Kiss Across Swords (Kiss Across Time Series) (24 page)

The shade had lengthened over her. It was close to sunset. She had slept the afternoon away. Clearly, her body had needed the restorative. But in the meantime, what had Brody and Veris done to each other?

Carefully, she sat up. Her stomach tilted, but that was all the protest it gave. So she ate the food and drank the water, consuming all of it mechanically despite a distinct lack of appetite and an urgent need to go in search of Brody.

While she ate, she gazed around the bowl of the oasis. There had been considerable progress during the afternoon. The three wagons of barrels were almost completely filled. The teams of soldiers were working on the last one now, sealing each barrel with hot wax to prevent leakage. Most of the men were stripped to the waist. Both Brody and Veris were overseeing the operations, each looking after their own wagons.

Alexander sat on the other side of the oasis, under shade. Observing, as usual.

Taylor tightened her belts and added the sword and knife. She made her way around the edge of the oasis, dodging the horses, until she reached the point where the run off created a happy-sounding tinkling stream that had carved a channel out of the desert and wound its way around bedrock for a league or more. She started to follow it.

At one point the stream dropped about three feet onto bare flat rock, creating a tiny waterfall, before oozing over the rock and continuing on into the desert. Or a miniature shower, depending on a modern perspective.

Taylor stared at the water, her skin itching.

“Screw it,” she muttered and stripped quickly. She took the knife into the water with her, laying it on the flat rock, close by her hand. But she unbound her hair and let the water cascade through it before sitting up and rinsing off.

“The sword isn’t much use if it’s not by your side,” Brody told her.

She smothered her yelp of surprised. He stood next to the pile of her clothes.

“I have my knife,” she said, holding it up.

“Not much use against a sword,” he said. “If I were the enemy, I now have your sword, which you left here for me to pick up.”

She bit her lip. “Damn.”

Brody grinned. “Shall I bring it to you?” He bent down to pick up her sword belt and pulled the sword from it.

“For all the good the blade does me, why not?”

He tramped across the stream to stand in the inch deep water in front of her and hold out the blade. “Sometimes just the offer to fight is good enough.”

“Good enough for what?” She took the sword and lay it down on the flat rock just at the edge of the water flow, where it was dry.

“Good enough to test their resolve. To see if they really mean it.” Brody stared down at her, his hands on his hips.

“Mean to fight?”

He nodded. “If you pull your sword—if you make the offer to fight and their hearts are truly not in it, they’ll take off running, leaving you the victor.”

Taylor was having trouble drawing her attention away from the proximity of Brody’s thighs to her face. The knowledge that he was naked beneath the tunic, that his cock was accessible underneath a thin layer of cloth, was distracting her. She licked her lips.

Brody smiled. “You’re not thinking about fighting.”

“Damn it, no. It’s all your fault.”

“No, it’s your fault. You suggested I not wear what I’m not wearing.”

She could see his cock pushing at the tunic, lifting it.

Taylor pummeled her attention back to the subject. “What if they don’t turn tail and run?”

Brody dropped his hands to his belt buckle. “Ah. Well, now you’re screwed. Now you have to fight him. You probably shouldn’t have picked on him in the first place.”

“Great. So I can bluff, or fight if I’m called on it.”

“That’s right.” He dropped his sword next to hers. The knife clattered next.

“I can’t fight with a sword.”

“Better stay by my side then,” he said. “Stay very close.” He pulled the rest of his clothes off in less than a minute. They flowed off him like water off a duck’s back, with more grace that she’d ever manage. He tossed them all onto the sand a bare yard away.

“You’re so beautiful,” she said with a sigh as his body emerged.

“That’s my line, isn’t it?”

She smiled. “Men can be beautiful, too, and you are. You’re perfect.”

Brody picked her up and wrapped her legs around his waist. “You’re wet.” His hand cupped her ass, the fingers tickling her cleft. He kissed her, his tongue sliding gently inside.

“And you’re sandy…and hot, too.” Taylor touched his chest. “You’ve been out in the sun too long.”

Brody nodded. “I’m glad I fed when I did the other night, or I’d be very weak by now and feeding among this small group could be a problem.”

“Get wet. That’ll cool you off.”

Brody put her on her feet again and lay down under the tiny waterfall. He gasped as the water covered him. Taylor sat down and washed off the dust he had smeared on her and sat up and waited for him to finish his impromptu shower.

Brody came up from under the waterfall, laughing and shaking the water out of his hair.

“What?” she asked, smiling at his amusement.

“If you look at our location on a modern map, I think you’ll find we’re somewhere inside the borders of Jordan.”

“That’s what’s funny?”

He laughed again. “What’s funny is that it’s all your fault that I’ve started thinking about stuff like that. How maps change over time. Language. I’ve spent all these centuries resenting the hell out of time for being stuck with it. Now I’m finally starting to see how… I don’t know, how privileged I actually am to be able to see the changes first hand. Humans don’t get to see that. They don’t live long enough.” He sobered, his arms around his knees. “There’s a lot of things I love about you, Taylor, but for that one alone, I would give you immortality, if you asked me for it. It took me a thousand years and you, but I can see a way for it to be considered a gift, now.”

Taylor kissed him, trying to hide her tears. It helped that her cheeks were already wet. There was no answer she could give Brody that wouldn’t compromise her right now, or make her want to confess everything.

Then the kiss changed and grew erotic as their kisses so often did. It helped that they were both naked. Brody cupped her breasts and tugged on the nipples, making them hard. The little spurts of electric pleasure shot straight to her clit, making her gasp and her clit to bloom. Her pussy grew moist all over again.

She stroked Brody’s cock, curling her fingers around the massive shaft and felt his hips shift at her touch. She pressed her thumb against the seam on the underside and he jerked hard.

“Unfair,” he muttered.

“All’s fair.”

“That so?” He grabbed her hips and flipped her with his considerable strength, bringing her onto her hands and knees in the water. Taylor felt the touch of water on her wrists and calves, then Brody’s cock was pushing against her vagina. His hand curled over her shoulder. “All’s fair,” he growled and slid into her in a hard, smooth stroke that buried him to the hilt.

She gasped and may even have cried out. She wasn’t sure. All she was conscious of was Brody’s thick cock inside her.

Then he reached between her legs and found her clit with his fingers and began to pluck at it in time with his thrusts and in time with what his other hand was doing to her nipple.

“No, I’ll come too fast!” she protested between ragged inhalations.

“Come around me. Squeeze me,” he growled. “Scream for me.”

She hung her head, feeling the roiling climax already building from deep inside her belly. Her body began to shake. There was no putting it off. It was coming.

“
Chríost.
Veris,” Brody whispered.

Taylor lifted her head. Veris stood a dozen feet away. How long had he been watching? It didn’t matter. She could see he was caught up in their passion. The juncture of his thighs was swollen, his cock erect under his tunic. His hands were balled into fists as he stared.

Taylor lifted herself to her knees, letting Veris see Brody’s hands on her breast, and her clit.

Make the offer
, Brody had said.

She dropped her hand to her breast. Stroked it. Cupped it. It was incredibly arousing to offer herself to a man who was like a virtual stranger in one sense, especially when she was being fucked by another and right on the verge of climaxing. She curled her arm around Brody’s neck, needing the support. Her body was trembling, moving in little shifts that matched Brody’s heavy thrusts up into her. He had not stopped.

“God, I’m coming, Taylor,” Brody whispered.

“Come,” she said.

He came with a choked groan and it triggered off her own delayed climax. She rolled her head back against Brody’s shoulder and closed her eyes as she cried out her pleasure in pulsing hard waves, made more intense by the fact that Veris was watching.

But when she opened her eyes, Veris had gone. She couldn’t stop the little moan of disappointment that spilled from her.

She still trembled when Brody slipped from her body and washed traces of himself away from her.

“He followed us here,” she said, trying to sound analytical and calm.

“Followed which one, is the million dollar question,” Brody replied.

“You, of course.”

He shook his head. “It’s not that simple anymore.”

“Why not?”

As he got dressed, Brody told her of his nighttime tryst with Veris and the awful ending. Taylor frowned, thinking it through as she carefully dried off and dressed, then strapped her sword and knife back into place. “He would have even less reason to follow me now.”

“He’s on a knife edge. Davina is fucking with his mind so much, I don’t know what he’ll do any more. He’s not the Veris we know.”

“But we still have to make him commit to you.” Taylor wiped at her eyes. “We have to get him away from that woman. He’s dying inside and he doesn’t even know it.”

Brody kissed her forehead. “Like you say. We’ll figure it out.” But he seemed distracted and for the rest of the evening around the campfire, even though he stayed within sight of her and Veris sat on the other side with his men, Brody’s conversation was stilted and vague.

Taylor challenged him on it. Brody frowned. “I’m thinking. Hard. Sorry, Taylor. I’m not good at mentally multi-tasking like you and Veris. I’ve got half an idea, but it needs refining before I dare even mention it out loud.”

Only half-satisfied, Taylor left Brody to stare into the fire and poke at it with a long stick for the rest of the night. Which left rather more time than she wanted to catch Veris’ lingering, speculative stares across the flames.

Taylor declared she was tired and going off to sleep far sooner than she was ready, after the day’s long nap. As a result, she tossed and turned on her blanket, listening to the men talk more freely than they did when she was among them. For that reason alone, it was probably better she not be at the fireside, so she resisted getting up and going back.

Eventually, she went to sleep, hoping the morrow would be an easier one and that Brody would not find the night too taxing in the meantime.

* * * * *

Brody waited barely ten minutes after Taylor left the fire to slip away himself. He caught Veris’ eye as he left and took the same route out of the oasis as they had last night, but didn’t go as far. He waited in a shallow hollow between dunes, where the air was still and warm.

It didn’t take Veris long to follow. He slid-walked down the side of the dune, his sword slapping his thigh. “You called. I come. What—”

Brody’s punch took him on the jaw before he was barely into the dell. It was meant as a sucker punch and it worked. There was no way to take out Veris in a fair fight. Not with his height, weight and reach.

Veris landed on his ass, but he didn’t stay there. He came up streaming blood from his nose, mad as a bull and swinging.

The fight lasted a few short, ugly minutes and ended bloody, as Brody had expected it to. Veris got him on his back and beat the crap out of him. Brody deserved it. But he had got his licks in and was willing to pay the price for daring to pick a fight with someone like Veris.