Page 13 of Love in the Wild

Her husband put an arm around her shoulders. Eden tried not to think about where they were headed or why and instead focused on anything that might help them find a way to safety. All their bags had been left behind, but Eden still had her camera bag slung across her chest.

“Here’s good, Cash,” one of the poachers said.

“It’ll do,” Cash said. His British accent was rough, uncultured. “Line ’em up,” Cash ordered, and the tourists, including Eden, were all pulled into a line.

“On your knees!” one of the men shouted, and they started shoving people down. Eden sank to her knees on the muddy forest floor. Her heart raced as the man called Cash raised his gun and pointed it right at her head.

No one was going to save her, or the others. They were going to die like Dian Fossey and all the others who had given their lives to protect the wilds of Africa.

* * *

Loungingon the limb of a tree, Thorne heard his gorilla family send a warning howl in the distance. They were a mile away, but the sound carried. Birds screamed in response, and Thorne leapt to his feet, listening for any hint of what had caused the commotion.

“Danger, danger,” the animals of the forest warned him, but Thorne never let danger hold him back. He raced swift-footed along the tree branches until he saw a sturdy vine and in one flying leap grasped it and swung. It had been this way for many years. When danger threatened his family, he was the one who faced it. Sunya and the other males viewed him as weak, and Thorne had lived his entire life proving to them he was not. Now swinging headlong into danger was but second nature to him.

Moving through the jungle, vine to branch, branch to vine, he reached the source of the disturbance in a mere few minutes. He was a hundred yards away when the sound of guns went off.

Guns.He hated them.

He had learned from his friend Bwanbale how to speak English and Swahili, and in the last five years he had gained some knowledge of the world beyond his forest. Guns brought pain, suffering, and death to all that he loved in the jungle.

Rage surged through Thorne, roaring like a fire within him as he swung toward the small clearing. Some humans were kneeling on the ground, and others were shooting guns at them. It was easy to see who were the predators and who were the prey as the bodies fell. Thorne filled his lungs with air and let out a wild roar that echoed across the jungle.

The predator men screamed and ran, but one stayed behind, his gun pointed at the last remaining prey. Thorne launched himself from the nearest tree and tackled him to the ground. They rolled half a dozen feet, and the moment Thorne had his bearings, he gripped the man’s neck and snapped it. Then he chased down two other men, killing them and leaving their bodies where they fell. The forest would take care of them.

He returned to the small clearing and crouched behind the survivor, and his breath caught in his throat.

This human wasfemale. He had never seen a human female before, at least from what he could remember aside from puzzling dreams of a female who’d held him in her arms and sang to him. He’d refused to come near the part of the forest where Bwanbale had said humans visited. His only experience with other humans had been violent and dangerous, aside from Bwanbale.

But now he wished he had ventured closer to other humans much sooner. This female’s hair was the color of sunlight. He ached to touch it. He crept closer, staying crouched lest she attack. Female gorillas would sometimes snarl and attack males who crept up on them when they did not wish to mate.

He grunted in the tongue of his gorilla family, hoping to reassure her that he meant no harm. Thorne leaned in, smelling the air just above the back of her neck. Something about her scent—a mixture of sweat, fear, and fruit—appealed to the deepest male part of him, but he didn’t want her to fear him. Her hair, bound up in a strange way, brushed against his face, its silky texture tickling his nose. He reached up. His fingers trembled now when they had never trembled before. Thorne curled his fingers in the sunlight of her hair.

The female gave a soft gasp, almost a sound of distress, and flung herself to the ground. He was so startled by her sudden movement that he leapt around her prone body to see her face. She was in a submissive pose, but he wanted ...yearnedto see the face of this female. The one he had saved, the one whose scent called to him like nothing ever had before.

In that moment he was overcome with bone-deep loneliness. He had always been alone. Though Keza and Akika loved him, he knew he was not truly one of them. Now he had a chance to end the ache that had dwelt inside him for years.

She slowly lifted her head to look at him.

He remained hunched, his knuckles pressed into the ground as he studied her eyes, eyes the color of leaves. Her face was delicate, her nose small and curved up slightly. There was a hint of something secret and wonderful in her pale skin and the way the blood tinted it the soft color of ripe fruit.

His heart beat an unsteady rhythm against his chest. Looking upon her filled him with a dozen hungers that he barely understood. Bwanbale had spoken of human mates, of women, but Thorne had not been able to imagine such a female.

This female waslikehim and yetunlikehim. She was smaller, her body soft and curved as opposed to the hard, angled lines of his own form, yet he found her enticing in a way that made him want to let out a low rumbling growl of pleasure like a jaguar would when filled with contentment.

At the thought of jaguars, he made a chuffing noise as he curled one fist around one of the few human weapons he possessed—a knife, one Bwanbale had given to him. He wasn’t sure how to speak to her, because the English he’d been taught seemed to have fled his mind in the presence of this female’s beauty.

Thorne balled his fist and pointed an arm toward the dead men and grunted. He wanted her to know she was safe, that he’d killed the predators and now she would not be harmed. The words Bwanbale had taught him still wouldn’t come to him.

The female continued to stare, swallowed hard, and then spoke to him.

“Hi.”

It was a greeting. He stopped pointing to the dead men.

“Do you understand me?” she asked.

Thorne did understand, yet he was too fascinated by her soft voice, which was the sweetest birdsong he’d ever heard. It prevented him from responding. He tilted his head to one side and inhaled deeply. He could feel the river mud he’d painted on his face and body a few hours ago drying and growing stiff against his skin. It kept his skin protected when he went into the sunlight and helped him camouflage himself the way other beasts did when they wished to hunt or go undisturbed in the jungle. Was she startled by his appearance? He must look fierce to her—or at least strange.

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