Free Savage Hunger (Project Nemesis) by Celeste Anwar Page A

had altered them, but the fact that they’d showed no fear in coming to her rescue.
    It was enough to make any red-blooded woman swoon.
    Added to that was the fact that they were each devilishly good-looking, powerful, attentive, and concerned, and the combination was enough to wilt any woman’s resistance.
    She’d thought she was progressive enough not to want or need a man to rescue her, or feel weak kneed at the thought of not one, but three interested men.
    She was just a woman, however.  And it’d been long enough since she’d been with anyone appealing that having three handsome, muscular men ready to defend her, however reluctantly, was enough to rev up her engines and make her want to have a go at one or all of them.
    Normally, she could ignore her body’s sensual demands.  She’d done it long enough she felt like a camel conserving water through a desert.  She’d been able to hold off on getting some for years at a time.  But now, she had this insistent urge in the back of her mind, niggling at her, wearing her down.  As much as she tried to ignore it, she had an achy spot in her body that needed to be poked.
    She didn’t need love to satisfy those carnal urges.
    On one hand, she hoped it didn’t come up again.  On the other, she kind of hoped that it did.
    Lost in her thoughts, following Dante’s broad shoulders, she barely noticed that the forest was getting darker.  She’d been so absorbed with putting one foot in front of the other that she hadn’t taken much note in the change around her.
    “We need to make camp,” Zach said, stopping and looking around.  They were surrounded by a grove of bamboo.  Beneath their feet, the floor of the forest had turned to a soft loam.  “It’s getting dark and this looks like as good a place as any to stay for the night.”
    Zach began shaking the trees, putting his ear to them to listen for water.  He seemed to find something he liked and pulled a cleaver out of the canvas bag and started hacking away at the thick trunk.  Within minutes, he’d chopped the tree down and sectioned it out.  Sticking the corner of the blade in one end, he made a hole then put it to his mouth.
    Water dribbled out, moving down his chin.
    Jasmine was amazed.  She supposed they’d had training for this sort of thing.
    Zach offered it to her and she drank her fill.  The water had a slight green taste to it, but it was otherwise delicious and clean.
    “Start checking the other trees,” Zach said to Lucas.  “I’ll work on building a shelter to keep the rain off us if it rains tonight.”
    “Probably will,” Dante said, looking up at the sky and sniffing as if he could smell or see something she couldn’t.
    Jasmine sniffed the air but didn’t smell anything and could see less.  She busied herself pushing dead leaves out of the area.
    “I’ll see if I can build a fire,” Dante said, going off to gather dead bamboo trees and moss.
    He came back fairly quickly, fishing an orange lighter out of his pocket.  He looked at Jasmine’s hopeful face.  “It’s so humid out here.  No guarantee this is going to work.  If it doesn’t we’ll just have to huddle together under the shelter to stay warm.  It gets pretty cold in the jungle at night.  The ground leeches all the heat out of your bones, but we can lay down a blanket to keep it from happening too bad.”
    She watched him strip the bamboo down then press a piece to his face.  “It’s cold.  Still has moisture in it.  We might not have fire tonight.”
    “You’re not just saying that so you can cozy up to me, are you?” she asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
    He grinned, making his dark face look that much sexier.  “Maybe.”  He laughed then worked at building a fire.
    The lighter couldn’t spark.  After attempting to get it going for twenty minutes or so, Zach finally approached and told him to give it up and save the butane for another time.
    Reluctantly, Dante agreed.  “Guess it’s gonna