Free Wolf by Madelaine Montague Page A

going to happen.
    It’ll just be me and my boys fucking you instead of the local boys.”
    Dismay flickered through her, and fear, but she dismissed it resolutely. “You don’t have to do that,” she said quietly.
    “You obviously haven’t been around too many men on the edge, Baby!”
    “You don’t have to … take.”
    He stared at her blankly a moment and swallowed audibly. “Jesus!” He scrubbed a hand over his face and finally turned to the other men. “She won’t be able to keep up.”
    Hawk flicked a glance from Mac to Sylvie. “She can if we help her.”
    “Cavanaugh?”
    “We can take care of her.”
    “Beau? You crazy, too?”
    He grinned. “As a loon. Let’s just get goin’.”
    Mac scanned the sky, shook his head in disgust, and urged Sylvie ahead of him.
    She’d lost her shoes. She hadn’t actually given that any thought until she stepped from the beach sand and into the jungle brush. She gritted her teeth at the first jab of debris, wondering how the guys had managed to run through the woods barefoot. She was well aware that she was only allowed to stay with them on sufferance, however, and tried her best to hide the fact that every step was painful, and it only got worse.
    As bright as it already was on the beach, it was dark under the canopy of trees, but it brightened steadily, revealing things she would’ve far preferred not to see.
    She almost regretted pestering them to take her with them until they caved in.
    She hadn’t actually given a thought to anything beyond staying as close to the men who had protected her as she could. She hadn’t considered that she was going to have to tramp through jungle growth so thick she could be lost in a matter of seconds. She hadn’t considered having to fight off more insects than she’d ever seen in one place in her life.
    She hadn’t considered that they were on the run and didn’t dare stop more than a few moments at the time—partly, she knew, because she’d held them up and they’d still been on the coast at daybreak.
    She hadn’t considered that she was going to discover more things she hadn’t adequately thought out almost hourly.
    She wasn’t exactly free from fear either. She’d grown up in a city and had lived her entire life in cities. The closest she ever came to nature was a walk, or jog, in the park. Every living thing in the jungle scared the piss out of her. Oh, there was the 37
    occasional sighting of a beautiful, brightly colored bird and butterflies, but there were far more horrible things crawling all over the place than charming ones. The first several hours that they walked she was so busy searching for things that might bite that she was vaguely nauseated from the constant movement of her own eyes and head—motion sick—and so tense with anxiety that it took all she could do not to scream every time something new jumped out at her.
    She finally became so weary and sick to her stomach her misery surpassed her fear, but it was always there in the back of her mind, a constant companion. When they finally took a break, she examined the spot where she wanted to collapse carefully and then wilted to the ground.
    Beau handed her a bottle of water. “Make it last. We don’t have much.”
    Nodding, she took a couple of small sips and put the cap back on.
    Someone thrust a pack of peanut butter crackers at her. She shook her head.
    “Thanks. I’m not hungry.”
    “Eat anyway,” Mac growled.
    She took it and swallowed a little convulsively. Opening the package with shaking hands, she took one out, folded the pack back up and stuffed it in the shirt pocket since the sweat pants she was wearing didn’t have pockets. She discovered she actually felt a little better after she’d eaten the cracker, not quite as nauseated anyway.
    Mac made an irritated sound. “At least it won’t take much to keep you,” he muttered.
    She flicked a glance at him and looked away. Clearly, he was still pissed off about her insistence on