Dark Stallion

by Dark Stallion (lit)

  Except she knew they weren’t even close to ‘ordinary’ and this wasn’t home.

  So, could she trust her instincts? Should she accept that they were as trustworthy and exceptional as they seemed to be?

  She thought she did, but that didn’t help her any when it came to the situation she’d found herself in. If she was right and they were really good men, was it right to allow them to risk their lives for her?

  She couldn’t convince herself that it was or that it wasn’t something she could do anything about. She’d already tried to escape, though, and that hadn’t gotten her anywhere.

  Well, it had. She’d had a rousing good time with Aydin ‘punishing’ and ‘subduing’ her, more fun than she should’ve considering that it had been very, very bad of her to allow him to have sex with her—encourage him!—when she hadn’t known him more than a few hours!

  She would never have believed she would even be tempted to do something like that!

  Which meant that she was more powerfully attracted, to both men, than she’d ever been to any mortal man, or she’d dropped a few cards from her deck when she made the trip from her world to theirs.

  Maybe that was sort of the key to her uncharacteristic behavior and her inability to fully grasp the dangers, though? Maybe her mind simply hadn’t adjusted to this as reality? Maybe, it had even prompted deep, dark fantasies to surface that she’d kept locked away all these years and never acknowledged before?

  She thought it was possible and it was certainly easier to accept that nothing she’d done actually was uncharacteristic but rather suppressed. She supposed discovering herself in a place where no one knew her and none of the old rules applied had been a sort of liberating experience, particular since it didn’t have the feel of reality to her—yet.

  It was beginning to feel all too real, though.

  She didn’t believe Colwin had just made that stuff up, or that he’d exaggerated, despite the fact that he hadn’t seemed particularly perturbed about it. She thought it was more a matter of him accepting that that was the way things were—in his world. Hoonans were their enemies because they did horrible things to them whenever they caught them.

  It made her wonder how they could stand to look at her, believing as they did that she was one of the hoonans. She supposed she could see how they could have sex with her anyway, but only in the sense of punishment—rape and pillage—and they hadn’t treated her like that. Even Aydin, as angry as he’d been, had been careful with her, had given her as much pleasure as he’d taken.

  Was that why he’d pulled out, she wondered? Because he didn’t mind fucking a hoonan, but he didn’t want to spill his seed in one?

  Was there any chance she was wrong and they actually could get her pregnant, she wondered uneasily?

  But, even if they could, why would they worry about it?

  Not that Colwin seemed worried about it, but she couldn’t think of but two reasons why Aydin would’ve pulled out—the possibility that he might get her pregnant and or a disgust of the idea of sharing his seed with a hoonan.

  Colwin had seemed to indicate that he didn’t think it was possible. He hadn’t actually said that, but he hadn’t seemed to think so. Then again, he had told her he’d never fucked a hoonan before.

  That had stung, especially after the way he’d held her, made her feel as if he was making love to her, but then again she didn’t suppose she could blame him for being defensive.

  She thought he had been defensive. He’d been sweet right up until she’d suddenly remembered she didn’t have protection, and she knew he’d taken that the wrong way—as if she was afraid of being tainted by him—because he was centaur. God knew it seemed to go way beyond a little racial prejudice! Neither the hoonans nor the centaurs seemed to think twice about killing one another!

  And maybe she was a little worried about the possibility of getting pregnant, but they were centaurs! It wouldn’t be like giving birth to a baby with a different skin color! They had to know that it just wasn’t possible for a hoonan, or a human, to give birth to a centaur!

  She shook the thought. It was ridiculous even to worry about it! They were too different for anything like that to happen.

  It was them she should be worried about!

  She glanced at them at the thought, realizing that she liked them—a lot! It was more than just being sexually attracted to them. She liked them. She couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to them because she was with them!

  Almost as if they felt her gaze, both men turned to look at her. They must have seen the worry in her expression because almost identical expressions of curiosity flickered across their faces. It made her heart clench in her chest. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much they favored one another despite the difference in their coloring.

  They turned back to their task after a moment and then rose, moving toward her.

  “We will have to make the fire up again,” Aydin said dryly. “It had burned out when I returned.”

  Colwin sent her a look, waggling his brows at her, and she bit her lip, looking away. She didn’t suppose, under the circumstances, that it was likely to cause friction between them, but there was no sense in going out of her way to provoke trouble between them. They already had a volatile enough relationship.

  Not but what she could see both sides, she thought wryly as she got up and followed them back to the campsite. Aydin was the older and clearly the more responsible of the two. He obviously loved his brother and wanted to look out for him even though Colwin just as obviously tried his patience.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t seem to see that his little brother was now a man and didn’t need or want his guidance and wisdom. He wanted to live his life his own way, even if it was reckless and fraught with danger. Maybe he even thrived on danger? In any case, she could see where it must chafe to have an older brother always trying to tell him what to do and how to do it.

  It was bad enough that one always had parents to do that!

  That thought made her throat close.

  What must they think of her disappearance? How much time had passed back home, she wondered? Was the time in the world she’d come from the same? Or had weeks or maybe months passed while everyone searched for her?

  She hated to think of what they must be going through. She knew they loved her, but it wasn’t as if she could do anything about her situation.

  She still felt guilty for enjoying being with Aydin and Colwin when she knew they must be suffering.

  “What troubles you?” Adyin asked gruffly.

  Emma glanced at him in surprise and swallowed back her misery with an effort. “I was just thinking my parents must be terribly upset.”

  He looked like he wished he hadn’t asked. “It is not something to dwell upon.”

  “I know it’s pointless when I can’t do anything about it. I just wish ….”

  “You have remembered where it is that you come from?” Colwin asked.

  Emma studied him for a long moment and finally focused on the campfire. “I never really forgot. I just didn’t think you would believe me.”

  Aydin felt his belly tighten. “Tell us and then we can decide to believe or not.”

  Emma nodded. “It’s hard to explain, especially since it was true and I just … woke up here. But … I’m not from this place. I almost thought when I woke up that I’d traveled through time, but this place is nothing like Earth ever was.”

  Chapter Seven

  Adyin and Colwin exchanged a look Emma found hard to decipher.

  “I told you you wouldn’t believe me. I don’t understand it myself. I’d taken my class on a little field trip into the forest to study nature.”

  “Class?” Colwin interrupted.

  Emma nodded. “I’m a teacher—at least I was. I taught kindergarten—preschoolers—children not quite old enough to go to regular school.”

  Colwin finally nodded understanding.

  “Anyway, we’d taken a picnic lu
nch and ate in this little clearing we discovered and started back. The children had thoroughly enjoyed the walk in the woods. They should’ve been tired, but they were actually pretty rowdy. They kept darting off chasing each other. Finally, when we reached the edge of the woods and they began to complain about going back into the classroom, I decided I’d let them play just a few minutes longer. I’d hoped that they’d run off some of their excess energy and it didn’t seem dangerous when we were in sight of the school.

  “They wanted me to play hide and seek with them and finally I gave in. I’d walked just a little way back into the woods and I saw this huge old oak tree with a hollow—almost like someone had tried to carve a fairy house inside it. Not that it was that big, but it was big enough for me to hide … and that’s last thing I remember. I stepped inside the tree and everything went dark. The next thing I knew I opened my eyes and found myself inside the castle—lying on a bench—with all of those … people staring down at me.

  “I thought at first that it just couldn’t be real—that I’d hit my head or something like that and I was hallucinating. But it was just too horribly real not to be real! And then you two rescued me ….”

  Aydin and Colwin exchanged another look.

  “Ok—kidnapped me, but really I feel much better being with the two of you than I did with those—awful people at the castle, especially after King Bart decided he was going to marry me!” She frowned. “At least I did until Colwin told me what would happen if they caught up with us.”

  She studied their faces a little anxiously. “I’m not a witch, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said uneasily. “I didn’t make it happen. It happened to me.”

  Aydin cleared his throat. “You are saying that you are a human, from Earth.”

  “I know it’s hard to believe …. You said human! You’ve heard of humans from Earth?”

  “Our mother is an other-worlder,” Colwin said after a prolonged moment.

  Emma gaped at him, feeling a dizzying collision of thoughts in her head. “Your mother?”

  Emma discovered that that was too much to absorb.

  A human woman had given birth to a centaur?

  She could get pregnant?

  Why was the woman still here unless it was impossible to go back?

  Or had she stayed because she’d gotten pregnant?

  She narrowed her eyes at Colwin. “You ass!” she growled angrily. “You knew damned well I could get pregnant if your mother’s human!”

  He reddened faintly, but she couldn’t tell whether it was with discomfort or anger at being called an ass. “I did not say I could not get you pregnant,” he pointed out stiffly.

  “You implied it, damn it! You deliberately misled me!”

  “You fucked her?” Aydin growled.

  “You fucked her,” Colwin shot back at him.

  “I did not try to get her pregnant!” Aydin snapped. “I pulled out before I spilled my seed!”

  Colwin narrowed his eyes at his brother. “If you did, then it was because you were in centaur form and knew what it would mean to get her pregnant in that form! Do not tell me you would have pulled out otherwise, for I will not believe it!”

  Aydin’s face darkened.

  Emma surged to her feet. “Wait a minute! Time out! This is my damned argument! You two can argue later! And, I might add, I do not appreciate you using the word fuck in conjunction with me! Even if that was what it was you could at least make a damned pretense that it was a little more than that!”

  Both men stared up at her in baffled anger for several moments.

  A slow smile curled Colwin’s lips. “I was mating with you.”

  Emma studied him a little suspiciously. “Well, I guess that’s better.”

  “It is better?” Aydin demanded. “Only a moment ago you called him an ass for trying to get you pregnant!”

  “Oh—is that what he meant?” Emma asked in dawning anger.

  Both men rolled their eyes. “What did you think I meant?” Colwin said irritably. “Mates reproduce, gods damn it!”

  “Ok, so I get it, but you should’ve asked first, damn it!”

  Colwin looked uncomfortable. “That is not the way we do it,” he muttered.

  “I don’t care how you do it! Where I come from you’re supposed to ask a woman to marry you and then have babies with her! Not knock her up and then call it a mating! You mean to tell me you were trying to get me pregnant?”

  “We do not marry! We mate!”

  Emma blinked at him. “For how long?”

  “Forever.”

  “Oh … oh! I can’t do that. I’m going home.”

  Colwin’s lips tightened into a thin line of anger. “What did you think we were doing if it was not mating and you do not care to call it fucking?”

  Emma blushed. “Having fun?”

  She could tell he didn’t know how to respond to that. He looked pleased—fleetingly—and then angry all over again. Instead of responding, he hunched his shoulder at her and focused on turning the rabbits on the spit they’d made over the fire.

  Aydin seemed more interested in staring at the fire than continuing the discussion for that matter.

  After staring at their backs for several moments, Emma finally turned and stalked over to the pallet she’d helped Colwin make from the brush they’d gathered and plunked down on it. It was actually fairly cushiony, but not so much that flopping down on it wasn’t painful. Gritting her teeth, she focused on ignoring the pain until it subsided and then turned her mind to the discussion—such as it was.

  She was too angry at first to think about anything except her possible exposure to pregnancy. As her anger began to subside, however, it occurred to her that Colwin wanting to mate with her was quite possibly the sweetest thing any man had ever said to her—that and the fact that he clearly wanted to have a baby with her—wanted her to have his baby!

  It was insane, of course. They hardly knew each other and she couldn’t imagine he’d fallen hopelessly in love with her in such a short space of time—any more than she thought King Fart had!

  Still, it was sweet.

  And it was, sort of, a proposal, she supposed and nobody had ever proposed to her before. Well, Murry had, but that hardly counted when he’d proposed they pool their income and sell her house so they could get a nicer one!

  She discovered she was a lot more intrigued by his offer than she should have been. It was absurd! She couldn’t stay here! She had to go home ….

  To her empty house and her empty life.

  Didn’t it just figure that she would finally find a man that actually wanted her to have his baby in a place like this? When she was almost too damned old to even consider having a baby?

  He was just young and naïve, she told herself. He seemed very manly and he looked very manly, but she could tell he was young and he had to be naïve to consider forming a life partnership with a woman he hardly knew. Who was older than him. And not even the same species.

  Or course, he was half human if she could believe him.

  Guilt began to swamp her. He’d bared his soul! He’d told her he wanted to mate with her and have a baby and she’d cussed him out!

  She was such a bitch!

  “The food is done if you are hungry,” Aydin said to her after a little while.

  If she was hungry? She wasn’t that pissed off!

  She got up and settled across from the two of them. Resolutely closing her mind to the fact that it had been a cute furry thing not long ago, she took the stick Aydin handed her and blew on the steaming meat, feeling her mouth water with anticipation. Using another stick, Aydin speared one of the tubers from the fire and handed that to her.

  It was the most divine meal she’d ever eaten in her life! She would never have believed wild bunny and completely unfamiliar roots could taste so wonderful! She was never going to be able to look at a rabbit the same way again, she thought a little sadly, especially if she was hungry.

  “This is goo
d!” she said after she’d eaten enough to appease the gnawing hunger a little.

  Aydin nodded politely.

  She studied both men uncomfortably. “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I didn’t mean to be so hateful. I just …. I’m so lost here. I really don’t belong here.”

  Adyin and Colwin both looked at her in surprise.

  Adyin frowned thoughtfully. “Mother felt the same when my father and uncle stole her away from her world and brought her here.”

  Emma felt her belly clench. “They went there and took her?”

  Colwin glared at him.

  Aydin shook his head slightly. “She is right, Colwin. It must be her choice—to go or to stay with us.”

  Colwin’s lips tightened, but he didn’t say anything.

  “I was dying,” Aydin said after a moment. “The hoonans had captured me and worked me in the mines until I was nigh dead when my father finally managed to get me away from them. The men of the village could do nothing for me and neither my father or my uncle could accept that nothing could be done. They knew of her, knew that she was a doctor. They captured her and brought her back to help me get well.”

  Emma thought for several moments that she would cry. “And she fell love with you and your father and decided to stay?”

  Aydin shrugged. “She loves me. She loves my father and his father. She decided to stay.”

  Emma blinked at him in confusion, glancing at Colwin. “She’s … uh … I’m confused.”

  “They are mates,” Colwin said. “Our mother and our fathers.”

  That was pretty hard to misunderstand and almost as hard to accept.

  Her first thought was, no wonder she decided to stay! Two absolutely gorgeous men of her own!

  They had to be, she was sure. Aydin and Colwin were quite possibly the handsomest men she’d ever met. They must take after their fathers!

  It was still hard to believe a woman from earth would give up civilization to live as she must here. She’d had a horrible time coping with the discomfort and inconvenience and she’d never thought of herself as being soft. “Where are they now?” she asked after a moment.