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Bab hit Cara with her hip. The little, skinny woman flew off Brady’s hips and landed with a grunt in the dirt.

Brady sat up with a speed to belie his distracted, aroused state. He reached for the shiny bent stick thing he always carried at his side. But Bab was on top of him by then, straddling his hips. She pressed his shoulders down before he could reach the thing.

She ground her hips against his, spreading her wetness and scent on him. His hands grabbed her hips much as he had touched Cara. For having such thin fingers, his hands were surprisingly strong as they squeezed and tried to move her. She knew what he wanted so eagerly, but she wanted to take her time with him.

She moved her hands into his hair. It was as soft and fine as the rare, colorful feathers they sometimes found at the base of the mountain. His bright eyes flashed at her, and his pretty mouth shouted words at her that had no meaning.

Cara came back at her and tried to unseat her, but one sharp swing of her arm sent the skinny one tumbling away.

Brady swung at Bab’s head then, surprising her with the force of his blow. She shook her head. So he was much like the other males and liked to rough up his women. Though his lean body held more strength than suggested, his punch was nothing compared to Jak and Hop.

“Get off of him, you crazy bitch,” Cara shouted, her jealousy not unexpected and easy to ignore.

Bab pressed her mouth to Brady’s, but he twisted away. She ran her mouth along his neck and shoulder as she’d seen Cara do. He tasted clean so she nibbled on him, little snips that sent him squirming with lust.

She could wait no longer. She needed to have his man rod inside her. Never had she been so ready and wanting. She reached between her legs to find him and guide him inside her.

But his thing was limp and spent. Had her attempt at playful mating sent him to his pleasures too soon? No, there was no stickiness of his spilled seed between them, only her heat and wetness.

“Get off, Bab.” Brady’s words finally made sense. “Get the hell off of me.”

She slid off of him in disappointment. Her own desires cooled and dried. Brady scrambled sideways away from her and picked up his shiny stick. He pointed it at her and crawled on his knees to Cara.

Cara sat up, her hair tangled around her face and a large bruise growing on her cheek.

“You all right?”

Brady nodded. “You?”

“I will be when we kill her.” Cara stood up on unsteady legs and pulled a long, thin branch from her belongings.

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Bab had seen the shiny branch before, it was brighter even than the thing Brady held, but only now did she understand it was a bad thing. Its edge looked sharp like one of the stones they used to scrap and shape their hides. It looked like it could kill like Cara wanted.

Bab choked back a sob and looked toward her bundle of belongings and poor little Angel.

Why was Cara going to kill her? She dropped flat on the ground and put her face in the dirt.

The sobs bunched in the back of her throat burst free. “I’m sorry. I should have known I wasn’t worthy to have your seed. Please don’t kill my baby. Angel didn’t do anything wrong. Forgive me for being so stupid. I was selfish and thought only of my own pleasure. Your beauty blinded me to everything else. Forgive me.”

Despite the noisy water on two sides of them and her racing heart, she heard Brady’s ragged panting.

“Hell! The bitch bit you!” Cara spat out some of those coarse, meaningless words like Brady had used earlier.

No longer caught up in her rapture, Bab realized the words were curses of a sort, angry words directed at her. She peeked up from under her brow.

Brady still held his strange stick pointed at her, but Cara had let hers sag to the ground.

She touched his shoulder. A thick, dark line of blood oozed from where she’d nibbled on his shoulder.

Bab looked back down at the ground. She’d injured him. No wonder his body had lost its desire for her. She’d hated when Jak or Hop hurt her. Why would Brady not feel the same?

Shame heated her face but left her insides cold. She deserved to die. After running away to escape the abuse from the men in her village and protect her daughter from it, she’d rendered the same treatment on a man she loved.

“Kill her,” Cara snarled. “If you don’t do it, I will.”

Bab made no attempt to defend herself, disgusting thing that she was. Angel suddenly wailed from where Bab had hid her. She couldn’t let her death be that of her child also. “Please take care of Angel for me. She can be a better person than her mother. Raise her gentle, I beg you.”

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Brady held his pistol steady in his right hand but didn’t point it at Bab. The Savage crouched on the other side of the fire in as small of a heap as she could and still feed her baby.

“Damn. Are you using your sword to clean it?”

Cara answered him by scrubbing even harder at the bite on his shoulder. She’d cut a piece of his second shirt off and heated water. Now she dipped the cloth in the steaming water and attacked his injuries. He didn’t want to get an infection, but he wanted to keep some of his skin.

Bab looked over at him and then quickly looked back down at Angel. He wouldn’t have killed her even if the baby hadn’t howled, but he wasn’t sure Cara would have let the Savage live.

“Ouch!”

Bab’s dirty nails and teeth had opened his skin in a number of places. Though the hot water stung, as did Cara’s less than gentle techniques, it was necessary.

“Shoot her after she feeds the baby,” Cara muttered loud enough for Bab to hear. The Savage whimpered as she did each time one of them looked at her. At least she’d stopped her bawling and apologies.

“Do you want me to shoot the baby too, or are we going to let her starve to death?”

“Shut up,” Cara growled and found another abrasion on his neck to attack.

“Finish up so we can eat our dinner before it falls off the bone and into the fire.”

She glared at him and scrubbed at the bite on his shoulder some more. His entire body felt bruised and battered. Bab was deceptively strong and heavy. He hadn’t been able to budge her, and she shook off his punches as if he hit her with a feather pillow instead of his fist. No doubt she was used to rougher handling.

He shivered at the remembered touch of her thick fingers on his body. His stomach tightened and sickness rose in the back of his throat. Never had he imagined the female Savages might think of him in a carnal way. He didn’t even think of Bab as a woman but rather as a different species. He hadn’t considered she might be sexually attracted to him anymore than he expected his horse would be.

But hadn’t male Savages ravished Cara? Why wouldn’t the females think the same way?

The turn of events was so strange, he couldn’t quite get his thoughts to put it in sensible order.

Cara threw the piece of shirt into the water simmering in their old cooking shell. “Put your shirt on before your girlfriend loses control again.”

He tugged his shirt on over his head, taking care not to grimace though his scrapes and bruises throbbed and burned. The last thing he needed was for Cara to see him acting injured.

Her temper simmered hotter than the water.

A nagging sensation of being watched drew his gaze to Bab. She stared at him with a hunger that had him taking up his gun again. He would never feel safe in her company again.

Actually, he preferred to not be in her company at all.

Cara used her knife to stab at the spitted bird. She slapped a portion onto Brady’s metal plate and handed it to him. Despite the discomfort in his stomach, he was voraciously hungry.

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He set his gun on his thigh and used his fingers to eat the meat. Cara put a few tubers on his plate also, the roots dried and crumbly from overcooking. They ate in silence, both of them watching Bab.

The Savage’s attention finally focused on something new. Her tear-reddened gaze tracked each bite he took. She licked her lips and even with the roar of the falls, he heard her stomach growl.

“Hell.” Cara added more curses. She took the new cooking shell and slid it toward the Savage. Half the tubers were left.

Bab stared at her with wide, scared eyes, but she set Angel down and reached for the food. She glanced at Brady with a desperate question in her dark eyes. He nodded. She grabbed the shell though it must have been very hot and held it close to her mouth. She jammed a handful of the sliced roots into her mouth and chewed only twice before swallowing. Another handful followed.

Brady looked away, his own appetite gone. But he took another small bite of meat. Cara did the same and with as little enthusiasm. But they were both warriors and understood the need to keep up their strength. They had to eat when they could and as much as they could.

Bab finished the tubers long before they finished the bird. Cara drank a cup full of water and then refilled it before handing the dented tin to him.

“One of us is going to have to stay awake at all times,” she said without trying to speak quietly.

“I’ll behave,” Bab said. “I’ll leave and go back to Rena.”

“Have you been following us and watching us since we left your cave?” Brady thought back over the last day. How many times had they been careless and unaware of their surroundings?

“I wanted to make sure you weren’t leaving.” Bab picked up Angel and held her close.

“I want my baby to grow up with you and learn to be clean and pretty.”

“How were you going to keep us from leaving?” Cara glared at Bab with the merciless stare that could make a grown man tremble. “Did you intend to beat us and keep us captive?”

Bab shook her head wildly. “We only want Brady to stay. He can give us more pretty children like Angel.”

Brady’s meal did a sickening turn. “Cara and I are a couple. Do you understand that? I only ever have sex with her.”

“Have

sex?”

“He doesn’t want to stick his thing in you and he never will,” Cara snapped.

Bab cringed away. “I washed and tried to be clean. I can learn what you like.”

“Holy hell.” Brady took a deep breath that hurt his ribs. Even if he was perverted enough to want this creature, he probably wouldn’t survive the experience. “Bab, we’re the kind of people who have one mate at a time. Cara is my mate.”

He didn’t look at Cara to judge her reaction to that declaration, but she didn’t contest it.

“It is very strange.” Bab looked sad and settled herself on her side with Angel carefully set in front of her. She stared into the flames with tears in her eyes.

Cara scooted closer to Brady and lowered her voice. “You will never be safe from her.”

“She seems intelligent enough to understand I’m not going to cooperate with her.”

“She’s strong enough that she doesn’t need your permission.”

“Cara, she can’t make me. My cock shrivels at the thought.”

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But Cara didn’t laugh at his weak joke. She took his hand. “Brady, there’s a lot of things you don’t know about Solonian history. Generations ago, when our men started to weaken with the wasting sickness, one of the first medicines our healers designed was to increase a man’s vigor.”

“I see. What has that to do with us?”

She gestured toward Bab. The Savage’s eyes were closed and her naked chest rose and fell with the slow, deep breaths of sleep. “She would likely know of it. The Savages are relatively infertile. Children are born few and far between. I’ve seen their males drinking the potion to improve their virility so they could take a woman as often as possible.”

The pain and anger in her eyes distracted him from her meaning for a moment.

Understanding came to him slowly. “You mean they could give me something to make me…?”

“To make you hard and eager for anybody or anything.” She looked over at the sleeping Savage. “She wants you, and she’ll try again. Even if she feels regret now, it doesn’t change what she is or what she's capable of doing.”

“I didn’t know a man could be …. ”

“Could be raped by a woman? They can. I’ll tell you something in confidence. Don’t ever tell anyone else. A few of our women tried to rape Juston Steele not long after he married Katerina. They would have succeeded if we hadn’t arrived in time.”

“Hell.”

“If we’re not going to kill her, we have to try the river tomorrow.”

“We’re not going to kill her.” It was too easy to think of Bab as some pitiful creature instead of a dangerous enemy. “They’ll die this winter. Them and their babies.”

“They’ll go back to their tribe before then. They’ll figure out they can’t live on their own.”

“And little Angel? She looks so human and so damned fragile.”

Cara hugged herself. “I know. What can we do? She has to stay with her mother.”

She leaned into his side. His shoulder was stiff, but he lifted his arm and wrapped it around her. They would be leaving the child to grow up into a hellish existence. How would they live with that?

* * * *

“I can’t swim that.” Cara shaded her eyes and looked across the river.

They were near the falls, and she had to shout for Brady to hear her. Bab hung back a hundred steps from the river bank, her eyes wide as she stared at the great, white spray of water at the bottom of the cliffs.

“I’ll help you.” Brady stood with his hands on his hips and frowned at the river. He took her arm and led her downstream so they could hear each other. “We’ll find some driftwood, make a small raft and float most of the way. Just two or three logs wide so we can straddle it and paddle. I think we can do it.”