Kiss Across Swords (Kiss Across Time Series) (11 page)

“You’re the storyteller,” Taylor pointed out.

Brody grinned and unbuckled his sword belt. He reached around her to hang it over the back of the chair. As he did so, he kissed her cheek. “And I don’t even mind the tag this time. How do you do that?”

“It’s called truth.”

“When I use the truth, people just get insulted.” He unfastened his belt and dropped it beside his chair.

“You use it like a weapon. You use it to wound.”

Brody paused from lifting the tunic over his head to glance at her. “More truth, huh?”

She smiled. “Tell me about when you saw Veris for the first time.”

Brody threw the tunic on top of his belt. “It was another skirmish, like the one you saw this afternoon. The Fatimids want to preserve St. David’s Gate. Everyone does, of course—”

“Why ‘of course’?” she interrupted.

He looked surprised. “I keep forgetting you learned this stuff in history books. It’s the gate where they used to lead all the sinners, dragging their crosses on their way to their execution. Jesus would have gone that way up to the mountain. But there is also a holy Muslim temple — a mosque — on the same mountain.”

“I see,” Taylor said.

“Godfrey of Bouillon and his group are patrolling the walls along the north of the city and down along the west side as far as St. David’s Gate. Raymond, my patron, is controlling the walls south of St. David’s Gate, until they swing toward the east. The Fatimids tried another sally this morning, at the gate. Both Godfrey’s forces and Raymond’s became involved in beating them back.”

“And you ran into Veris,” Taylor finished.

“Not exactly. I was clearing the south side of the gate for Raymond’s knights to push through and saw Veris take a sword in the side. It was a mortal blow—or should have been for any other man. I think he believed no one else saw the strike. I thought nothing of it except that it was a waste of a fine fighting soldier, for I’d seen him working the field before.”

“Military thinking.” She picked up a date. “If I’d seen Veris fighting and knew nothing of him, I’d rue the loss of such force and skill, too.”

Brody grinned. “I was stunned to find him still fighting twenty minutes later, apparently none the worse for wear, except for a rent in his tunic and blood all over it, with his temper up well and good. I knew then, what he was. He could be nothing other than vampire. No one else would have survived such a blow.” He leaned forward on the chest, his eyes glowing. “You should have seen him. He was as good as three men, laying them down like a scythe at harvest time, his eyes blazing with fury. It was fascinating.”

Taylor had seen Brody only a few hours before, locked in battle with dozens of Fatimid fighters and she had been just as compelled by the warrior who had emerged from Brody at that time. She knew exactly what had drawn Brody to Veris.

“Then I saw the spear from the corner of my eye,” Brody said, straightening up. “I have no idea even now, sixteen hundred years later, what made me so sure the spear was intended for Veris. There was no signal they were heading for him. It was just a sinking feeling I had that the one weapon that was lethal to vampires would be used against him. So I started running, trying to reach Veris before the Fatimid with the spear did. The Fatimid was clambering over the bodies that Veris had slain and making hard going of it, but Veris was turned away. The asshole was going to take him from behind.” Brody shrugged. “I got there in time.”

“In time to do what? Come on,” Taylor complained. “You can do better than this! What happened next?”

He blinked. “You want more detail?”

“Of course I want more! You can’t hold out on me about something as important as this! I want every single little detail. Every second of it!”

Brody rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, looking acutely uncomfortable.

Taylor straightened. “Oh wait. Oh, no, is this a guy thing? You don’t want to talk about the intimate details? Is it?”

He glanced away, out of the tent, then down at his boots. “I don’t know that I’d put it…”

“Oh shit, it is,” Taylor said, staring at him in amazement. “
That’s
why I’ve never heard this story from either of you. You can’t talk about it because you’re both guys and it’s icky talking about intimate stuff.” She swallowed back a big lump of laughter, because she knew that would be guaranteed to make Brody shut up permanently. Instead she sat, flummoxed by the logic of the male mind.

“I don’t get it,” she said softly. “Neither of you has ever had any problem talking about anything at all with me about stuff we do, before now.”

Brody took a breath. A big one. “Of course not. That stuff we do with you.”

“Oh.” She chewed her lip while she phrased her next sentence very carefully. “But you don’t even mind talking about stuff you and Veris do—I mean, now I’m with you.”

“Exactly. You’re with us now.”

“But you talk about stuff you do even when I’m not there.”

“Not there physically, but that doesn’t make any difference,” he said flatly, his gaze not shifting from her eyes.

Ahhh…
And just like that, the shape of it fell into place for her.

“Are you afraid I’m going to resent your relationship with Veris in this time, if you tell me too much about it?” she asked softly. “After all I said about your hold over him, the hold I didn’t have and wished I did?”

“No. I wasn’t even thinking about that,” he said flatly. He grimaced. “Although now I am.” He yanked at the hauberk and pulled it over his head in one impatient tug and it fell with a metallic, heavy sigh onto the ground between his feet. He plucked the undershirt away from his chest. The expression in his eyes was one of discomfort touched with resentment. “This time has always been ours.”

“‘
Ours’?”
she repeated, puzzled.

Brody rubbed at his brow. “Mine and Veris’.”

It actually hurt, once his meaning sank truly home. She sat staring at him as the pain settled and spread like a fast expanding pool of something black and noxious.

“God, don’t look at me like that,” he said with a groan.

“How should I look?” she whispered.

He turned his gaze from her. “It isn’t meant to hurt you,” he ground out.

“It does.” She couldn’t quite keep her voice steady. “What do all the trips back in time mean to both of you, then, if your time before me is so sacrosanct? Are they just make-believe? Something you pretend never happened? An alternative history in your memory? What?”

“Don’t do this to yourself. Not now. Especially without Veris here.” Brody sounded a touch desperate and even perhaps afraid of what he’d set in motion. “He would explain it better than me anyway.”

Taylor sat up, push her plate away. “Not now? Then when? Where? We’ve been together four years. These trips back in time were supposed to be giving us a chance to backtrack through both of your memories. I thought we were building me into your personal histories. That’s what the queen said and neither of you saw fit to disagree with her, or tell me any differently. Now you tell me neither of you consider me a part of your past. That you’re fighting to
keep me out of it
! How the hell did you expect me to react? Smile and say ‘oh, how silly of me. My mistake’?” She reached for the tunic she had cut up, thrust her arms into it and yanked it closed around her furiously.

Brody watched her every movement. It wasn’t until she gripped the spiked post at the back of the chair that he spoke.

“You’re reading far more into this than you should.”

“Really? The two men I love don’t want me involved in four-fifths of their lives? That’s trivial?”

That jerked him to his feet. “You’re going to penalize us for having pasts longer than you? I didn’t think you were capable of such prejudice.” The condemnation in his tone was rich.

She held up a hand. “Stop,” she said softly. Tears burned in her eyes. “God, Veris taught you how to do that, didn’t he? When the going gets too tough or uncomfortable in an argument, attack instead. It’s the easiest way out of talking about feelings.”

Brody sank onto the chest. “You’re right. That’s exactly what he does. Jesus, I just did it, too. I didn’t even realize.” He pushed his hand through his hair, then scratched at the back where the long hair he was used to feeling was missing.

Taylor felt her tears spill and let them roll unchecked. Brody was just going to have to feel even more uncomfortable now. This was too important to dance around with subtleties.

“Brody?” she nudged gently.

He lifted his head to look at her and sighed. “Oh, God, it was just a simple thing. It wasn’t this huge significant shutting out you feel it is.”

“Tell me,” she begged.

He looked down at his hand resting on his knee and curled the fingers into a fist, then loosened them. Thinking. Then he looked at her again. “It’s like that rule most people have about not discussing intimate details of past relationships with their current lovers.”

Taylor lowered herself onto the edge of the big chair. It held no cushion or comfortable lining. That, more than anything seemed to characterize Brody in this time period. “But you and Veris
are
my current lovers.”

“It’s different for us. You live as long as we do, you tend to compartmentalize your life. It lets us blend in with humans. It keeps us sane. Keeps things straight in your mind. You keep the events in one section separate from the others.”

“And you’ve separated you and Veris into one section and me and you and Veris into another?” Taylor asked.

“Something like that,” Brody said. He picked up her hand. “There’s no reason why the three of us won’t continue on for another two thousand years. You’ll have plenty of history to share with us.”

She pulled her hand from his. “Then why do we get to jump around history? Your history? Veris’ history? There has to be a reason. The queen thought it was so I could catch up with your pasts. Now you’re saying you don’t want me to share that. You’re saying she’s wrong. Veris has been insisting for about a year now we’re not just living inside our memories when we jump back, that this is
really
time travel. We’re actually back in history. I have facts to prove that he is right, too.”

“What facts?”

“I can’t give them to you until we’re back in our time. They’re material proof.” She fought hard not to touch her belly as she spoke, or look down at it. “But if we’re not flipping backward in time for me to catch up with your pasts, then why are we doing it?”

Brody shook his head. “You really think I have an answer for that?”

Her tears began to fall again. “I think you’re wrong. Both of you,” she said flatly. “We only ever travel to times and places in your personal pasts. Things you remember. It’s one of the first things both of you nearly always say when we arrive. ‘Oh, I remember!’ And have you noticed that I’m always with you when we travel? Sometimes the three of us go. Sometimes it’s just you and me and sometimes just me and Veris. But it’s always me that goes.”

Brody’s hand clenched. “I had noticed,” he admitted.

“Why would we be doing that if it wasn’t for me to catch up with your pasts? Can you think of any other reason?”

He sat there for a long moment in silence. Taylor waited him out.

“No,” he said at last. “But it doesn’t mean that yours is the only reason. It just means we haven’t figured out the reason. That’s all.”

She nodded. “I know. I’m not trying to trap you into agreeing with me. I’m just trying to get you to help me to reason it out.”

Brody pressed his fingers to his temples. “God, I wish Veris was here,” he muttered.

Taylor wiped her damp cheeks. “That’s why we’re having this conversation you so hate,” she pointed out. “To make sure he’ll be here next time we need to have one.”

His black eyes skewered her. Her heart beat twice before he said flatly, “And for that you need to know every little detail of what happened when Veris and I met.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The past has been disrupted. We need to get it back onto its rails again. You know how it is supposed to go because you lived it the first time. I didn’t. But if I know as much about what
did
happen, I can help nudge it back on track. We both know him inside out. I’ll have to make some adjustments for this younger version of him, but his erotic tastes will still be the same. If we can’t orchestrate your seduction of him in record time, then we don’t deserve him.”