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Centaur Chronicles:
UNBRIDLED
By
Raven Willow-Wood
© copyright by Raven Willow-Wood, Jan. 2008
Cover Art by Eliza Black and Alex DeShanks, Jan. 2008
ISBN 978-1-60394-127-3
New 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.
(A Selection From the Novel)
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.
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