noticed Sarah had gone quiet and allowed her gaze to wander into the deep black of the barn. “What is it?” Sarah turned back and smiled at Diana and then squatted down and rubbed a hand reassuringly along Benny’s leg. “It’s nothing. I guess this birth has her friends excited, too.” Dropping to her knees, she checked the baby’s progress. It was time. “Quickly Diana, we’ll have to help her with the baby.” Feeling for the baby in the birth canal, Sarah discovered it was coming out feet first. Grabbing two little legs right above the hooves, she pulled the baby out just far enough where it’s other two legs came free. Benny grunted as she struggled to push, and Diana knelt down by Sarah on the hay strewn floor and grabbed the baby’s other two legs as they appeared. Together, the women gently pulled, helping Benny with the delivery. “The baby’s almost here!” Sarah said, excitement lacing her voice. A final strong pull from both women brought the baby all the way out. Overbalanced as the baby came free, both women tumbled backwards, sprawling on their backs on the dirt floor of the barn. They glanced at one another and laughed with both relief and amusement at their predicament. They were distracted by a sound that rent the air, a scream the likes of which Sarah had never heard before. It sent chills cascading all over her body. Her hair prickled and stood on end. Sarah and Diana sat up in alarm, looked down at the baby they had just pulled free of Benny, and screamed in unison. “Oh my god! It’s half human!” screamed Diana, her hands flying to her mouth in horror as she scrambled to her feet and raced out of the barn. Jolted from her own stupor, Sarah noticed Benny’s horrified reaction and lunged forward to grab the baby up before Benny could harm it in her fear. Cradling the baby tightly in her arms, she scrambled away from Benny as the mare struggled to rise. Shaken, too stunned to think, she glanced down at the baby in her arms once she had it safely away from Benny, discovering to her surprise that it had stopped wailing the moment she had grabbed it up. With a mixture of wonder and amazement—and a healthy dose of horror—she studied the beautiful face of a dark haired baby boy that’s stomach ended in the black haired body and legs of a Clydesdale horse.

The sound of horses galloping toward her and coming to a quick halt behind her brought Sarah’s attention abruptly away from the baby boy. She turned quickly, the baby still held tightly against her, to find two mythological centaur men standing before her, their front hooves pawing anxiously at the dirt. The blood must have drained completely from Sarah’s body, for she felt like she would faint the moment she saw them and the furious scowl on the black haired centaur’s face. “Give me my child,” Teagan snarled in a commanding timber that brooked no argument. And then, Sarah did faint.

Chapter One Sarah carried a tray laden with a bowl of chicken soup, a pack of saltine crackers, and some freshly brewed ice tea into Diana’s room. Ever since the incident in the barn two years before, Diana had wanted Sarah to stay close. She had finally accepted that Diana’s need outweighed her convenience and had moved out of her place in town next to her practice and moved in to her sister’s home to make sure that Diana felt safe and secure. They never talked about what had happened after that night—for the sake of their sanity, but, truthfully, Sarah had been just as shaken as Diana had. She would have far preferred it if Diana had moved in with her instead of the other way around. Though she wasn’t completely convinced that distancing themselves from the farm would make either of them safer, considering what they’d seen, she thought she would’ve felt safer in town. “How’s my patient?” Sarah asked, smiling at Diana’s haphazard hair splayed about her on her white linen pillowcase. Diana pulled the covers up to her chin, the scowl on her face clearly displaying that she did not feel nearly as pleasant as Sarah did. “What is that god-awful sound coming from that window?” Diana demanded, her sour mood darkening. Sarah set the bed tray on Diana’s lap and turned to look out the window. “It looks as if a little fat bird is serenading his reflection. He really is cute.” Sarah chuckled as the bird puffed up its chest and pranced in front of the reflection. Diana’s face reddened a little in embarrassment for being short-tempered with her sister, but then she really couldn’t help it, not that much anyway. Getting sick made just about everyone a little mean, some more than others. Still, she felt guilty. After all, Sarah was taking care of her, and she wasn’t being very gracious. “Thanks for the soup,” Diana murmured as she brought the spoon to her cracked lips and dry mouth. “You’re welcome, but be careful, it’s …,” Sarah said as she turned and saw Diana pour some soup down her throat. “Hot!” Diana yelled, her face becoming pinched in pain, her other hand scrambling for the tea. Sarah bit her lip, feeling bad she hadn’t mentioned that the soup was still pretty hot when she came in, but the bird had distracted her. She was always getting distracted. “I’m sorry. I should have warned you already.” She looked appropriately chagrined. “It’s okay. I think it gave my throat a mini peel. The next time another doctor looks at it he’ll tell me I have the throat of a twenty-year old, and maybe I’ll get laid.” Sarah tried not to laugh at that, but she couldn’t hold back the smile at her sister’s downtrodden words. They had both been single most of their lives. It wasn’t like they had lacked for male attention and even stepped into a relationship here and there. Men just didn’t seem to ‘take’.

It was like a perm gone bad. You paid all that money because you thought what you are doing would make you happy, and then the hairstylist fucked it up and you had to live with it until it went away. It was the same with men. You poured everything you had into it, trying to make the relationship work, and lived with them until they went away. Diana picked up her spoon again, trying to focus her bleary eyes on the soup in her spoon. She blew on it for a minute, looking away for a second to spear Sarah with daggers before she cautiously held the liquid to her lips to test the heat. Sarah did laugh out loud at that. Her sister had the most non-threatening ‘evil’ look that she’d ever seen. “So, how are your other patients faring?” Diana asked, picking up a cracker and soaking it in her soup before biting off a small piece. “Everyone is doing fine. They’ve all had their shots, been fed, groomed, et cetera,” Sarah said, counting everything off on the tips of her fingers as she did a little spin in place, resisting the urge to flop on the bed to chatter, which would result in soup everywhere. Turning instead to the only other furnishing the room afforded, a small chair in the corner of the room in front of the bed by the door, she flopped into it, the air immediately rushing out of the cushion. Her father had always told her she was too rough—too rough on the furniture, too rough on the family, just way too rough, period. He hadn’t approved of her unladylike flopping on couches and beds, leaning the chair back on its hind legs at the dinner table, climbing every tree in their yard, throwing dirt balls with rocks hidden inside at the neighborhood boys she hated because they tormented her and Diana about their red hair. Inwardly, she shrugged. He hadn’t really approved of much of anything his family did, and she had never really listened to him anyway. She far preferred the company of her mother and sister, who had always been by her side, to the company of a man who was absent most of the time and aloof when he was around. Sarah sat silent for a moment as her body settled deep into the cushiony chair, watching Diana struggle to control her now shaky hand that held the soup laden spoon. She knew what Diana had right now was nothing serious, just a little cold, but she still didn’t like to see her sister sick. She never said anything, but secretly, it had always scared her. It was an awful reminder of how quickly their mother had been taken away. Trying to dispel negative thoughts, Sarah shook herself mentally and stood up quickly to escape her morbid thoughts. Diana lifted a brow at her questioningly as she puckered her lips before she sipped some more soup. “Well, I guess I should go now. You probably don’t feel much like talking, and I still have a lot more work to do.” Diana nodded, her mouth too full to respond. She swallowed gingerly, trying to be careful with her still sore throat. “Thank you again,” Diana said, watching Sarah as she paused at the door to her room. “I love you.” “I love you, too,” Sarah said, blowing a kiss before she turned and left, shutting the door behind her. Without pausing, she walked through and out of the small ranch house, then crossed the few yards to the barn, glancing uneasily at the brilliant colors of the sunset and the darkening sky. Although she tried her best not to acknowledge the reason for it, she’d made it a

point since that night two years ago to finish her chores and be out of the barn by the time night fell and the shadows gathered inside. Entering the barn, she saw a few curious heads come out at the sound of her arrival and some of the tension eased from her at their expectant expressions. Crossing to the first stall, which held her roan gelding, Crouger, she rubbed him lovingly behind his ears. He nudged her affectionately with his head, causing her to take a step back. “Now, is that any way to treat your sweetheart?” she asked chidingly as she reached in the back pocket of her faded, torn jeans for a sugar cube. Some of them, she discovered, had gotten crushed when she’d flopped in her sister’s chair, but the horses never cared. They took whatever they could get. She held her palm out perfectly flat under Crouger’s mouth so as not to tempt him with her fingers, and he didn’t waste any time in taking the small treat she offered, exploring her palm thoroughly with his lips until he’d captured every crystal. Crooning to the gelding, she lingered to enjoy stroking him while he nuzzled her in search of more sugar, blowing out a disgruntled breath when she didn’t produce another sugar cube. A noise at the back of the barn startled her. Her head snapped in that direction automatically. Even though she tried to convince herself that it must have been one of the horses, chills raced up her arms to ripple along the back of her neck and down her spine when she discovered the back of the barn was pitch black now that the sun had gone down, the lantern at the front of the barn the only light, just like the night that she had delivered Benny’s baby. “There’s nothing to fear, is there Crouger?” she asked aloud, trying to reassure herself more than the horse. All the same, she didn’t like the idea of wandering around the dark barn. She had just decided to wait until tomorrow to finish up the chores that needed to be done when she abruptly felt a presence behind her and a large, rough hand wrapped around her mouth. **** Chandler studied his nephew, Aydin, as he lay perfectly still upon his pallet of furs in his father’s home. He had just turned two, but he was not healthy and strong like the other boys his age in their village. Something was terribly wrong with him, and it was nothing the healers in his village had ever encountered before. Frustration boiled within him as he held the child’s small hand, stroking it absently as he struggled to think of something he could do to help the child. He was too weak to even open his eyes. His chest rose and fell so slightly, Chandler was worried that every breath would be his last. Teagan was beside himself with worry and grief—and rage. He blamed the healers, convinced that they simply did not care enough about his child to find a way to help him. If it came to that, Chandler blamed them himself. He was not as convinced as Teagan was that it was simply a matter of indifference, but it could not be avoided that the babe’s dark coloring made him as much of an outcast as his father had always been. Perhaps it was thoughts of the healers that brought her to mind—and maybe not. He had tried to put her from his mind when they had quit her world, but not altogether successfully. Truthfully, it was not often that he did not think about her when he gazed upon

little Aydin. The image of her clutching the infant protectively to her breast, her pale, sky blue eyes wide and huge in her face when he and Teagan had revealed themselves to take the child, seemed permanently entrenched in his mind and nothing he could do seemed to oust it completely. Be that as it may, it came to Chandler abruptly that she was a healer, that she might understand what ailed the child when their own healers claimed no knowledge of the sickness that was slowly draining the child of life. He would have to go and find her, he decided grimly … and take her. Gently, Chandler lay Aydin’s hand back down on the soft pile of furs and lovingly brushed a few stray black hairs from the child’s forehead. Lifting his gaze, he studied Teagan, who sat beside his son, holding his other hand tightly, as if by doing so he could infuse some of his own strength into the child. Dismissing the urge to give Teagan possibly false hope by telling him what he had in mind, he rose to his feet, giving Teagan a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder before he turned to leave. Crossing the small abode, he lifted the leather flap that covered the door, immediately shifting into his centaur form and then setting off at full gallop as he headed to the Tree of Knowledge. Regretting his stubborn determination to put the female from his mind, now, he prayed that he would be able to find her and that she would be able to heal Aydin, that he could bring her back in time to save the child. If he had not been so focused on trying to forget her, he realized, feeling a little sick, it might have occurred to him before that the hoonan female might be Aydin’s only hope. **** Sarah tried to scream, but the large hand wrapped around the lower part of her face didn’t really allow breathing, much less her screams. Mindlessly, she pulled at the arm attached to the hand, desperately trying to dig her fingernails into the flesh to use them as a wedge. All of her efforts didn’t move the hand or stop the man who held her hard against his tall frame from dragging her deeper into the shadowy depths of the barn. She gave up her struggle with the hand around her face for a moment, trying to analyze the situation quickly and conserve her energy for the right moment to break away from her attacker, but she knew she had to do something and quickly. There was no one for miles around except for Diana, and she was too weak to get out of bed, had probably fallen back to sleep not long after she had left. Besides, she wouldn’t want a brute to find Diana helpless and alone. Abruptly remembering a report she’d watched on TV from a female rape victim that had escaped her attacker, Sarah wiggled her face the best she could, thankful for the sweat on her face and his palm that allowed the movement. She managed to work her lower mandible free while he wrapped his other arm around her waist, tightening his hold on her. With all the strength and determination she possessed, Sarah bit down on the hand that had held her mouth closed. Violent curses erupted from her captor, who instantly released her. Fear snaked through her at the sound, sending gooseflesh rippling all over her. Apparently, she had taken her attacker completely by surprise. She tried to make the best of her small window of opportunity. Shaking off the shock of being dropped so suddenly, she leapt to her feet and ran as fast as she could away from the barn and toward the house. It was almost as dark outside as it had been in the barn, but she knew her way around the land, even at night.

She didn’t turn around, not even once. She tried to focus on running as fast as she could, trying to convince herself that if she just tried hard enough, she could make it back to the house and lock the door, grab her gun. The sound of a horse galloping behind her caught her off guard, though. It had to be a very large horse. Either that or the adrenaline pumping through her was causing all the blood flow and nerves to bundle in her head and consequently her ears, because the horse sounded big and very close. She didn’t have time to make sense of the fact that there was a horse behind her when she had been expecting to hear her attacker fast on her heels, perhaps the sound of his hoarse breath as he tried to keep pace, his heavy footfalls, or disgruntled shouts at having been bitten. Before Sarah even realized what was happening, powerful arms closed around her, hoisting her high into the air. She screamed in fear and flailed her arms wildly, trying to fend off her attacker with everything she had. All of her struggles stopped abruptly, however, when she realized the man who’d grabbed her wasn’t a man at all. The dim light filtering from the barn formed a gleaming halo around his long blonde mane of hair, limned the smooth, golden tan of his muscular arms and upper torso—and his lower half—the pale golden coat and form of a palomino.

Chapter Two Sarah surfaced toward consciousness with reluctance. More thoroughly disoriented from the faint that had dragged her into unconsciousness than she’d ever been from waking from sleep, she lay perfectly still with her eyes closed, struggling to summon memory to explain where she was and how she’d gotten there. The incident in the barn surfaced first, shooting a fresh rush of adrenaline through her. Hard on the heels of it, she remembered the last image that had been imprinted in her mind—the centaur. She sat up with a start, her eyes now wide open. In utter dismay, she looked around what appeared to be a tent, discovering that she’d been lying on a bed of white fur. Scrambling to her feet, she looked wildly around. The view only disoriented her more, strengthened the unreality of her situation. The place she found herself in reminded her more strongly of movies of desert sheiks than anything else. Large, tightly woven mats with colorful designs covered much of the ground, but it was definitely dirt beneath her feet, and she was definitely in some sort of tent, not a building. Beyond the canvas outer walls, curtains appeared to have been strung along rods or wires near the ceiling of the tent to divide the modest space into separate areas by use. The pallet where she’d awakened looked like little more than a huge bed-size cushion covered with furs. A large chest was set at the foot of it, however, and another, smaller one beside a curtain pulled back to reveal a privy area. Beyond the loosely draped curtain on the other side that had been tied back, but which must have been placed to separate the sleeping area from the main living area, she saw several groupings of colorful pillows. A very large woven mat covered most of the ground in that area, and near the center was what appeared to be a large brazier of beaten metal shaped roughly like a saucer that looked as if it had been designed for both heating and cooking. She took all of that in with one sweeping look, however, more focused on finding a way out that actually examining her surroundings. She spotted it in seconds—because it was filled, with a man. Her heart leapt into her throat and then stilled abruptly at the vision as he stood. Never in her life had she seen a man more classically beautiful. His shoulder-length, thick blonde hair cascaded around him, teasing broad shoulders that had been kissed by the sun, framing a square jaw. His expression was dark, but she scarcely noticed it, for the scowl didn’t detract one iota from the glory that was his face. He had long lashes that highlighted brilliant blue eyes, a straight nose, firm kissable lips, and a proud chin. His arms were crossed in a guarded, standoffish manner, but it only brought out the definition in his large arms and defined pecs. As she allowed her gaze to move lower in her assessment, she found a mouthwatering tight stomach, narrow hips covered in a modest leather kilt or sarong. The loincloth did little to hide his incredibly muscular thighs. The sight of him literally took her breath away, and, apparently, all other brain

functions because she had lost all thoughts of her kidnapper, the horse man, and the worry of waking up in a foreign place. It was a while before she realized that she was staring at him with her mouth slightly ajar and he was looking right back at her, and he didn’t look happy to see her. The moisture pooling in her mouth—alright drool—finally brought her out of her very rude appraisal. She blinked a couple of times when she realized that she’d been staring blatantly at the beautiful stranger, her gaze having lingered for quite some time on the inadequate cloth covering his impressive package. “I am Chandler,” the stranger said to her as he extended a hand in greeting, his expression hardening and belying the friendly gesture. His deep voice washed over her like a caress, stirring heat low in her belly and making her skin prickle with awareness. Still trying to grasp exactly what was going on, Sarah hesitantly supplied a little stiltedly, “My … name is … Sarah.” She frowned in confusion as her own voice broke the enchantment that had held her, looking around in bemusement to be sure she hadn’t imagined the surroundings she had awoken to. Her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. Unless her mind was, the tent and simple fur bedding were still there. “I’m…confused,” she began, only to have him cut her off. “I am sorry,” Chandler said, running a hand through his errant blonde hair in an almost worried way. “I need your help.” Mesmerized all over again by the play of muscles in his arm when he lifted it, Sarah stared at his arm—until she saw the right hand that went through his hair. There was a distinct bite mark on the lower portion of the palm. She hadn’t imagined any of it! Everything had really happened. And this was the man that had sneaked up behind her and grabbed her! Fear effectively squashed all interest in the handsome stranger. She started to back away, shaking her head. Glancing wildly around for some avenue of escape, she saw there was only one exit, and he was still filling it. It was a tent, however, not a solid structure, and the moment that thought registered, she turned around and ran to the far side of the tent. Dropping to her hands and knees, she ripped up the bottom edge of the leather enclosure and ducked down to try to get under and out. She wasn’t quick enough. Two strong hands dragged her back and then ripped the material out of her hands, and she was tossed onto the fur on the ground. Before she had time to try to escape again, he was on top of her, one hand covering her mouth, one hand against her hip, pressing her down onto the soft furs with the weight of his body. His incredibly hot—half naked—make that mostly naked—body. Gooseflesh instantly erupted all over her the moment her mind registered it, the moment she felt his very large, thick, hard member pressed against her mound. The heat from it practically burned her nether lips. Her ears became hot as a blush crept from her ears to her cheeks. Embarrassed and irritated at her body’s reaction to him, she stared up at him with a mixture of fear and dawning anger. “Do not be afraid,” he said, his voice harsh as if he were lecturing her, his brow furrowed in irritation. He could say that when he had her pinned to the fur and that seriously dangerous ‘weapon’ grinding against her groin and she was supposed to believe she had nothing to

fear? She noticed that he had his uninjured hand covering her mouth. Briefly, she contemplated trying to bite him again, but, despite his hold on her, she realized she wasn’t really afraid, now that she believed his gruff reassurance. If he had wanted to hurt her, he’d had plenty of opportunity to do so. “I do not have time to fight with you, hoonan. I need you,” he said, his hot breath caressing her cheek. “Aydin is ill. Despite the fact that you are one of our enemies, I think you are the only healer that can save him.” That struck a foul cord with Sarah, instantly diverting her from the residual uneasiness. How dare he! She had been minding her own business, and then out of the blue, he had taken her away from her home to who the hell knew where, and then insulted her, but everything was okay because he had told her that he needed her? She didn’t know where he was from, but, as her mother had always said, ‘You catch more flies with honey’. Still rankled at his comments, but deciding that he sounded sincere about needing her help, she attempted to take his hand away from her mouth. Although he was obviously reluctant, probably worried that she would attack him or try to run again, he allowed her to move his hand away. Sarah could have said a lot of things. She thought about it—briefly. Considering she didn’t know who she was talking to, the fact that he was wearing a pretty damned strange get-up, he was a great deal stronger and faster than her, and she didn’t know where the hell she was, she thought it would be wise to keep her sentiments to herself. “What, exactly, do you think you need me for?” she asked, trying to ignore the hitch in her pulse as her recalcitrant brain instantly leapt to the bludgeon pressing against her mons. After studying her for several moments, as if trying to decipher her thoughts through her expression, he rolled off of her and moved to the entrance, waiting silently for her to do the same. Sitting up slowly, Sarah studied him cautiously and finally got up and followed him outside. A jolt went through her when she’d left the tent. Surrounding her was a virtual city of tents. If she hadn’t known better, she would’ve thought she was in some kind of powwow or reenactment of some kind. The strangeness of her situation just seemed to be getting stronger and for a moment a sense of disorientation washed over her. Chandler didn’t say anything else to her. He just started walking. She stared after him, trying to decide whether to follow or take to her heels. A second glance around was enough to discourage that flicker of rebellion, however. Deciding that was her ‘invitation’ to follow, she hurried to catch up to him, trying to keep pace with his much longer legs. A few tents later, he stopped and pulled the leather door covering to one side and ducked inside, holding the flap back for her to enter. There was nothing the least bit welcoming about his expression, despite that healthy erection he’d pressed against her when he’d tumbled her onto the furs. Obviously, ‘it’ might be happy to see her, but he wasn’t. Still nervous about his intentions, she tried to reason that surely he didn’t intend to harm her, despite the fact that it was almost like he was angry at her or perhaps resented her. He had mentioned something about her being the enemy. Whatever he was feeling, she couldn’t be sure, but it was strange to feel that someone she had never met

would harbor such harsh feelings toward her. She mentally shook herself. She was probably just reading more into the situation than what was really there. She hoped. Realizing she didn’t have many options, she ducked into the tent that Chandler had just entered. Like the one they had just left, it wasn’t very large inside. Actually, she mentally amended, it was almost identical to the one she’d just left with one notable difference. The fur covered pallet in the bedroom area was occupied by a handsome black-haired man that bore a striking resemblance to Chandler and a black-haired baby boy that had the body of a horse. The moment her gaze settled on the baby, Sarah very audibly gasped. Chandler swept her with a look of disdain at her reaction. The other man’s reaction was even harsher, if possible. Such anger glittered in his eyes that she took an instinctive step back. Still shocked that she was obviously seeing the baby she had delivered from Benny two years ago—the baby she’d tried hard to convince herself couldn’t possibly have been what she’d thought he was, she turned to Chandler. Despite her shock, she couldn’t help but notice he seemed to be decidedly angry at her involuntary reaction to the boy. It wasn’t that she was appalled, she was just … surprised. She had just never thought that centaurs existed or even could exist. She’d convinced herself that whatever had happened that day, it wasn’t what her mind assured her had happened. The foal had just been—deformed. The men—centaurs she’d seen hadn’t existed outside of her traumatized mind. It was shock and horror that had created the bizarre images out of—things she had seen—horses blurring into men that were part horse. Chandler’s gaze bored into her, his electric blue eyes dagger hard. She was a little disconcerted to realize she did indeed feel like he held animosity toward her. She hadn’t imagined it before, and it certainly wasn’t only because of her reaction to the child, although she was pretty sure that had definitely exacerbated the situation. From the moment she had seen him standing in the tent, though, he had maintained a perpetual scowl on his handsome brow. Dragging her gaze from his with an effort, she turned to look at the child again. It seemed inescapable that they’d brought her to see him, although why they thought she could help was beyond her. She was a veterinarian. He was—well, if she accepted that she wasn’t hallucinating—half human half horse. She couldn’t begin to imagine how she was supposed to treat such a creature that was neither all of one or the other, but both. He must think she could, though. He must know she was a veterinarian. Why else would he have taken her? It still struck her as strange that he would sneak up on her and take her against her will when all he had had to do was talk to her. Why hadn’t he come to her and explained to her that he wanted her help? It was obvious the child was very sick and, uncertain as she was about even attempting to try to treat him, she took a few steps toward where the boy lay on the bed of furs and began to kneel down next to him. The black-haired man already on his knees beside the child, holding his small hand, sent her a look of resentment she was beginning

to become all too familiar with. Sarah knew her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her now. Both of the men were angry with her! She felt her own ire rise in defense at the realization. She didn’t know why, but she found it strange and more than a little unnerving that they would bring her to help the boy if they felt such animosity toward her. “Teagan,” Chandler said. “You must let her examine Aydin.” She flicked a quick glance at Chandler as he spoke before returning her attention to the child. Aydin. Any doubts that had lingered were obliterated at that. He’d said he’d brought her because Aydin was ill and needed a healer. The man named Teagan, with obvious reluctance, gave the tiny hand he held a reassuring squeeze and settled it on the child’s chest, which seemed to be just barely rising and falling with his shallow breaths. He didn’t spare her another glance as he stood and moved away from Aydin. Ignoring the animosity radiating from both men, Sarah moved closer to the boy, noticing for the first time that a small leather bag of her supplies that she normally kept in the stable back home was sitting beside him. She frowned at it for a moment, but then discarded her negative feelings about being brought against her will and tried to focus on the fact that the men had been trying to do something good. Struggling to recall what she knew of general medicine, she leaned over the boy and examined his pupils, his pulse, and respiration. Reaching in her bag, she found several of her instruments and proceeded to check his ears, nose, and his throat. She checked his tonsils and then worked her way down his body. She tried to be as gentle as she could, seeing that the boy was extremely weak and wasn’t able to communicate whether he was in a lot of pain. She couldn’t be sure what he was feeling since he appeared to be sleeping and the man that had dragged her there hadn’t mentioned anything, nothing other than the fact that he was ill. Specifics on his symptoms before his nearly comatose state would have helped matters a great deal in making a diagnosis. It was almost with a sense of surprise that she realized once she’d finished examining him that she had a clear idea of what his symptoms indicated. He seemed to have muscular EPSM, Equine Polysaccharide Storage Myopathy. It was a deadly disease among Clydesdales and had taken many of them that she had personally looked after. Dismay filled her. She studied the boy. He was very young, but he appeared so strong. Even though he was deathly sick, he wasn’t painfully thin. Perhaps he did have a fighting chance. Standing, she turned to face the two men at the front of the tent, realizing they were waiting on something from her. Trying to be as professionally calm as she could be, she informed them, “He’s very sick, as you well know, but I’ll try to make him better. I can’t make any promises. His case is advanced and he’s ….” She paused. Was she really going to say half horse? The concept still struck her as unbelievable, but she had examined him herself. Logic told her no, but she knew it for a fact. She was sure that it was the horse in him that had allowed him to contract the disease. She, of course, had never treated a case like this one, but maybe being half human would work in his favor? Chandler did not wait for Sarah to say more. He knew that she was repulsed by their kind, that she must feel disgust at having to be in such close quarters with them.

“Teagan will stay with you while you care for his son. At the end of each day, I will return for you.” He stopped, but he knew what must be said. “You are an enemy of the people. You can not be allowed the freedom of the village to take whatever knowledge you might gather about us back to your people.” He nodded to his brother and then quickly left the pavilion, trying to put as much distance between himself and her as possible, hoping that would ease the raging lust consuming him. He had seen how appalled she was that first day when she had delivered Aydin. Her sister had screamed in horror and ran away. Sarah had been too shocked to react in kind, but he knew she was just as horrified. No doubt it was only her training as a healer that had prevented her from bolting, as well. As unreliable as his memory was from the moment he and Teagan had confronted her and demanded the child, he recalled vividly what had gone before, and, unfortunately, there was no denying their reaction. Afterward, nothing was very clear in his mind. He had been as stunned as she was when they had approached her, though for a far different reason. He had observed her and her sister from a distance for weeks, but that had not prepared him for the encounter. It had not occurred to him that he would need to be prepared beyond making certain that there would be no real opposition to deal with. He had seen many of her kind in battle, had fought his way through their villages to rescue members of his tribe, but he had never seen one such as her. It was not merely the fire in her hair or the paleness of her skin that made her so different from the others of her kind that he had seen. There was a vulnerability about her that he had not anticipated. That helplessness, that gentleness and sweetness of her soul that he had instantly sensed in her, seen in her eyes when she had looked at him, had not given him the sense of triumph it should have as her enemy. It had reached right down into his own soul and twisted something into a painful knot, made him wish for things he could put no name to. Beyond that, which had more thoroughly rattled him than any clever trap she might have thought to set, she was so beautiful it had frozen the air in his lungs until he had felt as if he was suffocating. Try as he might, he had not been able to dismiss her from his mind since and worse, none of the feelings she had engendered in him. The desire for her had not waned, had not been discovered to be nothing more than the product of imagination embroidered all out of proportion to reality when he had returned for her. It infuriated him that he could feel so attracted to one of the enemy. It was beyond insane to be attracted to her. It defied all logical thinking. Despite the ruination of their people by her own, though, despite everything he had been told about them, seen and experienced himself, he was still drawn to her. As if summoned, her image clouded his mind. Hard upon it, the memory surfaced of their battle of wills in his pavilion when he had taken her, and he felt his cock stir to life again, become hard and rigid beneath his sarong. Those moments when he had held her down on the furs filled his mind so completely he could almost feel the softness of her skin, the pliancy of her curves pressed against him, taste the scent of her in his nostrils. Resentment at what had begun to seem a malicious jest of the gods invented expressly to torment him filled him on the heels of the ache his thoughts produced.

Passing his own pavilion, he strode briskly from the village, as if by walking fast enough he could escape his thoughts. He found himself eventually upon the bank of the Bern River beyond their encampment, surrounded by the copse of trees where he often went to seek peace. He did not find it. Instead, it seemed the glow of Mearth’s twin moons transformed his place into the intimacy of a shadowy bower for a lovers’ tryst and images of her teased him more powerfully than before. This time, however, it was not images of things that had happened but of what the heart yearned for. Instead of fear and loathing, he saw desire in her eyes as he took her down to the leafy ground and covered her body with his own, heard her sighs of pleasure on the breeze sawing gently through the trees as he mapped her body with his hands and lips, learning every inch of her flesh. Desperation moved through him to claim her, and, as he squeezed his eyes closed, he could almost feel the heat and wetness of her body close around his turgid flesh, squeezing it. Brushing the soft leather of his sarong aside, he curled his hand around his member and stroked it in time to the images in his mind as he plowed into the tight sheathe of her body, feeling his heart race faster and pound harder as his body rushed toward culmination. He expelled a harsh grunt as the first hard spasm hit him, jerking with the force of it. A groan rumbled in his chest, held inside him by his gritted teeth as another wave and then another ripped through him. Shuddering, weak and dizzy in the aftermath, relief gave way to disgust as he caught his breath, and then burgeoning anger joined the self-disgust. He had expended himself like a callow youth, wasted his seed in the dirt over a female that had never looked at him with anything warmer than shocked dismay. It was not a yearning of the heart, but lust, plain and simple. Why waste his seed in the dirt when the woman was his to use as he pleased, he thought angrily? He had taken her. She was his by right of conquest. The gods be damned hoonans were not shy about using his people in any way that suited them! He should assuage his needs, expunge his sick fascination with the hoonan woman and be done with it and her before he sent her back!

Chapter Three Sarah was too stunned to react for several moments after Chandler had left. Slowly the shock drained away and was replaced by anger. She turned it on Teagan since he was the only target available. “If I’m an enemy and neither of you trust me, I don’t know why in the hell I was brought here to begin with!” she snapped. Surprise flickered briefly across Teagan’s handsome features before his face tightened with barely leashed fury. “I did not bring you or send for you! That was Chandler’s idea and not something either of us wanted—to bring a hoonan among us when it is you who are responsible for this to begin with! If your people had not worked him nigh to death in the pits he would be well and strong now!” His accusation more than his anger sent a cold jolt of shock through Sarah that was far more profound than her surprise at Chandler’s barely veiled antagonism. “My people?” she gasped faintly as he surged toward her and gripped her arms painfully. “You may be certain that I will watch you, woman! If you do anything to bring more harm to my son, I will snap your neck without another thought! If he dies, you will die!” Sarah gaped at him in dismay, too horrified to bring any sort of order to her mind. “Am I dying, Papa?” a small voice asked. Teagan released her so abruptly that Sarah, weak with the adrenaline rush that had shot through her and disappeared almost as quickly, nearly wilted to the ground. The consternation that filled Teagan’s face as he whipped his head in the child’s direction drained the fear from her, though. He was clearly distraught over his son’s condition. It hardly excused his treatment of her, but she understood it. “No!” he said almost harshly, moving to kneel by the child again and brushing a shaking hand over Aydin’s forehead. “Uncle Chandler has brought a healer to make you well again.” Sarah smiled with an effort when the child’s gaze moved to her. She wasn’t prepared for the baby’s reaction, though. His face paled. His lower lip trembled and then his entire face crumpled. “Make her go away, Papa,” he wailed. Sarah thought for a moment she would burst into tears herself. The child’s fear of her was more telling even than his father’s angry accusations, and her chest tightened painfully. Tears welled in her own eyes in spite of all she could do. She swallowed them back with an effort when Teagan turned an accusing glare at her. “Do you know her?” he demanded. Aydin sniffed, shaking his head. “She is hoonan, Papa?” he asked in a frightened whisper. Despair filled Sarah. It was bad enough Teagan and Chandler seemed to hate her for no reason at all that she could figure out beyond the fact that they’d decided she was ‘hoonan’, whatever they meant by that. How could she treat the child when he distrusted her as much as they did?

The answer was simple. She couldn’t. Swallowing against the painful tightness in her throat, she moved slowly toward the child. Kneeling on the edge of his pallet, she paused when he curled into himself and shifted closer to his father. Trying to ignore Teagan’s baleful glare, she smiled at the child as reassuringly as she could manage. “You don’t have to be afraid of me, sweety,” she said soothingly. “I wouldn’t hurt you for anything in the world. I swear it.” To her surprise and relief, Aydin seemed to relax fractionally. Sniffing back his tears, he peeped at her above the arm his father had wrapped protectively around him. “My name’s Sarah. What’s your name?” He stared at her suspiciously. “You have forgotten ….” Teagan muttered, trailing off when Sarah flicked a warning frown at him. Aydin followed the look. His distrust had deepened again when he met her gaze, and Sarah felt her frustration surface once more. She smiled at the boy reassuringly. “I think, maybe, me and daddy—uh—Papa, should talk,” she said firmly. Rising to her feet, Sarah looked at Teagan imperiously. His gaze flickered over her with a mixture of surprise and something else she couldn’t quite grasp. After a moment, though, he patted the child and rose to follow her as she whirled on her heel and strode toward the front of the tent. She stopped there, folding her arms over her chest. “Mr. …. Uh ….” She floundered when she realized Teagan was the only name she had for him and he seemed disinclined to furnish her with a more formal sobriquet—which made it difficult to treat him to the cold formality she’d intended. He’d paused before her—towering over her like a dark cloud actually—his bulging arms folded over his equally powerful chest, his straight, black brows almost meeting over the bridge of his nose. She should have been intimidated by his stance. She might have been if her focus hadn’t been more on the child than the child’s father. Peering around his hulking form toward the baby, who she discovered had sat up to observe the confrontation, she grabbed Teagan’s wrist and turned to lead him out of the tent. Surprise flickered in his eyes, but he followed her. She rounded on him almost as soon as he’d dropped the door flap in place, stabbing a finger into his chest for emphasis. “Listen you … you overgrown mountain! You brought me here to take care of him ….” “I did not,” he interrupted her tirade with a low growl, although she noticed his demeanor was far more relaxed and less threatening than before. In fact, she suspected the faint gleam in his eyes was a flicker of humor—which only irritated her more. She struggled to regain her righteous indignation. “Be that as it may, Mr. Teagan ….” “Teagan, not Mr. Teagan,” he corrected her. The gleam of amusement was more pronounced now, and the anger had given way to curiosity. Sarah blinked at him, feeling her bravado fading fast. “Teagan,” she said through gritted teeth. “If you feel the need to watch me, then watch—and keep your damned opinions to yourself! I need to earn his trust ….” His expression tightened. “You will not. He is a clever boy, not easily duped.” Sarah felt her own anger rise. “I’m not trying to trick him,” she said tightly. “I

can’t treat him if ….” “You will have to work around it,” he growled. Sarah’s lips tightened. “Look, asshole …!” “What is ‘asshole’?” he demanded suspiciously, interrupting her again. “Guess!” she snarled, giving up and whirling to stalk off. That was what she’d intended, at any rate. Like every attempt she’d made to try to make him see reason, however, he forestalled her. Grabbing her, he jerked her tightly against his length, spearing his fingers through the hair at the nape of her neck and dragging her upward until they were nose to nose. Before she even had a suspicion of what he had in mind, he planted his mouth tightly over hers in a punishing kiss. Stunned by the move, fire had coursed through her veins before she had time to throw up any sort of defense. She wasn’t at all certain she could have if she’d had more warning. The boldness might have disarmed her anyway. The sheer hunger of his kiss almost certainly would have, because his mouth felt absolutely divine. His heat seemed to melt her bones and his taste—it was like potent wine, creating heat in her belly and completely disordering her mind. He was breathing heavily when he lifted his mouth from hers at last. Dizzy, Sarah opened her eyes with an effort. “Aydin does not need to trust. I do not need to. Be certain, woman, that I will watch you, and if I have any suspicion whatsoever that your intentions are evil … there are ways to punish you that I, at least, would find vastly pleasurable. You may not be able to say the same, but I can assure you I would not mind at all, and it would not interfere in the least with what you have been brought here to do.” A shivered tiptoed down Sarah’s spine. Unfortunately, she discovered she couldn’t convince herself that she found his suggestion either threatening or abhorrent. She struggled to summon a healthy dose of resentment anyway as she returned to the tent—with indifferent success. There was no getting around the fact that the man was drop dead gorgeous and he could kiss—my god, could the man kiss! As rattled as she was already by everything that had gone before that, it was no wonder she didn’t know which end was up and couldn’t think straight. Aydin favored her with the pouty, distrustful scowl one might expect of a sick toddler when she returned. The defiance gleaming in his eyes was enough to shift her focus away from the father to the son. As unfamiliar as she was with children, she was still surprised at his grasp of things no human two year old, she felt certain, would have. Of course he wasn’t human. He also wasn’t a colt, which would have been almost fully matured to adulthood in two years. In size, Aydin still wasn’t much bigger than a newborn foal, but she suspected if he hadn’t been ill he would have been far stronger. She was still certain she’d correctly diagnosed his problem. She’d seen it enough to recognize the symptoms. She didn’t understand, exactly, what she was dealing with, but she didn’t know anything to do for the baby but follow the standard treatment and hope for the best. She forced a smile. “Let’s get you up so I can get a better look at you,” she suggested pleasantly. His scowl became more pronounced—so closely mirroring his father’s that it was almost amusing—almost. “I am tired. I want to sleep.” “You’ve done enough of that,” she said, firmly tamping the reflection that an

actual colt might be easier to deal with. A colt could balk, but it couldn’t argue. “You don’t like being sick, do you?” Aydin flicked a glance behind her, and she knew he was appealing to his father. Tamping her irritation, she turned to look at Teagan, as well. He studied her face for a long moment and finally moved his gaze to the boy. “Do as she says, Aydin,” he said finally, reluctance in his expression and every line of his body despite his words. Sarah wasn’t surprised when Aydin picked up on it. His lower lip trembled threateningly. “Feel bad, Papa. Do not want to.” “Look at me, Aydin, not Papa. I understand that you don’t feel good,” she said with sympathy when she had his attention. “Just get up and walk around a little bit for me, please?” He still looked resistant, but her plea on top of Teagan’s order had the desired effect. He began trying to struggle up. Sarah bit her lip, her heart squeezing in compassion at the effort she saw it was taking him. Moving closer, she dropped to her knees and helped him, holding him when she saw how wobbly he was on his feet—all four of them. “There now!” she said encouragingly, stroking his back, enjoying the feel of the soft, black coat that furred his little body even as she gentled him, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He sent her a doubtful look, but he didn’t try to pull away from her. “Was too,” he contradicted her. “Can I lie down again now?” Sarah found herself struggling to hide a smile. “If you’ll be a big, brave boy for me and walk—just a little bit.” She managed to coax him into taking a half a dozen shaky steps away from the pallet and then back again. A fine sheen of sweat had coated the skin of his face and upper torso by the time he managed it, and he was breathing hard. “Good boy!” she exclaimed when he dropped heavily to the furs again, stroking the long black mane of his hair. “That was so good!” A reluctant smile flickered across his lips at the praise. “It was not,” he disagreed. “I feel sicker now.” She smiled back at him despite his disagreeableness, leaning down impulsively to plant a light kiss on his forehead. He sucked in a sharp breath of surprise. She heard the echo of another behind her. Aydin didn’t jerk away from her, however. He merely drew back to stare at her with a mixture of surprise and wariness. “Why did you do that?” Sarah was almost as surprised by the impulse as the boy was, but she smiled at him teasingly. “You don’t like my kisses?” He seemed to think it over. “I am not certain,” he replied after a moment. Sarah chuckled. “When you’re older, you’ll be more certain.” He tilted his head. “Why?” Sarah bit her lip, reddening. “Trust me, you will.” He studied her curiously for a moment, as if struggling to capture an errant memory. “Why do I know your scent? Are you my mother?” The questions sent a jolt through Sarah. She sat back on her heels and stared at him while it slowly sank in that he actually remembered, or seemed to remember the few moments she’d held him after his birth. It wouldn’t have been that surprising if he’d actually been a colt. The dam and foal generally bonded by scent moments after birth.

Maybe human babies bonded to their mother the same way, even if it was unconscious? It seemed painfully obvious the poor baby had missed having a mother, and equally evident that he had never been told—anything about her. She couldn’t resist the urge to gather him into her arms. The impulse to mother him strengthened when he accepted her touch. “No, sweety, but I was there when you were born. I’m surprised you can remember.” He snuggled her. “I remember your smell,” he murmured. “I do not remember anything else. Papa said my mother died.” She’d been so focused on Aydin, she’d managed to put Teagan from her mind. At that, however, she glanced around sharply for him. For several moments, she met his gaze. He didn’t want Aydin to know, she realized. Focusing on Aydin again, she searched her mind for something she could say that would be true that he could find comfort in. “She would’ve loved to see what a handsome, strong, brave little boy you are,” she said finally, fabricating what she thought he needed to hear when she recalled how frightened Benny had been. Judiciously, she reminded herself Benny hadn’t actually had the opportunity to bond with her baby. “You think so?” he asked doubtfully. She pulled away enough to match her nose to his, crossing her eyes at him and earning a reluctant chuckle for her efforts. “I know so,” she said firmly. “Now rest a bit, and Papa and I will see about finding you something to eat.” He sighed and lay back against the furs when she released him. “Not hungry.” “But you need to eat to get strong, so you’ll try for me, won’t you?” He didn’t immediately disagree, which she took as progress. Ruffling his hair, she got to her feet and turned to look at Teagan uneasily. The tightness around his mouth told her he hadn’t cared for her familiarity with Aydin. He caught her arm and led her outside the tent again. Contrary thing that it was, her heart instantly leapt at the possibility that he might decide to ‘punish’ her a little more. She thought, wryly, that she could get used to his brand of punishment way too easily, and, considering the animosity he clearly felt toward her, that wasn’t a good thing. “What was that all about?” he demanded tightly. Sarah stared at him but decided to be deliberately obtuse. She was disposed to like the child, even if she didn’t particularly care for the father or his attitude, and she wasn’t going to apologize for it. Besides, it would be a great deal easier to treat him if he was willing to allow her to coax him. “He doesn’t need rest—unless you want him to continue to decline. He needs to be on a strict exercise and diet regimen. As nearly as I can tell—without any damned equipment to run tests—he has EPSM. It’s a disease that results in an accumulation of high muscle glycogen and abnormal polysaccharide in skeletal muscles. It makes him feel weak and shaky and that makes him reluctant to work his muscles, but it’ll only get worse if he doesn’t. We need to cut as much of the carbohydrates from his diet as we can and maximize fat intake—he’ll need that to provide an alternate energy source.” She could tell from his expression that he hadn’t understood half of what she’d said. “Look—I don’t know what you’ve been feeding him, but it isn’t good for him. He needs less—grain, more fat.” His lips tightened. “The food your people fed him has made him ill,” he said

tightly. “Or mayhap the fact that they barely fed him at all?” Sarah struggled with her anger. “Is there any possibility, at all, that we could call a truce? Because if there isn’t, you might just as well take me home, damn it! I haven’t done a damned thing to you, and I sure as hell haven’t done anything to that baby! Maybe it’s all your fault for snatching him to begin with? Did you think of that? No! I can see you didn’t! I would’ve taken care of him!” She could see that had set him back on his heels, but only briefly. He sneered at her. “I would not leave my son in the hands of hoonans to be worked to death in the pits!” Sarah blinked at him. “I don’t have a pit!” she shot back at him. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t put a baby in it! You don’t know a damned thing about me!” “And I do not care to know!” he growled. “You are hoonan. That is enough to know.” “Well, I don’t like arguing with crazy people,” Sarah snapped, “but I am, in point of fact, human—I don’t know what the hell a hoonan is! And as far as I can see, you’re the same thing I am—not that I care—but I sure as hell can’t figure out why you keep throwing that up to me as if we’re different.” He looked more than a little taken aback by that comment. Recovering slightly, he gave her a strange look. Seeing he looked slightly more reasonable, Sarah struggled to tamp her anger. “I’m not happy about being dragged here without even a ‘by your leave’, but I’m here now, and I want to help Aydin get better. He’s a sweet baby, even if you are an asshole, and I’m not going to hold it against him that his adoptive father is a total jerk! Can we just focus on the diet plan?” Teagan frowned at her curiously. “I am not Aydin’s adoptive father,” he said finally, almost reluctantly. “I am his sire.” Sarah gaped at him. Unfortunately, the first thought that ran through her mind when he said that was that he would have to have a hell of a cock to impregnate a mare, and her gaze instantly dropped to his groin. As packages went, it was damned impressive, but a cock long enough to handle a mare would’ve been hanging out of the bottom of his sarong, and she didn’t see an extra knee cap. Right about the time that it dawned on her that she’d examined him thoroughly, she realized with a jolt of dismay that he really was off his rocker. “But you can’t … you couldn’t …. Alright, I don’t even want to go there. I don’t know how Aydin was conceived, and I don’t want to. It’s done. We have to deal with it. But I can tell you Benny has the same thing, and he probably got it from his mother. The food, whoever gave it to him, isn’t likely the cause. This is thought to be something inherited from the parent. What we need to focus on is a treatment. He isn’t metabolizing his carbs normally. When he eats too much, it makes him feel weak and sick and he doesn’t want to do anything. Unfortunately, by giving in to that urge, he’s just gotten weaker and sicker. We’ll have to start him slowly and give him time to build his strength back up, but we have to push him to get up and move around as much as possible. Higher fat in his diet can take the place of the carbs he shouldn’t have and give him energy. “As soon as he can walk around the tent without too much difficulty, we need to get him outside so that he can get more exercise.” Teagan had looked more agreeable up to that point. At the last suggestion,

however, his lips tightened. “He can not go out.” Sarah gaped at him in disbelief. “You’re afraid someone will see him?” “Yes,” he said tightly. Fury washed over her. “You son-of-a-bitch! If you’re ashamed of him, why did you take him start with!” She thought for several moments he might become violent. He looked as if he was contemplating it. “I am not ashamed of my son,” he growled. “Ashamed of my actions, yes, but not of him.” His anger took the wind out of her sails faster and more effectively than the comments alone would have. “I don’t understand, then.” “It is not safe for him to leave the pavilion. If the hoonans steal him away again, he will die.”

Chapter Four Sarah had no idea what time it was when she finally left Teagan’s pavilion, but she knew that it must be very late. Beyond the fact that she was exhausted and discouraged from the hours she’d spent coaxing Aydin to eat when he didn’t want to and to get up and work his weakened muscles, she had put in a full day on the farm before she’d been brought here, and it had been after dusk when she was taken. The village was quiet and dark, bearing up that assessment. The only light brightening the landscape came from the western sky, where the moon was setting. She stared in that direction tiredly for several moments, trying to remember if she’d noticed the moon being full, but finally decided it must be. Otherwise, it wouldn’t brighten the sky so much. Teagan had sent her away. She’d bullied the poor baby until he was so thoroughly exhausted he’d cried, and Teagan had looked at her as if she was a monster and sent her away. She felt like a monster. Even knowing—or at least believing—that what she was doing was in his best interests, that they didn’t dare wait even till dawn to start treating him, she still felt like a bully for making Aydin cry when he’d tried so hard to be manful about it. If it came to that, she was exhausted to the point that she felt tearful herself—the tiredness on top of total emotional upheaval, that is. She glanced toward Chandler’s tent and then, without really considering anything beyond the fact that she didn’t feel like dealing with any more hostility, turned the other way. She caught a glimmer of light sparkling just beyond the tent village as she did so, and her heart leapt with something approaching real pleasure as her mind instantly identified it as water—a river or a lake. She didn’t care. The moment she spied it all she could think about was a nice bath to sooth her tired muscles and frazzled nerves. No hot bath, but she could see at a glance that there wasn’t one to be had any where around. It was summer. She doubted the water was cold—unless, of course, it happened to be spring fed, but then if it was there was just as much chance of it being a hot spring as a cold one, she reasoned. She didn’t really consider why that seemed reasonable to her. She was running on empty as far as brain function went. All she could seem to manage was simple thought and enough awareness of the dark things battering at the back of her mind to be glad to keep them there for time being at least. She didn’t try to creep through the village streets. It didn’t occur to her to consider it. She strode quickly toward her goal, certain everyone must be asleep. It startled her when she caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure near one of the tents, but he didn’t shout at her or start toward her. He merely watched as she strode by, and she relaxed again. The water, she discovered, was a river which bent around nearly three sides of the tent village in a horseshoe shape. She followed it until she reached a wooded area and

then stripped. Dropping her clothes to the ground, she made her way down the bank cautiously and tested the water with her toes. It was cool, as she’d expected, but not uncomfortably so. Sucking in a deep breath, she dove in, deciding to take the plunge all at once instead of torturing herself. Briefly, a jolt went through her as the water enveloped her, but it wasn’t enough of a shock to her system to produce much discomfort. Surfacing after a few moments, she sucked in a refreshing breath of air and treaded water briefly, trying to decide whether to swim further out or move closer to the bank so that she could stand in the water without the effort of swimming. Deciding after a little thought to stretch her aching muscles, she swam out until she was nearing the center of the river where the current was hardest and then turned around. She was gasping for breath by the time she reached a point where she could touch the bottom of the riverbed and still have her head above water. Sloughing the water from her face, she tipped her head back to slick her hair back from her face and finally lay back in the water, allowing herself to drift. How had she come to be here, she wondered? And where was she? She hadn’t actually allowed herself to ponder those questions. Truthfully, she hadn’t been given the chance to consider them and look for answers even if she’d wanted to. She hadn’t wanted to. She felt panic waft through her the moment she allowed the questions to enter her mind because there was no reasonable explanation for what had happened, and she knew no amount of trying to make it seem reasonable was going to change that. She’d fainted dead away when she’d saw what had seized her—what she thought had grabbed her, because it looked like one of those nightmarish things she’d convinced herself she’d never really seen. A faint wouldn’t have kept her unconscious long, though. Even a prolonged faint, which she supposed it must have been, still wouldn’t have allowed enough time for whoever or whatever it was that had grabbed her to take her far from her home. And this place was a long, long way from her home. She’d grown up on that farm. She knew the county from one end to the other even before she’d become a veterinarian and traveled around the county treating her patients, and this was definitely not home turf. Beyond the certainty that she was a very long way from home, though, her mind failed to produce any explanation for where she was or how she might conceivably have gotten to this distant place in what must have been little more than the blink of an eye. Reluctantly, she shelved that unanswered question and considered what she’d thought she had seen just before she fainted. Actually, she was pretty certain that what she’d thought she saw was why she’d fainted. Had she actually seen it, though? After considering it for several moments, she decided she would have to put it down to hysteria. Even though she wasn’t prone to panic, there was no getting around the fact that she had, and, furthermore, that she’d had plenty of provocation. She hadn’t seen the thing since she’d come to, though. Where would it have gone? And why would it capture her and then just toss her into this strange village and leave again? She was a doctor. Even if she was just a doctor of veterinary medicine, she knew how the mind could play tricks on a person, particularly during moments of extreme

duress. In all the months since that night in the barn when Aydin was born, she’d managed to convince herself that that was what it was. Benny had birthed a horribly deformed colt and then two men had come out of no where and snatched it from her. It hadn’t seemed too farfetched to consider her mind had simply ‘made up’ what she thought she’d seen. There were horses in the barn, and two strange men. Her mind had just morphed the two together. She could live with that. It was a little harder to explain that she’d had the same bizarre hallucination earlier this evening. True, she’d been just as terrified, maybe even more frightened, but why that hallucination? Because she’d had it before and her mind had simply produced it because the situation was similar? Maybe. That didn’t explain Aydin. Nothing explained Aydin. By any standards, she supposed he would have to be classified as a deformity, because it went against everything in nature, but he certainly wasn’t a horribly malformed horse as she’d convinced herself he was. He was, in point of fact, a beautiful little boy whose lower body just happened to be that of a black coated colt—and that part wasn’t malformed either. He was a perfectly beautiful little centaur baby boy. It didn’t particularly make her happy to realize that if Aydin existed, the two centaurs she’d managed to completely convince herself were nothing more than figments of a traumatized mind might also exist. And it wasn’t really a great leap from that point to figure out what had happened to Benny. She’d been raped by a centaur. Inwardly, she shrugged. She supposed that wasn’t fair. Benny obviously hadn’t tried to fight him off or she would’ve looked as if she’d been in a fight, and neither she nor Diana had noticed anything—which was why both of them had been totally bowled over when Benny had turned up pregnant. She hadn’t gone missing and neither of them had seen or heard of anyone’s stallion going missing. In fact, the only family she’d been able to discover that even owned a stallion was on the other side of the county, and he was a stud. No way would his owners have allowed him out to service the country mares for free. So—a randy centaur had mistaken Benny’s sexy backside for one of their own? That seemed pretty damned farfetched, but if it had been dark and he’d been confused about where he was—expecting it to be another centaur—she supposed it could happen—not that it wasn’t a damned underhanded thing to do! Sneaking up on poor Benny’s blindside and fucking the hell out of her! Considering Benny’s reaction to the baby, she didn’t doubt Benny would’ve gone into a blind panic if she’d actually gotten a look at the centaur. That was crazy—all of it, Sarah decided, sitting up in the water abruptly and glancing around to get her bearings. She’d drifted a good bit downstream, she saw. Shaking off her thoughts, she swam back to the copse of trees and emerged from the river. A breeze wafted across her damp skin, causing it to prickle all over. Sloughing as much of the water off as she could, she gathered her hair and twisted it to wring as much water out as she could and headed toward the place where she’d dropped her clothing.

She’d just stepped into the shadow of one of the trees when someone stepped from behind the trunk and grabbed her from behind. Adrenaline shot through her, tearing loose a scream of terror. It died in her throat, muffled behind the huge hand that covered her face. “If you had it in mind to escape you have taken the wrong direction,” Chandler said in a low, growling voice. Sarah went weak all over the moment she recognized his voice, but a bolt of deja`vu went through almost in the same instant. Tearing his hand from her face as he relaxed his hold on her, she whirled away from him, looking at him in disbelief. “It was you!” she gasped in a suffocated whisper after staring at the golden halo limning his body and pale hair from the moonlight filtering beneath the trees. He looked just as she’d seen him before—when he’d chased her from the barn and caught her. She frowned in the next moment, looking him over in confusion as it dawned on her that he didn’t look just as she’d seen him before. He wasn’t a centaur. Where in the world had that idea come from? “I don’t … understand,” she said hesitantly. “Obviously not,” he said tightly. “I do not know what Teagan was thinking to allow you to leave unescorted, but I thought I had made it clear enough that you were not allowed to do more than move between my pavilion and his.” “You’re the one who kidnapped me!” Sarah said accusingly, ignoring the none too subtle threat in his words. He caught her arm, jerking her toward him before she could put more distance between them. After staring down at her a moment, as if he was trying to pierce the shadows and read her expression, he shook his head at her, not in denial, she discovered, but because he thought her witless for not figuring it out before. “I captured you, yes. This confuses you? You are saying you left without permission because you did not understand my orders? You had some idea that you were free to come and go as it pleases you?” Sarah felt her jaw go slack. “I’m a prisoner?” Uttering a snort of derision, he jerked her up and tossed her across his shoulder. She grunted when she landed, but she was too surprised even to try to struggle until he turned and began to stride briskly toward the village. “Hey! Wait a damned minute! My clothes … I’m naked!” “I noticed. It is the only reason I did not turn you over my knee and teach you the error of ignoring my orders. If you do not want everyone staring at your bare ass, I would suggest you be quiet,” he growled, “else you will arouse the entire village and they will come out to watch.” “But … my clothes!” she whispered forlornly. He shrugged. “If you are so worried about being seen naked, mayhap I will not allow you to have them at all. Mayhap that will discourage you from wandering about the encampment when you were told not to.” The threat silenced her long enough for outrage to surface. “How dare you!” she hissed at him in impotent fury. “I dare much,” he countered, sounding almost amused now that he’d managed to make her furious.

“Bastard,” she snarled. He ignored that, and, since Sarah discovered they were already passing the outer ring of tents, she bit her tongue. She could have cheerfully strangled him, though. Aside from the fact that she didn’t have a stitch on, he’d left her clothes! What the hell was she supposed to wear if somebody decided to make off with them before she could get back to them? She didn’t take his threat seriously. He couldn’t possibly mean it, she assured herself, especially since he had to know damned well she hadn’t been trying to get away. Maybe she would have if the thought had occurred to her, but she hadn’t. She’d been bathing, and he had to know that. He had to have been there already, laying in wait for her, or she would’ve heard him approach. She didn’t know why she hadn’t considered running, if it came to that. Except she couldn’t bring herself to abandon Aydin, knowing he needed her. And she didn’t know where the hell she was. “I just went to take a bath,” she muttered when they reached his tent. Expecting him to set her down, she was dumbfounded when, instead, he merely ducked inside. She pin-wheeled her arms when he finally did set her down, trying to catch her balance. Failing, she landed on the pallet hard enough to make her wince at the pain that went through her tail bone. Stunned, she gaped up at him in surprise. His expression was uncompromising. “Move over.” Sarah stared at him in shocked disbelief. “You are not sleeping in the same bed with me!” He lifted a brow at her. “Do you see another?” he asked almost mildly. Sarah set her jaw mulishly, belatedly grabbing a handful of fur and dragging it over her. “I’m naked! I’m not sharing this damned pallet with you.” He set his hands on his hips, his eyes narrowing. “I can always tie you to the center support post if you prefer.” Sarah gaped at him for a moment, certain he couldn’t be serious, and then glanced at the post. “You wouldn’t dare.” He tilted his head at her. “Why do you think I would not?” he asked almost curiously. Sarah blinked at him, trying to think why she’d gotten it into her head that he wouldn’t do such a thing. Nothing came to her, and he certainly looked serious. “Because … because it’s barbaric, that’s why!” He lifted both brows at her that time, but there was no amusement in his eyes. “Then I must suppose I am barbaric—but I will give you the choice. I will sleep with you so that I will know if you attempt to escape again, or I will tie you to the post so that I can sleep more comfortably. Either way, I intend to sleep on my own pallet,” he said implacably. Indignation washed over Sarah. He knew damned well she hadn’t been trying to escape, but if he was determined to ignore the evidence right in front of his nose it hardly seemed worth the effort to inform him, again, that she hadn’t been trying to escape. Favoring him with a disdainful glare, she moved over, turned her back to him, and settled. The lamps lighting the interior went out. A moment later, Sarah heard the soft rustle of fabric before she felt the fur covering her shift. She sat up and peered at the dark form beside her. “Are you naked?” she demanded.

“Yes.” She hadn’t expected him to admit it. Nonplussed, she simply stared at him for a long moment. Finally, she lay down again, putting as much distance between herself and him as she could. He dropped a hand to her waist and dragged her across the pallet until her back was plastered against his belly. She went as rigid as a board. “Is this really necessary?” she asked in a hoarse croak. “Unfortunately,” he growled irritably, “yes.” There didn’t seem to be much to say to that. It was hardly a ‘come on’. In fact, he didn’t sound any happier about the situation than she was. She discovered it irritated her. It wasn’t as if she had any interest in being raped, and she sure as hell wouldn’t be cooperating. She was grateful he seemed disinterested. She really was, but she was naked for god’s sake! She’d rubbed boobs all over his back, twat under his nose, and her ass in his face. Why the hell wasn’t he interested? Because she was hoonan, and they hated hoonans. What the hell was a hoonan? And why was it that Chandler and Teagan hated them so rabidly that all they saw when they looked at her was an enemy? Was it the hair? The skin? What? Chandler was blond, his complexion a golden tan. Teagan had black hair. He was more swarthy than tan—certainly not golden skinned like Chandler, but as far as she could see they were all of the same race. She’d thought, at first, that they were trying to say human, but they didn’t mispronounce anything else that she’d noticed. Aside from having a sort of stilted way of talking, and an accent she’d never heard before, she hadn’t had any trouble understanding them—not the words they spoke anyway. A lot of the things they had talked about evaded her comprehension, but the words were mostly clear to her. Maybe the hoonans were just a rival tribe? That didn’t make sense to her either, though, because they had found her—both times. It had to have been Teagan and Chandler the first time, too, although she’d been in no state to recognize them. So there couldn’t be any confusion on their part that she was a member of another tribe, could there? She fell asleep worrying the puzzle over in her mind. Daylight was filtering into the tent when she woke. Reluctance filled her as soon as consciousness began to surface, and, although she couldn’t identify it beyond the fact that she was still too tired to want to wake up, she struggled to dive back under the curtain between awareness and unconsciousness. A rising awareness of discomfort made that impossible. The bed she lay upon wasn’t just lumpy and unyielding, it was hot and scratchy beneath her back. Cool morning air wafted over her front, making the down on her skin stir just enough that she realized she was uncovered. Sighing when she finally accepted sleep had eluded her, she yawned and stretched. When she opened her eyes, she discovered Chandler was standing over her, studying her. A jolt went through her despite the lingering lethargy of sleep. She blinked her burning eyes, but the image didn’t disappear. His expression was taut as he studied her, but his gaze wasn’t on her face. Following the direction of his focus, she stared down at herself blankly for several moments before the memories of the night before flooded her mind and she realized why

she was naked. She covered herself with her hands and arms since she seemed to have kicked off the cover in her sleep, her gaze shooting to his face again. For several moments, he held her gaze while a quivery warmth slowly crept through her system until she felt flushed all over, tense, expectant. Breaking the hold on her, he glanced down at something he held in his hand and finally dropped it on the pallet beside her. “You will wear this while you are here.” Glancing down, Sarah saw a crumbled garment. When she reached for it, she discovered it wasn’t cloth as she’d thought, but rather it seemed to be leather of some kind—a very fine, very soft leather that was like nothing she’d ever seen. Sitting up, she held the piece up, studying it in confusion when she saw there were no sleeves, not even arm holes. It was nothing but a flat, unformed rectangle. He took it from her hands and motioned for her to stand. She got up, watching him curiously as he wrapped it around her to form a simple sarong that overlapped to one side of the front and covered her front just above her breasts to her knees. She frowned when he tucked one end into the top of her left breast and moved away. She was supposed to walk around in this, she thought in rising indignation? Sure it covered everything, but she was still naked underneath, and prior experience with wearing a towel in this fashion told her that the top wasn’t likely to stay tucked if she moved around much. Beyond that, although it overlapped by a good bit, it was going to open every time she bent down or stood, flashing who ever was close enough to see, to say nothing of the fact that her ass and twat were going to be shinning if she forgot and bent over. Chandler distracted her from her unpleasant evaluation when he approached her again. Shoving one hand into the top, he fastened a broach of some kind through the layers. She stared down at the broach when he removed his hand and stepped back, trying not to think about the brush of his hand against her breast. The broach appeared to be fashioned from silver in a filigree design of some sort, but she couldn’t tell much about the design upside down. “Your things are there,” he said, indicating a curtained off section of the tent with an inclination of his head. “I will be outside when you are done.”

Chapter Five Her things? Her mind still sluggish from too little sleep and the shock of waking up to see a beautiful man staring at her, Sarah merely stared at Chandler as he strode from the tent. After a moment, she turned and headed toward the curtains. When she pushed them aside, she discovered the area sectioned off was a privy of sorts. Eyes only privacy, she thought wryly, but certainly better than no privacy at all. A bowl and a pitcher she discovered was filled with water sat on a tall wickerlooking chest. Beside it was a travel potty. A lumpy bundle had been set atop the lid of the potty. She stared at it a moment and finally decided this was what he’d meant by ‘her things’ since she didn’t see any sign of the clothing she’d been wearing the day before. The contents surprised her. She wasn’t certain how she felt about it beyond that—vaguely angry and at the same time grateful for his thoughtfulness. The odd assortment of toiletries was welcome—and recognizable. Wondering when he’d sneaked into her room and filched them, she made use of the pot and then poured water into the bowl and washed her face and brushed her teeth and then her hair. Feeling slightly more human, vaguely discomfited about the primitive facilities, although she’d certainly been exposed plenty of times to conditions as rough or worse in making her rounds of the farms where she treated her patients, she left the tent. She would’ve at least liked to have had her damned shoes, she thought irritably as she stepped outside and met Chandler. Without a word, he clamped a hand around one of her arms just above the elbow and led her to Teagan’s tent. She might have objected except that, unlike the night before, the tent village was awake and working alive with villagers like a stirred ant hill. As busy as they all seemed to be, they spared the time to stare at her. There were no friendly smiles, not even merely curious ones. Every face that glanced her way expressed varying degrees of hostility. She couldn’t be certain, but she had the vague impression that Chandler’s hold on her began to seem more protective than guard-like. Quelling the urge to try to hide behind him, she lifted her chin and met the gazes cast in her direction coolly. She was shaking by the time they reached Teagan’s tent, though, and glad to duck inside away from the view of the other inhabitants of the village. Chandler’s hold on her arm eased once they were inside. Instead of releasing her completely at once, though, he moved his hand almost caressingly on her arm before removing it, as if trying to rub away the red marks he’d left on her skin. She glanced up at his face in surprise at the gesture, but he’d looked away before she could read his expression. Teagan, she discovered, was sitting cross-legged in front a brazier near the center of the tent. Any doubts she’d had about what they wore beneath their sarongs were instantly dispelled when she glanced at him. She got a good view of the impressive package veiled by his sarong the evening before. The last time she’d seen that much ‘meat’

dangling between a male’s hindquarters it had belonged to a bull—or a stallion. Good god! She felt her face heat when she realized that both Teagan and Chandler were looking at her curiously. She was a down-to-earth kind of gal. She worked with animals, had her entire life since she’d grown up on a farm. She wasn’t inclined to be particularly prosy about her own or anyone else’s nudity or sexuality. Animals were inclined to fuck whenever the mood struck them, and she’d had conversations with farmers while their animals fucked practically beneath her nose without turning a hair. She had no idea why she was abruptly so acutely aware of her own femininity or the sheer magnitude of virile male around her, or discomfited about it, but she found herself struggling to act unconcerned when it was usually no act. With an effort, she pasted a false smile on her lips, transferring her attention from the cock and balls she’d been staring at as if she’d never seen either before—and she damned sure hadn’t seen anything like it on a man—to the pan of food he was cooking. “That looks good. What is it?” Teagan’s nearly straight black brows tented briefly above the bridge of his nose. “Eggs,” he responded curiously. Feeling her face turn a brighter shade of red, Sarah grappled with some excuse to explain why she hadn’t recognized the eggs—beyond the fact that she hadn’t actually been looking at the damned pan. Coming up empty, she merely nodded with as much unconcern as she could muster and made her way to Aydin’s pallet. Although she knelt on the pallet before she bent over to examine him, she felt a breeze waft across her buttocks. Groping behind her with one hand, she discovered she hadn’t imagined that the damned thing had ridden up high enough to expose her and glanced quickly toward Teagan and Chandler. They were both studying the pan of eggs with frowning concentration, but she had the feeling, from the tense set of their shoulders, that they’d gotten a good eye full. It was the sarong, she thought irritably. She wasn’t used to being naked beneath her clothes, and it made her aware of her body to an uncomfortable degree. She also wasn’t used to having to worry about her clothes riding up or shifting to expose more than she wanted revealed. She wore jeans most of the time. She missed her jeans. She wondered if Chandler would fetch her clothes from the riverbank if she asked him. Aydin stirred, redirecting her focus to him. Smiling faintly, she brushed his black hair from his soft cheek, realizing as she did so that she hadn’t seen a single child in the village. Frowning thoughtfully, she reviewed the mental images she’d picked up and concluded she was right—not one. She also hadn’t seen a single dark head, she realized in surprise. She’d seen every shade of blonde from flaxen to nearly brown, but nothing darker, certainly no one with raven-wing black hair like Teagan and his son. She dismissed the curious circumstance after a moment. “Wake up, sleepy head,” she murmured next to Aydin’s ear. The long, curling thatch of lashes fluttered, drawing her attention to them. What she wouldn’t do for thick, long lashes like that, she mused! As his eyes fluttered open, it came to her that his eyes were just like Teagan’s— same color, same shape, same beautiful lashes.

How, she wondered, was that even possible? He’d claimed he had sired the baby, but how? It wasn’t as if she wasn’t well aware that men on occasion took it in their heads— usually when they were drunk or stoned—to fuck a farm animal. They had a compulsion to stick ‘it’ in something and whatever hole happened to be handy was liable to get plugged if they happened to be in the right frame of mind at the time—or not in full possession of their mind. But cross species ‘pollination’, thankfully, rarely worked. If it did there’d probably be man-goats, man-sheep, man-cows, and maybe even manchickens running around barnyards, although that generally just resulted in dead chickens. Donkey and horse worked, after a fashion, although mules were neuter because it didn’t really work. Horses had even been crossed with zebras, but that was still a similar animal. Shaking the thoughts off when she realized Aydin was staring at her, she smiled at him. “Ready to get up and work some more?” His little face crumpled with reluctance, but he began struggling to sit up almost immediately. She moved away enough to help him, glancing toward Teagan questioningly. “Papa made eggs?” Teagan nodded. Rising, he brought two plates. She smiled up at him in thanks as she took the offering. His gaze flickered over her face. He didn’t return the smile, but his expression lightened. Feeling vaguely rebuffed, she looked away. Her smile was a little more strained as she focused on Aydin again. He was studying the plate of eggs with revulsion, she saw. “Come on. You can eat just a little,” she said coaxingly. “I’m never hungry first thing in the morning either, but it’s important to get your protein, and you’ll need the fat for energy.” She ate more than she wanted trying to coax him to eat, but she managed to convince him to eat a little more than half. Chandler finished eating and left. She didn’t look in his direction, but she was acutely conscious of him and knew when he took the plates and utensils Teagan had gathered up and left the tent. Presumably to wash them, she thought. Teagan doused the fire he’d used to cook and moved to the front of the tent, fastening the door flap open to allow a breeze to enter and chase away the last of the smoke from the fire, most of which, thankfully, had exited through the vent around the center support. Bullying Aydin in getting to his feet when he’d finished eating, she made him walk a little further than she had the night before. He was shaking and sweaty by the time she let him climb onto the pallet again, but it seemed to her that he was progressing. Leaving him resting on the pallet, she joined Teagan near the opening of the tent. He glanced at her when she settled across from him but returned his attention almost immediately to the stick he was whittling on with a wicked looking knife. She watched him curiously for a few moments and then turned to study the villagers she could see. “Everyone’s blonde,” she said after a time. Teagan’s gaze was on her when she looked at him. Frowning, he focused on his project, and she saw that he was fitting feathers into slits he’d cut in one end of the slender shaft he’d been working on. He ignored her gambit for information.

“Why does everyone here hate me?” He met her gaze for a long moment before his gaze flickered over her face. “Because you are hoonan,” he said gruffly. Sarah frowned. “But—I’m not!” His lips tightened. “You are.” “I’m not even from here, am I? Where am I?” “Mearth.” Sarah looked at him blankly. “This place is called mirth? As in amusement?” Something flickered in his eyes. “There is not a great deal of that here,” he said wryly. “You are from beyond the Tree of Knowledge, the doorway.” Sarah stared at him, trying to digest that indigestible nugget of information. “Another world? Another dimension?” she asked, disbelieving, although she supposed it was more like an inability to accept. She knew, deep down, that she couldn’t possibly be on Earth, and yet not only did it seem impossible to be anywhere else, it also seemed impossible to have gotten here through a tree of all things. Unless he was just calling it a tree and he meant something else? It was mind boggling any way she looked at it, and yet she had only to peer out the opening of the tent to see with her own eyes that she was in some fantastic place that bore no familiarity beyond the blue sky, green grass, and trees. It was like Earth, but not, and she realized that was what he was saying—Mearth, a corruption of Earth, just like she was sure hoonan was a corruption of human. And if he wasn’t, then what was he? Teagan merely shrugged at her questions. Either he didn’t know a great deal more about it than she did or he just didn’t care to share the information. “You did not know of the doorway?” Sarah met his gaze at the question. “As far as I know, no one on Earth does. You didn’t either, did you?” He frowned, but she wasn’t certain if it was the question or his concentration as he fitted a metal tip into the other end of the shaft he’d made—which she realized as he set it aside and picked up another slender stick of wood, was an arrow. The plates and forks they’d used were metal, like the arrow tip. The broach Chandler had used to pin her sarong was also metal. She glanced outside again, studying the tents they referred to as pavilions and then the villagers within her range of vision. There were women using wide wooden bowls and wooden, club-shaped pestles to grind some sort of grain. Everyone was wearing clothing similar to what she and Teagan and Chandler were wearing except that there was a slight variation in the colors, and some were decorated with beaded designs. She saw other women carrying bundles of some sort of plants, men striding within view and then disappearing. No children. No animals, not even dogs or cats. The entire scene reminded her of movies she’d seen of the old west that depicted Indian villages, and yet there were almost as many differences as there were similarities. They had worked metals. The Indians hadn’t had those, unless they traded for them. Maybe these people did? “It is forbidden to approach the Tree of Knowledge,” Teagan said, breaking into her thoughts.

When she looked at him, she saw his color was heightened. “I had drank too much of the ceremonial drink and had gone to offer up a prayer to the gods when I … found it.” That explained a lot! She didn’t know much about any of the Indian tribes or their practices, but she’d certainly heard that many of them used hallucinogens in their ceremonial drinks. “I’m amazed you managed to find your way back,” she responded neutrally. He flicked a glance at her. She saw surprise in his eyes, maybe even a touch of relief. “I did not realize I had passed into another place until I awoke.” His discomfort over the incident was patently obvious. She was surprised he’d shared it with her—and oddly gratified. Feeling a need to reward his confession with one of her own, she smiled wryly. “I got so drunk once when I was in college that I decided to strip naked and go skinny dipping with a bunch of my friends. We were having a party at a lake. I was mortified when I realized what I’d done the next morning, of course, but the good thing was everybody else was as drunk as I was, or worse, and I just pretended I didn’t really remember. That’s a good thing about drinking too much. Everybody pretends they don’t remember what they did.” He smiled faintly. Sarah’s stomach executed a backwards flip and everything inside of her fluttered with a faint jolt of excitement. God the man was so handsome it was downright dangerous! God forbid he give her a real smile. She might just faint! “Why do have black hair when everyone else is blonde?” she asked, mostly to distract herself, although she was dying to know everything about him she could pry out of him. It was as if a door had slammed shut. The gleam of humor left his eyes. His face turned to stone. He glanced toward Aydin. “My mother was raped by a hoonan. This is why I am outcast, even among my mother’s people. I regret that Aydin must endure what I have, but he has me to protect him as well Chandler. I had only Chandler—my mother died birthing me and Chandler’s father would not acknowledge me—and, although Chandler fought many battles for me when I was too young to defend myself well, he also was young and many were the times that he was beaten down trying to defend me and I was also beaten.” The emotions that rolled through Sarah at that were too numerous and too conflicting to grasp all at once. Outrage and commiseration dominated, however. “The damned bullies!” Sarah muttered angrily. “Diana and I had to endure hell, too, because of our red hair. I can’t tell you how many lectures my parents gave me, or whippings my father gave me, for beating up the neighborhood boys!” A mixture of surprise and amusement, disbelief, and a modicum of respect flickered in his eyes in quick succession. He allowed his gaze to wander over her. “You beat the males?” Sarah shrugged. “Girls often grow faster than boys. Up until I was around twelve years old, I was as big, or bigger, than the boys.” She smiled wryly. “I’m afraid I wasn’t very good at keeping my temper, either. When they teased me and Diana, I beat the living hell out of them if I could get hold of them or threw rocks if I couldn’t. It was the rocks that really got me in trouble. I whacked Tommy Hill in the head with one, and he

had to get stitches. My father beat me for it, but I always thought it was more because he had to pay for the medical bills than anything else. He never paid me or Diana a lot of attention otherwise.” Amusement flickered in his eyes although the smile didn’t make it to his simply fascinating lips. Sarah’s belly tightened with the memory of the feel of them against hers. “Remind me to make certain that there are no rocks handy if I make you angry.” Sarah stared at him blankly while it slowly sank in that he was teasing her. A husky chuckle escaped her. The gleam that entered his eyes that time was hotter and had nothing to do with amusement. Sarah shook her head at him, struggling to tamp the echo of heat inside of her in response. “I shouldn’t have warned you. I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I told you my aim isn’t nearly as good anymore?” Teagan allowed his gaze to wander over her face, although it pleased him so much to look at her that he had made it a point to avoid looking at her directly. It was not just that he thought her features beautiful, he realized, that disarmed him. The frank way she had of meeting his gaze had a way of throwing his mind into complete disorder, of making it nearly impossible to think straight. He had mixed feelings about kissing her. He had not been able to resist the urge, and yet he could not deny that it had been one of the most unwise impulses of the many he had yielded to in his life. He could not look at her now without remembering it, though, and recalling it made him want to do so again—and much more. It was not just that she looked at him, he realized abruptly, when none of the women of his tribe ever really did. It was the way she looked at him. He saw what he wanted to see, he thought derisively. He saw interest, admiration, and those things were not there. She was hoonan. Regardless of her apparent friendliness, regardless of her ability to make him feel as if she looked at him with the interest of a woman for a man, it was false, a lie to entrap him, to make him lose his head and do something stupid—again. Like kissing her. He was still sorry when she got up and returned to Aydin. He felt like he would suffocate when she was close, and burn up with fever, but he missed it when she was not close enough to make him feel that. He nicked his finger with his knife when she bent over to waken Aydin and he caught a glimpse of the cleft between her legs and the bright tufts of curling hair that surrounded her nether lips. The image filled his mind to push her to her back and spread her thighs wide so he could examine that intriguing cleft more thoroughly. His cock tented his sarong at the thought, and he shifted uncomfortably, trying to will it into obedience. It was as well, he thought in self-disgust, that she had spent the night in Chandler’s pavilion. From the moment he had been able to ease his anxiety about Aydin, his entire focus had been on her, and his cock had remained at half mast or full attention thereafter. He wondered how Chandler had faired. He was certainly not immune to their little captive. Despite his brother’s efforts to pretend otherwise and his own distraction between his worry over Aydin and his focus on his own discomfort, he had not failed to notice the way Chandler looked at her when

she wasn’t aware of his attention. They were not likely, either of them, to find any relief—unless Chandler sought out one of the village women for it. Unfortunately, that option was not open to him even if he had dared to leave little Aydin alone long enough to see to it. Even the village women freest with their favors would not give him leave to use their bodies for fear he would ‘taint’ them with his hated seed. He had suffered the torment of the damned since he had reached gods damned maturity, however—his one and only excursion into the pleasures of the flesh having ended with him making a complete fool of himself with that gods bedamned creature from Sarah’s world. He could live with it. He would have to. Raping captives was something the hoonans did, not any self-respecting centaur, and certainly not one of the golden tribe—unless a man wanted to become less than a man. She would not give it, would not offer herself—certainly not to him. Mayhap Chandler, if he could overcome his hatred of the hoonans in general to give in to his needs, but he was far more likely to find a village woman who was willing rather than try to coax acquiescence from Sarah. It puzzled him that she did not seem to hate them. Mayhap she was only very good at hiding it? He paused in his labors and risked a glance at her again, continuing to watch when he saw she was unaware of him. She seemed to genuinely care about Aydin. It disturbed him. The child was vulnerable. He had missed not having a mother. He had not had to say anything. He knew, because he had not had one. Chandler had done his best to take the place of both parents, but he was only a few years older. There were things that mothers did that Chandler had not known how to give. In his time, he had watched the mothers with their babes and yearned for those caressing touches, the kisses, the smiles of love and encouragement—even the scolding. It was not the same when Chandler picked him up when he had fallen or was hurt and patted his head and told him to stop sniveling. There was no one to dry his tears and kiss away his hurts. No one for Chandler either, he thought judiciously, and yet Chandler had never seemed to blame him for killing their mother when he was born. He hated that he could not give Aydin any more than he had had. He was a good boy. He deserved to have a mother. He was torn between gratitude that Sarah was willing to give Aydin some of the motherly affection he needed so badly and anger and fear for the same reason. She would leave again once he was better and then he would truly miss having a mother because she had given him a taste of it. Was it better to have some? Or none at all? In his gut, he felt that it would be better for Aydin to have none than to have a little and have it taken away again, but he could not seem to discourage Sarah. He had growled at her and threatened her and spoken harshly to her and she had still treated his son with gentleness, had not shown any of the anger or resentment he knew she had to feel at being taken captive. He would talk to her, he decided. He would tell her she was not to embrace the child or kiss him or encourage him in any way to believe she felt any affection for him. He would tell her he would punish her if she did.

It was an unfortunate thought. It instantly reminded him of his ‘threat’ to her the night before. His cock tented his sarong. Breathing out a gusty sigh of disgust, he piled the arrows he had been making into his lap to hold the fucking thing down.

Chapter Six “Rest, Aydin,” Teagan said gruffly. “I must walk Sarah to Uncle Chandler’s pavilion, but I will not be far nor gone long.” Aydin stared at his father anxiously, but he merely nodded. Disturbed by that fearful look, Sarah balked. “I’ll go straight there, I promise. You don’t need to leave Aydin alone.” “I will walk you,” Teagan said implacably, taking her arm and leading her from the tent without allowing her to debate the matter further. To Sarah’s surprise, instead of heading directly toward Chandler’s tent, however, Teagan glanced around and then led her around the side of his tent to a thick tree that stood several yards behind it. Rounding the trunk of the tree, he jerked her to a halt. “I do not know what game you are playing, woman, but I told you I would not allow you to harm Aydin,” he growled. Sarah stared at him in disbelief and dawning anger. “I haven’t hurt him! I wouldn’t! Maybe it seems harsh to you to push him, but he needs that. He’s weak and sick now and he doesn’t feel like exercising, but that’s the only way he’ll get his strength back.” Teagan’s lips tightened. “I have no quarrel with what you are doing in that respect. I can see that he is stronger today than yesterday. He is only a babe, though. He can not see through your attempts to win his trust and manipulate him. He is vulnerable. It will wound him when he discovers that you are only pretending to care for him,” he growled angrily. “I know you hoonans are a cold, heartless breed, but I will not allow you to use your wiles on my son to get to me!” Sarah stared at him with her mouth agape. “I do care about him!” she said finally. “Why would you think I’d only pretend to? Why would I pretend? How could I possibly use him to get to you, and why would you think I’d want to?” “You can not possibly care about him when you only met him yesterday. Even if he was not what he is!” Sarah stared at him with a mixture of confusion and anger. “What he is,” she said tightly, “is a sick, frightened baby, and he needs comforting as much as he needs treatment for his illness. And no matter what you seem to think of me, I’m not cold blooded or heartless. I do care about him! I wouldn’t use him to get to you even if I had a fucking clue of what you’re implying!” Teagan glared at her in frustration. “You do not need to kiss and fondle him,” he growled. That comment rocked Sarah back on her heels. She came back with fury. “Are you implying that I’m some kind of … pervert?” she demanded. He frowned at her in baffled rage. “What is this word?” he asked suspiciously. Sarah stared at him, trying to decide if his ignorance of the word meant he hadn’t insinuated what she thought he had or if he was familiar with the concept but not the word. “An unnatural affection,” she said finally.

“It is unnatural!” he growled. “He is not your child. For you to behave as if he is, now, will only hurt him later when you leave him!” Sarah studied him a moment. “Are you jealous? You think I’ll steal his affection from you?” she asked cautiously. “He adores you. You can’t possibly think he would stop?” Teagan ground his teeth and looked heavenward for guidance. He grabbed her shoulders as if he meant to shake her. Instead, he drew her to him until they were nearly nose to nose. “If you break his heart, woman, I will wring your scrawny neck!” Sarah stared back at him wide eyed, her heart hammering unpleasantly fast in her chest, but despite the fear his fury inspired, she had never been one to back away from a fight. “I think I liked the other punishment you promised a good deal better,” she said shakily. That rocked him. His head recoiled from hers as if she’d slapped him. He stared at her in bafflement for a long moment, the smoldering fire in eyes changing subtly but swiftly from fury to passion. “Take care, woman, or you will get more than you bargained for,” he growled ominously. A thrill of anticipation went through Sarah that was the polar opposite of the fear she’d felt ten seconds before. She blinked at him, suddenly breathless. “I had a fairly good look at it, actually. It’s pretty intimidating, but I think I can take it.” He tilted his head, his gaze flickering over her face speculatively. She could see distrust and uncertainty warring with desire in his eyes and thought for several moments that he would thrust her away. Disappointment filled her the moment the thought flickered through her mind. She didn’t have to consider whether she wanted him to or not. As unnerving as his anger of before had been, his desire for her was so potent it made her weak with want. She moved infinitesimally closer when she sensed he would set her away. His gaze flickered to her lips and held. He released his grip on her so abruptly she swayed with the sudden loss of support. Before it even registered in her mind that he’d rejected her offering, however, she discovered he’d merely shifted his hold on her. Hooking a hand behind her neck and one at the small of her back, he dragged her upwards to meet his mouth as he lowered it to cover hers. The pressure of his mouth was hard, almost punishing, but the eagerness inherent in his touch belied any intention to hurt. Shaking with need, he fitted her as snugly against his form as he could manage while he plundered her mouth with a ravenous hunger that shot her heart rate and heat index into orbit almost instantaneously. She caught at him blindly for purchase, straining to move closer still to the fire already threatening to consume her. No drug known to mankind could have had the potency or speed in shooting her toward sublime ecstasy that the feel of his mouth and tongue on hers did. Everything inside of her erupted into complete chaos the instant their mouths connected in an intimate communication of mutual yearning. With the first stroke of his tongue along hers, his essence seemed to fill her to her pores, jolting every nerve ending, stimulating every cell of her body to vibrant life. A vortex of sensations sucked her in to a dark madness of primal need. No ordered thought crossed the dizzying sea of sensations swirling through her mind, only dark urges. She wanted to be consumed by him, filled with him. Images flooded her mind of his cock thrusting deeply inside of her channel in the same way his

tongue filled her mouth, and impatience, desperation, to feel it followed. She was so intent on absorbing the wondrous sensations he was creating in her it didn’t occur to her to participate beyond holding on until she felt the easing of his mouth against hers and sensed his withdrawal. He withdrew the delightful caress of his tongue and the heat of his mouth before she had time or enough mind to protest by more than following his retreat as far as his tether in her hair would allow. His gusty pant for breath fanned her face as he lifted mouth from hers, alerting her only then to the fact that she was so breathless herself she was near to black out. With more effort than it should have taken, she lifted her heavy eyelids to send him a look of reproach regardless. The look he gave her in return almost singed her eyebrows. She swallowed with an effort, struggled to collect her thoughts enough to beg, or demand, that he finish what he’d started—now. As if he’d read her thoughts, intent filled his eyes. She lifted her lips readily as he caught his breath and leaned in to kiss her again, eager for another taste of his passion, of him. “Teagan!” A guilty jolt went through both of them as Chandler’s harsh voice intruded between them like a bucket of icy water. Almost in sync, they whirled toward the sound. Chandler’s expression was stony, but fire raged in his eyes, a fury that seemed to be divided between the two of them but directed mostly at her. Teagan stiffened, the sudden tension in him radiating hostility that even Sarah could feel, and uneasiness wafted through her as she glanced toward him. “Think! Look around you! She is hoonan, a captive, and you are in plain view of the entire village. She is not worth what she would cost you, brother,” Chandler growled. His comments threw Sarah into fresh disorder. Feeling heat rise in her cheeks as if the rebuke was meant entirely for her, she looked quickly around, discovering Chandler was right. She hadn’t considered the tree, as broad as the trunk was, offered them little privacy. She wouldn’t have cared, a moment before, if Teagan had thrown her down on the ground and fucked her senseless. She’d wanted him to, and she suspected if he had she still wouldn’t have cared if half the people in the village had been watching. “What will she cost me?” Teagan demanded harshly. “The favor of the gods? My place among the people? Will I lose their respect for sullying my lines with a hoonan?” Empathy softened the raging anger in Chandler’s eyes. “There is always more to lose, brother,” he said more gently, but with an edge to his voice Sarah couldn’t entirely decipher. “Do not succumb to this … creature’s wiles. You will regret it.” If he’d slapped her, Sarah couldn’t have been more shocked or numbed by disbelief. Anger swept in swiftly to fill the void of emotion the insult had left in its wake, however. She didn’t know what to take exception to more, the suggestion that she had evil designs on Teagan, or that Chandler had called her a ‘creature’ as if she was some reptile that had slithered into their midst. Teagan released her, not slowly or reluctantly, but almost as if he had to struggle to keep himself from thrusting her away. That stung even harder than what Chandler had said and suggested. Struggling with both hurt and anger, she glanced mutely from one brother to the other. The distrust in both men’s eyes straightened her spine, bolstered her wounded pride. Unfortunately, she was too distressed to think of anything cutting

enough to utter in return, and her chin wobbled with hurt the moment she opened her mouth to try. She clamped her lips tightly together again, summoning anger to quench the sudden desire to burst into tears that had descended upon her like a thunderclap. She didn’t look back at Teagan when Chandler caught her upper arm in a painful grip and hauled her back toward the village. She didn’t look at Chandler or any of the villagers that stared at her as he marched her angrily past them. She allowed her vision to lose focus and stared stonily into space, refusing to lower her eyes as if she had anything to be ashamed of or cared whether they all hated her or not. She did care, though. It was withering to be so despised when she’d done nothing at all to earn it—angering, too, but the sense of injustice that flickered to life inside of her was smothered by the weight of hurt. Her chest and throat ached with unshed tears and the need to let them flow when Chandler dragged her inside his tent and released her at last. She stood where he left her, absently rubbing the bruise forming on her arm until she sensed Chandler’s gaze on her. Dropping her hand then, she looked around the tent, intent only on avoiding eye contact with him. Finally, she moved wearily to the pallet and sat down. “My brother’s life has been misery enough to him for ten lifetimes,” Chandler growled into the silence that had held them. “He does not need more hurt, nor does Aydin. Do what you were brought to do and cease toying with their lives for your amusement or I will make certain you regret it.” Sarah felt the blood leave her face. Try as she might she couldn’t summon even a spark of anger, a modicum of the temper from before to chase the cold from her or give her the strength to fight back. The courage she’d always prided herself on seemed to have deserted her entirely, leaving her as spineless and whipped as a cur dog. Dimly, she realized it was because their opinion of her mattered—Chandler’s, Teagan’s, little Aydin’s. How or why in the space of little more than a day it had come to that, she couldn’t imagine, but it did. She didn’t really know what their lives were like, couldn’t completely grasp the little she’d discovered about them, but it was enough to ensnare her so completely in the tragedy of their lives that she ached for every hurt, great or small, that they’d endured. It was enough to torture her with guilt at the thought that she had added to it in any way. Teagan’s rage had been directed at her because he was afraid she would hurt Aydin and Chandler’s because he was afraid she would hurt Teagan. It didn’t matter that she had no desire or intention of hurting any of them. Their protectiveness toward one another weighed her down with a sense of guilt that she knew she didn’t deserve but felt just the same. She swallowed against the painful knot of misery in her throat, staring at her hands in her lap instead of meeting his accusing gaze. The need to escape battered at her. “Take me home,” she said a little hoarsely. “You said … or at least implied you would. Aydin doesn’t need me. You and Teagan can handle his treatment as well as I can.” “Is that what that was about?” Chandler demanded harshly. She looked up at him in dismay and confusion as he closed the distance between them and came to tower over her. “What?” she gasped blankly. Dropping to his knees, he grasped her shoulders none to gently. “Do you think if you drive a wedge between me and my brother it will gain your release more swiftly?” Sarah blinked at him, more confused instead of less. It not only hadn’t occurred

to her that that might be the case, it hadn’t occurred to her to try it. And, if she’d thought of it, it wouldn’t have occurred to her that it was even possible considering the hate they seemed to feel for ‘hoonans’ in general and the distrust they felt toward her in particular. She didn’t know which part of the accusation to respond to. “I didn’t—wasn’t ….” “No? Then why did you kiss him? Why try to seduce him?” he asked tightly. Sarah’s absent spine reasserted itself. She wanted to deny she’d done anything of the kind. Unfortunately, that wasn’t true. She’d seen he was struggling between desire and distrust and she’d tried to egg him on. “Because I wanted to. I enjoyed his kiss! I wanted more!” Her words seemed to enrage him. The sense of triumph she felt that she had succeeded in arousing it was evidence enough that she’d unconsciously wanted to. It had the desired affect, too. He threw her down on the furs, plastering himself full length against her, trapping her face between his palms as if he was more inclined to crush her skull than kiss her. For a split second, she feared she’d pushed him too far. When he crushed his mouth down over hers, though, a heady sense of victory filled her. There was a world of difference between the feel of his mouth, his taste and scent and touch, to Teagan’s, and yet it filled her with the same fierce desperation for fulfillment. She kissed him back as feverishly as he kissed her, digging her fingers into his taut flesh to hold him to her, writhing beneath him as much in demand as to assuage her need to feel the delicious contact of her body with his. It didn’t occur to her to wonder or doubt her overwhelming reaction to both men. The need they stirred in her was primal, without conscience, not subject to rational thought. He broke the kiss just as she began struggling to free her legs, which he’d entrapped with his weight, to wrap them around his waist. A savage, completely uncharacteristic and, unfortunately, impossible urge to throw him down on the furs and mount him regardless of his wishes went through her as he shoved away from her. She had to fight the urge to claw him and scream at him to finish. Damn him! Damn both of them! “Gods!” he growled, rolling to his feet and scrubbing a shaking hand over his face. The look on his face brought her to earth as sharply as if she’d executed a belly flop from the loft of her barn. It knocked the breath from her. She shivered at the loss of his heat, the abrupt fall from the peak of passion to stone cold soberness. She wanted the raw, untamed passion both Teagan and Chandler engendered in her and, she sensed, felt for her, but she realized in the instant she stared into Chandler’s eyes that she wanted so much more it was terrifying. He shook his head slowly in denial. “I will take you back when Aydin is beyond danger and not before. But I will give you fair warning, hoonan, you are playing with fire. My brother and I will not fight to have you, so do not think you can play one against the other by offering something you do not expect to have to give. The next time you try such a ploy we will both fuck you until you can not walk!” he growled. It wasn’t a ploy you dense moron, Sarah thought furiously. She felt like a woman possessed by a demon, had to stifle the urge to scream at him ‘Fuck me! Fuck me! Teach me a lesson! I dare you! I double dog dare you!’ Sanity reluctantly pierced the fog of denied release, though, as Diana’s image

flickered through her mind. “You can’t mean to keep me here indefinitely! My sister will be worried sick! She might not have missed me yet—might think I’m just making my rounds, but she’ll know something’s wrong if I’m gone for days! And I have patients that might need me!” She sat up. “Just take me back long enough to … to make sure she’s alright. I’ll come back, willingly, this time. I swear it!” His lips tightened, his face hardening implacably. “More tricks!” he muttered in disgust. Sarah wanted to throw something at him, or better yet, grab a bat and beat him unconscious. It was bad enough they’d dragged her from her home, teased her until she was nearly a raving lunatic, and treated her as if she was … some femme fatale super spy whose only objective in life was to crush them. They could at least have some consideration for her sister, if not for her! “You bastard!” she snarled at him. “What right do you have to treat me like this? I haven’t done anything to you or your brother … or Aydin … except to try to help him!” “The right of might!” he growled. “The right of conquest!” Sarah narrowed her eyes at him. “Some conquest!” She sniffed at him in disdain. “You sneaked up on an unarmed woman, half your damned size, and snatched her away from her home and her family just because you could!” “Exactly,” he growled. “I made coop against the hated hoonans, and you will be held accountable for what your kind has done to my family! If the hoonans had not stolen him away and worked him nigh to death to build their temple to their damned gods, I would not have needed to steal you away!” Sarah gaped at him. As completely unreasonable as it seemed from her viewpoint, considering she’d had nothing at all to do with what had happened, it was impossible not to see his reasoning. Truthfully, she didn’t in that moment. It wasn’t until later that she managed to digest it. She was too horrified by what he’d told her to consider anything beyond the image that instantly filled her mind of Aydin, who was nothing more than a baby, stolen from his family by strangers—which must have terrified him—and then worked until he was so weak he could hardly stand. Teagan had told her much the same tale—not all of it. She hadn’t really absorbed it, though. She was still having trouble taking it in because she hadn’t fully accepted that she wasn’t on her world at all but on another world that was so different from hers she wasn’t certain she could ever fully accept it as being real. No wonder the baby had looked so frightened when Teagan had said he was leaving him alone for a few minutes. No wonder he was so desperate for reassurance! She felt sick as understanding settled inside her, not just of what Aydin had suffered but the reason behind Teagan’s furious demand that she keep a distance from the child, his threat to her. She felt stupid and shallow. It didn’t matter that her entire world had been turned upside down and she could hardly grasp what was going on around her. She’d felt Aydin’s need. That was why she’d been drawn to shower him with affection, not that she wasn’t always as gentle and affectionate with her patients as she could possibly be, because she knew they were hurt or sick and scared and needed comforting as much as they needed to be treated. But Aydin wasn’t like her other patients. He wouldn’t forget her as soon as she

was out of sight. He was vulnerable because he was sick, not just because he was a child, which made him defenseless already. For Aydin’s sake she did her best, beginning the following day, to try to repair the damage she’d already done and distance herself enough to keep him from becoming too dependent on her. It was harder than she’d thought it would be to try to maintain a balance of encouragement, keep him from feeling rejected, and refrain from displays of affection. It wounded her to see the hurt confusion in his eyes at her withdrawal. She couldn’t completely refrain, partly because she could see he felt rejected, but mostly because the harder she tried to harden her heart to him the more she wanted to mother him. Her focus on Aydin should have made her immune to Teagan and Chandler. Unfortunately, it didn’t. By the end of her first week of captivity she’d begun to think she knew what the poor old mare no one wanted to breed felt like corralled off from the stud and unable to do anything but watch the parade of mares he was allowed to service. Not that Chandler and Teagan did, but they might just as well have because they wouldn’t let her have any of it. She didn’t know what was wrong with her anyway! She’d always considered she had a healthy interest in sex, but she wasn’t a nympho by any stretch of the imagination. Sure Teagan and Chandler were like gods compared to the mere mortals she’d been around before, but it still seemed unreasonable for her to feel so desperate for them to make good on their promises and fuck her bow legged—damn them! Sure they were absolutely stunning, not just handsome, but built like gods—and swinging the damnedest joysticks she’d ever seen on a man, but familiarity should have bread contempt—or at least leavened her reaction to them a little bit. She should’ve begun to get used to the way they looked, not felt more antsy to get hold of them as time went on. If she hadn’t known better, she would’ve suspected they were feeding her something that had her jacked up like a man on potency drugs. The only time she managed to get her mind off of sex, at all, was when she was working with Aydin, and even then she couldn’t completely dismiss it from her mind because she was acutely conscious of Teagan’s watchfulness. If they’d been total jerks, maybe some of her fascination would have worn off. They didn’t even have the consideration to continue to behave like complete assholes, though. The morning after her ‘fight’ with Chandler, he’d produced the means to pen a note to her sister, Diana, and told her he’d see to it that she got it. She wondered what Diana would think about the strange ‘paper’. Even if Diana couldn’t tell she’d had to use a quill pen to write with, it seemed to her that her sister was bound to find that much pretty strange. She was tempted to write ‘Help! Send the cavalry. I’ve been abducted by barbaric aliens!’ She tamped the urge with the reflection that Diana might or might not believe there was a door through one of their oaks to another world, but she would certainly be more distressed. After a great deal of thought, she concocted an apology for dashing off without warning and penned a yarn about having ‘forgotten’ she was supposed to be a guest lecturer at a conference and that it might be a few weeks before she got home because she’d met a man and had decided to ‘pursue the promise of a relationship’. She didn’t think Diana would believe any of it, but Diana would recognize

her handwriting and, hopefully, be angrier about her abrupt defection than worried. It was hard not to appreciate the consideration. Even though it was his fault she had to worry about it to start with, she was acutely aware that he hadn’t had to do anything at all. She discovered the following day, when Chandler escorted her to the river to bathe, that the ‘natives’ had appropriated her clothing left on the riverbank because they were wearing her clothes and shoes. She’d been indignant enough about the theft she’d completely discounted the fact that she was surrounded by enemies. She wasn’t certain what she would’ve done if Chandler had grabbed her and covered her mouth to keep her from screaming abuse at them—probably have gotten her ass kicked—but she was mad enough at him for ‘rescuing’ her from her folly that she’d wanted to fight him by the time he let her go. She might have tried if he hadn’t tossed her into the river to cool her down. By the time she’d waded back, she was still angry, but she’d regained a little sense and she’d managed to refrain from doing or saying anything truly stupid when he’d informed her that she was a captive, his captive, and that whatever she had was his also. He hadn’t let her have her clothes or shoes back, but he’d appropriated them from the natives. Satisfied that he intended to give them back to her when he returned her, she left it at that. All in all, she was forced to admit that they didn’t treat her badly. Never having been a captive before, she didn’t have anything to judge them by beyond the fact that most women captured and hauled off in her world usually turned up dead, often showing signs of torture, or found themselves sold by a white slavery ring to work in a brothel. For barbarians, she thought they treated her well, certainly well enough she couldn’t muster any hate for them no matter how hard she tried or how much they seemed to dislike her. She was pretty sure the stupid lugs thought they were being ‘honorable’ restraining themselves. It nagged at her, though, that it was at least as much because she was ‘hoonan’ as self-restraint in not mistreating their captive. They might not want her as much as she wanted them to get hold of her, but they weren’t immune by any means. She thought she could’ve found it in her heart to hate both of them if they’d decided to rid themselves of temptation by finding a willing woman in the village, but she spent all day with Teagan and Aydin, and she knew he wouldn’t leave Aydin alone at night when she was with Chandler. She spent the night with Chandler, which meant he wasn’t able to look for a woman at least then, but, unfortunately, didn’t preclude the possibility that he took care of it while she was with Teagan. She was fairly certain neither of them turned to another woman, though, because the brazen bitches had the unmitigated gall to come to both Teagan’s and Chandler’s tents and offer themselves. Teagan had looked as if someone had cold-cocked him the first time one of the women sauntered up to him and invited him to her tent. She’d slanted a look at her as if she was a cockroach, or worse, and informed Teagan he didn’t have to resort to fucking a hoonan. If he needed release, and he was willing to swear he wouldn’t spill his seed in her, she was willing to accommodate him. Teagan’s face had gone from slack-jawed surprise to granite hard in two seconds

flat. She hadn’t completely understood the dull red that crept into his face or the look he flicked at her at first. “Thank you, Chara,” he said coldly. “If I had need, I would be deeply appreciative of your willingness to accept me—if not my seed.” She’d insulted him, Sarah realized as everything she’d heard since she’d been there abruptly connected in her mind with the woman’s words and the look on Teagan’s face—what Teagan had said the night Chandler had confronted him when he’d kissed her—Teagan wasn’t accepted. The tribe hated hoonans, and Teagan was half because his mother had been raped by one. She’d wounded him, the callous bitch! Surging angrily to her feet, Sarah stalked across the tent, intent on pulling every straggling blond hair out of the bitch’s head. Surprise flickered in Chara’s eyes—more because of Teagan’s comment, Sarah thought, than the look of intent on her face, but after throwing Sarah a look of venom, she left. Teagan caught her as she tried to stalk past him, dragging her down onto his lap. “Bitch!” she snarled at the woman’s retreating back. Teagan clamped a hand over her mouth before she could say more. Chara halted in her tracks and turned to look at Sarah speculatively but apparently decided against pursuing the matter. “What did you do that for?” Sarah demanded when he finally removed his hand from her mouth. “I could’ve kicked her ass!” He gave her a strange look. “Just because you believe you could, it does not follow that you are a match for her, little fool,” he growled. “You are fortunate she decided not to return to avenge the insult.” “It’s an insult here, too?” “Yes.” “Good to know!” Teagan eyed her speculatively. “Why do feel the opposite is true, then?” Still angry, Sarah merely shrugged, sliding a simmering glare in the woman’s direction when she looked around for her again and discovered Chara had sat down in front of a tent still within her view. Smiling provocatively at the bitch, she turned to Teagan and kissed him soundly on the mouth. Surprise worked in her favor. By the time he recovered from his shock, she’d already drawn back, depriving him of the chance to reject her if that had been his intention. She would’ve liked to know if he would’ve, though, and might have lingered long enough to find out, despite the possibility of having the woman as witness to it, except that a giggle from the rear of the tent reminded her she had another audience.

Chapter Seven Embarrassed as Sarah was that she’d behaved so badly in front Aydin, the giggle was almost worth it. The sound sent a pleasant warmth through her. Grinning at the child, she returned to his pallet and dropped to her knees, pinching his nose playfully. “What are you giggling about, stinker?” “You kissed Papa,” he responded, grinning back at her, although surprise, either at what she’d called him, or the playful pinch, had flickered through his eyes briefly. Sarah blushed faintly. Before she could think of anything to say in her defense, however, Aydin made one of those devastating comments children were so prone to and knocked the breath out of her. “Are you going to make me a brother with my Papa?” Horror washed through her. Her eyes widened, and her cheeks caught fire. She didn’t dare turn around to see if Teagan had overheard. She was afraid he had. “Oh, baby! You’re not supposed to ask grownups things like that!” Aydin looked both contrite and distressed. “Why not?” “Because … because … you’re not!” Sarah responded after floundering for words for a few moments. Aydin frowned. Instead of informing her that that wasn’t an answer—which it wasn’t—he threw her another curve ball. “Do you not like my papa?” “Well … uh … uh …. Of course I do, sweety! I kissed him, didn’t I?” she managed in a strangled voice, searching her mind a little frantically for a change of subject. “Then why will you not make a brother for me? I would like to have a brother so that I have someone like Papa does.” “Oh god! Aydin!” Sarah gasped in distress, resisting the urge to clamp her hand over his mouth only with a strenuous effort. That was what came of giving into an illjudged impulse and kissing Teagan in front of his son! “Baby, I know you would, but it’s … complicated. When you’re older … Papa can explain it to you.” He frowned. “It does not look complicated. The man sticks his ….” Sarah clamped a hand over his mouth. She supposed she shouldn’t have been so horrified. As young as Aydin was in years, he had obviously had plenty of opportunity to observe such things. She didn’t know anything, really, about their culture. Evidently, from both his comment and Chara’s bold offer, such things weren’t taboo in his world— either that or Aydin had just had more of an education than he should have when he had been in the hands of his captors. “I’m really not comfortable talking about this with you, sweety,” she said as gently as she could when she removed her palm from his mouth. “You do not want to be my mother because you do not like me?” he asked woefully. Sarah squeezed her eyes closed in pain. This was what Teagan had been so angry with her about. As hard she’d tried to fix the mess she’d made, she’d failed miserably. It took an effort to smile. “Of course I like you, darlin’!” she exclaimed, stroking his cheek

because she just couldn’t resist. It was hard enough to fight the urge to pull him into her arms and cuddle him. She did like him. She liked him very much. Aydin wasn’t the only one in danger of becoming far too attached. If she stayed with him much longer, it was going to break her heart to leave him. “How could anybody not like you! You are so sweet, and smart, and handsome!” He smiled faintly, sending her a look she couldn’t quite decipher. “You think I am handsome?” She grinned at him. “Of course I do … because you are.” She ran her fingers through his silky black hair, brushing it back from his face. “You have beautiful black hair.” She cupped his cheeks and put her nose to his, crossing her eyes at him. “A very manly nose. Gorgeous eyes. I would kill to have those long, thick eyelashes!” She pulled away and looked him over. “And this is a very handsome black coat.” A startled look entered his eyes when she stroked her hand along his back and then abruptly lifted it and dug her fingers into his ribs. He uttered a choked laugh and then broke into giggles. “A big, strong chest … and lots of tickle bugs. All the girls will be eyeing you when you get a little older.” “What was that?” he asked when he’d caught his breath. “Tickles? You don’t know about tickle bugs?” Sarah asked him teasingly, as relieved that she’d managed to distract him as she enjoyed his laughter. “Let’s see if I can find more.” She tickled him again, but as much as she enjoyed his giggles and he seemed to enjoy it, she didn’t want to make him too breathless when he was still so weak. He sent her a look from beneath his lashes when he’d mastered his laughter. “I look just like my papa,” he said. “Yes, you d ….” Sarah broke off in surprise when she realized the scamp had tricked her, glancing at Teagan before she thought better of it. He was trying hard to pretend he hadn’t been listening, but she noticed a faint twitch of his lips. She gave Aydin a reproachful look when she turned back to him. He tried to look contrite, but she could see he was very pleased with himself. She’d seriously underestimated the child, she realized wryly. As sick as he was, as young as he was, he’d obviously noticed she wasn’t disinterested in ‘Papa’ and figured on trying a little matchmaking. She knew next to nothing about children since neither she nor Diana had any. She was around children often enough when she visited the farms to attend the animals, but she was more focused on her work than on the curious onlookers. She didn’t know what to do about it. She didn’t think there was anything she could do—not now. She should’ve realized when she yielded to the need she saw in the child that she had no business doing it. Maybe it would’ve been a problem anyway, just because the child didn’t have a woman in his life and felt the absence, but she was never going to know now, and she couldn’t salve her conscience with it. Despite that worry, she at least saw that Aydin was responding well to the treatment. By the end of her first week of working with him, he was notably stronger. By the end of the second, he was strong enough to actually romp about the tent, at least in brief spurts. He needed to get outside, but Sarah was reluctant to broach that subject again now that she knew how Aydin had come to be so ill to start with.

In any case, there didn’t seem to be any children for him to romp with. Chandler never walked her down to the river to bathe until dusk, but there was still enough light to see the villagers mingling about. She saw no children among them, and although it occurred to her that they might make the children go inside at dusk, she hadn’t heard the happy munchkin voices of children at play. There had to be some children—unless all of the children had been stolen away, not just Aydin, and none of the others recovered. That would be a good enough reason for all of the villagers to look at her like they hated her. She finally concluded that that must be the case. She didn’t see any children, hear them, or even see a sign that there had been children in the village, but they’d been taken. Children, even well behaved children like Aydin, forgot themselves when they were at play. If there were any, she should have heard them or seen the sort of chaos children created when they played. She didn’t dare search the village openly when everyone was sure she was an enemy and liable to interpret it as an attempt to spy, but in the space of two weeks, she’d managed to get enough glimpses to see a good deal more than they would probably have liked. She found some of it disquieting. Near the center of the village, she’d glimpsed what appeared to be stacks of weapons—spears, shields, swords, and bows, she thought. The bows and arrows, she might have put down to nothing more than hunting weapons, maybe even the spears, but the shields and swords couldn’t be for anything except defense. She’d never seen any of them carrying weapons, and she’d been under the impression that they were peaceful. She supposed they might be for the most part, but it was unnerving to have to face the fact that these people were armed against expected attack. Denial was not a good thing when it meant she couldn’t prepare herself for what could happen at any time, but the weapons made it clear that she was still having trouble adjusting her mind to her situation. The carts and the cultivated fields just confused her. The tents suggested the tribe was nomadic. The fields suggested they weren’t—not if they worked the land—and the carts …. She didn’t know what to think of those. They were two wheeled carts and fitted with long poles and that suggested they must have animals to pull them—the poles were too long to indicate the carts were designed to be pulled by people—but she hadn’t seen any domesticated animals. She might have thought they kept the animals in fields further away than she’d been allowed to see, but the fields had been cultivated between the village and the river. It might have been merely because it was more convenient to water the plants, but she had the feeling that was only part of it. The village tucked into the horseshoe the river formed suggested defense, and the location of their fields suggested that they’d situated them there to guard their primary food source. The realization that she’d entered a world that might explode into violence at any time unnerved the hell out of Sarah and made her long to go home. She was almost as worried about Diana as she was herself, knowing that the note she’d written wasn’t going to appease her sister for long.

If it had happened the other way around and Diana had been taken, she would’ve been going out of her mind with worry long before now. And yet, despite her urge to avoid the unpleasantness of an attack by their enemies, and her worry about Diana, she was just as worried about leaving little Aydin to have to face what she was desperate to run from. What would happen to him if the village was attacked? He’d come a long way toward recovery, but he was still too weak to run very far very fast, and he was just a baby. He couldn’t defend himself. How could she leave him in peril? How was she going to live with herself if she did? There wasn’t an alternative. Even if she was willing to stay, neither Teagan nor Chandler wanted her to, and she doubted very much that she would get far if she tried to persuade them to allow her to take Aydin with her. Besides, her home was no safe place for him. She’d have to keep him hidden away from the world or the media would be all over him. Everyone would want to come to stare at the ‘freak’ of nature. Considering how the kids had tormented her and Diana only because they had red hair, she couldn’t imagine what hell life for Aydin would be in her world. **** The strange, almost mournful sound that wafted on the morning air hadn’t even faded when all hell broke loose. Chandler rolled from the pallet and snatched her from it before she could get her eyes open. Half dragging her, he pulled her from his tent into complete chaos. Sarah blinked her sleep blurred eyes, trying to focus her burning eyes, trying to figure out why everyone seemed to be running in every direction at once. They met Teagan as he lurched from his own tent. He stared at her as Chandler shoved her toward him. Grabbing her abruptly, he dragged her around him in a circle and gave her a shove toward the opening. “Stay with Aydin!” he bellowed at her. “Do not leave his side!” Sarah gaped at him in confusion, but he didn’t wait to say more. He turned away and broke into a run. With fear beginning to pierce the fog of her sleep deprived brain, Sarah abruptly thought of Aydin and dashed inside. He was sitting up on his pallet, his eyes as wide as saucers with fear, his complexion pasty. Rushing to him, Sarah dropped to the pallet and wrapped her arms around him protectively. “It’s alright, baby. Everything will be alright,” she murmured soothingly, although she had no clue of what was happening. “They are coming,” Aydin said, his voice shaking with fright. His entire body was quivering with fear. “Who’s coming, sweety?” Sarah demanded anxiously. “The hoonans. They are coming to take me away again,” he said, his voice cracking on a sob. “No!” she said, refusing to even consider the possibility. “No one is taking you anywhere! I’m here. I won’t let them. And your Papa—he’s right outside. He’ll make sure they don’t come in here.” She didn’t know where Teagan was, though, and she glanced around the tent despairingly, realizing it offered virtually no protection at all. The thunder of hooves, what sounded like hundreds, filled her ears, and her heart seemed to stop in her chest for a handful of moments. She clutched Aydin more tightly, staring toward the opening to

the tent where the door flap fluttered. “Stay put!” she ordered Aydin, leaping to her feet and racing to grab the flap and tie it closed, too mindless with fear by now to consider it was no more protection than the rest of the tent. Horror froze her in her tracks when she reached the opening and grabbed the flap. Outside the tent, centaurs raced by—not men on horses as she’d thought, centaurs, armed to the teeth with bows and quivers slung across their backs, shield and sword clutched in their hands. She gaped them, unable to move, unable to accept for many moments that she was seeing what her eyes told her. Two of the centaurs skidded to a halt beside the tent. “Woman!” Teagan roared. “I told you to stay put!” She stared at him blankly, trying to grasp that the centaur had Teagan’s head and torso, and the centaur body of a black horse. “Stay out of sight!” Chandler bellowed at her, dragging her gaze from Teagan to him. Sucking in a sharp breath, Sarah clawed the flap closed and tied it jerkily. Aydin was crying when she turned to look at him. The child’s distress pierced her shock, and Sarah raced toward him, pulling him into her arms and rocking him to comfort him as she heard the first shouts and screams and clash of swords her mind instantly translated into a fierce battle despite her shock. She had to hide Aydin, she realized abruptly, glancing frantically around the tent in search of a place. The sounds of battle were close. Their enemies had caught them off guard and were virtually in the village already. The tent contained nothing, she saw in dismay, to hide the child in. As her gaze fell on the plates where Teagan had been in the process of cooking breakfast, however, a thought clicked in her mind. Leaping up, she raced to the brazier, grabbed a plate, and rushed back to Aydin’s pallet. Throwing the furs to one side, she grasped the plate with both hands and began to dig frantically at the dirt. “Hush, baby. Don’t cry. I won’t let them get you,” she murmured as soothingly as she could to Aydin as she clawed and dug at the dirt to form a hollow large enough for him. The sounds were growing louder, closer, she thought when she could think at all. She dug faster, flinging dirt in every direction in her frantic haste. Finally, when she thought she’d carved a hole that would accommodate him, she scooped him up and settled him in it. It wasn’t deep enough, but she was afraid to spend more time working at it. She stroked Aydin as soothingly as she could with her shaking hand. “Shhh! It’s alright. Everything will be alright. You need to be brave for me, baby. Can you do that for me, Aydin? Be very brave and very quiet. No matter what you might hear, don’t make a sound.” Sniffing, he nodded. She forced a smile. “Good boy! You’re such a brave boy! Remember—not a sound and be as still as you can possibly be,” she cautioned him. Grabbing the furs she’d thrown aside, she quickly covered him and stared at the results, trying to decide if the small lump he made would be noticeable. There was nothing she could do about it, she thought in despair, if they did notice, but she could try to keep their attention from the pallet if anyone did manage to get past Teagan and Chandler.

She didn’t want to think about what she’d just seen, but it flickered through her mind anyway, further undermining her ability to think. Flipping the fur back, she peered at Aydin. “Can you breathe alright, baby?” He nodded, but his eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and he’d pulled himself into as tight a little ball as he could. Dropping the furs back over him, she looked around and, seeing the piles of dirt she’d made, scrambled on her hands and knees to smooth it as much as she could before looking around for a weapon of any description. There wasn’t an actual weapon, of course, and not even anything she could use as a club, but just as despair began to sap the energy from her, she spied the long, double tined fork Teagan had been using to cook with and scrambled toward it. Before she could reach it, a tearing sound distracted her. Her head whipped in that direction, and for a split second horror froze her in her tracks as she saw a man with long, black matted hair step through the hole he’d made in the rear of the tent. He jolted to a halt when he spied her. The man behind him collided with him, forcing him to lurch forward to regain his balance. The action unfroze Sarah’s muscles, sending her into a flurry of motion as she dove for the cooking fork. A hand closed around her ankle as her fingers curled around the handle of her weapon. Her heart slammed into her lungs in terror, forcing a scream from her throat that felt as if it had peeled the skin off on the way out. Rolling instinctively, she began stomping his head with her free foot. If she’d had shoes of any kind, it might have had some effect beyond thoroughly pissing him off. She was barefoot, however, and the effort didn’t even loosen his grip. Unable to formulate actual speech, she growled at him, using the long handled fork in her hands as a club rather than a stabbing weapon. The tines had the desired effect anyway, raking his flesh as she flailed at him and cutting a pair of bloody trails across his cheek. Another man grabbed her arm, wrenching the fork from her before she could even think to try stabbing the man with it. Dimly, she realized there were three of them, the two struggling to grab her wildly flailing arms and legs and a third, who was searching the tent. Her mind instantly leapt from his search to Aydin. Screaming again, she balled her hand into a fist and punched the man who’d grabbed her arm in the groin as hard as she could. He let out a bellow, released his grip on her other arm, and grabbed his balls. Lurching to a sitting position, she threw everything she had behind the punch she swung at the man kneeling between her legs catching him squarely on the jaw. His head swung sideways at the blow that felt as if it had broken every bone in her hand, and his body followed. Springing to her feet, Sarah raced around the center pole, trying to get to the fork the man had taken from her. As she dove for it, the third man tackled her, knocking the breath out of her. Stunned, she was still trying to drag air into her lungs when the man seemed to levitate off of her. She caught a brief glimpse of Teagan’s enraged countenance as he flung the man he dragged off of her through the air like a rag doll. The man she’d tried to neuter with her fist had recovered enough to lurch toward Teagan with his sword. “Teagan! Behind you!” she gasped hoarsely. Teagan whirled at her cry, bringing his shield up in time to divert the blow and countering with a blow of his own. Before Sarah could feel any kind of relief, however,

a man seized her by her hair, nearly wrenching her neck loose from her spine as he hauled her to her feet. She caught a split second glance at his fist as it shot toward her face and then pain exploded, blinding her, and darkness crowded her mind. She tried to shake it off, but her head swam nauseatingly as he caught her around her waist and jerked her from her feet. Half carrying her, half dragging her, he lurched toward the hole the men had cut in the rear of the tent. Sarah caught at the hand gripping her so painfully, trying to pry his fingers loose. For a brief moment, she thought she’d succeeded but discovered he’d only shifted his hold to throw her across his shoulder. The blood rushed to her head, making it pound harder, bringing the swimming darkness closer. She pounded at his back ineffectually with her fists as he began to run with her, but the jouncing of her body on his shoulder knocked the breath from her. Running out of steam at the restriction of air, she hung limply for a time, fighting to stay conscious, struggling to keep from throwing up more for her own comfort than because she cared if she barfed down his back. The unwashed stench of his body added to her distress. She couldn’t pass out, she kept telling herself. God only knew what the bastard had in mind, but she knew she didn’t want to find out. Despair filled her when she thought about Aydin, but either he’d been quiet or they had just made too much noise to hear him. Teagan had been fighting with the other two men, she realized, when the man carrying her had made off with her. Teagan would protect him. He was more than a match for the two men he’d had to deal with, she told herself. If she hadn’t managed anything else, at least she’d evened the odds for him by one. Good plan, Sarah, she chided herself in disgust. She’d convinced one of the men to haul her off, and now Teagan had only two to deal with. They hadn’t gotten to Aydin, though, she comforted herself, and Teagan wouldn’t let them. The pounding in her head didn’t lessen by a great deal, but the threat of unconsciousness eased. By the time it did, though, she discovered the bastard that had taken her had cleared the battlefield and left any help she might have had behind. Struggling against despair, Sarah planted her hands on the man’s back and pushed herself up high enough to look around through the veil of her hair. The hoonans who’d attacked were in full retreat, scattering as they ran from the centaurs who’d given chase. She didn’t see a sign of either Teagan or Chandler, and she doubted any of the others would respond to a cry for help. She was going to have to defend herself. Fear tried to pierce the fog of pain at the thought, but she tamped it, trying to assess her situation. The man’s arm was clamped firmly around her thighs. She thought she could fling herself back and over enough to make him lose his balance, but if he landed on her she didn’t have a chance fighting him off. His strength already gave him an advantage over her. Add his weight to the equation and she was lost. There were other men close by, as well, within a few yards of them. The chances weren’t good that she could elude all of them. She thought the chances were very good, though, that the men would regroup once they’d put some distance between themselves and the centaurs and then her

situation would be even worse. She’d worry about getting away if she managed to get loose to start with, she decided. He’d slung her over his left shoulder and was gripping her with his left arm. He held a sword in the right. Launch herself to the left? Or the right? He knew she was conscious. He might be expecting her to throw herself backwards or to the left. He wouldn’t expect her to try to lurch to the right because his head was in the way, and he was bound to consider her locked tightly on his left shoulder. Right it was, she decided, closing her mind firmly to the sword. Gathering herself, she bolted upright and threw all of her weight to his right side. His fingernails gouged the back of her thighs as he tried to hold onto her, but her maneuver was too much for him. He lost his grip and both of them tumbled to the dirt. She’d caught him completely off guard, however. She managed to roll free of him. Drawing her knees up to her chest, she slammed both feet into his chest as he tried to scramble up. The blow sent him flying backwards. Without waiting to see if he was stunned, Sarah scrambled to her feet, glanced wildly around, and made a dash toward the river. She heard shouts and the thunder of booted feet as several men gave chase. Pouring on more speed, she dodged a man that lunged at her, leapt another that dove for her, and plowed the dirt beneath her. Pain shot through her ankle as she landed. Gritting her teeth, she did her best to close her mind to it and headed toward the river at an awkward lurching run, diving from the bank the moment she reached it. She had a split second to worry about how deep the water was before she hit it. Fortunately, her form was off because the water wasn’t nearly deep enough for a dive. She managed to cleave the water, but not in a perfect arch. She hit the river bottom in a belly flop, which beat the hell out a neck breaking head fall. It knocked the wind from her. Struggling against the urge to try to recover the breath she’d lost, she swam until she reached the current at the center before she was forced to come up for air. By the time she’d caught her breath and managed to fight her wet hair out of her face, she discovered the current had carried her a goodly distance downstream. A half a dozen men lined the banks where she’d gone in, studying the water. One spied her, shouting and pointing, but although they ran down the bank, none of them did more than wade in knee deep. Sarah didn’t wait to see if they’d get up the nerve to try to swim after her. As tempted as she was to let the current carry her, she was so tired and weak she knew that would be dangerous. Summoning her determination, she began fighting the current, struggling toward the opposite bank. When she’d finally managed to break the pull of the current, she paused, treading water to catch her breath and check the location of the men who’d been chasing her. A centaur, she discovered, was bearing down on the men, who’d waded from the water and taken to their heels. As she watched in frozen horror, the centaur reached the nearest man and clove his head from his shoulders with the sword he swung at the man. Bounding over the body even as it crumpled toward the ground, he galloped briefly toward the other men before skidding to a halt. He stared after them for several moments, as if debating whether to pursue them or not and finally turned. As far away as he was, she knew the moment he spied her in the water. A jolt went through her. Whirling, she began to swim toward the shore as fast as she could.

Her ragged breath didn’t drown out the sound of the loud splash as the centaur hit the water. Her heart clenched painfully at the sound, and she struggled to swim a little faster. She was so winded by the time her feet touched solid ground moving her legs was like trying to drag two fifty pound logs. Struggling to catch her breath, she turned to see if the centaur was still heading in her direction. He was. He was also close enough that she recognized him. Indecision gripped her as she stared at Chandler, but although part of her felt relief to see him, another part was diametrically opposed to facing something she couldn’t bring herself to accept. She’d lived among them for two weeks and never once had any inkling that they were the centaurs. In spite of all the times they’d flung that hateful epitaph at her, that she was hoonan, it hadn’t occurred to her that they weren’t. Because she’d refused to really listen. Aydin was Teagan’s son and the spitting image of his father—who was half human because his father was hoonan—and Aydin was half horse because, obviously, a centaur was capable of breeding one, however dismayed Teagan had been when he’d discovered he had. Almost sobbing for breath, she turned and stumbled away. He caught up with her as she reached the top of the mossy bank.

Chapter Eight Some wild thought of eluding him prompted Sarah to drop to her knees as he made a grab for her. He dropped to his knees, as well, grabbing her around the waist as she tried to crawl away from him, dragging her beneath his body. His sword thudded to the ground beside them as he caught the wet hair at her nape with his other hand, dragging back on it until her neck arched. Gasping for breath, she twisted her head against his hold until she could look back at him over her shoulder. His expression trapped the air in her lungs. She knew abruptly what he intended without a word passing between them. Chaos erupted inside of her. Her thoughts scattered in a million different directions at once. “Chandler?” she croaked in a shaky voice. He shifted over her. Releasing his grip on her hair, he caught her cheek to keep her from turning away and covered her trembling lips with the heat of his mouth. Fire coursed through her, enveloped her, making her skin, chilled from the water, pebble all over. Dizziness swept through her as she absorbed his essence. Her belly clenched as the fire coursing through her veins centered there, making moisture flood her channel in response. He pushed her legs wide as he plundered her mouth with the thrust and retreat of his tongue, and she felt the head of his cock probing her cleft. Doubt wafted through her, but the need she’d struggled with so long was not to be denied. Her body had readied itself for him, welcomed his conquest by producing the moisture he needed to pierce her flesh with his own. She gasped as she felt him stretching her, felt her flesh yield reluctantly to his possession despite the wetness of need coating her channel. He began to shake as he pressed slowly into her, his girth stretching her until fear and need began to seesaw back and forth, warring for dominance. Pleasure chased the fear from her mind, though, as she felt him moving steadily deeper and deeper until the head of his cock butted her womb. She dragged in a sharp inhalation of breath as her womb contracted almost painfully at his touch. He stopped. Breaking the kiss, he hovered in stillness above her as if he was struggling for control, gasping harshly for breath. The urge to move swept through her, and she rocked away from him, needing to feel the delicious friction of his member as it slid outward along her passage again. “Be still, woman!” he growled. “Or I will spill my seed in you now.” A fresh wave of heat flooded her at his words. The muscles along her channel clenched in response. Shuddering as her muscles tightened around his shaft, he uttered a deep chested groan and began to move jerkily, pulling away until little more than the head of his cock was inside of her and then slowly delving her depths again until Sarah was nearly mindless with need to feel him pounding into her, driving her toward the pinnacle she could feel almost within her reach. “Faster, Chandler, please,” she murmured huskily. He stilled again, grinding his teeth. At her groaning complaint, however, he seemed to gather himself. Grasping her hips, he began to drive into her more rapidly, so

deeply she wasn’t certain for a moment whether she felt more pain or pleasure. Almost on the thought, however, her body shattered, exploding with ecstasy as her climax caught her. She groaned as the first, intense wave hit her. He groaned, as well, jerking out of her abruptly, grunting hoarsely as his body expelled his seed. He’d pulled out, Sarah thought numbly, disbelief and disappointment skating through her as his abrupt abandonment curtailed her climax. Instead of the relief she supposed she should have felt that he hadn’t risked impregnating her by coming inside of her, she felt bereft, cheated. She swallowed against a painful tightness in her throat when he finally relaxed against her, panting harshly as he strove to catch his breath. “Why did you do that?” He tensed. “Pull out,” she clarified. Chandler straightened with an effort, staring down at her broodingly as she dropped to the ground and turned to look at him accusingly. Obviously, he thought in self-disgust, the experience had been less than satisfying for either of them. His lips tightened as his frustration increased. It had been insanity to take her as he was. He did not know what had possessed him to try it—the heat of battle that was still upon him; the fear that had been riding him that he would lose her to the tribe that had attacked them, mayhap the anger and pain that lingered when he had seen the way she looked at him when she saw what he was—but he was furious with himself that he had been so out of control that he had risked hurting her to have what he wanted—and then left both of them dissatisfied when he had realized, belatedly, that he could not do what he wanted without risk that he would hurt her. He should have stopped the moment he had thrust into her and realized she was too small for him in this form, but he had neither been able to bring himself to do so nor to ignore the warnings in his head. The desire to wound her, spawned by the image that rose in his mind of the look on her face when she had seen him, licked at him, and he yielded to the impulse. “I would rather spill my seed in the dirt than waste it on a hoonan woman,” he growled instead of telling her that he had done it to protect her. It did not give him any pleasure, though, to see his words had wounded her. He felt more ill and hurt, and angry because he did, not less. Pain lanced through Sarah. She struggled to shrug it off, fought the faint wobble of hurt in her chin as she spoke. “You didn’t mind fucking me!” she spat at him. He flushed. “I made a stab at it,” he ground out. “You are not woman enough, hoonan, to take the half of my cock! I took no pleasure from it when I could scarcely get more than the tip inside of you.” Sarah gasped in outrage. It was amazing how insulting he could make it sound when telling a woman she was small and tight was supposed to be flattering, damn him! But she knew she was insulted because she knew what he said was most likely the truth. Not that that was her fault! She wasn’t a damned centaur. She hadn’t been ‘built’ to handle one. “Well, thank fucking god for that! I’m a woman, not a … damned mare!” she snapped, deliberately insulting him in return. “I don’t know how you can even call that … anaconda a cock!” Chandler glared at her in furious, frustrated silence for a moment. Shifting abruptly from centaur to his hoonan form, he caught her shoulders and bore her to the

ground, silencing her with his mouth. Anger inspired it, but he had no sooner felt her soft mouth beneath his, felt the press of her body against his length, than desire usurped the urge to wound the ache and frustration inside him had spawned. The hunger for her, unquenched by their awkward union, resurrected itself, gnawing at his vitals for appeasement. She struggled briefly, but as his need, more teased than appeased by their first joining, thundered out of control, he felt the fight go out of her. Fire surged through him like a tidal wave, scorching him, driving sanity before it, dimming everything beyond a sense of triumph and the desperate need he’d felt before. Parched with the thirst for the taste of her, he drank in her essence with dizzying relish, explored her mouth with his tongue in an avid quest for more of her and more still as each caress of his tongue along hers only increased the need instead of assuaging it. He could not get enough of her fast enough, he thought feverishly. Wrenching his mouth from hers as impatience to explore the rest of her thundered through him, he dragged his lips down her throat, sucking at the moisture that lingered there. Hooking one hand in the top of her sarong, he jerked it downward, freeing her breasts. He wanted her naked, wanted to feel every inch of her skin against his own, but he could not bring himself to stop long enough, or pull away, to rid her of the gods bedamned thing that frustrated that hunger. Freed from the restraint he had placed upon himself before, he toyed briefly with the burning urge to plow into her at once, to feel the hot, moist heat of her body closing around his cock again immediately, to drive into her with the frenzied need he had held in check. He had dreamed of these breasts, though, he thought in bemusement, taking a moment to study the coral tips before he yielded to the need that had been battering at his self-control since the first time he had seen her gloriously naked. The feel of the hard little tip on his tongue set his blood to pounding harder against his skull. Her gasp of pleasure as he pulled on first one and then the other with his mouth, the way she arched her back to offer the delicate, succulent rosettes, undid him. Tugging and suckling at her nipples with more ravening need than caution for the delicacy of the fragile buds, he shoved a shaking hand between them. Thrusting their damp clothes aside, he raked his fingers through the damp ringlets of her mound and parted the petals of her sex with fingers that trembled with eagerness. Madness descended over him in a red haze as he pushed one finger inside of her. Wet, she was wet for him, he thought dimly, feeling his chest tighten with an odd sense of both gratitude and triumph, gloriously tight. He thought for one panicked moment that he would lose his seed as he tested the tight cavity of her body, felt the hot, damp walls close snugly around his finger, pulling at him, dragging him deeper into mindlessness. He could not wait longer, he thought with sudden certainty, else he would shame himself and disappoint her completely. Twisting, shoving at her legs to part them to accommodate his hips, he positioned himself between her thighs and shifted upward for another brief taste of her mouth, curling his long body over her far shorter one to probe the mouth of her sex with the head of his cock even as he thrust his tongue into the warm, wet cavity of her mouth in heated prelude to the penetration his mind was most focused on. His control slipped further from his grasp with the mock mating and the snug grip of her sex around the sensitive tip of his member. Releasing her mouth abruptly, he

sucked in a harsh breath, mentally bracing himself to hold his seed as he curled his hips to delve more deeply inside of her. Doubt shook him as he felt the reluctance of her small body to accept his girth. He gritted his teeth as he forged onward, ground them together until his jaw ached. Sweat popped from his brow despite the cooling dampness of the river water that still coated his skin. He began to shake with the strain of holding his release in check, of fighting down the urge to ignore the taut glove of her sheathe and plow into her mindlessly. Gods damn it! he thought, pausing to catch his breath, trying to decide if her panting breaths were from pleasure or pain. Her moan of disappointment settled the matter. Sawing back and forth a moment to collect the moisture of her body on his cock as much as to gather the stamina to try again, relief filled him, briefly, as he felt her creamy moisture work its magic, and his shaft slid more easily inside of her. The relief died a quick death as he sank to the hilt and felt her muscles ripple around his cock. His heart seized painfully in his chest, felt as if it had leapt upward to lodge itself in his throat. Dragging in a pained breath, he lifted his hips to chart the outbound course. She lifted her legs to wrap them tightly around his waist, gripped his buttocks, digging her fingers into them. He lost it, lost all control, any ability to think. Grinding his teeth at the tortuous pleasure pounding through him, he felt his hips begin to pump with a will of their own, gaining speed despite his frantic attempts to slow himself down. Within moments, he found himself driving into her in such powerful thrusts that he felt the jolts run through her body with each downward thrust, heard the choked pants of breath he drove from her. He fought to regain control, but he could no more slow his body’s response to her than he could cease breathing. Come, damn you! he thought desperately as he felt his body gathering to expel his seed. She stiffened suddenly, uttering a choked cry. Uncertainty flickered through him, but her channel locked around him like a vice and ripped the fragile hold he had on himself away. His balls tightened to his belly, as if a hand was squeezing them, and a stream of scalding semen shot from him. The convulsion knocked the breath from him in a choked grunt. He tried to drag in another breath, but the second wave hit him and another on top of that until his entire focus was centered on the spasms forcing his seed from his body. Relief filtered through him when the convulsions finally ceased and he could drag in a decent breath of air. The relief was profound, exquisite after the pained spasms and the ache that had hounded him for weeks—brief. She shoved at his shoulder to make him move off of her. It took an effort to collect the strength to manage it. He looked down at her face searchingly. She was glaring at him. “You came inside of me!” she said accusingly. Baffled anger flickered to life, not the least because he had been prepared to thoroughly enjoy the peaceful sense of relief that had invaded him with release, and her anger scattered that promised pleasure to the winds. He had pleased her. He was— almost—certain that she had come. She did not look pleased. “You complained before because I did not!” he growled indignantly. “Well! Thank for you for the magnanimous gesture!” she snapped. “Now, I’m a

mess!” Rolling away from him, she stalked down the riverbank and squatted by the water’s edge to wash herself. Chandler followed her, watching her with growing anger. “There is no pleasing you,” he growled in disappointment. “First you are angry because I withdrew, and now because I came inside of you.” She sent him a withering look. “It’s a sticky mess! You don’t expect me to wear it!” He flushed. No doubt it was not particularly comfortable, but it was his seed, gods damn it! She should be proud to have it. He was pleased that he had given it to her, or had been. If he had known that she would behave as if it was something nasty and disgusting, he would not have! It was because he was centaur, he realized abruptly, furious with himself that he had not realized that. She was afraid he would get a child on her. “If you are done,” he said stonily, “we will go back.” Stalking up the bank again without waiting for a response from her, he snatched his sword and shield from the ground where he had tossed them without any regard for their value to plow her furrows—something she had not appreciated, he reflected, at all. The sneaking suspicion that he had failed to give her pleasure discomfited him, and, not for the first time, he regretted his determination to remain celibate only because the women of the village spurned his brother. It was not only because he knew Teagan would feel his rejection more profoundly if Chandler cavorted with the women at will. He resented the way they treated his brother, and that made it difficult to look upon them with any favor. He could have, though. There were plenty who had offered, enough that he had had no doubt of his desirability—to centaur women, at least. Sarah was hoonan, though. It should have occurred to him that she would not see him in the same light, particularly when his own knowledge of their differences had colored his perception of her in the beginning. Not to the degree that he had not wanted, desperately, to fuck her, he reflected wryly, but he had been able to fight it right up until the moment he had seen her disappearing over the rise and had realized he would lose her if he could not fight his way free of the battle and chase after the bastard making off with her. He had realized then that he did not care that she was not centaur. He knew it should matter to him, but it did not. In truth, it never had. Obviously, it mattered to her, though. It was a fit of contrariness that compelled him to shift into his centaur form, the sting to his pride that she found it horrifying. He set his jaw grimly when she climbed the bank and jolted to a halt at the sight of him. He was a magnificent centaur, gods damn her to hell! In this form, he had fought, and won, many battles. He was powerful, terrifying to his enemies. It was not much comfort to reflect that Sarah also found him terrifying in what he considered his true form even though he only assumed it when he had need of the powerful strength it gave him. “We will travel faster this way,” he said tightly. “I must discover how many of our children those bastards stole and join the hunt for them to take them back before they can reach the fortifications of their city. For once that maw swallows them, it is nigh impossible to get them back.” Sarah set him a startled look. “The children?” she gasped.

His lips tightened. “We keep them close, hidden from sight when we are away from the city during the growing seasons, but the bastards have no doubt been watching, for they are only allowed to play outside at dawn. They timed the attack when the children would be most exposed.” To his surprise, Sarah moved readily toward him, climbing onto his back and grasping his waist to balance herself. He glanced back at her as he settled his sword in the sheathe he wore across his back for it, adjusting the harness for her comfort rather than his own. “Hold tight.” She shifted closer to his back, looping her arms around his waist and locking her fingers together. Clamping his arms to his sides to hold her more firmly, he leapt from the bank into the water. The jolt as they hit the surface nearly unseated her, but she regained her purchase, clamping her knees against his sides. It was oddly comforting to feel her weight on his back and uncomfortable at the same time because his mind kept wandering to the feel of her clamped tightly around him. He had yielded to the urge to mount her in his centaur form, he realized abruptly, because he had wanted to claim her as his mate, not merely to fuck her as he had told himself. The realization gave him no comfort, instead, it angered him. He should not want that. It was one thing to yield to his man’s urges. She was a beautiful, desirable woman, hoonan or not, and a man could be forgiven for lusting for her. To want to mate was another matter entirely. Lust was a natural thing, something his people had always accepted as a part of themselves apart from the urge to breed their young. They indulged the whims of their bodies freely, but they guarded their seed with care. No woman offered herself to a man during the time of fertility unless she was willing to mate with him, and no man accepted the offer unless he considered her worthy of breeding his child. He had transgressed on both parts, trying to seed a woman who had expressed no interest or willingness to carry his child and trying to breed a corruption. He did not think less of Teagan because he was a half-breed. He loved his brother. He did not think he could have loved him more if he had been fully his brother instead of only his half brother. But, by the same token, he knew the fate that awaited half-breeds because of the countless battles he had fought to protect Teagan from the viciousness of the pure-breeds, both young and old alike. He should not want that for any child he sired. He should not want that for Sarah. To try was to risk her death, and it would be a horrible, agonizing one. Any child he spawned while in the form of a centaur would be borne in that form. Even if she could carry it, the babe would tear her to pieces as she struggled to give it life. She was small enough a babe gotten upon her in his hoonan form, that would be birthed in that form, would be hard for her to manage. Nausea welled inside him at the realization that he could not bear the thought of the agonizing death that would await her if she tried to bear a centaur babe. Coldness washed over him in the wake of the realization of how close he had come to completely losing his head. It was as well, he thought, that he had given her a disgust of his prowess as a lover. If she had been willing, he would have been fighting a battle each time he took her, a battle that they would both lose if he lost his head.

Better to stay away from her as he had set out to do in the beginning, he told himself, knowing even as he did that the chances were not good that he could hold to his resolve if she gave him any encouragement at all. Hell, he was not certain he could hold his resolve if she did nothing to encourage him. He wanted her again now. She was going to have to fight him off if she did not want him plowing her furrows at every turn. The council would have his balls for rape if he was not careful. **** The village was still in uproar when they returned. Seeing the women dancing nervously about in their centaur form barely registered in Sarah’s mind, however. She couldn’t think of anything beyond the possibility that Aydin had been taken. The moment Chandler halted before Teagan’s tent, she slipped from his back and dashed inside. Teagan, still bloodied from his battles, still in his centaur form, was kneeling in the center of the tent, his head in his hands. As she entered, he dropped his hands and jerked his head up to look at her. Relief, quickly tamped, flickered in his eyes. He surged toward her, grasping her shoulders painfully. “When did they take him?” he ground out. Sarah stared at him, feeling as if the ground had fallen out from under her. “They found him?” Confusion flickered over his face, but she tore herself from his grip and raced to the pallet. Dropping to her knees, she flipped the furs back and stared down at Aydin’s sleeping form blankly for several moments before it sank in that he was really was there. Lifting his head, he blinked at her sleepily. “Are they gone?” A half sob half laugh erupted from Sarah. Grabbing him, she cradled him tightly to her, rocking back and forth with him, relief warring with irritation at him for scaring her. “Oh, Aydin! You nearly scared us all to death!” “You told me to be very quiet,” he muttered, snuggling against her. “I guess I fell asleep.” Sarah uttered a snorting laugh and looked up to discover Chandler and Teagan standing over them. “He’s alright,” she said unnecessarily, mopping at the tears on her face with one hand. Returning her attention to Aydin, she pushed him away to kiss him all over his face. Teagan dropped to his knees beside them, and she relinquished her hold on Aydin reluctantly so that his father could embrace him. His gaze was on her, however, as he hugged the child. After a moment, he looked at Chandler and then down at the hole she’d dug. Before he could say anything, however, a commotion at the front of the tent caught everyone’s attention. They turned to discover angry villagers crowding the opening.

Chapter Nine Chara was in the forefront. “It is her fault! She told them!” she said loudly, pointing at Sarah. Teagan and Chandler both stiffened. “That is not true!” Chandler growled ominously. “She had no opportunity if she had wanted to, no knowledge of the children.” “It is true!” Chara said angrily. “No one else here would have given them the information!” “This is what comes of bringing a hoonan among us!” someone else ground out angrily. “They have taken six of the children!” “We have watched her carefully,” Teagan snarled. “She has not been out of our sight since she has been here. She is always with Chandler or me. She saw nothing she could have reported even if she had had the opportunity to pass a message to the others, and she does not belong with that tribe!” “They took her with them, did they not?” an older man said angrily. “Against her will!” Teagan ground out. “That is not how I saw it!” Chara snapped. “She looked willing enough to me!” Teagan’s hands clenched and unclenched at his sides as he glared at the woman in impotent fury. Sarah merely gaped at the angry crowd, feeling her uneasiness mount as they whipped their anger up. Aydin slipped his small hand into hers, squeezing it. “You are a liar!” he snarled. “You are only saying that because Papa did not want you, you ugly old bitch! I saw everything! She hid me from them, but I was afraid for her, and I saw the men attack her. They would not have done that if she was one of them! She would not have hidden me from them!” Aydin’s outburst silenced the crowd. The elder looked them all over with grimfaced suspicion. Finally, he met Aydin’s defiant gaze. “You are blinded, child, by your affection for her. Do not lie for her.” “You are blind if you can not see that she is nothing like the others!” Aydin said angrily. “Aydin!” Teagan said warningly. “You do not speak to an elder with such disrespect. Aydin looked chastened but still angry. “He called me a liar,” he muttered. “Even so,” Teagan said, struggling to maintain a stern look. Aydin was both clever and quick. He saw the flicker of amusement in Teagan’s eyes. “I love Sarah, and it still was not a lie! You saw, Papa. She fought them with your cooking fork. Tell them!” Teagan looked at the elder. “I can not, because he would call me a liar, as well, and then I would behave disrespectfully to an elder.” The elder studied Teagan’s grim face with reluctant respect. “Show me where she hid the child. Unless she has magic at her disposal, I am at a loss to understand how

she managed the feat.” Chandler drew Sarah and Aydin aside as Teagan led the elder to the pallet. Sarah wasn’t certain whether his gesture, as he gently but firmly pushed her and Adyin behind him, was for protection or because he was worried she would say something that might create more trouble. She supposed, wryly, they might have reason to doubt her good sense when her temper was up, but she wasn’t an idiot. She knew when to keep her mouth shut, and facing down a mob was definitely one of those times. They’d quieted to allow the elder to handle the situation, and because Aydin had shocked them all speechless, but they were still angry and looking for someone to vent their anger on. It wouldn’t take much to set them off again. “You put him here?” Sarah glanced at the elder as he addressed her, sensing disapproval. “There wasn’t anywhere else,” she said defensively. “I didn’t have time to think of anything else.” The elder stroked his chin almost thoughtfully. “He seems none the worse for it.” “She did not bury me,” Aydin muttered. “She only tossed the furs over me.” The elder studied Aydin disapprovingly for a moment. “You are undisciplined, but I suppose it is to be expected that your father would overindulge you when you have been ill.” The comment raised Sarah’s ire. It might be true that he’d spoken disrespectfully to the elder, which he certainly shouldn’t have, but she was inclined to think Aydin was amazingly well behaved. Chandler’s hand tightened on her arm before she could say anything, however. He shook his head ever so slightly when her gaze flew to his face. The elder seemed satisfied at having the last word. He glanced toward the villagers still crowding the opening of Teagan’s tent and waved a hand dismissively at them. “Be about your own business,” he said testily. “This is a council matter.” There were disgruntled mutterings, but the people crowding the opening of the tent dispersed. Chara, leveling a glare at Aydin and then Sarah, was the last to leave. “Ugly bitch,” Aydin muttered under his breath. Sarah put her hand over his mouth as the elder shot Aydin a disapproving glare. “Willful and disrespectful,” he murmured, turning his attention to Teagan and Chandler. “You left the battle to chase the hoonan.” Chandler’s face hardened. “I do not like to argue with an elder, but I respectfully disagree. I did my duty. I fought well beyond the time when we had routed the enemy. Sarah is my captive and my responsibility. I only did what my honor demanded.” The elder shrugged. “And neither of you have gone to help free the children taken.” “Our personal responsibilities take precedence,” Teagan ground out. “There is not a tribesman among us who would ignore the needs of his family in favor of the needs of others.” The elder’s lips tightened. “Nevertheless—although I am satisfied with what I have seen and heard and see no reason for the council to consider the possibility that you have brought a spy among us, I will tell you now that no one is comfortable having a hoonan among us. The healers have taken it as a personal affront that you brought her here, ignoring their efforts for the boy. The women do not trust her among their men.” A

grim smile flitted briefly across his lips and disappeared. “And I do not trust that she will not make trouble in the village—or between two brothers who have a bond that should not be severed, particularly over lust. You will return her to her people before we remove to the high country. No hoonan has ever set foot in the city, and that will not change, however good she is at the healing arts.” Sarah’s shoulders slumped when the elder followed the last of the villagers out. An unpleasant medley of emotions rioted through her. Dismissing them for the moment, mostly because she didn’t actually want to examine them, she gave Aydin a stern look. “I know it’s my fault you learned that word. I shouldn’t have said it within your hearing, but you aren’t supposed to repeat bad words.” Aydin gave her a blank look. “What word?” Sarah bit her lip, struggling with the urge to smile. “You know very well what word, young man!” Aydin nodded. “I am not to call her a bitch. I should never call anyone a bitch, even if they are a bitch.” “Aydin!” Sarah said warningly. He favored her with a look of innocence. “I am sorry. I will not say bitch, ever again. And I will not call her a bitch.” Sarah popped his rump and pointed imperiously toward his pallet. Hanging his head, he trudged toward it as if he’d been broken by the severity of her chastisement. Folding her arms, Sarah watched him until he’d settled and sent her a beseeching look. She turned her back to him, struggling not to laugh. She’d had no idea he was such a master of drama! Teagan and Chandler, she discovered, were studying one another assessingly, reminding her of the comment the elder had made about her causing trouble, most specifically between the two of them. The amusement left her abruptly. Teagan, she realized uncomfortably, knew she and Chandler had lingered to scratch their itch before they’d returned, and it was obvious he didn’t like it at all. She saw no reason why she should feel discomfited by it … particularly when Chandler had made it abundantly clear that he’d just needed to and wasn’t particularly happy with the only female available. She could live with ‘just sex’. It wasn’t as if there could possibly be more even if any of the parties involved wanted more—which clearly, neither Teagan nor Chandler did. What she wasn’t happy about, or satisfied with, or willing to accept, was the fact that they obviously considered it ‘lowering’ themselves to fuck her. It wasn’t as if it didn’t unnerve her to know that they were centaurs! Deciding she didn’t feel like dealing with the argument she sensed brewing between the brothers, she looked around the tent tiredly and finally focused her attention on straightening the mess from the battle that had been fought inside. The upside to the fact that the place didn’t actually contain a lot was that it didn’t take long to straighten up. The downside was the same thing—not much to occupy her. Her stomach growled, reminding her that no one had eaten since they’d gotten up. “There’s nothing to cook in or eat on,” she said to no one in particular. Teagan glanced at her. “I will walk you down to the river to clean them,” he said, flicking an almost challenging gaze at Chandler. Chandler’s lips tightened, but he merely nodded. “I will fetch food from the

stores and then stay with Adyin.” Sarah pursed her lips, glancing from one to the other as the suspicion settled in her that there were undercurrents to the conversation that she’d missed. Instead of pointing out that Teagan was the one who generally washed, and cooked, and that she saw no reason for both of them to go to the river, she stacked the dirty plates and utensils. She didn’t particularly want to go out and have to face the villagers again so soon after they’d threatened her, but she certainly wasn’t going to cower in the tent and let them know how much they’d unnerved her. Teagan surprised her. Directing her toward the slit in the back of the tent, he stepped through and held it open for her, and then led her to the tree line instead of walking her through the village. She wasn’t certain if it was consideration for her or if he just didn’t want to risk antagonizing them himself, but she appreciated it just the same, all the more because she hadn’t had to ask. The swim in the river, Sarah realized as she followed Teagan to the river again, hadn’t been particularly good for the sarong Chandler had given her to wear. It was nearly dry now and had stiffened from the swim. Worse, it was drawing up. Where before it had overlapped by nearly a foot, now it only overlapped by about half that much. There was approximately an equal amount that had gone missing from the bottom which had previously reached nearly to her knees and now only hung about halfway down her thighs. She was going to have a serious problem doing bend and squats now. She discovered when they reached the river why Teagan suggested she come to wash the cooking and eating implements. As soon as they reached the spot along the bank where they usually came, he dropped his sarong and waded into the water to bathe. The sharp contrast between his tribe, or at least Teagan and Chandler, and the hoonan tribe didn’t strike until that moment. The man who’d taken her had reeked, not the smell of someone who’d just expended himself in honest labors but the rank odor of someone who was either completely unfamiliar, or only passing familiar, with personal hygiene. She didn’t know if she could paint them all with the same brush, but that one had certainly been disgusting—which by extension she considered insulting considering how regularly everyone pointed out that she was hoonan. Now that she thought about it, none of the men who’d come after her had shown any disposition to come in the water after her. That almost certainly indicated that the knowledge of swimming wasn’t common to them and also explained why the river served as such a superior fortification for the centaur tribe. They must be ungodly primitive, she decided. Surely, even if they were afraid of the water because they couldn’t swim, they would’ve developed boats? Dismissing it after a moment, she surreptitiously studied Teagan as he bathed. He’d had blood all over him, but he had moved easily. All things considered, she hadn’t really had the chance to pay him much notice, but she saw as she watched him that not all of the blood belonged to the attackers. He had been wounded. Setting her washing aside immediately, she went to him. He glanced up when he heard her splashing through the water. “You’re hurt. Why didn’t you say something?” she said chidingly. He dropped his hands to his sides as she moved close enough to examine the

wound that arched from his left breast, down along his side, ending near his hip—which was when she discovered he had shifted back to his hoonan form. “It has closed. I do not have need of a healer,” he said in a gravelly voice that drew her attention from his side to his face. “I see that,” she said, relieved. “It must not have been a bad cut to close so quickly. It’s probably good that it bled, though. I imagine the blood cleaned the wound. All the same, I’d like to put disinfectant on it. If they’re all as nasty as that repulsive thing that grabbed me, there’s no telling what kind of germs they carry around.” He didn’t say anything for several moments. Just as Sarah began to be uncomfortable enough to consider returning to the bank, he lifted a hand and very gently touched the bruise along her cheek. She heard him swallow. “I did not thank you for protecting my son.” Warmth had flowed into her belly, and, unfortunately, she couldn’t put it down in its entirety to his gratitude. “You don’t need to. I did it for Aydin,” she said gently. “I know this, but I am still grateful … still distressed that you were hurt.” That warmed her more, but higher, in her chest. She forced a wry smile. “I’m fine. It hardly hurts now at all.” Uncomfortable with the silence that fell between them then, she sent him a teasing look from beneath her lashes. “You didn’t thank me for encouraging that man to haul me off, cutting down your opposition to two.” He stared at her for a moment and finally chuckled. He shook his head at her. “That was a very clever strategy … but you will not do it again. I could not decide whether to look for you or for Aydin, and I was tearing around looking for both until I saw that Chandler had gone after you.” He looked away. “When I could not find him, I went back to wait for Chandler’s return so that he could help me to track them. If they had taken Aydin ….” Sarah studied his profile. “It would’ve been my fault because you were divided.” He looked at her sharply. “It would not have been your fault.” She didn’t believe he wouldn’t have blamed her. She would certainly have blamed herself. She didn’t want to talk about what might have happened, though, or think about it. Leaving him, she returned to finish cleaning. Teagan scrubbed himself absently as he watched her. As he had more than half hoped, she crouched on the bank as she had before. He was fairly certain she had no idea the position hiked her sarong high enough to give him a clear view of her womanhood, and he had no desire to enlighten her by staring too blatantly. She had disconcerted him mightily when she had approached him. He had not expected that. Unfortunately, he had also not thought of any way when she had to take things in the direction that he had wanted to go. If she had been one of his tribeswomen, he would have simply asked. Then she would have politely refused, he thought wryly, as they always had until he had finally accepted that the answer would always be no if he was asking. The likelihood that Sarah would also say no had not escaped him. She did not seem to see him in the same light as the women of the village, but that might be nothing more than wishful thinking on his part, he knew. Unfortunately, it did not follow that she would yield to him only because she had given herself to Chandler. He was as well aware that Chandler was often offered favors

by the women as he was that Chandler just as often politely declined. He was not as sure as he would have liked to be that he would have been as sensitive to Chandler if their roles had been reversed. He liked to think that he would have, but there had been a time when he had desperately wanted Chara, and, if she had accepted him, or offered herself, even as a lover, he did not think he could have been manful enough to turn her away. It had not been difficult at all to turn her away when she had finally offered. The insult aside—and he would not have swallowed his pride and taken that kind of offer if he had thought he was dying—he was surprised to discover that he had no real interest anyway. It had stung, but not as it once would have. It had wounded his pride, but mostly it had embarrassed him because Sarah had overheard. He was not certain what had compelled Sarah to defend him—he suspected that it was at least partly because Aydin had witnessed it—but he had mixed feelings about it. She was a baffling puzzle all the way around. He was not confused about one thing, however. He was absolutely certain that he wanted her far more desperately than he had ever wanted another woman. The weeks he had spent with her had been sheer torture—torment he would not have traded for anything in the world, but still misery in its purest form. To watch her, want to touch her so badly he could taste it, and yet know that he could not …. She had been at least partially right when she had accused him of being jealous of his son. He was … but not that Sarah would steal Aydin’s affection from him. He had envied Aydin the affection Sarah lavished upon the boy. It did not say much for his character, he thought in self-disgust. The other was true, as well, although it hardly excused his jealousy. He was worried about Aydin. He did not want Aydin hurt, but he had finally realized that that was out of his hands the moment he had allowed Sarah into their pavilion. Aydin, he suspected, would have opened himself to hurt if Sarah had done none of the things she had because the child was desperately in need of a mother. He would have been hurt if Sarah had not given her affection and approval so easily, and he would have tried harder to win her love … and he would have convinced himself that she cared about him. Maybe, he thought, even if Aydin was hurt when she went away, it was still better that he had had something. He knew that he would not trade a little something for nothing himself if he had to regret it for the rest of his life. He should simply ask her to be his lover and be done with it, he thought in disgust, instead of standing in the river like a fool while his skin wrinkled trying to think of the best way to approach her when he could not get his mind on anything except staring at her cleft. This was getting him no where fast, and, considering that he had already angered Chandler by demanding a chance with her, he was going to feel like a complete coward, and Chandler would think him one, if he went back without even trying his hand with her. Bracing himself for rejection, he began to wade toward her when he saw that she was nearly finished with her task. The closer he came to her, however, the better his view of her womanhood and the less focused his brain became. The sunlight glinted on the red thatch, mesmerizing him, and, as he moved closer still, he saw the fragile, pink inner petals just peeking from the outer lips with its fiery dusting of curls.

By the time he reached her, his cock was thumping against his belly and his mind was completely gone. She looked at him with surprise when he closed the distance between them in a rush and grasped her hair, tugging her head back. The surprise registered in his mind, but if there was more than surprise he had no awareness of it, and no awareness of anything else beyond that point in time as he bent his head to cover her parted lips with his own. The hot, moist cavern of her mouth set his mind and his body on fire. Feverishly, he sucked and licked at her lips and tongue, stroked his own tongue across hers to absorb the taste and texture of her, traced the slick inner walls of her mouth, imagining without any difficulty the glide of his cock inside of her nether mouth in the same way he thrust his tongue in and out of her mouth. He came up for air when he thought that he would pass out from lack of oxygen, sucked in a gulp of it, and dove for her mouth again, wanting to consume her as his need for her was eating him alive. She was shaking, or he was shaking, or perhaps they were both were. He did not have to look far for the reason why he was shaking. He was so rigid with tension every muscle quivered. He lifted his head to stare at her face dizzily. Her eyes were closed, her face taut, but she was not crying and she did not scream. Close enough, he thought dimly, diving for the pulse he saw in the side of her throat, sucking at it. He liked the feel and taste of the fragile skin of her throat almost as much as he had enjoyed the taste and feel of her mouth. He returned to her mouth on the thought, sucking at her soft lips, swirling his tongue across hers for another taste of her. The image of her nether lips singed his mind. He struggled with the urge to shove her to the ground and explore it as he had her mouth, but a more desperate need had begun to pound in his brain. His cock and his balls had become so engorged he felt vaguely ill with the pain throbbing in them. His heart and lungs felt as if they would give out with the strain of his pounding heartbeat and his laboring to drag air into his lungs. If he waited any longer he was going to come without ever having been inside of her, he thought with more than a touch of panic. He was not certain how they found themselves on the ground, whether they had fallen together or he had lowered them both. He did not care either. Her thighs were splayed around his hips and the head of his cock had found its own way to the dark throat he wanted to swallow him. Gasping in a desperate breath of air as he lifted his mouth from hers, he curled his hips jerkily. Agony and ecstasy warred within him as he fought his way inside of her and felt her flesh enfolding him in a hot, moist vice. The counter pressure of her body eased the painful throbbing in his. Ecstasy quickly dominated, and he paused when he could go no deeper to relish the feeling, wishing he could get deeper still. He noticed she was panting for breath. Lifting his head, he studied her cautiously. She opened her eyes slowly and looked up at him. “I think I’m going to come,” she murmured in a husky whisper. He felt his skin tighten all over, either at her words or the sound of her voice. A shiver traveled through him, going deep. A choked groan escaped him as he felt the ripple of her inner muscles along his cock like massaging fingers, pulling at him. The

muscles in his own belly tightened threateningly in response. Dragging in a deep breath, he began to move, thrusting into her more and more feverishly as her gasps and moans drove him on. She tensed just as he felt everything inside him tighten in nearly painful spasm. Uttering a soft, keening cry, she began to shudder and quake beneath him, arching jerkily against him. She leaned up and bit him on his chest, moaning against his breast. The faint sting of her teeth sent him over the edge. He was not certain for several moments whether he was dying or experiencing the purest bliss, but he did not care. Profound relief shot through him as he felt his body expel his seed in convulsions that drove the breath from him in hoarse grunts. By the time his body had ceased to seize, it felt as if he had pumped every ounce of his strength into her. His body felt so heavy, his brain so sluggish with fatigue, that all he could manage for many minutes was to gasp for breath and try to keep from crushing her with his weight. “Don’t take this wrong way,” Sarah murmured when she’d finally caught her breath, “but I have mud in the crack of my ass, and I’d really like to wash it.” Disconcerted, Teagan rolled off of her. He did not know whether to laugh or cringe when he saw she had not been exaggerating. He had tumbled her onto the muddy riverbank and plowed her into it. Mud caked her hair and her entire back. Grinning at her sheepishly when she sent him an irritated glance, he got up and followed her into the water to wash the mud from his hands, forearms, and his legs from the knees down. Sarah watched him with a mixture of irritation and amusement and finally chuckled. “I’ve never ‘mud wrestled’ before,” she murmured when he looked at her. Vaguely confused by the words she’d used—which he often was since she had a habit of referring to things he had never heard of—the meaning was still not lost on him. “I have not mud wrestled before either,” he said. She grinned at him. “At least it was soft. I would’ve had a hard time keeping my mind on business if you’d decided to throw me down in a patch of briars—or worse, poison ivy.” He reddened in discomfort, although he had no idea what briars or poison ivy was either. “I was not thinking.” “No!” she exclaimed, but she smiled when she said it. He would have felt far better about her behavior if he had not noticed the smile did not meet her eyes. There were shadows there that he could not quite fathom. He studied her when they had bathed and gathered the pots and dishes. “I did something wrong?” he asked finally, although he was not at all certain that he wanted to hear the answer. She flicked a questioning glance in his direction, but he could not help but notice that she did not meet his gaze. “Why would you think that?” Irritation flashed through him. “Because I am not stupid,” he said wryly. Sarah let out a huff of breath, trying to figure out exactly what her problem was since he’d obviously noticed. She discovered she couldn’t unravel the myriad of emotional threads wound tightly through her, though. She smiled at him dismissively. “Maybe it’s just that I’m starving?” He did not believe that, and he could see that she did not, but there did not seem

to be anything else that he could do but wait for the explosion. He did not doubt that there would be one. He hoped that when she had had time to think it over that she would not decide that he had raped her, but he did not hold out a lot of hope that that would not be the case. She had not offered, and he had not asked. He had taken.

Chapter Ten There were so many things troubling Sarah she had a hard time sorting them. It was no wonder, she thought wryly. Before Chandler had dragged her off to their world, the most excitement she ever experienced was being cut off in traffic or managing to safely deliver the young of some barnyard animal having difficulty with labor. In the space of less than a day, she had been attacked, been in the middle of a life and death battle, been kidnapped, escaped, been fucked senseless by Chandler, accused of espionage by the villagers, who’d shown an inclination to lynch her, and then topped it off by being fucked senseless by Chandler’s brother, Teagan. Even the highlights of her day so far left her feeling as if a fit of hysterics might actually make her feel a little better. Her face still hurt from the close encounter with the hoonan man’s fist—not much, but a dull ache that was hard to ignore. Beyond that the fight had left her so bruised and sore and stiff all over that when she finally had a chance to sit down and rest quietly for a few moments, she began to wonder if she could get up again. She doubted the romp with first Chandler and then Teagan had helped, but she also doubted it accounted for much of the stiffness. It still contributed to her emotional and physical exhaustion. By the time Teagan had cooked a simple meal, she was no longer really interested in eating. She ate anyway since he’d gone to the trouble, and she didn’t want to be questioned, by anyone, as to why she was no longer hungry when she was the one who’d brought up food to start with. When Aydin had eaten and exercised, however, and settled on his pallet to rest, she crawled onto the pallet next to him and fell asleep. Chandler studied her frowningly for a time. “She does not usually do that?” he said questioningly. Teagan, who had been wondering about Sarah’s strange behavior even before she had crawled onto the pallet, flushed. “She has not before,” he admitted, focusing on raking the scraps of their meal into one container to be added to the village compost pile. Chandler was studying him when he finally looked up. “What happened at the river?” Teagan narrowed his eyes at his brother. His tone had been carefully neutral, but the question in itself was accusatory. It seemed so to him, in any case. “Nothing beyond what we went to the river for,” he said tightly. Chandler’s gaze turned speculative. “If it was nothing beyond what was intended, why are you defensive?” Teagan struggled with the rise in his temper. “Because I do not like being questioned,” he growled finally. “What is it that you think that I did?” “I am only trying to understand what is wrong with Sarah,” Chandler said with determined patience. “She seemed fine when she left.” Aydin joined them at the cook fire, settling between the two. Worry was etched

on his face. “Do you think that she was hurt and she just does not want to say?” Teagan and Chandler both looked at the child in surprise. Aydin shrugged. “She is not one of us. She would not recover as quickly. I know the bad hoonan hurt her when he took her. Do you think that he might have hurt her again?” Chandler and Teagan were both silent as they thought that over. “She did not seem hurt when I caught her,” Chandler said finally, trying not to look as uncomfortable as he felt when he realized he had not actually checked her for any injuries. It had seemed reasonable to think she could not be hurt, though. She had managed to free herself, had managed to elude the men trying to recapture her, and she had swum the river. Her face was bruised from the man’s fist, and he had noticed that she was limping a little, but could not see that either of those explained why she had been so subdued and then had crawled in Aydin’s pallet to sleep. “Mayhap it is my fault,” Aydin mumbled. “She cried because I upset her. Mayhap that is what made her want to sleep? I know that I am sleepy sometimes when I have cried.” Teagan frowned at him. “She did not cry much, and it was because she was relieved you were not hurt. It is not your fault that she was upset. I think mayhap that you are right, though, and it is only that she is tired. Much happened this morning. I am feeling a little tired myself.” Chandler exchanged a speaking look with him as it occurred to him abruptly that their love play might have had something to do with her tiredness. “Do you think you might have made a baby brother for me when you took her to the river?” Aydin asked into the prolonged silence. Teagan stared at Aydin in stunned fascination, wondering how the child could possibly have figured out what had happened, or even what he had in mind when he had left. Sarah had not seemed to suspect what he had in mind. He glanced at Chandler uncomfortably. He did not like to lie to his son, but he was not inclined to admit that he might have risked getting a child on her. He had spilled his seed inside of her without regard for the consequences. And he had not asked her that either, he realized with another healthy dose of guilt. “I did not ask her,” he admitted finally, deciding a partial truth would have to do. “You know it is not acceptable to beget upon a woman when she had not given permission, do you not?” Aydin nodded but frowned. Teagan noticed Chandler was looking particularly uncomfortable, and it struck him at once that Chandler had not asked her either and had done the same as he had. There was no other explanation that he could think of for that look of guilt. Resentment swelled within him, but he struggled to tamp it. He did not even have as strong a claim upon Sarah as Chandler did. It had been Chandler, after all, who had captured her. He still resented it. “You asked my mother?” Aydin pursued. Given that his thoughts had turned to speculation regarding what had gone on between Chandler and Sarah, Aydin’s question caught Teagan completely off guard. He felt his face heat and knew he had given himself away. “That was different. It was

conquest,” he said stiffly. “Captives do not have the same right of consideration as our own women. It is forbidden to take them against their will, but persuasion is acceptable and if the woman is not completely unwilling, forceful persuasion. There is not a question of either breeding or mating, however. A man takes his pleasure, pleasures his captive as much as possible, and the consequences, if there are any, are entirely her problem.” He wished he had not gotten so carried away with lecturing Aydin on the finer points of acceptable centaurian behavior as to have mentioned the last. Fully expecting Aydin to ask him why, if that was so, he had gone back to collect his son, Aydin floored him again. He tilted his head curiously. “Is Sarah not a captive?” Teagan and Chandler exchanged a look. This time, however, there was speculation in both men’s eyes. “Yes,” Chandler said emphatically, relief evident in his voice. “And that means that it is not dishonorable to get a child on her with or without her permission. It is not necessary to even to ask permission to fuck her so long as force is not used that would cause physical harm. It is never permissible to hurt a woman, whether she is a captive or not.” Aydin eyed him speculatively before he turned to study his father. “Then you both bred her?” Chandler cleared his throat and got to his feet abruptly. “I believe that I will go and assess the damage from the attack.” Teagan glared at Chandler’s back as he made his cowardly retreat. “Do you think, since he bred her first, that his seed will take?” Teagan eyed his son with disfavor. “Did I not already say that it was not a question of breeding or taking a mate?” he demanded testily. Aydin shrugged. “But it is the same thing, is it not? You do not fuck them differently. Do you think that his seed will take because he fucked her first? I do not mind having a cousin, but I would rather have a brother.” “Did Sarah not tell you only a little while ago that you were not to repeat bad words?” he demanded instead of answering the question he could not answer. Aydin looked at him in surprise. “Yes, but she is a captive. She is not my mother. What bad word did I use?” Teagan glared at him. “Fuck.” Aydin looked puzzled. “What else am I to call it, then?” Teagan thought it over. “Do not say it front of Sarah. I do not think she would think it appropriate if she does not like it when you say bitch.” Aydin nodded obediently. “But what do you think?” “I think I did not ask her when she was fertile, and, if she is not, then neither took,” Teagan said irritably. “And if she should happen to be, then it is in the hands of the gods.” Which meant that it would not be his because the gods never favored him as he was all too well aware. “You should ask her and then you could be certain that you fucked her when she was ready to be bred. Uncle Chandler could have the next turn, because I would like a brother closer to my own age.” Teagan studied his son with a mixture of empathy and irritation, wishing that it

was as simple as the child believed. “We can not keep her, Aydin.” “I do not know why not!” Aydin said angrily. “Uncle Chandler captured her and we love her. We would take very good care of her and then we would have a family like everyone else … and I would have a mother.” Teagan felt his face heat. “I do not love her, and I am certain that Chandler does not love her.” Aydin studied him with such a knowing look that Teagan began to wonder if Aydin knew something he did not. Finally, the child shrugged. “You do not dislike her.” Teagan conceded that much. “You did enjoy fucking her? I will not believe that you did not because I have seen the way you and Uncle Chandler look at her, and I know that you have been wanting to.” Teagan studied his son in brooding silence for several moments, wondering if he and Chandler had been that obvious or if Aydin, with nothing to occupy his mind, had spent far too much time watching and listening to everything going on around him. He was inclined to think it was the latter and resolved to make certain that Aydin resumed his lessons if he was well enough to spend so much time studying things he should not be studying. “She is a beautiful woman,” he muttered finally, “even if she is hoonan, and when you are older you will learn that it does not even take a beautiful woman to make a man think of these things. Lust is natural and comes to us all.” “I still think that she is special, and your sire was hoonan … and I do not know what my mother was, but I do not see why that matters. If you and Uncle Chandler do not dislike her and you do desire her, then it will still work and we can make a family.” He had guessed that Aydin was leading in this direction, and he was still not prepared. “Beyond the fact that she was told that she would be returned to her home once you were better, the council has forbidden it,” Teagan said with as much patience as he could muster. “Even if Chandler and I found it acceptable, and I am not going to say one way or the other, we can not simply keep her.” “Elder Patten forbade it,” Aydin pointed out. “We could go before the council and demand the right of conquest to keep her.” Teagan sighed. “Go and rest. We have until the harvest before we will leave for the high country and home. I will think about it.” Aydin brightened immediately. For a moment, he looked as if he was considering pressing his point, but apparently he thought better of it. Rising, he hugged his father briefly and then returned to his pallet. **** The sound of pounding hooves jolted Sarah out of a deep sleep. Sucking in a sharp breath as she opened her eyes, she struggled to push herself upright. Aydin, she discovered, was beside her on the pallet. Disoriented, uncertain of what the sounds meant but feeling threatened, Sarah grabbed him, pulling him close. “It is the warriors returning,” Aydin said, although he made no attempt to pull free of her fierce hold on him, instead holding her tightly in return. Sarah swallowed convulsively against the dryness of her throat, easing her grip on the child. “You’re certain?” “The warning horn was not sounded.” Cocking her head, Sarah listened to the sounds outside, voices calling out—wails

of distress. Despite her grogginess, she had no trouble understanding the news wasn’t good. Glancing around the tent, she discovered that she and Aydin were alone. Her uneasiness magnified until she spotted Teagan and Chandler standing just beyond the opening of the tent. The light was dim outside, and Sarah stared at it in confusion. “I must have slept a long time,” she said finally. “It is dusk,” Aydin responded. As startling as that information was, she’d thought she must have slept through the afternoon and night. It was something of a relief to discover she hadn’t lost as much time as she’d thought. Lifting a hand to rub the tiredness from her eyes, she sucked in a quick breath at the pain the simple gesture caused her. “You are hurt?” Aydin asked, anxiety in his voice. Dropping her hand, Sarah stretched experimentally and discovered she was stiff and sore all over. “Aside from feeling as if a truck ran over me, no.” Aydin studied her with a mixture of confusion and worry. “What is a truck?” Sarah glanced at him. Shaking her head, she smiled wryly. “A big machine we use to ride in and carry things. It was just an expression. I’m stiff and sore, but it could’ve been worse.” “This is why you slept all afternoon?” Sarah studied his troubled face and finally patted his cheek. “I’m alright. Stop worrying.” She was actually a little surprised to realize it was the truth. She felt remarkably alright all things considered, emotionally as well as physically. Despite the reminder of the morning’s events, the distance of time had eased some of her fear and shock. Truthfully, she hadn’t been aware of either to any great degree even at the time, although she was certain she’d felt both. There hadn’t been time to feel the things she knew she should have felt. She supposed it was rather like getting cut by something extremely sharp—it took a while for the sensation of pain to reach the brain. If she’d had the luxury of merely standing back and watching, she didn’t doubt she would’ve been terrified and/or too shocked to react. She hadn’t had that luxury, though. She’d been dragged into the middle of the battle, and her own personal battle had narrowed everything down to a small window she was more capable of dealing with. The fact that the man had knocked her nearly senseless had pretty much made it impossible to deal with anything else, for that matter. She wasn’t unscathed for all that. If she had been, fear wouldn’t have been her first reaction to the sounds outside. In the space of a few hours, she’d gone from a complete sense of security to a complete lack of it. Despite everything she’d seen, heard, and experienced in this primitive world so far, she still hadn’t felt threatened. She’d been wary of both Teagan and Chandler when they’d first brought her, but she’d not only come to trust them, she’d come to feel safe with them. No one was safe when the sky fell, however, no matter how strong, or how well protected from most everything else. The raid that morning had shattered her fragile peace, and it was not something she was going to recover from any time soon, if ever, she realized.

That was why she’d felt so fragile earlier, most of it anyway—the sense that she was safe had been torn away from her and Teagan and Chandler, whom she’d come to depend upon to make her feel safe, had failed her, not because of anything they hadn’t done, but because of what they had. She understood, now, that the passion that had exploded between her and Chandler, and her and Teagan later, was spawned by the life threat that had gone before. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t desired them before. She had. What she’d wanted from them before, though, was mindless pleasure merely for the sake of pleasure, an adventure. What she’d needed from them today was comfort and reassurance that she was important to them and that they would protect her to the best of their ability because she was. They’d given her their passion. She’d enjoyed it thoroughly on that level, loved every moment of it, experienced a more powerful climax, both times, than at any time ever before. Chandler had made it clear, however, that she didn’t mean anything to him beyond a body to use, and worse, she’d realized as soon as Teagan had finished that it hadn’t meant any more to him than it had Chandler. That undercurrent she’d sensed but hadn’t quite been able to identify, was an agreement between them that Teagan would ‘have a turn’ with her. She supposed she had no reason to quibble over it. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t given as much pleasure as they’d gotten—and they’d given her what she’d been wanting, hoping they would. Sometime after it had first dawned on her that she was just desperately horny, and desperately attracted to them, that had ceased to be enough. It wasn’t their fault that it wasn’t. And it was a very bad thing that her motives had changed, because she didn’t think it was just because she had had her sense of security snatched out from under her today. Basically, she didn’t want to play any more, she realized. It had gotten way too serious. It wasn’t a strange, but exciting adventure anymore. She wasn’t acting out a fantasy to have sex with two absolutely divinely handsome men. They weren’t even men!

Chapter Eleven “What happened?” Sarah asked as soon as Teagan and Chandler entered the tent. Teagan studied her assessingly and finally turned to his elder brother, lifting his brows questioningly. Chandler almost seemed to shrug. “The warriors have returned. There are many who are injured.” Sarah got up from the pallet, looked around for her bag of supplies, and moved to get it. “I should go and see if I can help.” Chandler caught her arm, dragging her to a halt. “You are not needed.” Sarah stared at him in surprise and dawning anger. “How do you know? You said there were a lot who were hurt. I don’t know how much good I can do, but I can certainly stitch up wounds.” His lips tightened. “Your help would not be welcome,” he growled. “Two of the children were killed in the battle to rescue them. A third will not live long. It is not safe for you to go out there.” Sarah dropped her bag from suddenly nerveless fingers, gaping at him as the horror of what he’d said slowly sank in. She thought for several moments that she would faint. “The one who’s hurt,” she finally managed to say through lips that felt awkward and uncooperative, “maybe I could help?” “The village healers are attending her—as well as the other injured.” Sarah glanced a little blankly from Chandler’s harsh features toward the opening of the tent. “I’m just supposed to sit here and do nothing when I might be able to help?” “The village healers will do whatever can be done.” She wanted to argue with him. She might not be any more than a veterinarian, but she knew a good bit about medicine, and she must certainly be better prepared than the tribe’s healers. He’d said it wasn’t safe for her to go out there. They blamed her, just as they’d blamed her earlier for the attack. It wasn’t right, wasn’t just, but when all said and done they were just like everyone else she knew. They wanted somebody to blame, needed it. Being a hoonan was enough. She swallowed a little sickly. “You could at least offer,” she said weakly. “Tell them I’m willing to help. I might be able to help the little girl. What if I could save her life?” “You do not know that you could.” “I’ll never know if I’m not even allowed to try!” “If you tried and failed, it would be all the worse for you!” he ground out angrily. “Please?” she asked weakly, knowing she couldn’t outrun him if she tried, and she certainly couldn’t fight her way loose from him if he didn’t willingly allow her to go. “You can’t know that she’s beyond help! You’re not a doctor.” He released her arm and caught her face between his palms. “The child was

nearly dead when they brought her in. I am a warrior. I have seen the face of death too many times to count, too many times not to know it. If I believed that you could help her, I still would not let you risk your own life for hers. The hate for hoonans is high now. You will stay put or I will tie you to the gods damned center post!” Tears of despair, anger, and fear filled her eyes. She blinked them back with an effort. Seeing the fight had gone out of her, he released her. Sarah continued to stare at him for a moment and finally glanced at Teagan and then Aydin. Aydin’s face crumpled when she looked at him. He lifted his arms beseechingly at her, and she moved quickly to him to gather him in her arms. It comforted her to hold him. She had no idea whether it comforted him or not. “You will not let them hurt Sarah, Papa?” Aydin asked, nuzzling tightly against Sarah’s chest, as if he could hide inside her from his fears. “You know I would not, Aydin!” Teagan said gruffly. “I will gather my pallet and bring it here … for tonight, at least,” Chandler said. He jerked his head at Teagan and the two of them moved further away. “Did you return your weapons yet?” Teagan’s lips thinned grimly. “Earlier, but the bow would not have been of much use in a close fight.” “I have hope it will not come to that … so long as they do not see her. They are more focused on their own concerns and grief just now to think of her. In a few days they will settle again,” he said absently. “In the meanwhile, I think it will be best for us to share your pavilion. They would go to mine first since it is known she stays with me at night, which would give us some warning. I will try to grab a couple of swords from the arms if I can do so without notice. “If I am seen, they will know why I want them, and that would defeat our purposes. I would suggest, once I am gone, if you hear a commotion coming your way that you take Sarah out the back of the pavilion and head for the Tree of Life with her as fast as you can.” Teagan nodded, turning to look at Sarah and Aydin. “They will not hurt Aydin, and he is not strong enough for the pace you would need to set to elude pursuers. I will come to him as quickly as I am able.” Teagan was not surprised that Chandler seemed to read his mind, but as it happened, anxiety for Aydin on that count was only part of his worry. Aydin was strong enough to get out of the way if the pavilion was overrun, and clever enough to know it would be wise to. There was no question, however, that an angry mob would leave them no choice but to return Sarah to her own place as quickly as possible. He merely nodded, therefore, hoping as Chandler did that it would not come to that. Instead of leaving by the front, Chandler waited until it was full dark and slipped through the tear in the rear of the pavilion. Teagan focused on normal tasks, partly because he needed something to occupy him, partly because he knew it was important the villagers see that they were not behaving as if they expected trouble, and partly because he thought it might ease Aydin’s and Sarah’s anxiety if he appeared unconcerned. Although he secured the door flap before he did so when they generally left it wide to catch the breeze in the evenings, he lit the brazier and a single lamp to work by. Sarah took her cue from him after a little while. Pulling away from Aydin, she

took him through his exercises. It was as well he was so accustomed to the task of preparing a meal, Teagan thought wryly. It took little thought, which was just as well since his mind was divided between Sarah and Aydin, and listening for any indication that Chandler had encountered trouble. Sarah and Aydin both jumped when Chandler reappeared at the opening in the back briefly, tossed two swords into the opening, and then disappeared again. Relieved that Chandler had managed to accomplish the most critical, and dangerous, part of his mission, he rose immediately and retrieved the weapons, striding back toward the brazier and slipping the swords beneath a cushion within easy reach. By the time Chandler returned with the bedding of his pallet bundled beneath his arm and shoved it through the opening, he had prepared a meal for the four of them. No one was much inclined to eat, for all that. He and Chandler, however, were accustomed to the need to eat to maintain strength under far worse conditions and ignored the tension coiling in their bellies to consume what they knew they needed. The situation did not seem to particularly effect Aydin’s appetite one way or the other, but Sarah barely picked at her food. Teagan noticed it with disapproval, but he kept his thoughts to himself. When they had finished, he gathered everything to take it to the river to clean it as usual. He did not like the idea of leaving the pavilion, but he thought it was important to go about their routines as usual. He made quick work of the task, regardless, lingering only as look as it took to perform it without the appearance of tearing haste and then returned to his pavilion with relief. Remembering that he had decided that Aydin should resume his lessons once he was back in his pavilion, he went to the chest where he kept his books and removed the book Aydin had been reading before he became so ill. Sarah looked at him in surprise when he gave it to her and asked her to oversee Aydin’s lessons, but she took the book. Satisfied that he had provided something to occupy both of them, he joined Chandler at the front of the pavilion, opening the door flap but leaving it to flutter in the slight breeze rather than tying it back. Chandler looked a question at him when he settled across from him. “Under the cushion near the brazier,” he answered the unasked question. Chandler nodded, his pose relaxed, though Teagan could see it was a pose. Chandler was no more relaxed than he was. “The child has died.” Teagan nodded. “I saw the priests gathering at the family’s pavilion for the burial ritual.” “They will do nothing tonight out of respect for the grief of the families that have lost children. Tomorrow may be another matter.” Teagan did not disagree openly, but he was no more convinced of the truth of Chandler’s words than Chandler was. They sat in plain view of the villagers, listening absently to Aydin as he read and Sarah’s voice as she corrected him from time to time. “Aydin wants her to stay. He has developed a strong attachment to her and is counting upon brothers and cousins off of her.” Chandler glanced at Teagan sharply before turning to study Sarah’s bright head bent close to Aydin’s. His belly tightened at Teagan’s comment, his heart fluttering strangely at the thought of Sarah’s belly swelling with his child. He thought it unlikely he had gotten one on her, but oddly enough he found he did not dislike the possibility, the

opposite, in point of fact. “Things are always simple to children,” Chandler said after a moment of struggling to tamp the upsurge of both excitement and uneasiness the idea caused him. “We are barely tolerated by the tribe as is. They would never accept Sarah even if she could be brought to accept the idea, and I have grave doubts that she could be persuaded.” Teagan shrugged. “I pointed all of that out to him. He is of the opinion that her status as captive is enough to hold her and that the council could be convinced to honor our right of conquest to her.” Chandler struggled briefly with the temptation to inform Teagan that it was his right of conquest, not ‘ours’, but since he had gone after her for Teagan and Aydin’s sake he was uncomfortable with the thought of claiming her for himself, now, even though the suggestion that he could do so was enough to fire his imagination with possibilities he had not considered before. It fired his blood, as well, to think that he could share his pallet with her as his lover and not merely his captive who needed to be guarded and, at the same time, protected. The thought of breeding his child on her thundered through him again. This time it was harder to ignore the urge. “That is the thoughtlessness of his youth speaking. He cares for Sarah. He would not want to hurt her by treating her in such a way, or to dishonor the agreement we made with her to gain her cooperation. She has a sister she cares deeply for and is worried about. Even if we could convince the council, and I do not believe we could, Sarah would be unhappy, and Aydin does not want that. What he wants, he can not have—her willingness to give up the life she had for him.” “He has not thought it through,” Teagan agreed, nodding. “I think it is only the threat he sensed in the mob here earlier that made him more anxious to cling to her because it emphasized the thing that he has been trying not to acknowledge—that she will leave him.” “It is that threat, and the one we are worried about now, that make it clear that the idea is not one we can consider. Even if we could convince the council once tempers have calmed, there would always be this threat. She would never be completely accepted, and everyone would look to blame her each time we are attacked. You and I both know that. And the likelihood is high that we will see another raid soon. We routed them before they could take more than a handful of children and took back half of those. They will not be satisfied with this day’s work. They will come back with a greater force.” Teagan let out an irritated huff of breath. “I know you are right, especially since they now know that we have Sarah. They might not recognize her as a tribeswoman, but they certainly know she is hoonan, and that will be enough to inspire their rage. They will come again if for no other reason than to try to exert their superiority because they believe they have the right to enslave our people at whim and we do not have the same right.” “Sarah is not a slave,” Chandler ground out. “They will not see it that way,” Teagan retorted. “They will certainly not believe that she lives among us willingly.” Which she did not, Chandler thought wryly, and there was no point in arguing the finer points that it was more of a bargain than enslavement or captivity, not when he was well aware he had taken her by force. His thoughts had come full circle, he realized,

when it occurred to him that Sarah’s entire outlook, and her options, would drastically change if he could manage to get a child on her—or Teagan—though he was more inclined to prefer the thought of it being his own. He toyed with the thought, examining it, but while he liked the thought a great deal more than he knew he should, and, it would certainly change Sarah’s circumstances tremendously, it would not make her acceptance automatic. True, she was not likely to want to carry it back with her, or abandon it—Sarah was too attached to Aydin for him to believe she would consider leaving her own child—but while the council was more likely to agree to accept her because they would not want a child of their tribe, even a halfbreed, to be reared among the hoonans, she, herself, would only be tolerated. Even while it angered him to think of the shunning she would have to endure, he acknowledged that it was not only likely, but not something either he or Teagan or Aydin could protect her from. He was no better than Aydin, he thought with disgust, and he could not even claim youthful ignorance and inexperience to counter the wrongness of his thoughts by eliminating intent to harm. Not that it was intent to harm her, but it was certainly with full knowledge that such an action would cause her harm. She would have to choose this life with full knowledge of what it would mean to her. He had grave doubts that any one of them, singly, or all of them together, could convince her to, but he saw no reason not to try it. Assuming, of course, they did not find themselves having to fight their way out of the village in the next few days, he thought wryly. “That may be true,” he responded to Teagan’s comment finally, “but I can not see that the hoonan tribe would do any differently if they had not seen that we have Sarah. They still failed today in their eyes. I do not know how many warriors were taken, but they will make poor slaves. They prefer to take the children since they can control them more easily, break their spirit long before they reach adulthood. Even if they took more from some of the other tribes’ encampments, they would not have come here to begin with if they had been satisfied with the take.” Teagan agreed. “I do not doubt that. I was only thinking that we have more to concern ourselves with than the displeasure of our tribesmen. I fear they will try to single her out when they come again.” “We can not keep her closer than we do already,” Chandler said dryly, “short of shoving her up our ass.” Teagan uttered a snorting laugh, though he felt little humor in the situation. “I am more inclined to want to climb inside her.” Chandler grunted. “You had no luck?” he asked, trying to sound casual. “I fell upon her like a starving man—which I was—or mayhap more like a lunatic. If she objected it was not loudly enough to penetrate my dementia,” he responded with a mixture of irritation and self-depreciating amusement. “I did not hurt her, and she did not seem to be distressed afterward, but I can not claim that she was as pleased with the experience as I was, either, loathe though I am to admit it.” Chandler shrugged, trying to ignore the flicker of resentment inside of him at the discovery that she had lain with Teagan, as well, particularly since he could think of no sane reason to feel it. Women took lovers. A man could hardly quibble with that when they also took lovers, in fact could not do so unless the latter was true. They were not

talking of a mating, after all, when they might reasonably expect the woman to abstain on the grounds of insuring parentage. “I can not claim to have done better … unfortunately. I wish, now, that I had more experience at least with our own women. There is no saying that it would give me any insight into pleasing her, but there can not be a vast difference … I would not think so anyway. At least, mayhap with some experience, I would know the signs to look for and know if I had pleasured her.” “If you had the mind to do so at such a time, then you are a better man than I. From the moment I felt her body close around mine I could not think of anything beyond that.” Chandler felt his throat close. He shifted uncomfortably as his cock aroused with interest at his thoughts. “I had not considered that, but, no, I can not claim any ability to think rationally. I am afraid if she can not gain pleasure from me seeking mine then she is doomed to have none from me. I do not think I will get better.” “Do you think that Sarah will tell us when she is fertile?” Teagan asked almost casually. Not entirely offhand. Chandler had no trouble reading the fact that Teagan’s mind had obviously followed the same path as his. He forced a shrug that was equally false nonchalance. “If she does not, then she can not complain if she finds herself with child. We can not be expected to know unless she tells us, or refuses to fuck on those grounds, or informs us that we must not spill our seed inside of her for that reason.” Teagan nodded. “It would not be dishonorable to consider that acceptance.” Chandler felt a little lightheaded at the thought of breeding a child on Sarah. He was not certain if that was because he welcomed the thought of having a child with her or because he welcomed the thought of what it would require to make one, but he was sure that he felt no reluctance. “The council would not see it any other way,” he agreed.

Chapter Twelve There had been a fantasticalness about her entire experience since she had awakened in ‘neverland’, Sarah thought wryly, that had made it seem more like living a waking dream than reality. The sense that, at any moment, she was going to wake up and discover none of it had been real had made it possible to cope with everything she had encountered thus far—not all of it with ease, by any means, but with acceptance. She had been willing to drift, though, to ‘go with the flow’, more, she supposed because she hadn’t really thought it would affect her than because she really was dealing with it. Today she had crashed and burned. Everything wasn’t just real. It was worse than real—nightmarish in fact. The hunky jerks who’d abducted her weren’t the typical cocksmen looking for ‘scalp locks’. She could have dealt with that, but no, they were centaurs, torn between the desire to collect their pound of flesh and revulsion of where the flesh came from rather than from the fear that she might expect more than just a good time. That was distressing enough without everything else. The raid had been a shot of reality she hadn’t needed. She’d still felt like she’d come through it very well. She wasn’t certain she would’ve handled a mugging in her own neck of the woods as well. At the very least, she would’ve dashed to the hospital to get checked out and not refused the sedative they would almost certainly have insisted on to calm her nerves. She’d handled her lumps and bruises without that, though. Mentally, she shrugged, thinking that the romps with Chandler and Teagan had probably served as well or better as an outlet/calm inducing sedative as any drug known to mankind. If it had just stopped there, she would still be alright, probably moping and miffed and feeling ill used, even though she hadn’t objected and knew she didn’t really have any grounds to complain. She could’ve enjoyed feeling mistreated, though, and blamed the whole mess on them and felt better about it. Feeling the whole weight of guilt for her ‘kind’ by mass hatred unnerved her more than anything she’d ever encountered. She’d never been a prom queen, cheer leader, or trend setter. She was used to being something of an outcast, not quite belonging, because it seemed as if she’d been born a square peg when just about everyone was a round one, but this went way beyond just not being popular with her peers. It soothed her somewhat to sit with Aydin and help him with his lessons, but she couldn’t focus on it for many moments without her mind wandering to her dilemma, without her ears pricking with alert for danger at the slightest sound she had trouble identifying. She might have felt safe if she’d been locked behind ten foot thick concrete walls, but she wasn’t certain even that would’ve given her the sense of security that had been ripped from her. She knew why everyone was angry. She was just as angry as they were … well, maybe not quite as angry, because she hadn’t lost a child, but still furious that those

animals, without any provocation, had attacked and stolen children and hurt so many people when they’d done nothing that she could see to deserve it. It was completely unfair that they were angry with her when she’d had nothing to do with it, though, when she despised the actions of those barbarians as much as they did. As ashamed as she would’ve been to admit it, and she didn’t consciously acknowledge it, she was so relieved when it was finally late enough to go to bed and she could cuddle up close to Chandler she had to fight the urge to act like Aydin and whimper for comforting. The need to reassure Aydin had calmed her nerves, strengthened her, because she wanted to give him a sense of security, but she was glad to turn that task over to Teagan and curl up with Chandler. She’d found the size of the men, Chandler and Teagan, daunting. She’d found their massively muscular bodies exciting and sexy. Their size and strength had made her feel dainty, feminine, and desirable. At the moment, though, the sheer massiveness of the man was the ten foot thick concrete walls she’d wanted. She was sorry she couldn’t wedge herself between Teagan and Chandler. She compromised by wiggling as tightly against Chandler as she could. She had to sleep with a boner wedged up her ass, but she was alright with that. At least it meant he was awake and alert. She slept surprisingly well. Chandler looked as if someone had punched him in both eyes the next morning, but she felt refreshed and far less tense. It didn’t last. They struggled to go about their routine as usual, but Teagan and Chandler were both tense and irritable. A pyre was built for the dead—the children who’d died and one of the women warriors. Chandler attended. Teagan stayed close by, working as he usually did near the opening of the tent. Surreptitiously, Sarah watched the play of muscles in his arms as he worked a cutting tool along an animal hide, carefully scraping the flesh from the inside. It was gruesome work, and yet Sarah found that she was fascinated watching him, wondering if it was ‘women’s’ work or if there even was such a thing among their tribe. Teagan cooked more often than Chandler, but Chandler was as proficient when he cooked from time to time. Teagan generally stayed close by the tent, but she couldn’t help but wonder if that was ‘usual’ or just a practice that had come about since Aydin had been ill, or maybe since she’d been taken. She’d been a little shocked when she discovered that the warrior that had died during the night was a woman, proof positive that men weren’t the only ones prone to chauvinistic attitudes, but then again the weapons of these people weren’t the great equalizers—guns. They fought with swords, spears, and bows. It was one thing to think of a woman in a flack jacket and helmet firing an automatic rifle and another thing entirely to imagine them slinging a sword or chucking spears. The bow—she could see handling one. She hadn’t been too bad at archery, but, from what she’d been able to determine, all of the warriors were expected to be proficient with all of the weapons. She had to wonder if that white headed bitch, Chara, was a warrior. Maybe that was why Teagan had said she couldn’t handle the woman? Then again, she hadn’t known at the time that they were centaurs and considering how much bigger and stronger Chandler and Teagan were in that form …. And the only time she’d seen any of them transform was when there’d been the threat of attack. She frowned faintly. They didn’t actually look the way legends had depicted

them, she realized, not exactly anyway. As a vet, she was more inclined to think the animal part of them was more horse-like than actual horse. In all the pictures she’d seen depicting them, they’d been portrayed as huge horses—like Clydesdales—with a normal sized human torso perched where the neck and head of the horse would’ve been. In some paintings the ‘human’ part of them wasn’t even entirely human, just human-like. The real centaurs weren’t built like the depictions, though. The horse-like body was more proportional to their human form. They hadn’t been taller, or not by much anyway. The animal part had been sleeker and more compact, more like a pony, or maybe a stag, than a horse. She might not have really noticed, especially under the circumstances, except that Chandler had carried her on his back, which had made it hard not to notice for someone who’d frequently gone horseback riding. Of those she’d actually seen, they were handsome creatures on the whole. It came as something of a surprise to her to realize she thought so, particularly since they were so completely alien to her mind. Then again, maybe it was only because she’d already thought Teagan and Chandler were handsome? They certainly didn’t look less handsome when they transformed. They were . . . awe inspiring. They were pretty awesome beyond the physical if it came to that. From everything she’d learned, they’d pretty much raised themselves and they hadn’t done a bad job of it at all. Technically, she supposed, Chandler had raised Teagan, but they were only a few years apart, according to them, which hadn’t given Chandler much to go on. It did explain, though, how they’d managed with baby Aydin. Chandler had experience under his belt already with infants if he’d taken care of Teagan since birth, and it seemed he had. Not that she was knocking Chandler, but she doubted he would’ve had much success if Teagan hadn’t been strong to start with—like Aydin had been. She hadn’t had much chance to observe Aydin, and none to examine him, but he certainly hadn’t been as weak, helpless, and uncoordinated as a new born human infant. Maybe that accounted for the fact that Aydin was maturing at a faster rate than a human child? He’d probably been closer in physical maturity to a two year old human at birth. Mentally and emotionally, he was maturing at a faster rate, too, but she supposed at least part of that had to do with the fact that he was being reared by two men—warriors—and had no mother to coddle him. She wondered if that was why Chandler and Teagan were such ‘manly men’, the fact that they hadn’t been mothered—Chandler hardly at all and Teagan none at all. It didn’t hurt their appeal. She’d never pictured herself as the ‘motherly’ type. She hadn’t been particularly anxious to get married, or even to find a ‘significant’ other and settle down to raise a family. She’d never actually pictured herself in the role of a mother, let alone fixated on the need to breed and nest. And she still felt an odd little lump in her throat when she thought about what they’d missed out on, felt the stupidest urge to want to … mother them, or at least coddle them a little bit. There was no doubt about it, she thought wryly. This little excursion into their world was making her nuts. It was the fear and uncertainty, she supposed. She needed them. She wanted to

think they needed her, too, because that would make her feel safer. They didn’t really need her, though. They seemed to appreciate the fact that she’d tapped in to their physical needs, but they’d gotten along fine before she arrived, and she was certain they would after she left. She wasn’t going to leave a hole in their lives. She hadn’t arrived in time to pick up the mess of their lives and make it all better. They probably wouldn’t even remember her a few years down the road. When all was said and done, it didn’t really matter, though, did it? They’d taken their responsibility for her seriously. She wasn’t really in any doubt that they had or that they would take care of her to the best of their ability regardless of whether she ‘put out’ or not. That was all she really needed to know—that they would protect her. It would be better, all the way around, if they kept things uncomplicated. She could indulge her fantasies about ‘the hunks’ when the mood struck her and the timing made it possible. They could fuck her to relieve their own needs, and when she went home none of them would have anything to regret. That thought had no sooner occurred to her than she knew it for a lie. She was going to regret leaving Aydin even if she managed to make it through without getting too attached to Teagan and Chandler—and even that was debatable. Aydin was never going to be completely well. She didn’t know a cure for his problem, anyway. He was responding well to the treatment, though, and he didn’t need her—hadn’t in a while. As long as he watched his diet and exercised regularly without overdoing it, he could lead a normal life. She’d done all she could. She knew it. Aydin probably realized it. Teagan and Chandler had to know it, too. They hadn’t said anything about taking her home, though, and she realized she hadn’t asked them because she wasn’t ready to go. Now was the time to go if ever there had been a time to decamp. It wasn’t just the threat to her because of the attitude of the other centaurs. She wasn’t even certain if that was the main reason it had occurred to her. That certainly wasn’t all of it. She decided to broach the subject with Teagan and Chandler once Aydin settled down to take a nap. He’d slept a good bit when she’d first been brought to attend him, but he no longer did. Generally, he just rested between the exercises. It was afternoon by the time he finally dozed off and gave her the opportunity she’d been waiting for. Chandler had left the tent, but she wasn’t at all sorry for that. Teagan had always seemed more approachable, and she thought he was the main one she needed to speak to anyway since she’d been brought to take care of Aydin. Teagan sent her a look of questioning wariness when she approached him, but he waited for her to gather her thoughts. Sarah considered the best way to broach the subject for a few moments and finally just decided to take the plunge. “Aydin doesn’t really need me anymore. I think it’s time I went back.” Teagan frowned, looking toward his son and studying him for a long moment before he returned his attention to her. “I know right this minute probably isn’t a good time, but when this blows over— assuming it does—I should go back. Nobody wants me here. I’ve really done all I can for Aydin. You’ll need to watch his diet and exercise—he’ll always have to—but as long as he understands that and takes care of the imbalance it shouldn’t present too many

problems for him.” Teagan frowned, focusing on his task for a few moments. He was back to making arrows. She supposed he’d taken the hide off to stretch it to dry or soak in something when he’d left with it and cleaned up earlier. “He is better,” he said slowly, “much stronger.” Relief surged through Sarah that he’d acknowledged that much, at least. Before she could push her point, though, he continued. “He wants you to stay. I would be willing to take you as my woman.” Sarah felt her jaw go slack. Her heart executed a funny little leap … until it hit her that he’d said Aydin wanted her to stay, and he would be willing to take her as his woman. “If I claimed you as my woman, you would be allowed to stay and accepted by the tribe.” Allowed to stay—accepted. Meaning they still wouldn’t like it but her status as his woman would require them to accept her? Which meant they wouldn’t hate her any less. “I would take very good care of you—provide well for you. I know this does not look like much to you. I have seen the home where you lived, but Chandler and I have a comfortable home in the city. The people always remove to the fertile valley during the growing season because there is not enough good land around the city to grow what is needed to feed so many, but it is a house of stone—strong and more comfortable than here.” Sarah stared at him speechlessly, trying to wrap her mind around the fact that the first ‘proposal’ she’d ever gotten was beginning to sound a lot like a business proposition. No—make that did sound like a business proposition! “Aydin wants a brother, but I would not require that of you. He needs a mother, and you are good with him. He would have to settle for that.” Sarah struggled to swallow against the knot of hurt, anger, and disappointment that welled in her throat. “What would you get out of it?” she asked tightly. He looked at her blankly. “Beyond a live-in baby sitter, what do you expect to get out of the arrangement?” He reddened faintly, anger flickering in his eyes, although she was too angry herself to read it or care if she had. “The use of your body on occasion.” The use of her? “I’d have to know just how often you’d expect to ‘use’ my body,” she gritted out, surging to her feet, her hands balled into tight fists, “before I could consider this oh-so-tempting proposal. Nightly? Weekly? Monthly? Or would it just be when you couldn’t hold out any longer? A couple of times a year?” He glared at her angrily. “That does not have to be a requirement of the agreement if you do not want it,” he said tightly. “No? Does that mean I would be your woman, but you would be fucking whatever female took your fancy?” “A man has needs …,” he ground out, deciding to inform her he would require at least some gods damned consideration. He sure as hell was not going to tell her that his tribeswomen spurned him for his hoonan blood and that there was no likelihood that they

would change their minds if he took a hoonan as his woman. “A woman has needs, too, you fucking asshole!” Sarah snarled at him, struggling with the temptation to punch him. Instead, she whirled and stalked off. He surged to his feet and followed her. She heard the clatter of the wooden shafts as he abandoned them and followed her, but the sound had barely registered when he caught her, treading his fingers painfully in her hair and jerking her head back to force her to look up at him. It sent another surge of anger through her, but a spark of fear, too, and beneath that, a wave of heated desire. “I could keep you,” he growled in a low, furious voice. “I do not have to let you go.” Sarah’s pulse surged as she stared at him, but the fight went out of her abruptly. Or you could ask me to stay, she thought despairingly. Tell me I mean something to you and ask me. I’d want to stay if you’d give me a reason. She didn’t say it, though. If he had to be prompted it wouldn’t mean anything even if he was obliging enough to repeat it. The urge to dare him to keep her against her will flickered through her—to prompt him to do it. But if it hurt now to know that he didn’t care anything about her, how much worse was it going to hurt if she stayed longer? Would she grow more attached? Would she ‘outgrow’ her stupid crush? She didn’t want to find out, she realized. “You gave your word.” Something flickered in his eyes. “I did not. That was between you and Chandler, and I am not bound to honor his agreement with you. Mayhap I will simply claim you as a slave and share you with my brother and we will both fuck you whenever we please?” Promises, promises, Sarah thought a little wildly, knowing even as a rush of excitement shot through her at the ‘threat’ that she was deranged to consider the prospect so thrilling. Why was it that it also made her want to weep? He released her when she didn’t challenge him, which relieved her and made her regretful at the same time. Chandler returned a little later. Sarah waited with a mixture of hopefulness and despair, in vain, for Teagan to take the decision out of her hands and inform Chandler that he had decided to claim her as their love slave. No doubt noticing the tension, Chandler glanced from her to Teagan speculatively, but he’d brought a strange box-like object with him, and it caught both her attention and Teagan’s. Setting it down, he studied the tent thoughtfully. “What is that for?” Teagan asked, freeing her of the need to. “It is a place to hide Aydin if it should become necessary again,” Chandler said grimly. The comment brought Teagan and Sarah both closer to examine it—a little doubtfully. Noting the skepticism on their faces, Chandler looked irritated. “We can bury it in the ground, leaving the top level so that it will not be noticeable and yet he could climb into it quickly.” Pleasure flickered through Sarah that he’d thought her idea of hiding Aydin was clever enough he’d decided to take it a step further, but she was still a little distrustful. “If they could see the top, they’re liable to figure out what it is, but if it’s covered he wouldn’t be able to get any air,” she said slowly. “The door doesn’t look like it would hold much weight, either. If they stepped on it ….”

Chandler nodded. “There was nothing available to make it sturdier, but I think as long as it is near the walls of the tent it is not likely it would be trod on.” “Good idea!” Sarah said approvingly. “Maybe we could set it so that the top was a little under the wall of the tent? Or maybe just a tiny bit of the edge beyond the side of the tent so he could get air from the outside? We don’t want to have to worry about him suffocating. And then we could throw a rug over the top or maybe a thin layer of dirt to make it less noticeable?” She ‘helped’ Chandler by supervising. He sent her a look from time to time that was a mixture of amusement and irritation, but he didn’t say anything. Aydin woke while they were working on it, and Sarah reluctantly gave up her job as supervisor and settled with him to work on his lessons. She’d been too upset the night before to pay much attention to the book he was reading from. With surprise, she discovered it wasn’t just a book of stories as she’d thought, but a history of the centaur clan. Not surprisingly, a good bit of it was more fanciful in nature than informative. There were references to the ‘gods’ liberally sprinkled through the text and used to explain the origins of the world and the centaur tribe. The pictures in the book were beautiful. “My father made the book for me,” Aydin responded when she asked him about it. Sarah lifted her head and looked at Teagan in astonishment, although she wondered in the next moment why she was the least bit amazed. He worked with his hands all the time. She shouldn’t have been surprised at all to discover he was such a talented artist or that he’d gone to such lengths to make something so marvelous for his son. “It’s beautiful,” she said in quiet admiration when Aydin handed the book to her to look through it. “It must be wonderful to be able to make something this beautiful.” “Uncle Chandler is very good, also,” Aydin said loyally. “He made most all of the furniture for our home. He and my father are always in great demand as artisans. This is why we are very wealthy centaurians. Papa has promised that he will teach me the trade of stone working when I am a little older.” The conversation, overheard by both men, seemed to discomfit them almost as much as it pleased them to hear Aydin’s praise. Sarah might have doubted their abilities, might have been inclined to put it down to the admiration typical of children for those they loved, except that the book made it obvious there was far more to their talent than childish hero-worship. “You like working with stone?” Aydin shrugged. “I think I will like to. I am not strong enough yet.” Sarah ruffled his hair affectionately. “I don’t think it’ll be long before you’ll be plenty strong enough to start learning the trade. It may be a while before you can lift anything very big, but it’s usually best to start small anyway.” That explained at least in part why both Teagan and Chandler were so muscular, she mused, wondering if they both worked with stone or only Teagan. She didn’t ask. They hadn’t volunteered any sort of information about themselves, and she took it as a silent refusal to share. If they’d wanted to get to know her better, or vice versa, they wouldn’t have been so reticent. Then again, maybe it was just in their nature to be that way? Or maybe it was a combination of their nature and the stigma they’d lived under?

“I can’t wait to show you everything,” Aydin said enthusiastically. Sarah’s smile fell. She glanced at Teagan and Chandler for help and discovered that both of them were now, apparently, completely focused on their tasks. She didn’t believe it. Only a moment before, she’d gotten the distinct impression that they were listening. “I’d like that,” she responded hesitantly. “But … you know the elder said it wouldn’t be allowed, sweety. And, anyway, I have to go home.” Aydin’s face crumpled. “You do not love me, Sarah?” “Oh, Aydin!” Sarah said, distressed. Pulling him into her arms, she hugged him tightly. “Of course I do. You can’t be in any doubt of that! But I don’t belong here. I have my own home, my own family. My sister loves me, and I love her. I couldn’t just … not go back. Don’t you see that? How do you think your father would feel if you just left and he didn’t know where you’d gone or what had happened to you? Don’t you think he’d be terribly sad and worried? You wouldn’t want to do that to him because you love him. It’s the same with my sister.” Aydin looked forlorn for several moments, but then he brightened. “We could bring her here, too!” Sarah knew she must have looked as horrified by that artless suggestion as she felt. “No!” she said more firmly than she’d intended. She forced a smile when she saw she’d upset him. “Diana’s a lot different from me. She wouldn’t enjoy camping out,” she said a little weakly. “And she already has a home. Actually, it belongs to both of us. Our mother left it to us, but we have a farm and there are lots of animals there that have to be taken care of. Usually, we do that together, but since I’ve been gone she’s had to do everything herself. She needs me to help her take care of the place. It’s just too much for one person.” Aydin frowned. “You do not have a man, or children, though, do you?” Sarah reddened. “Just my sister, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t important to me.” Anger flickered in Aydin’s eyes. “You do not love me. If you did, you would want to stay with me.” Dismay filled Sarah. “That’s not fair, Aydin! And it isn’t true. You know it isn’t.” He pushed away from her. Getting up abruptly, he crossed the tent and sat down beside his father. Great! Sarah thought, thoroughly depressed. Now it’s unanimous. They all hate me!

Chapter Thirteen It wasn’t the tension in the village that made Sarah glad when it was time to go to bed the second night. That seemed to have eased somewhat, though it was hard to tell for certain with the tension climbing inside the tent. She was angry with both Chandler and Teagan—Teagan because of his ‘proposal’ and both of them because neither one of them had made any effort to come to her rescue when Aydin had put her on the spot. Aydin was mad with her because he wouldn’t or couldn’t understand that she had no place here and beyond that, missed her sister and her home. Teagan was obviously angry with her because she hadn’t been interested in that glorious proposal he’d made. He should count himself lucky she hadn’t punched him in the nose! And Chandler—well, she suspected he and Teagan had had a powwow about her attitude because they had had a private discussion and now he seemed to be angry with both her and Teagan. It wasn’t nearly as comforting to settle with him on his pallet as it had been the night before when she’d been so scared. Obviously, they still thought it best to keep her out of sight, though, or she was pretty sure Chandler would have stalked off to his own tent. His anger with her didn’t seem to tame his ‘beast’, though. When he dragged her up against him, that ‘log’ of his insinuated itself between the cheeks of her ass and stayed—until she had just about drifted off. Apparently, he decided to do something about it. Sarah tensed the moment the arm that had been lying across her waist drifted upward and a jolt of surprise still went through her when he very deliberately hooked his hand in the top of her sarong and yanked it down. The instinct to elbow him in the ribs was thwarted by the fact that he was too close behind her to make that the least bit effective. The temptation to give him a piece of her mind was strong, but while she was straining her ears to make certain that Aydin was sound asleep and unlikely to hear, Chandler began to tug and pull at her nipples until both were standing at attention. She tried to roll away and out of his reach, but he’d obviously anticipated the move. His arm tightened, and he lifted one leg and coiled it around her hips and thighs. “Aydin will hear!” she hissed a little frantically, trying to ignore the pleasurable waves wafting through her with each teasing tug of his fingers. He shifted, placing his mouth next to her ear. His heated breath added to her mounting distress. “Not if you do not make a sound,” he murmured huskily. A shiver skated through her. It was as hard to ignore the lure of pleasure, she realized in dismay, as it was to figure out how she might handle the situation without alerting both Aydin and Teagan to what was going on. Not that she cared if Teagan knew, the rat!

It occurred to her, in fact, to wonder if that conversation the brothers had had included Teagan’s threat to share her with his brother if she had no interest in being his woman. As if he’d taken her silence as acquiescence, Chandler’s hand left her breasts and slipped down her belly. Lifting his leg from hers, he grasped her thigh in almost the same moment and brought her upper leg back, hooking it over his to give him access to her. She tensed to move her leg back and clamp them tightly together the moment he released his hold on her, but he wedged his hand between her thighs. An electric current seemed to sizzle through her as his fingers parted the lips of her sex, and he slid one thick finger along her cleft. His touch seemed to knock the breath from her. She stiffened, trying to brace herself, but when he brushed her clit, a shiver went through her, and she uttered a choked breath. He paused, rubbed his finger experimentally over the nub, sending more waves of heat through her. She couldn’t help it. It felt so good, she went limp as the fight left her abruptly and the desire for more inundated her. Shoving his other arm beneath her, he began to pluck at her nipples again, stoking and teasing the nub at the same time until she was struggling to catch her breath, arching instinctively against his hand. He lowered his mouth to her shoulder, nipping at it as he slid his hand from her clit to push one finger inside of her. The muscles low in her belly clenched in response, clinging to his finger as he pushed deeper. Moisture gathered inside of her, coating his finger as he stroked it back and forth along her passage. Distress filled her when he removed it completely, but in the next moment she felt the probe of his cock, felt the tug of her flesh as he stretched her. Both pleasure and frustration filled her mind as he sank into her and withdrew over and over. As good as it felt, the position on their sides prevented him from the deep penetration she knew she needed to assuage the ache that began inside of her. As if he’d read her thoughts, or more likely because he was as thwarted as she was, he abruptly rolled with her until she was beneath him. Splaying her legs wide with his own, he drove so deeply inside of her she gasped, burying her face into the furs to stifle the sound. For a moment, he stilled, merely rotating his hips, grinding into her in a way that made her feel faint, breathless, on the verge of release. Supporting the bulk of his weight with one elbow, he slipped a hand beneath her belly and found her clit, stroking it. She bucked against him at the jolt that went through her, feeling her heart slam into her ribcage as a flutter of impending release went through her. Uttering a harsh exhalation of breath near her ear, Chandler withdrew and drove into her again almost as quickly. His deep, driving thrusts rocked her world. Rapture exploded inside of her so blindingly, so abruptly, that a sharp cry burst from her before she could stop it. Clamping a hand over her mouth, she did her best to contain the sounds, but she was too mindless with the convulsions rocketing through her to manage more. Into the dark, blissful aftermath of expended release, a child’s voice intruded in a whisper. “Did Uncle Chandler hurt her?” Oh god! “No,” Teagan growled. “Go back to sleep.” “Why was she making that sound then?” “Shut up, Aydin!” Teagan snarled.

Mortified, Sarah wanted to crawl under the pallet and die. Or better yet, kill Chandler. He’d collapsed on top of her with his own release and was showing no signs of rolling off any time soon. She lay huffing for breath—because he was squeezing the air out of her as fast as she could drag a little in—and fuming. When he finally rolled off of her, she rolled to face him and smacked him angrily on the chest. “You ass!” she hissed at him. He caught her fist before she could hit his chest again, rolling over her and pinning her beneath him face up that time. His voice was shaking with repressed laughter as he leaned close. “It is dark. He does not know.” “Like hell!” He almost seemed to shrug. “If he knows, then he is old enough to know.” He wasn’t old enough for a porn show! Even if it was too dark for him to see, she didn’t want him listening! “Do you think he made a ….” The meaty sound of a hand clamping firmly over the child’s mouth cut him off from finishing the question. Sarah didn’t need the rest, though. It instantly leapt into her mind what he was asking and right behind it came two not very welcome revelations. They lived in tents—at least part of the year—and there were children. Obviously, the children figured out what all the huffing, puffing, and groaning was about whenever they managed to put it together and nobody worried about it—except her! And she remembered abruptly that she’d discontinued her birth control because she didn’t like the side effects. Oh god! If she hadn’t had her damned mind on her itch she might’ve remembered that in a little more timely manner! That thought completely diverted her from her embarrassment about being overheard. Obviously, Chandler was right. Aydin hadn’t seen anything. If he’d figured out what was going on, it wasn’t her that had ‘educated’ him, not that that made her feel a lot better, but she was more interested in something a lot closer to home—like the answer to Aydin’s question. Just how potent were they? Would it take since she was human and they weren’t? And where the hell was she in her cycle? She fell asleep worrying about it and trying to count the number of days she’d been in their world. She emerged into semi-consciousness sometime later already fully aroused by the insistent tug of a hot mouth at her breast. The languid heat building inside of her made it impossible for many moments to decide whether she was having the most vivid wet dream she’d ever had or if it was real. She finally managed to coax her eyelids up for a look when the wonderful pulling sensation at her nipples ceased. In the dim light of pre-dawn, she saw Teagan’s taut face as he caught her knees and pushed them wide. Grasping his cock, he guided it to her opening as he leaned over her, impaling her on the rounded tip before she could gather her wits to assimilate his intent. She sucked in a sharp breath as she felt him penetrating her, glancing abruptly around for Chandler as it dawned on her she’d fallen asleep on his pallet. He was still on the pallet, beside the two of them—not asleep. Lying on his side, his head propped on one hand, his face taut, he watched

through narrowed eyes. His gaze wasn’t on her face, though. He was watching as Teagan slowly pressed more and more deeply inside of her. Goosebumps erupted all over her as she followed his gaze. Pressing on her knees until they were nearly against her chest, Teagan pushed relentlessly for several moments, moving deeper and deeper. Finally he eased off, allowing the resistance of her body to push his cock outward along her channel until he was nearly all the way out. Repositioning himself, so that he was supporting his upper body with his elbows, he drove inside of her again, this time penetrating so deeply it seemed to force the breath from her lungs. Abruptly remembering Aydin, she twisted her head to look and discovered with relief that he was sleeping soundly, though she could see nothing but the dark hair and his rump since he was turned away. The distraction still cooled her enthusiasm. Teagan drove the heat upwards again as he set a pace impossible to ignore. Her body responded with a will of its own to the punishing stroke of his cock along her channel. As he pounded against her core, waves of sensation radiated outward with each glancing blow against her g-spot until she was lifting her hips to match his thrusts. She went rigid as her climax caught her up in the throes of bliss, panting and gasping for breath, struggling to keep from making any sound. Teagan uttered a choked sound above her. Dropping lower, he covered her mouth as he began to convulse in ecstasy, groaning into her mouth as he expelled his seed into her. She lay panting for breath when he rolled off of her at last, her eyes closed. She was wide awake now, though, and as soon as she managed to collect the strength, she opened her eyes to glare at him and then Chandler as they lay on either side of her. “I can’t believe you did it with him in the tent with us!” she snapped in an angry hiss. Chandler’s lips curled with amused tolerance. “Do you think the others put their children outside to ‘do it’?” “Or mayhap go outside themselves?” Teagan asked. “Maybe they just don’t do it at all?” Sarah snapped irritably, knowing better. She didn’t care what their customs were, though. She wasn’t comfortable with it. Unfortunately, she couldn’t really discuss it when she didn’t dare speak above a whisper for fear she’d wake him and he’d overhear. “I’m not doing it when he could see and/or hear!” she muttered angrily, rolling onto her stomach and closing her eyes firmly. A hand settled on her buttocks and traced her cleft. Chandler’s mouth covered her ear briefly, sending a wave of goosebumps cascading down her length. “I could push my cock inside you from here just as easily,” he murmured when he’d released the sensitive shell. She glared at him when he leaned away to study her face. He grinned at her unrepentantly and popped her ass playfully with the flat of his hand, rolling away before she could decide whether to retaliate or not. Sensing Teagan had also moved away, Sarah firmly closed her eyes and sought sleep. To her surprise, the lingering sense of euphoria from her release took her there. The smell of cooking food aroused her a little later, and she woke to discover the day was bright outside. With no idea what time of day it was beyond full morning, she yawned and stretched and moved to the privy area of the tent to perform her morning ritual.

Teagan and Chandler, both looking surprisingly satisfied and relaxed, were sitting around the eating area with Aydin when she emerged. She joined them, taking the plate left for her. Aydin, still looking a little heavy eyed, smiled at her. She couldn’t see anything about his expression that seemed to indicate he knew or remembered the goings on of the night before, and she relaxed fractionally. The day progressed fairly typically with the exception that she spent a good part of it teaching Aydin instead of most of it directing his exercises. Chandler left the tent, or pavilion as they called it, shortly after breakfast and didn’t return until nearly dusk. It worried her at first, but as the day wore on she came to realize that it could only mean they no longer felt the need to guard her, which had to mean the villagers had settled down—more or less—and the threat had blown over, for the time being at least. She decided to test it once they’d finished their evening meal. “I was wondering it I could go to the river to bathe?” Chandler and Teagan exchanged a look. “I will take you,” they both said, almost in unison. Sarah gaped at them in surprise, feeling her face heat. “To bathe,” she said emphatically. “Papa should walk you so that he can bathe, too,” Adyin piped up. Sarah whirled to look at him, but his expression was one of purest innocence. “You will be going back to your pavilion tonight, will you not, Uncle Chandler?” ‘Uncle Chandler’ frowned at him. “I had not considered it, but I think that it would be safe enough to do so,” he said finally. “Then Papa will not get the chance to bathe if he does not take Sarah to the river. He will not want to leave me alone.” Teagan and Chandler exchanged a look. Teagan’s eyes were dancing with suppressed laughter, and, after a moment Chandler relaxed, reluctant amusement entering his own eyes. They were conspiring against her, Sarah thought with disbelief! All three of them! She didn’t believe that expression of innocence on Aydin’s face for a moment! In fact, she began to suspect he was the master manipulator in the equation. She studied him suspiciously for a moment but since Teagan got up to gather the dinner ware and cooking utensils for cleaning, she focused on helping him. They slipped out the back way, moving into the tree line. With wry amusement, Sarah wondered if they were going to leave the ‘back door’ the raider had cut for them. They seemed in no hurry to repair it, and she was obliged to admit it was a convenient way for them to avoid encountering any of the villagers. Teagan left the load of dishes he’d carried on the riverbank near the water’s edge when they arrived. Dropping his sarong, he waded in with the soap and cloth he’d brought. Sarah studied the dishes for a moment and decided to attend to her own bath before she settled to scrubbing so that she could dry while she took care of the chore— assuming, of course, that Teagan didn’t. He handed her the soap and washcloth when she’d waded out into the water. Fully expecting him to take advantage of their location to fuck her brains out, since she was convinced that was what was going through his mind when he offered, she was a little surprised and disappointed when he seemed more interested in bathing than playing. Mentally shrugging, she focused on her bath and finally waded out when she’d

finished since he didn’t seem in any hurry. They hadn’t had a chance for a full bath in days, she reflected when she’d wrapped herself in her sarong again and squatted down on the riverbank to scrub the dishes. Maybe he just wanted to soak? Or maybe, she thought with a trace of irritation, he just wanted to avoid doing the dishes? That suspicion seemed to be confirmed when he began to wade out of the river just as she finished the last of the washing. She looked at him in surprise, though, when he dropped to knees in front of her, discovering when she did that his focus wasn’t on her face. Warmth instantly washed through her when she saw where his gaze was focused. He settled his hands on her knees, unbalancing her as he did. She rolled onto her back on the bank. When she did, he pushed her thighs wider and lowered his head. A little stunned, she merely watched the descent of his dark head between her legs. The first, delicious, heated stroke of his tongue along her cleft seemed to make every fine hair on her body lift. She sucked in a sharp breath, grasping his head. He moved unerringly to her clit, though, and from the moment his mouth closed on that tiny, exquisitely sensitive bud of flesh, her mind took a vacation. She gasped, panted at the swift rise of her body toward culmination as he sucked and tugged at her with the same fervor he lavished into every kiss, every caress, every stroke of his cock inside of her. He hadn’t touched her once, she thought feverishly, that it wasn’t as if he was dying of hunger for her. She thought the sheer intensity of his passion drove her higher and faster even than his touch. The climax that seized her in its throes was blinding, shattering. She cried out hoarsely as it rolled over her in battering waves. He didn’t lift his head from her until she lay panting and half unconscious from the force of it. Crawling over her, he fitted his mouth to hers, kissing her lips as hungrily as he had her sex. She gasped as he curled his hips and drove his shaft into her. Her body quaked around his cock, clung to it, resisting every inch of the flesh he struggled to push inside of her, but he was too mindless with his own need to heed, fighting her resistant flesh until he was buried to the hilt inside of her and she was hoarse with gasping for breath. She groaned as he ground his pelvis against her mound and sparks shot from her clit to her g-spot, electrifying everything between the lightning arc. Sucking in a harsh breath, he curled his hips back after a moment to pull his shaft down her passage, and then thrust again, gaining speed with each pass until there was no escape and no surcease from the constant stimulation. Her second climax hit her harder than the one before and she lost all touch with the world around her, all awareness of it, gasping, groaning, whimpering in her efforts to keep from screaming. She felt him come even as her climax hit her, felt the jerk of his cock inside of her, felt the hot stream of his seed coating her womb. She wasn’t certain if her climax triggered his, or the other way around, but it left her with a more profound sense of completion than she could ever remember to feel his pleasure in her body. Catching his breath, he sought her mouth, kissing her with gusty enthusiasm. When he lifted his head, he stroked her cheek. “I gave you pleasure, Sarah?” he said, his voice hoarse, but with just enough of a questioning lilt to assure her it was a question, or maybe a request for praise? “Oh god, yes!” she murmured. She shivered, opening her eyes with an effort to

look at his face hovering above hers. His expression was taut, his eyes questioning. She swallowed with an effort, lifting a hand to touch his hard cheek. “Yes.” “I suppose all of that caterwauling is her way expressing her enjoyment?” a woman’s voice asked nastily from above them.

Chapter Fourteen Sarah didn’t have to look to know the owner of the voice. Teagan’s head snapped up, his body tensing instantaneously. To Sarah’s surprise, though, instead of moving away from her, he slipped his arms around her almost protectively, flicking a quick glance around them before he returned his gaze to Chara. “It is ill bred to intrude upon lovers,” he growled. “Is that what you are calling the hoonan now? Your lover?” Teagan ground his teeth. “What is it that you want, Chara?” Chara shrugged. “Nothing. I only came to see what made that racket that has frightened off all of the game, no doubt, for miles. I thought the hoonan was objecting— from the sounds she was making. She is a captive. You know our laws forbid forcing captive women.” Right! Sarah thought angrily. The nosey bitch! Hoped, maybe, but she doubted the woman had thought anything of the kind. She’d thought she might find something she could use to make more trouble. Very likely she’d been the instigator of the mob, at least the first time. She’d made a dangerous enemy, and not just for herself. “I know the laws, Chara,” Teagan ground out. Chara lifted her chin at Sarah. “What have you to say, hoonan? Now is your chance to avenge your dishonor.” Sarah thought she felt like throwing up. She hadn’t realized what a vile bitch the woman was. “Funny, but I don’t feel dishonored. You know damned well it was consensual sex, Chara.” Even if it hadn’t been, she wouldn’t be fool enough to side with a snake like Chara. Chara’s eyes narrowed. “I wonder if Chandler knows about your little assignation?” Sarah smiled at the woman sweetly. “He had to watch Aydin. We’re planning a three way later. Would you like to come and watch?” Shock washed over Chara’s face briefly before anger took its place. “Hoonans,” she spat with disgust. “We do not practice the vile, deviant things you hoonans do!” Sarah kept her smile with an effort. “Oh, come on Chara! Don’t try to tell me you aren’t ‘in’ to spectator sports! You know you enjoyed watching!” For a moment, Chara struggled with her temper. Abruptly, uttering a curse, she whirled and stalked off. Teagan relaxed visibly. Sarah noticed when she glanced at him that he was studying her with a strange look on his face. “What is three way?” he asked curiously. Sarah didn’t know whether to laugh or brain him. Obviously, it had sounded intriguing to him. “I was not serious!” “You were trying to antagonize Chara and succeeding very well. What is three way?” Sarah studied him irritably for several moments. “Something seriously kinky that

I’ve never done, and I’m not sure I want to try. If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.” She could tell he wanted to pursue the matter, but he allowed it to drop. Shifting onto his knees, he caught her hands and pulled her up. As they waded out to bathe off the ‘soil’ of their labors, Sarah wondered wryly if she was destined to have sex with Teagan in the mud—not that she was knocking it. It was actually kind of kinky. “What did she mean about the laws?” she asked Teagan. Teagan studied her for a long moment. “She meant that you could accuse me of rape, and I would be gelded.” Horror washed over Sarah. “You can’t be serious!” He grimaced. “It is not something I find humorous.” Fury usurped Sarah’s shock. “That … cold blooded … conniving … cunt!” she snarled, unable to think of anything any worse to call the snake. “They’d do that! On the word of a captive—a woman they’d have every reason to doubt?” “No hoonan woman willingly allows a centaur to fuck her. No centaurian woman willingly allows a hoonan to fuck her. My seed inside you would condemn me, not your word.” Sarah stared at him in disbelief, not because she doubted every word of it, but because he and Chandler both had had sex with her, knowing she only had to scream rape and display the evidence and they would be unmanned. “So you’re saying hoonans and centaurians never have sex together—willingly?” “We are enemies. We have always been enemies. I am saying it is a disgrace and a dishonor, not only to both who do so but also to the families of both. No woman willingly admits that she has consented to a lover who is not of her people. If they are discovered, it is rape. Or she might consent only to make coop against her enemy and begin to scream as soon as he has spilled his seed.” Women like Chara, she thought, feeling sick to her stomach and unclean even to have been near such a creature. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know that women, in her own world, had done just such, but it was low, the lowest kind of dirty trick besides making it impossible for women who actually had suffered such an assault to get any kind of justice. “Knowing that, why would you tell me?” she asked after a moment instead of asking the question uppermost in her mind—why they would want to touch her if they knew she could retaliate in such a horrible way. “She gave you the opportunity to accuse me. Why did you not take it?” Sarah’s lips tightened. “Because it wasn’t true, and, even if it had been, I wouldn’t ally myself with that kind of backstabber. And that’s another thing! What has that woman got against you?” He shook his head, studying her with a mixture of amusement and irritation. He was doubtful that it was him Chara hated, though she certainly had no love for him. Possibly, it was because he had refused her offer, however politely, and then she had discovered him with Sarah, since there could be no graver insult to a centaurian woman than for a hoonan woman to be chosen above her. He thought it was far more likely, though, that it was because of Chandler. Just as he had once wanted her as his woman, she had wanted Chandler, and Chandler had spurned her. No doubt it had wounded her ego, if not her heart, but she had not been openly hostile until Chandler had brought Sarah into their midst. “She is a dangerous woman to taunt, Sarah. If I had had my wits about me, and not been stunned mute by admiration of that tongue of yours, I would have

gagged you.” Diverted, because she wanted to put the entire sordid mess behind her, Sarah smiled wickedly at him. “You like my tongue, huh?” He gave her an arrested look. “Why is it that I sense another meaning there?” he asked slowly. Sarah shrugged, returning to the river bank to collect their things. The woman had ruined what had been a pleasant tryst—more than just pleasant. As hurt and angry as she’d been the night before when Teagan had thrown ‘the proposal’ at her, said those things that had wounded her to the quick, the way he and Chandler had behaved toward her afterward had seemed a direct contradiction, had convinced her they weren’t as indifferent to her as that had seemed to imply. She knew men looked at sex differently than women. Their drive made it possible for them to have sex with women they didn’t like, weren’t even especially attracted to or the phrase ‘put a bag over her head’ would never have been coined to start with. Regardless, she still felt it would be impossible for them to have so much … enthusiasm if they weren’t as strongly attracted to her as she was to them. The things she’d learned at the riverbank, as unpleasant as that episode was, seemed to her to support her conclusions when doubts had nagged at her as to whether she could really trust her judgment. Either their judgment was as flawed as hers, or they felt more trust for her than they would openly admit—maybe more than they were actually conscious of. Surely, despite the drive, they wouldn’t risk anything so precious to them if they didn’t feel a good deal for her, would they? Surely it was at least an indication of strong physical attraction and not just that she was ‘handy’? Chara had offered to scratch Teagan’s itch so that he wouldn’t feel the urge to use her to take care of his needs. Not that the bitch hadn’t been so insulting about it to where it was almost as if the offer had been calculated to make him turn her down, but if she’d offered herself to Teagan, she’d probably made a similar offer to Chandler. And she knew Chara wasn’t the only one who’d offered. She might be wrong about that, but it felt like the tip of the iceberg to her. Very likely it was as much to guard their men against the hoonan woman as it was to protect, but the elder’s comment certainly seemed to bear up that conclusion—unless he was just referring to Chara, and it hadn’t sounded like that. Maybe she was lying to herself to feel better, but she thought it was at least possible that Teagan’s awful proposal was tendered in such a way as to spare himself rejection. If he made it sound as if he was making a sacrifice for Aydin, then it was Aydin she was rejecting if she turned him down, not him directly. Then again, maybe she really was lying to herself? Teagan might not have been deliberately hurtful and insulting—she certainly couldn’t see how he had intended to be or why ask her at all?—but she’d felt insulted and hurt anyway. And she had still responded with enthusiasm when they’d woken her up for sex—and again down by the river. If she couldn’t reconcile it in her mind, what did that say for her? That she was crazy enough about them, or just so sexually drawn to them, that she’d let them treat her like a tissue, use her and discard her? She saw when she glanced at Teagan as they reached the pavilion again that he

was studying her speculatively. Considering her thoughts, it took her a moment to figure out why. When the answer came to her, amusement flickered through her. Just like a man! Absolutely tenacious when it came to sexual matters! “I’ll give you a hint,” she said provocatively, pausing outside the tent. “It’s something like what you did to me on the riverbank—and could be part of a three way. That would be one possibility, anyway.” The blank look on his face was almost as priceless as the comprehension that struck in the next moment and the gleam that lit his eyes. Maybe Chara hadn’t been lying, she thought with amusement? Maybe they didn’t practice the ‘vile, deviant’ acts hoonans had thought up to spice things up? Two weeks rolled by with barely a blink. Considering the tedium of her routine, Sarah doubted that would’ve been the case ordinarily. Teagan and Chandler still kept her out of sight most of the time, though, which meant she hardly ever left the pavilions except to walk from one to the other and back again and every other day she got to take a ‘whole’ bath at the river instead of just mopping off with the water they brought her. For someone who had generally spent more time outside than inside before they’d taken her, that alone would ordinarily have been enough to have her climbing the walls. Added to that the fact that, aside from the meals they all took together, she spent most of her time with Aydin, teaching him his lessons or teaching him various exercises and seeing to it that he didn’t get lazy and have a relapse, and the sum total of her existence had narrowed to the sort of boring routine she usually avoided like the plague. She was so tired, though, that she hardly knew which end was up most the time. Teagan and Chandler seemed to have gotten the idea that she was completely alright with the concept of being fucked to death. She couldn’t decide if they had some lame brained idea that they were going to ‘store it up’ for the famine they expected when she left, or if they really needed it that often, or if they had some agenda she wasn’t privy to. After two weeks, though, they began to look almost as worn to the bone as she felt, and she began to suspect there was an agenda. She was just too tired to figure it out. There was a look of both complacency and expectancy about both men, though, when Teagan presented her with a sarong to replace the one Chandler had originally given her. That one had not fared well. Leather wasn’t washable, and she’d taken way too many swims in the thing. It had gotten stiffer and shorter over time until it was downright indecent, although she’d never particularly thought it was ‘decent’ to start with. She realized immediately that it had been made with the leather she’d seen Teagan working. She was warmed by that realization. She wasn’t certain what she thought about the fact that it was so much bigger than the one she’d had. The new sarong not only went to mid-calf when the other had, originally at least, stopped just shy of her knees, but it was wide enough it almost have lapped her twice and flared from her breasts down, which she didn’t think was particularly attractive. Wondering if they’d decided covering more of her would reduce temptation, or if it was a none too subtle way of pointing out that she was gaining weight, or if it was just made from a really strange shaped animal, Sarah looked the thing over doubtfully after

she’d put it on, trying to think of something nice to say about it. “This was … so thoughtful!” she said, forcing a smile. “And the leather’s so soft! And it’s so … roomy.” A frown flickered over Teagan’s face. He glanced at Chandler. Chandler studied her uncomfortably, looking somewhat deflated, though she wasn’t sure why since it was Teagan who’d made the thing. “It will be more comfortable,” he said slowly, “ … later.” Sarah frowned at that, looking down again. Actually, now that it seemed to her that they’d pointed it out, she thought she might have put on a little weight. It was hard to say when all she had to wear was the shapeless sarong. If she’d been allowed to have her jeans, which Chandler had hidden somewhere, she would know for certain. Deciding after a moment that it was probably just swelling, annoyed at the thought that they’d noticed something so insignificant, and at the same time feeling defensive since she could hardly be expected not to put on a little weight when she didn’t get the chance to exercise, she thanked Teagan for his thoughtfulness a little stiffly. They ate their breakfast in uncomfortable silence. Sarah felt bad about it even though she was more than a little miffed at the subtle insult. Despite her preoccupation, though, she’d begun to feel downright paranoid about the way Teagan and Chandler, and even Aydin, kept glancing uncomfortably at one another as if there was something nagging at them when Chandler redirected her thoughts. “They will begin harvesting tomorrow,” he announced as they finished eating, studying Sarah speculatively. “At harvest time, we are most vulnerable, so it is something we strive to accomplish as quickly as possible, and everyone helps with harvest … except for the women who are nearing their time.” Sarah lifted her brows at him. “Their time?” she echoed. “The time of their lying in.” Sarah blinked at Teagan, still all at sea. “The time of the birthing of their young,” Chandler clarified. “Oh!” Sarah said, nodding, then smiled wryly. “Guess they don’t want them ‘dropping’ them between the rows. Even the children?” “Yes. Aydin will be helping this year.” Sarah smiled a little thinly. It wasn’t that she thought Aydin ought not to, not on the grounds of his illness, anyway. She still didn’t like the idea that he would be so exposed, even if the fields were in the most secure location. A raid at such a time would trap them out in the open, and the safe box Chandler had built to hide the child in would be useless. Beyond that, she recalled abruptly that the elder had said that they had to take her back before the tribe moved to the high ground where their city lay and they would be leaving after harvest. It didn’t seem possible, after living with them all this time, becoming so used to being with them, that she was looking at a time, very near, when she wouldn’t be able to see them at all—would never see any of them anymore. A lump of misery formed in her throat at the thought. “You should help, as well.” The comment startled her out of her dark thoughts. “I don’t mind,” she said slowly, “but do you think it would really be a good idea? I mean, considering how they

feel about me?” “They will be more accepting if they see that you are willing to earn your keep,” Teagan said firmly, “willing to labor alongside of everyone else to bring in the harvest so critical to us if we are not to go hungry during the lean months.” Sarah frowned, wondering why it was even necessary to convince them of that under the circumstances, but she could see his point in so far as ‘earning her keep’. The food they ate came from the common stores. She’d been living on the fruits of everyone else’s labors for weeks. She could see where that might cause some resentment since they hadn’t wanted her in their village to start with. Maybe helping with harvest would make things easier for Teagan, Chandler, and Aydin once she’d left? She readily agreed, although she had mixed feelings about it. She was actually looking forward to getting out, even though hard experience had taught her harvesting was backbreaking work without machines to do the heavy work. It wasn’t going to be fun anyway to have to work alongside people that disliked her so much, but they’d be working. Surely that wouldn’t leave a lot of time to glare at her, and she’d be busy herself. She could ignore it. Between her preoccupation with the knowledge that she would have to leave soon and her struggle not to think about the things that kept creeping into her mind, the day seemed to fly by faster than usual. As tired as she was from all of the unaccustomed ‘exercise’ she’d been getting with Teagan and Chandler, she’d actually been looking forward to bedtime. Chandler and Teagan, she admitted wryly to herself, weren’t the only ones who felt a need to try to ‘store up’ intimacy. As annoying as the thought had been when she’d considered that was what they thought they were doing, the realization that she could count the days until she left made her reluctant to miss any opportunity for intimacy. Chandler disappointed her. Pointing out that they would have to rise at dawn and work until dusk, he merely spooned with her. He did the oddest thing, though, as they lay in the dark drifting toward sleep. He stroked a hand slowly and rhythmically along her abdomen—not her breasts, not her sex, her belly. Every time he reached the lowest point, and, she thought he would begin to stroke her mound, he skated his hand upward until it was just beneath her breasts, and every time she thought he would lift his hand to massage her aching breasts, he would start down again. Mildly irritated, she still found it oddly soothing and eventually drifted to sleep because she was actually so sated after weeks of sex she hadn’t had nearly as much interest in having sex as she’d had in using it for the connection between them.

Chapter Fifteen Everyone stared at the four of them as Sarah, surrounded by Teagan, Chandler, and Aydin, made their way to the fields. She was so preoccupied with pretending she was unaware of the hostile stares that it wasn’t until they’d reached the fields that it dawned on her that they’d formed a barrier around her, Teagan and Chandler on either side of her, and Aydin leading the way, but Aydin didn’t dash ahead. He stayed as close to her as the others. Their thoughtfulness warmed her, although it made her a little uneasy, too, to think they felt it necessary. She began to think once they arrived at the fields, though, that it wasn’t so much that they’d felt it necessary to guard her as it was that they’d been sending a ‘message’. She was under their protection, and they took their responsibility seriously. Aydin stayed close. Once they’d reached the fields, Teagan and Chandler joined a group of men who’d transformed into their centaur forms to pull the two wheeled carts that had confused her when she’d first seen them. She knew now, of course, that they were centaurs and also that they weren’t exactly nomadic as she’d first supposed. They didn’t move around exhausting the resources in first one area and then another. They ‘retired’ from their city during the growing season to plant and raise their crops in the more fertile valley. It would’ve made more sense to her to move the city to the valley, but she supposed they had their reasons for doing things the way they did. People usually did. Just because she hadn’t figured it out it didn’t follow that it wasn’t logical and reasonable to them. She hadn’t gotten close enough to the fields to study the crops. For a little while, she was interested enough in examining the strange vegetables they were collecting to ignore the discomfort of bending and straightening over and over. Long before they broke to eat the meal that had been cooked in huge pots over fires built near the field, though, she’d begun to feel the strain in her back and shoulders, and her hands were starting to get sore. Rubbing her back absently, she settled under a tree to eat her food, distancing herself a little from the villagers, although she tried not to make it too obvious that she wasn’t comfortable ‘rubbing’ elbows with them. Aydin sat with her naturally enough since he’d followed her step for step all day, picking alongside her. She was pleased, though, when Teagan and Chandler joined them. “Your back is hurting?” Teagan asked almost causally. Sarah smiled at him ruefully. “It’s been a while since I did any gardening. When I was a little girl, my mother always kept a large garden.” She thought it over. “Actually a huge garden. I never could figure out why she was determined to have such a huge garden, but I suppose it was because her parents always had. We didn’t need that much. We usually ate fresh vegetables until they were running out of our ears, then canned shelves full, and packed a huge freezer, and still ended up hauling basketfuls to our

neighbors.” She chuckled. “Everybody did the same thing, now that I think about it. They used to say ‘lock your doors when you park the car’ otherwise the seats will be full of melons and squash and beans when you get back! “Diana and I used to dread the harvest because, once we started, we knew we’d be picking and canning and blanching for weeks. We didn’t even have a garden for years after mother died, but we started planting a small kitchen garden again a few years ago … just big enough to grow the little we need and actually enjoy the gardening.” Aydin frowned. “If you did not make a big garden, where did you get food?” Sarah studied it over before answering. “It’s different where I come from. A lot of people still farm on a small scale, sort of like me and Diana, but companies own most of the farm land—businesses.” When Aydin still looked confused, she wracked her brain and finally recalled that he’d said Teagan and Chandler were artisans. “People who mostly grow so that they can sell to other people. One company might own a dozen fields like this one or even bigger. They grow the food, sell it to the grocers, and then people just go to the stores to buy what they want or need.” She could see he understood the concept but was still confused. “How could a few people grow enough to do that?” “They hire farm workers, and they have big machines that do a lot of the work.” She was still trying to explain what a machine was when they were called back to the fields. It was like opening a flood gate. Once Aydin’s curiosity had been thoroughly aroused by the discovery that Sarah’s world was so different, he pelted her with one question after another. She actually welcomed it. For one thing, it made the work easier when her mind was occupied and not just her hands. For another, it gave her an opportunity to learn about Aydin’s world, and his people, without actually having to ask. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been curious, but considering she’d been accused of spying she hadn’t wanted to ask even when Teagan and Chandler had unbent toward her enough that she might otherwise have been comfortable probing. She’d put together a lot of it in her mind from the few tidbits she had been told and her own observations, but it was nice to have confirmation on the things she’d figured out for herself and helpful to be corrected on the things she’d figured out wrong. She supposed it was her preoccupation with Aydin, but it was a while before she noticed something that puzzled her. She wasn’t the only one of the women wearing such an ill-fitted sarong. Although most of them wore something similar to the sarong she’d had before, here and there she happened to see one or two others who had to struggle with the long, flaring ‘skirt’ she was having so much trouble with. Not that she was going to object to the fact that the longer piece prevented her from having to worry about exposing her ass when she bent over, but the thing was long enough that bending down required that she move carefully to keep from stepping on the damned thing so that her boobs popped out the top when she straightened. She wondered a little irritably at first if she’d been given an ‘old lady’s’ sarong. She didn’t see any of the older women wearing the long version, though, and after a while she decided with a touch of both amusement and pleasure, that Teagan had done it to make sure nobody saw his ‘stuff’.

She didn’t mind him feeling a little possessive, as long as he didn’t start fighting with his brother about it, although they seemed to determine to keep things ‘even’ when it came to fucking her. She hadn’t noticed any real tension between them, anyway. Oddly enough, most of the women she saw with the long sarong looked pregnant. Peculiar. She supposed it made sense, though. They’d probably need the extra fabric to cover them before they were done. Overall, Sarah thought the day turned out to be a lot better than she’d anticipated it would be. She was more tired than she’d expected to be—trying to brace oneself for hard work just didn’t really prepare one for the challenge except perhaps mentally. No one had attacked her either verbally or physically, though. In fact, although they hadn’t actually smiled, she’d caught a couple of looks that had seemed almost completely neutral. Instead of going directly back to the pavilion at the end of the day, the four of them headed toward the river to bathe. Aydin nearly gave her heart failure when he sailed toward the riverbank and bounded in. Clutching her hand to heart, she ran to the edge to look over. Anger replaced her fright when she saw that he was swimming effortlessly. She was tempted to yell at him for scaring her, but it dawned on her that he hadn’t done it to frighten her, and neither Teagan nor Chandler had seemed the least bit perturbed. Not that men didn’t generally take pretty much everything in stride when it came to their children! It was at that point that she made an uncomfortable discovery. Although they’d gone to their ‘usual’ spot, the majority of the villagers had taken to the river to bathe not far from where they were—and not one of them had a stitch on! Men, women, and children had all piled naked into the water! Teagan and Chandler, dropping their sarongs without any self-consciousness, waded into the water, as well. Sarah stood on the bank debating. It dawned on her that she’d never considered herself a prude, and yet she was the only one the least bit self-conscious about nudity. Because decency, or lack of it, was a state of mind, she realized finally. They were bathing, not swimming for recreation, not frolicking in immoral depravity. She still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of being naked around children, but finally, since she needed a bath, and, she thought her reluctance to get undressed made her look judgmental, she dropped her sarong and dove in as quickly as she could. Aydin was gaping at her when she surfaced. He frowned. “You scared me!” he said accusingly. “I thought that you would drown.” Surprised since she’d just had similar thoughts, she gaped back at him. “Why would you think I’d dive in if I couldn’t swim?” He frowned and shrugged. “I did not think a person could swim in that form.” Sarah blinked at him, more stunned by that remark than she had been by his initial reaction. “Why would you think that?” Again, he shrugged, this time more uncomfortably. “The hoonans do not know how to swim. We do not swim in that form. I was always told that it could not be done

because the form was not made for swimming.” Sarah turned and glanced at Teagan and Chandler. Neither one of them had ever remarked on her ability to swim, but then Chandler, she realized, was the only who’d ever seen her swim, and he’d had other things on his mind at the time. “Oh really?” she said as she turned to Aydin again. “Watch this!” Sucking in a deep breath, she ducked beneath the water and swam toward the center of the river, surfacing several yards beyond him. He caught sight of her as she shoved her hair from her face. His expression was priceless. So was Teagan’s. He didn’t look especially pleased to see she was so far away. For that matter, Chandler didn’t. “Can you only swim under the water then?” Aydin called out to her. She didn’t particularly want to swim on the surface when she was bare assed naked. Shrugging it off when she decided she was far enough away they couldn’t really see her that well, she flipped onto her back and did the backstroke until she was near the center of the river and stopped to tread water again. “You are too near the current!” Teagan said, anger threading his voice. She was tempted to show him she could cross the current and swim to the other side, but she was tired. She wasn’t going to take a stupid risk just to show off. Nodding, she flipped onto her stomach and did the breast stroke heading back. Aydin stared at her as if she was a two headed freak. Admiration was mixed with his shock, however. “Are you a mermaid?” he asked in an awed whisper. The question drew a surprised chuckle from her. “Of course not, silly!” she said teasingly, backpedaling with her arms and lifting one leg to poke her toes above the surface and wiggle them at him. “Did you see that, Papa?” Adyin asked unnecessarily, turning to look at Teagan. Teagan did not look pleased. “Yes,” he responded grimly. “We all saw.” The disapproval in his voice annoyed her, but the comment made her look around and she discovered he was right. She’d had a far larger audience than she’d thought she had. “There’s something wrong with me being able to swim?” “Hoonan’s can not swim,” Aydin said simply. “This is why we always camp with the river to our backs.” “Well, I’m not one of them!” Sarah said crossly. “We know this,” Chandler said almost soothingly as he moved up behind her and slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her back against his chest. “They did not accept this before, though. Mayhap now they will begin to look hard enough to see that there are other differences.” Sarah tipped her head to look at him searchingly at that comment. She didn’t believe it, and she could see he didn’t really believe it himself, but that didn’t matter as much as the fact that he seemed to be saying he didn’t look at her that way anymore. She smiled up at him tentatively. Slipping his hand from her waist to splay it over her belly, he brushed a light kiss across her forehead and released her. “I will turn you over my knee and warm your backside with my hand if you swim so far out again,” he growled near her ear before he turned away and began to wade back toward the shore. Sarah turned to stare at him in stunned disbelief.

“Come, Aydin,” he called over his shoulder. “And I will spank your backside when he is done,” Teagan growled as he came up behind her. Sarah turned to give him an indignant look. He glared back at her. “I mean it, Sarah,” he growled. “You nearly scared the life out of me. The current is swift and dangerous.” She stared at his back speculatively as he stalked past her, feeling a good bit of her indignation dissolve as it dawned on her they’d been worried about her. Not that she was going to take a spanking! Unless of course it was a prelude to wild sex. It probably wasn’t one of her brighter impulses, but she yielded to the imp of mischief before she had time to think better of it. Ducking beneath the water, she grabbed Teagan’s cock and gave it a playful yank as she went by. She turned to see his reaction when she surfaced. He was gaping at her in stunned shock, and mischievous laughter erupted from her before she could stop it. The laugh, apparently, was the last straw. He started toward her with intent in his eyes. Uttering a squawk of alarm, Sarah plowed toward the riverbank as fast as she could. She might have escaped if she hadn’t been looking back to see how quickly Teagan was gaining on her. Unfortunately, she slammed into a wall—Chandler. Teagan halted behind her. Biting her lip, Sarah looked from one to the other, trying to look contrite and innocent at the same time. “That was you!” Teagan growled accusingly. “What?” Sarah asked, trying to pretend she had no idea what he was talking about. “That grabbed … that yanked ….” Sarah uttered a snort of laughter. “What did she yank, Papa?” Aydin piped up with interest. Sarah sent Teagan a complacent smile. He glared down at her a moment before a reluctant grin dawned. “I will make you rue that trick later,” he promised in a low growl. Leaning down, he picked up the sarong she’d dropped and wrapped it around her. Surprised, but relieved because she’d already begun to worry about how she was going to preserve any modesty at all if both of them moved away at once, Sarah stood obediently still as he folded it around her back to front and then fastened the pin to hold it together. Aydin, thankfully, had moved away, either to pout because ‘Papa’ hadn’t told him what was going on or, maybe, out of courtesy. Maybe that was how they handled nakedness? They were taught not to stare? What a concept! She’d already started to move away when Teagan tweaked one of her nipples. He chuckled when she whirled to gape at him. Chandler, who’d merely observed the byplay, shook his head at both of them. Despite Teagan’s promise, he merely nodded at Chandler and Sarah when they reached his pavilion, hooked an arm around Aydin, and led him inside. Settling a hand on her waist, Chandler led her onward to his pavilion. Pleasantly relaxed from the swim

after the hard day’s labor, Sarah made short work of her preparations for bed and headed to the pallet. Chandler dimmed the single lamp he’d lit upon entering and settled beside her, drawing her up against his length. For a few minutes he merely held her against him, then he began to stroke his hand over her stomach. More than half asleep already, Sarah roused slightly, wondering if he intended to do anything with the erection he had wedged in the cleft of her ass or if he planned to ignore it again. He lifted his head to nuzzle his face along the side of her neck. “You are tired?” “Mmm,” she responded non-committally. “This is yes? Or no?” “Exhausted,” she finally replied. He went back to stroking her belly. “Are you going to use that thing for something besides propping my ass cheeks open?” Sarah asked teasingly after a few moments. The question startled him. She could tell by the jolt that went through him and his sudden stillness. Shifting onto her back she looked up at him in the dim light from the single lantern. “I’m not that tired.” His gaze flickered over her face. Reaching for the pin, she unfastened it and opened the sarong in invitation. His gaze skimmed downward from her face down her length. Lifting a hand, he cupped one breast, massaging it. “Tell me what I can do to give you pleasure,” he murmured huskily.

Chapter Sixteen Sarah looked at Chandler in surprise. “Everything you do gives me pleasure.” Conflicting emotions flickered in his eyes—surprise, desire, doubt, pleasure. He lowered his head after a moment and took the turgid tip of the breast he’d been fondling into his mouth. A mixture of pain and pleasure jolted through her as he sucked at the tip, teasing it with his tongue. Briefly, surprise registered in her mind that her nipple was so tender, though why she was surprised considering how thoroughly Teagan and Chandler had familiarized themselves with her body was beyond her. Dismissing it with the reflection that she just hadn’t noticed before, she clutched him to her breast, stroking her fingers through his silky blonde hair as he finessed first one and then the other tip until heat coiled tightly in her belly and anticipation threaded her veins with fire. Lifting his head, he studied her face for a prolonged moment and then began to weave a trail of nibbling kisses down between her breasts along the center of her body until he reached her belly. Mmm, she thought as he lingered there, teasing her by nuzzling his face against her belly, Teagan told him how much I like that. He lifted his head to stare up at her face again and finally looked down to study her mound, stroking the bright red thatch she’d always hated as if he was fascinated with the springy curls. She parted her thighs willingly when he pushed at them. He shifted over her, fitting his hips between hers and, briefly, disappointment filled her. She forgot it in the next moment as he shifted over her, catching himself on his elbows and scooping his lower arms beneath her shoulders to lift her for the caress of his lips. She tipped her head back to give him access as he explored her throat and made his way to her lips. Maybe, she thought a little dizzily, he’ll get back to that? She was lightheaded by the time he broke the kiss, and she’d completely forgotten she’d even wanted him to kiss her nether lips. He paced himself, driving her crazy with the slow, thoroughness of each caress, showering nipping kisses along her face and throat, her breasts and belly, until she felt feverish with the need churning in her to feel him inside of her. “Chandler!” she gasped finally, in desperation, in fevered, drunken need. “Now! Please!” He pushed inside of her then, delving her passage with the same restraint that had been driving her crazy since he’d begun. She reached down to dig her fingers into the cheeks of his buttocks, pulling at him to urge him deeper, arching to meet him when he increased his pace until he set the rhythm she demanded and brought her to fulfillment. She arched her head back as the first shockwave went through, groaning. “Oh, Chandler! That feels so good!” A shudder went through him. She heard him grinding his teeth, and then he groaned harshly as he lost control and followed her into ecstasy. Sated, she sank blissfully toward sleep, rousing only slightly as he lifted away

from her and settled beside her again. She smiled faintly as he nuzzled his face against hers. “That was nice,” she murmured drunkenly. Light was filtering into the pavilion when she rose toward consciousness again. She muttered irritably when she felt Chandler roll away from her, snuggling deeper into the pallet. All she really wanted to do was go back to sleep, but the splash of water in the privy told her that was not to be. Still more than half asleep, she stumbled in the direction of the privy when she heard Chandler emerge, tangling briefly in the curtains before she managed to fight her way through. She was almost more tired, she thought glumly, than she’d been before she’d gone to sleep. Correction, she was more tired. She struggled to look more alert when she noticed Teagan and Chandler studying her over breakfast, opening her grainy eyes a little wider and then blinking them at the burn that resulted. “You are still tired,” Teagan observed, sending Chandler a look that was almost accusing. Catching the look, Sarah yawned. “Too much sleep,” she muttered when she could. “I’ll wash my face again.” “You should rest today,” Chandler said when she came out again. Sarah blinked at him. “God! After one day in the fields! I’m not such a wimp! It’s just early, and, really, I think I just slept too much. That’s almost worse than not getting enough sleep.” To prove her point, she led the way to the fields, or tried at least. Teagan and Chandler’s long legs weren’t easy to outstrip. Poor little Aydin, looking almost as bleary eyed as she did, had to trot to keep up. She felt better once she’d started to work. That lasted right up until the noon meal, or almost. She began to feel weak and just a little queasy right about the time her stomach told her it was running on empty. It was hard to tell whether she was merely hungry to the point of nausea, or just queasy. Struggling to ignore it, she paused to glance toward the cooks, hoping they would be calling everyone to eat shortly, and then glanced up at the sky to try to determine the time of day. It must be close to time to stop to eat, she told herself. Indigestion from eating so early and going straight to work? She felt progressively worse until she began to think she just had to sit down, or better, lie down. Everyone would think she was sandbagging, she told herself. Just a few more minutes and everyone would stop to eat. She’d feel better as soon as she ate something. Relief flickered through her when she heard the call. Letting out a sigh, she straightened and turned to follow the other pickers down the row. Darkness began to close in on her, however, before she’d managed more than a handful of steps. She stopped, trying to will it away, struggling against the sense that she was getting heavier and heavier. “Aydin?” she gasped uncertainly, groping blindly for him when the tiny dot of sight narrowed to nothingness. A sense of profound disorientation washed through her when she opened her eyes and saw that she was staring up at the sky and not even the unobstructed view of the sky

above the field. The thick canopy of a tree blocked all but small patches of blue. Three faces swam into focus. “What happened?” she croaked, closing her eyes again and lifting a hand to her pounding head. “You fell down,” Aydin said. Sarah frowned, trying to remember. “She doesn’t look pregnant to me,” said an all too familiar feminine voice derisively. Sarah’s eyes flew open. The view that time was of the underside of Teagan’s and Chandler’s chins as they glared at someone beyond her view. She struggled to sit up, but Teagan planted a palm in the middle of her chest and held her down. “No one asked for your opinion, Chara!” Chandler ground out. “Mind your own affairs!” Teagan snarled at almost the same moment. “Bitch,” Aydin muttered under his breath. “What opinion? What did she say?” Sarah demanded, or tried. She discovered it still took such an effort to speak that her questions emerged as a weak gasp. “Go fetch her something to drink,” Teagan told Aydin sharply. Sarah was about to inform him that she was more hungry than thirsty. The thought of food alone seemed enough to produce a volcano in her stomach, however. Shoving Teagan’s hand away, she sat up abruptly and threw up—all over Chara, who didn’t leap back quickly enough. “Oh god!” Sarah exclaimed when she’d emptied her stomach. “Just let me die!” “Is she dying?” Aydin whimpered. “She is ill with the babe,” said another feminine voice close by. “Go away and leave her be. She will be fine in a few moments.” “That will be a memory to live on in their minds,” Sarah muttered sickly. “Are they gone?” Amusement threaded the motherly voice. “They were routed the moment you emptied your stomach. Men have no stomach for these things.” Sarah opened her eyes to discover an older woman leaning over her. “Adyin fetched some water for you. If you feel like sitting up now, you can rinse the nasty taste from your mouth.” Sarah levered herself up cautiously and took the mug offered. “Did I throw up all over everybody?” she asked miserably when she’d rinsed her mouth and spat in the dirt. Amusement lit the woman’s eyes. “Only Chara—serves the vindictive bitch right! She is down at the river bathing now. I expect you should wait until she leaves before you consider going there.” Sarah smiled at the woman weakly. “I don’t know what came over me. It was so sudden! Thank you.” The woman shrugged. “Aydin brought the water.” “For being kind to me.” The woman looked a little embarrassed. “I think if you ate a little something it would help your feelings.” “I think if I moved away from the stench I’d feel a lot better,” Sarah retorted. “There is that.” The woman grasped her arm as Sarah struggled to get up, steadying her. She’d only walked a few steps when Teagan descended upon her. Scooping her

up into his arms, he thanked the woman politely for her help and strode toward the river. Still feeling too wrung out to be as embarrassed as she thought she ought to be, Sarah looped her arms around Teagan’s neck and dropped her head to his shoulder. “Why did you not say that you were ill?” he asked her after a moment. “Because I wasn’t,” Sarah retorted somewhat testily. “I felt fine, and then I didn’t.” He waded into the water with her when they reached the river, finally setting her on her feet. Wetting his hands, he stroked his damp palms over her face—washed her face. She didn’t want to think about why he was washing her face. “You are as pale as death … still,” he said after a moment. “The cool water feels good,” she said somewhat placatingly. “I do not know why it would. Your skin is not hot. It is far too cool.” She felt the abrupt urge to cry descend over her. She’d barfed … right in front of Teagan and Chandler! Could she possibly have done anything more disgusting? She sniffed at the sting in her nose. “I’m alright. I think I’m just hungry.” “You are certainly empty,” Teagan retorted, amusement threading his voice. “I am not at certain that you should eat again so soon.” Sarah uttered a snorting noise that was half laugh and half sob. “I’m so sorry!” she wailed. Teagan released a ragged breath, wrapping his arms around her when she dropped her forehead to his chest. “I am not. The look on Chara’s face when you threw up your breakfast all over her feet was priceless,” he said chuckling. Sarah uttered a watery laugh and sniffed again. He smoothed his hands over her hair and finally framed her face with his palms, trying to tip her face up. When she refused, he ducked down to look at her. “You are feeling better now?” Sniffing again, Sarah nodded, and he walked her back to the shore. Chandler and Adyin, she discovered, were waiting beneath a shade tree not far from the bank with plates of food. Her stomach lurched instantly, but she was pretty certain that time it was from abject emptiness. Still feeling uncomfortable, she studied her dripping sarong. “I’ve wet it. It’ll shrink like the other one now.” “I will make you another,” Teagan said promptly. “Better wet than having smelly stuff all over it,” Aydin chimed in helpfully. Sarah sent him a resentful glance, but since she discovered Chandler and Teagan were already glaring at him balefully, she felt her own irritation vanish. “So true,” she said ruefully. After considering her options, she decided to settle at a little distance from the others—just in case. She ate cautiously when Chandler handed her a plate of stew, waiting until she was sure it would stay down before she ate a little more. The stew, she decided, was a little too rich to risk eating much of it, however, and she focused mostly on eating the bread that came with it and drinking the water. She couldn’t help but notice that everyone watched her warily. “Teagan will take you back to the pavilion to rest,” Chandler said when she’d set her plate aside. Sarah looked at him for the first time. “I’m alright now. I don’t need to rest.” His lips tightened. “No one will expect more from you when you are obviously

ill.” “I’m not sick. I just publicly humiliated myself by barfing all over everything. I’m fine now. And Teagan would have to stay with me, right? Which would be two people short in the harvesting, not just one.” “You fainted before that,” Teagan reminded her. “I just felt bad because I was hot, thirsty, and hungry. I’m fine now,” she said determinedly. Teagan and Chandler exchanged a look. “You are a stubborn woman,” Teagan said irritably. Sarah smiled faintly. “I’ve been told that once or twice. If I start to feel bad again, I’ll stop to rest, alright?” They didn’t seem particularly satisfied with that, but they didn’t argue further. Still feeling a little weak and shaky, Sarah followed them back to the field and resumed work. Unlike earlier, the vague sense of weakness passed, to her relief. It wasn’t until it did that her focus shifted from her physical discomfort to the reason behind it. She wasn’t sick. She didn’t feel anything that suggested that she was or that she was coming down with an illness. She couldn’t fathom why she’d just abruptly passed out anymore than she could understand what had made her throw up. She’d been hot, thirsty, and hungry plenty of times and not had either of those violent reactions. It was mid-way through the afternoon before her rambling thoughts finally returned to the first few minutes after she’d come around from her swoon. Chara had said she didn’t look pregnant and the other woman, who’d never even told her who she was, had said that she was ‘sick with the babe’. Why would they think she was pregnant, she wondered with a mixture of disbelief and horror? Because all of the other women dressed as she was dressed were. Teagan had fashioned a maternity smock for her! As soon as that thought congealed in her brain she remembered the way he and Chandler had looked at her so expectantly when she’d first put it on. From there her memory leapt to the way they’d both developed an absolute fascination with her belly. Anger warred with her disbelief. Either they knew they’d gotten her pregnant, or they’d just plotted it and hoped they were right! The assholes! They’d kept her so busy fucking her brains out she’d been too distracted to keep up with the days! Resisting the urge to stalk from the field and confront them, she struggled to calm herself and figure out if it could possibly be true. It didn’t take a great deal of figuring, though. She hadn’t had a period since they’d taken her, since long before that, and she’d been off her birth control for months, long enough to re-establish a predictable cycle. She’d been here for weeks! A month at the very least, possibly a month and a half. She couldn’t think straight once the certainty settled in her mind that it wasn’t just everyone else that thought she was pregnant. She was pregnant! No wonder she’d fainted and then thrown up! She shook the thought off, struggling for calm reflection. She could just be late. She’d gone through some fairly traumatic events. That was enough to throw her cycle off.

Lie to yourself a while longer, she thought angrily! She was still angry when they finally left the field for the day, but she’d had time to consider that, as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t lay the blame entirely at their door—maybe not at all. She hadn’t exactly resisted. And she’d remembered at one point that she was off her damned birth control and should be careful. She’d willfully put it from her mind because it wasn’t convenient to remember it, because she’d wanted to have sex with them and she hadn’t wanted to think about the possible consequences. Well, she was going to have plenty of time to kick herself over that! “I’m pregnant!” she announced baldly when they reached the river to bathe. Teagan, Chandler, and Aydin all stopped abruptly in their tracks and turned to stare at her blankly for several moments. The three exchanged glances and then looked at her again. Teagan and Chandler looked like they were trying to decide how to react. Aydin beamed at her. She frowned at him, and his smile vanished. Chandler scrubbed a hand over his face—she suspected to wipe the grin off of it—and then shifted uncomfortably. “You are certain?” he asked finally. She sent him a drop dead look and plucked at her sarong significantly before transferring her accusing gaze to Teagan. He cleared his throat. “When do you think you will have your lying in?” “Why don’t you tell me since you planned it?” she said testily. Both men blinked at her before exchanging another glance. “You are not pleased,” Chandler said finally. Sarah frowned, considering it now that he put it like that. “Are you?” she asked cautiously. Chandler and Teagan relaxed fractionally. “We are pleased if you are pleased,” Teagan said warily. Sarah released a huff of breath and sat down. The truth was she didn’t know how she felt about it. She was still reeling with shock. She looked up at them. “You really are pleased?” she asked doubtfully. “I am pleased,” Adyin said. “I will have a brother—or a cousin.” Sarah reddened. So much for thinking the kid didn’t know everything that was going on! She couldn’t help but smile, however, and it seemed the moment she did happiness flowed all the way through her. She was happy about the baby—she was pretty sure. She’d made a hell of a mess of things, though, she realized, feeling her smile falter. She didn’t even know herself whether Teagan or Chandler was the father. She supposed it didn’t matter. It was hers, and they didn’t seem to care which of them had fathered the baby. What was she going to do, though? The elder had said they had to take her home when the harvest was in, and they were in the midst of harvest now. She wanted to go home, if it came to that. She missed her sister, and she missed her own world. At the same time, it almost seemed to crush the breath from her lungs to think of leaving Chandler and Teagan and Adyin. And the baby was half centaur! How could she have a half centaur baby in her own world? What if it looked like its father? How could she have a half centaur baby, she wondered in sudden horror?

She couldn’t, not naturally. She might be able to carry it. Women carried multiple children, but she’d never be able to deliver it on her own. It would have to be taken, and that meant it wouldn’t be a secret, couldn’t be kept a secret. It was a nightmare! She looked at Teagan and Chandler forlornly, feeling hopeless and scared and unable even to bring herself to voice any of her fears. She couldn’t have even if she’d wanted to with ‘little ears’ staring at her so expectantly. How in the world anyone who had one child ever managed to have another was beyond her! She adored Aydin, but she couldn’t move without falling over him, and he was so busy he was always overhearing things he shouldn’t. “Adyin,” Teagan said, almost as if he’d read her thoughts. “Go and stay with your Aunt Matilda. I will come for you in a few minutes.” Sarah glanced from Teagan to Aydin. Aydin looked stunned at first, and then sulky, but he didn’t argue with his father. Teagan stood watching him until he’d reached the edge of the village and finally settled beside Sarah. Chandler settled on her other side. “Tell me why you are troubled,” Chandler said gruffly. Sarah flicked a glance at him and dragged in a shuddering breath. “I’m scared,” she muttered after a moment. Teagan hooked a hand beneath her chin and tipped her face up to study it. “My Sarah?” he asked teasingly. “You are not afraid of anything.” She swallowed convulsively. “I’ve never had a baby. It’s scary,” she muttered, unwilling to tell him why the thought of this baby in particular scared her when they had always been so quick to take offense. He seemed to sense it anyway. “We would not risk anything as precious to us as you, Sarah,” Teagan said. “A babe conceived in this form as we are now will be borne in this form.” Sarah’s eyes widened with a mixture of hope and doubt. She’d seen one child in human form, but she’d thought it must be human. It dawned on her abruptly that the one time Chandler had had sex with her in his centaur form he’d withdrawn before he came. He’d told her it was because he didn’t want to risk giving her his baby—because she wasn’t worthy of it. She glanced at him sharply at that thought. He shifted closer, taking her hand, and she looked at him searchingly, wondering if he’d done it to protect her or because of what he’d said. “Is that why one of the children looks human?” Chandler looked down at the hand he was holding, toying with her fingers. “They can not manage the transformation until they are older. If they are born in centaur form they remain in that form until the time of change, when they leave childhood behind and become young adults. Most prefer to mate in their centaur forms, to form the bond in our true forms, but we are as often in this form and there are times when nature rules the heart and mind.” So he was saying it was lust? And Teagan that it was because she was precious to them, and they hadn’t wanted to risk impregnating her as centaurs? Did that mean they hadn’t set out to get her pregnant, she wondered? Teagan settled a palm on her belly, studying the faint mound beneath is palm. “This child is of the people and has a place among them as his birth right—his mother, also.”

Chapter Seventeen Sarah stared at him when he lifted his head to study her, trying to read something in his expression that would tell her how he felt about that. It eased some of her fears to hear it, to know that she didn’t have to worry about her child being accepted in the place where he belonged. But he wouldn’t really be accepted any more than Teagan had been. It was still better than what he would have to face on her world. “If you’d had a choice, Teagan, would you have chosen to be born, knowing you would never be completely accepted?” He looked taken aback for a moment, but then he frowned, thinking it over. “In truth, there were times when I questioned that, but I had the love of my brother and that made the worst of things bearable. Even if I did not love his mother, I would love this child … just as I love Aydin.” Sarah blushed, squirming uncomfortably, but still breathless that he’d said he loved her. “You love me?” she asked, needing confirmation that she’d heard him right. His face darkened, but he grinned. Pushing her to her back, he settled on his side facing her. “I have loved you exhaustively only to keep you here with me,” he said teasingly. “Is that not proof enough for you?” If he’d considered his lustful interest love, she didn’t know why he’d persisted in calling it fucking, she thought irritably, wondering if she could really accept that ‘token’ as proof of his love. “It may not be yours,” she pointed out hesitantly. “It is ours,” Chandler said emphatically. “We could not be certain that only one of us could ensure that you were pregnant before harvest, and we did not want to risk it. In any case, Teagan would not let me have you all to myself. If there is another for us, we will be certain to do it properly.” Sarah frowned at him, but she couldn’t dredge up any anger. “I haven’t had this one yet!” Chandler shrugged. “Stay with us, Sarah. We will have many years to discuss the possibility of another.” Sarah smiled at him tentatively. “You want me to stay?” “We are both exhausted with trying to convince you,” he retorted, smiling faintly as he caressed her cheek. “I am surprised each time that there is still seed left to spill.” Sarah chuckled. “Well, that’s a relief! I’d begun to think you were both completely insatiable and to wonder if I could handle it!” Amusement gleamed in Chandler’s eyes. “It is hard work—making a baby.” Sarah smiled at him, feeling a sudden surge of happiness. It took a nose dive in the next instant. “My sister! I can’t just not go back! I couldn’t do that to her.” Chandler and Teagan exchanged a frowning glance. “We know the way, Sarah. I could take a message to her, or Chandler could.” He paused, an expression of reluctance settling on his features. “Or we could take you to visit her.” “Or she could come to visit me!” She couldn’t help but notice they both slumped with relief.

“She could,” Teagan said more enthusiastically. Sarah frowned, considering it. “She’s bound to be suspicious with only a note from me, but if one of you took it to her and offered to bring her to see me then I could explain everything and she could see that I’m fine.” She studied her reluctance to go herself and realized it was partly because she didn’t want to leave Adyin to do so, but mostly because of a craven reluctance to bear the brunt of Diana’s anger once she realized what her sister had gotten herself in to. It would be easier to convince Diana to accept her decision if Diana could see that she was happy, she reasoned. “You should expect hostility,” she added warningly. Teagan and Chandler exchanged a speaking look. “You will stay with us?” “This isn’t just because Aydin wants a brother or a cousin, is it?” she asked doubtfully. Both men looked at her with almost identical expressions of annoyance and doubt. “We want you to stay because we love you—all of us,” Teagan said firmly. “Good! Then I’ll stay because I love you—and you—all of you! We should tell Aydin, since I suspect he had a lot to do with the plotting.” Chandler and Teagan exchanged a look. “I had thought that I would leave Adyin with his Aunt Matilda this night so that we could celebrate,” Teagan said slowly. Sarah lifted her brows at him, wondering who this mysterious Aunt Matilda was since she hadn’t heard the woman mentioned before. “You had?” Teagan glanced at Chandler, who nodded his head faintly in encouragement. “We had thought that you might show us three way.” Sarah stared at him for a moment in fascination before glancing at Chandler. A frisson of anticipation went through her. “Mmm,” she murmured thoughtfully. “I think you’re right. We should get some quality time in before I’m as big as a barn and logistics becomes a problem. You’re certain he’ll be alright with Aunt Matilda?” Teagan shrugged. “He is not fond of Matilda, but she will take good care of him as she did you today.” “That was Aunt Matilda?” She was inclined to like Matilda if for no other reason than the fact that she’d overcome her prejudice enough to treat her kindly in her distress—and also because she obviously didn’t like Chara any better than she did. They went down to the river to bathe together. Teagan left them briefly to check on Aydin as they headed back to the village, but rejoined them in his pavilion just as Chandler finished putting together a light meal. As hungry as Sarah was after the day’s labors, she found that her stomach was tied in knots at the prospect of being with both of them—alone, without the possibility of interruption or any anxiety that Adyin would see or hear anything he shouldn’t. She hoped the home Aydin had told her about was going to be a place big enough for walls and doors—with locks. Of course that wouldn’t prevent the scamp from standing outside the door with his eye to the keyhole, but it would beat the hell out of struggling for privacy in a tent! Neither Chandler nor Teagan seemed much interested in their food either. They ate in tense silence at first. “I will speak to the council members tomorrow,” Chandler said after a time and then glanced at Sarah. “It is only a formality. Regardless of what Elder Patten said, the council can not and will not refute our claims to the mother of a

child of the tribe. They will be expecting me and Teagan to do so since we have made it clear that we have bred a child on you and claim you as a part of our family.” It warmed Sarah to hear that and to realize that their attentiveness to her was their way of showing everyone how they felt about her. Wryly, she realized she’d sort of made a public announcement of her condition earlier. As embarrassing as it had been, though, she didn’t suppose anything short of ballooning out would have been as convincing, and since it was bound to be a while before she was showing maybe that was a good thing, regardless of how humiliating it had been for her? Almost as if some silent signal had passed between them, Chandler and Teagan set aside their plates and stood, pulling her to her feet when she’d set aside her own. She was trembling all over by the time the three of them had discarded their sarongs and settled together on the pallet, but with excitement not so much nerves. Alright, she was a little nervous, she mentally admitted as she found herself sandwiched between them. The nervousness vanished fairly quickly, though, as they began the ritual of exploration. Chandler dragged her against his length first, kissing her until she was floating in a sea of desire. By the time Teagan broke the kiss he bestowed on her next, she’d completely lost touch with the world, had no idea who the mouths and hands belonged to that caressed her until she was feverish and desperate for fulfillment. Turning to Teagan, she came up on her hands and knees. Grasping his cock in her hand, she stroked it as she worked her way down his body from his throat to his belly and finally took his engorged shaft into her mouth. He gasped, spearing his fingers into her hair and kneading her scalp as she alternately sucked at his flesh and took it deeply into her mouth. Chandler, either prompted by the suggestiveness of her position, or too feverish with his own needs to simply watch as she patiently worked to coax Teagan’s climax from him, moved behind her after watching for a time. Pushing her legs wide, he knelt between them, leaning over her to caress and pluck at her breasts. She groaned around Teagan’s flesh at the jolts of heated excitement that went through her. Teagan released a hiss of breath as the vibrations of her mouth traveled through him, stiffening. After teasing her nipples for a few moments, Chandler slipped his hand down to delve her cleft with his fingers, stroking her, teasing her clit so that her body leapt forward, swiftly climbing the ladder toward release. She groaned again at the jolts rippling through her, working more feverishly over Teagan’s cock as her own excitement grew. Removing his fingers from her, Chandler grasped her hips and fit the head of his cock into her opening, pressing relentlessly until the moisture gathered in her channel and his pressure combined to help him claim the full length of her passage. Pausing briefly as he began to set a rhythm, Sarah paced her own movements to match his, and they began to strive together toward release, feeding off of one another’s growing excitement. Sensing that Teagan was struggling to hold himself back, Sarah felt a hard surge of need and pressed her advantage, pulling on his flesh with the suction of her mouth with more determination. Abruptly, Teagan went rigid, releasing a low growl of effort. At almost the same instant, she felt the jerk of Chandler’s cock inside of her and knew he was teetering on the brink of release. The knowledge that both of them were so close sent her spiraling out of control. Goose bumps erupted all over her as the first spasm of

her climax rippled through her in an exquisite shockwave. Groaning, she pulled and sucked at Teagan almost frantically as the convulsions came harder, more rapidly. He let out a hiss almost of pain as his cock jerked in her mouth and his seed shot down her throat. Swallowing, she sucked on him greedily, as if she could pull his seed from him with the suction of her mouth. Chandler bent over her, jerking as he spilled his own seed into her. For many moments afterward, they stayed in a limp tangle. Finally, Chandler dropped beside her and pulled her down. Teagan had long since collapsed on his back, breathing gustily. He roused her slightly as he shifted downward to match his body to hers and kissed her. “You said that was one way,” he murmured teasingly. Sarah opened her eyes to study him with a mixture of amusement and annoyance before she twisted to look at Chandler. He looked back at her from beneath hooded eyes for a moment before he leaned down and kissed her shoulder. “I think we should explore this three way thoroughly,” he murmured. “It may take years.” “I am certain it will,” Teagan agreed. Sarah smiled sleepily at both of them. “When did you say we’d be heading home?”

The End