by Marie Harte
“I don’t understand.”
She would within a few minutes of meeting him. “Wolf is twenty-six going on fourteen. I love him, but he has an eye for the ladies. Always has. Problem is, they like him too. I still can’t believe he hasn’t gotten some young thing pregnant by now. My family doesn’t leave the ranch much, but when they do, it’s usually Wolf doing the selling of horses and livestock. The towns within a few days riding distance from Shine welcome him with open arms. Hell, he rarely has to pay the whores. Dad calls him the pretty one in the family.”
Now that he thought about it, Hinto wondered how Thais would take to Wolf. He didn’t worry so much about Mahpee. Like he’d said, Mahpee didn’t take much from women but sex, and Thais wasn’t one to give it away freely. But Wolf… the boy might just charm her into a night between the sheets. The notion didn’t sit well with him. At all.
“Hinto, you seem upset.”
“Not at all.” If Wolf so much as put a hand on her wrong, he’d break off his dick. Brother or not.
“Okay.” Thais didn’t seem to believe him. “Could you at least tell me—”
“Wait.” He stopped Beast, aware she stopped as well. His senses flared, telling him trouble lay ahead. He could feel several bodies, and the seeping energy of at least two on the brink of death. “There’s a group up ahead, beyond the next crook in the stream. Come on.”
They left Beast and Ainippe by the water with orders to stay put. Beast didn’t look happy about being left behind, but he stayed and nipped at Thais’s mare when the horse would have followed.
Hinto followed Thais. He moved slower than he would have liked, but until his full mobility returned, he had to be careful.
He joined her behind a large boulder as they absorbed the scene in front of them.
She whispered, “Six enemy. One family. Two of which are dead, another wounded but still alive. What looks like his wife or sister is being taken there.” Two men held her fast while another tried to force her legs still.
Hinto noted either her husband or brother calling weakly to her, currently under threat of a bullet by another man, while a young boy cried out for his mother, held back by a laughing man with black teeth and one eye. Five bad guys accounted for, and one more… There. He spotted the sixth man holding a precious two-year-old girl away from the carnage. He crooned something soft to her as she cried. Hinto couldn’t pinpoint the feeling, but he just knew the man wouldn’t be gentle for long. Something about the way he held her.
“We have to help,” Thais said before he could demand they assist the family.
“Yeah. I’m slower than you, but I have a gun.” He withdrew the weapon and checked to make sure all six chambers of the revolver were filled. In the racket beyond them, no one heard the click of the barrel as he closed it once more.
“Hurry. They are nearly upon the woman.”
“Shit. You take them out. I’ll grab the ones by the man and the boy. Then we’ll get the ugly one holding the girl. He’s not right.”
Thais didn’t question him. She nodded then disappeared into the woods, circling left to near the woman while Hinto circled right to move closer to his quarry.
His Amazon worked fast. She threw a knife into the back of the lecher atop the woman and jumped into the fray before Hinto shot the bastard holding a gun over the wounded man. The boy bit his captor’s hand and rushed to help his mother.
Hinto shot the man before he could reach the boy, then turned to help Thais. She had one of them in a headlock as she protected herself from a second male, until Hinto killed him. Once the other fell with a gunshot between his eyes, she broke her opponent’s neck.
The boy reached his mother, who was no longer moving.
“Thais?” Hinto yelled as he knelt by the wounded man.
She felt the woman’s neck and nodded. “Alive, but unconscious.”
The crying boy looked from his mother to Thais and leapt into her arms. The stunned look on her face might have been funny if Hinto hadn’t noticed the man with the girl no longer in sight.
“I’m going after the girl. Stay here.”
He left before she could protest. Using his gift, he felt with his sixth sense for vibrations of energy in the woods that didn’t belong. Following the trail with a more pronounced limp, he tried to move faster but couldn’t.
It turned out he didn’t need to. The man holding the girl was trying to mount Ainippe, Thais’s mare. Beast wasn’t near. Not good.
“Don’t eat the girl!” Hinto yelled as Beast rushed out of the woods, knocked the man’s gun to the ground and chomped off his arm.
The girl screamed as she fell to the ground. But when Hinto scooped her up, he saw that she was mostly unhurt, just scared.
And rightly so.
While Beast gorged on this newest feast, Hinto mounted Ainippe with the girl in his arms. A difficult task made harder by his weakened limb. A nudge from Beast helped him.
“Thanks. And try not to make yourself sick,” he told the vore while keeping the girl’s face away from the mess.
Beast nodded and returned to his meal. Used to such sights, Hinto didn’t do more than flinch when Beast tore through the man’s neck with one bite.
Urging Ainippe through the woods, he returned to the battle ground and stopped.
There in the clearing sat Thais next to the unconscious woman. The small boy sat in her arms as she crooned a song in that fluid language that sounded more like music than words. Thais stared down at the small blond head under her hands as she sang, her expression confused, defensive, and just a bit wondrous.
Her hands were soft as they stroked his hair, and Hinto noted with some satisfaction that the little boy had known exactly who to help him when he needed it most.
The Amazon with the heart of gold.
Chapter Fourteen
“They were on us before I could move,” Mark Raeford said as he thanked Hinto yet again. “They killed my brothers quick. Not sure why they didn’t take me out as well.” He lowered his voice so as not to distract his children from their mother and Thais, but Hinto saw the tears he couldn’t hide.
“Who knows what men like that think?” Hinto knew the type of men he’d just killed—criminals who took the easy way out. Easier to kill and rape and steal than work your fingers to the bone for hope of a good life.
“Yeah.” Mark swallowed loudly. “If you and your woman hadn’t come when you did, I don’t think… My daughter, my son—” He choked and closed his eyes.
The bandage around his ribs held his broken bones together. The small gash in his side had been made by a knife instead of a gun. Thais had given Hinto her paste, and he’d used it sparingly but effectively. She sat with the woman, trying to help her and her children while he sat with Mark.
To Hinto’s amusement, the boy seemed fascinated with Thais. He continued to play with her braid and all but sat in her lap as she talked with his mother, Judith.
“I can’t ever repay you for this,” Mark said and opened his eyes. “Everything I own is yours.” He glanced at his daughter and tears fell down his cheeks, but a core of steel lit his gaze when he turned it back to Hinto. “Except for my family.”
Did he really expect Hinto to ask for the girl in repayment? Then again, the desperation to find a female might push many a man into accepting the girl as a gift. “Easy, Mark. I have enough to deal with riding with Thais.” He caught the frown she sent him and grinned. “But you need to take better care of your family. You shouldn’t be passing this way by yourselves. Why not a caravan?”
“Costs too much. I have just enough gold to get us to Mobely, where Judith’s cousins have a farm. We were going to settle there. Raise our families together.” He looked over his shoulder at the shallow graves of his brothers. “Now Gabe and Tom will never get to meet the woman waiting for them.”
“Oh?”
Mark nodded. “Judith has a female cousin.” He lowered his voice. “Truth to tell, a lot of females pass through Mobely latel
y. There’s some church there that blesses folks into having youngins, leastwise that’s what I’ve heard. If you and the lady are wantin’ to start a family, might want to head to Mobely. Won’t take long after the blessing.”
“Is that what happened for you?”
Judith rose with the girl in her arms and left her son with Thais as she made her way to her husband.
He smiled. “No, just got lucky. Little April was born a year after Ryan. She looks just like her daddy, Gabe. My precious little girl.”
A protectorate, as he’d suspected. Something he’d never planned on having. Mahpee had tried it once with Dana, but the thought of making love to his brother’s woman hadn’t set well with any of them. The Dakota men were old fashioned, just like their father.
Thoughts of sharing Thais with his brothers reared its head and made him see red.
“You know, your Thais is a natural. I think Ryan’s in love,” Mark said and nodded at his son.
“Yes, I think he is,” Judith repeated and brought her daughter to her husband.
Ryan was fingering the handle of Thais’s knife as she gently explained the story behind it.
Hinto excused himself from Mark and joined her to listen.
“What about this one?” the little boy asked, pointing to the blue stone in the middle of the handle just under the guard.
“This is to remind us of the waters where the first Amazon was made.”
“Borned?”
“No, made. The Great Mother wasn’t happy with the men on her land. Not all of them were as nice as you, Ryan. Some of them fought and warred and set fire to the land the Goddess gave us.”
“Like the bad men,” Ryan whispered and shoved his thumb in his mouth.
Thais gave him a foreign, almost loving look, and kissed his forehead with a hesitation that made Hinto feel funny, deep inside.
“Yes, like them.” She hugged him tighter in her lap and continued. “When the Great Mother was sad, she wept. From her tears sprang the first Amazon. Strong, courageous, filled with truth and right and honor.”
“A hero,” Ryan mumbled around his mouth.
“Yes. A heroine to fight the bad men. The Amazon did as the Great Mother wanted and wiped the men from her lands. As a reward, the Amazons were allowed to live in the jungle, among the jaguars and the macaws and the monkey-men.”
Ryan stopped sucking his thumb to stare up at Thais in awe, the knife forgotten. “Monkey-men?”
Thais smiled, her expression sweet.
Hinto blinked, not sure he was seeing the same woman who’d broken a man’s neck not an hour past. She’d sure as hell never given him that look. He’d have remembered that.
“The monkey-men are the Amazons’ best friends. They have two hands and two feet, with six fingers and six toes on each. Their tails are stronger than most men’s arms, their fur is green and brown, and they speak with growls and groans. Like this.” She made a series of strange grunts and humming sounds.
“What does that mean?” Ryan’s eyes were as round as stones.
“It means beware the nighthawk. The monkey-men don’t like the nighthawks around our village. They take all the best bananas for the Goddess. And they tickle little girls—and boys,” she added quickly, “when they find them walking alone. Like this.”
She proceeded to tickle Ryan, who laughed so hard he forgot to be sad. When Thais glanced up at Hinto, she wore a smile on her face.
“So I guess you do like boys after all?” At that moment, he envisioned her carrying and playing with her own son. His child.
His heart raced in his chest.
Still smiling, she answered, “Well, they don’t smell as nice as little girls, but they’re twice as snaky when they wiggle.”
“You mean squirmy.” He chuckled.
Ryan played until he could no longer see his mother. Then he called for her in a panic.
“She’s with your dad, son. Don’t worry,” Hinto said.
Ryan tried to catch his breath as Thais wiped a tear from his cheek. “I just didn’t see her for a minute. But my hero wouldn’t let her get hurt.”
Thais rolled her eyes, and he realized she thought Ryan was talking about him. “Your hero, hmm?”
“Yeah, Thais would get him for sure.” He planted a smack of a kiss on her cheek, then ran to his parents.
Thais stared blankly after the boy, a hand on her face.
“I guess I have some competition,” he teased.
“Hmm?”
“So should I warn him?”
She whipped her face to his. “What are you talking about?”
“Ryan’s in love with you. Should I tell him you’ll break his heart?” He laughed when she flushed with anger and embarrassment.
“I’ll do no such thing.”
“Oh, so then you don’t eat little boys for breakfast?”
She swore at him and shoved her knife back in its sheath. He caught “asshole” and “shit for brains” before she ventured into that colorful language he knew he was better off not understanding.
They spent the night with Mark and his family, keeping careful watch over the group in case the dead men had friends among the living.
Thankfully, the night passed without incident. Early the next morning, Hinto stacked the guns and ammunition the dead men left behind next to Mark in the wagon.
He sat next to his wife. The children sat in the back. Hinto had tied two of the dead men’s horses to the back of the wagon as well, for trade if Mark didn’t intend to use them.
“Best of luck in Mobely.” He tipped his hat to Judith and the children. “Take care of them.”
“Thank you so much,” Judith said. Her lips trembled and she started to cry as her husband put an arm around her. “If it weren’t for you—”
“Then Ryan would have been forced to call the monkey-men,” Thais interrupted with a nod at the children. “Good-bye April, Ryan. Remember the Goddess, Ryan. Do good to others, be strong and be brave, like you were last night.”
Ryan nodded and motioned for Thais to come closer. She did and he pressed something in her hand. He whispered in her ear, hugged and kissed her good-bye.
Thais blinked several times, her eyes watery.
Frankly, he couldn’t be happier that they’d run into the Raefords. Watching her interact with the boy had shown him the woman had the capacity to love more than her sisters. The compassion she’d shown to young Ryan certainly proved she had it within her to love another not of her tribe.
Why that mattered, he didn’t quite know, but he worried that it meant so much more than it should have. The attachment he warned himself not to feel for Thais grew stronger with every minute in her presence. Would he be able to let her go when the time came?
Caging a woman like Thais would kill that very part of her he cherished. Respected. The part of her I respect, not cherish, and certainly not love.
Hell. Hinto was falling hard, despite the knowledge it would only bring him heartache. But he didn’t know how to stop these feelings. Every time he thought Thais had given him her all, she showed him one more facet of her personality he couldn’t help liking.
“Time to move on,” he muttered and mounted Beast. On and away from these feelings that will lead nowhere but to pain.
Thais waved at Ryan and smiled, her joy bittersweet to see.
Time to move on? If only it were that simple.
***
In the early morning several days later, Thais gripped the small, smooth stone Ryan had handed her. His favorite treasure, and he wanted her to have it. Such innocence in the young boy’s face. Seeing it, she’d been hard pressed not to wonder what life would be like raising such a child. To show him the right way to live, to follow the laws of the Goddess and respect females, to teach him to fight and become a warrior like her, like… Hinto.
She shot him a glance, bemused at his continued reserve. After dealing with the Raefords, she’d thought it best if she and Hinto were on guard day and night, which
to her meant no more sex. The act distracted her to the point she could only focus on him when he blanketed her with his powerful body. One kiss from Hinto knocked her world off balance, and she was having enough trouble dealing with the fact that she’d liked holding Ryan in her arms.
She’d expected some resistance to the idea. She hadn’t anticipated Hinto’s complete withdrawal. Though she was glad for the respite, she didn’t like this emotional separation. She still believed the Goddess had put him in her path as a test, but the answer of what to do about him danced beyond Thais’s reach. Should she embrace the gift of this man given to her? Or should she see him as no more than an obstacle to be overcome in her quest to pursue justice on behalf of her dead tribe?
The pull to each side of the argument weighed heavily on her. The sex with Hinto had been incredible, and scary. She’d have thought ceasing their intimate connection would have severed, or at least dampened, her growing affection for the stubborn man. Three days later, her feelings remained as strong as ever.
As to how Hinto thought about her… He hadn’t taken her rejection well. Yet she sensed more to his reaction than anger. She sensed hurt as well, and she didn’t like the thought of causing him harm.
Hinto hadn’t tried to talk her out of abstaining. In fact, he didn’t talk to her much at all. He still held her close each night to combat the cold, and she felt the telltale response of his arousal when he pressed against her. But he didn’t take her, didn’t even so much as kiss her.
She’d gotten exactly what she’d asked for. So why did it hurt so much?
As if he could hear her thoughts, he looked at her, or rather through her, and cantered ahead on Beast, who seemed to laugh at her as he passed. A small sign nailed to a tree said, Shine, One Mile Ahead.
Irritated she couldn’t stop wanting the old Hinto to resurface, she glared at his back and decided to ignore him in favor of the splendor around them. Hinto hadn’t been kidding about the wildness of this land. Big Sky Territory felt raw and untamed, as if the Great Mother had pushed the dirty bodies of man into Four Corners and Temeco, saving the great blue sky and its mountainous floor in this territory just for herself.