“I don’t care. Not this time.”
“Then we agree.” Veris lowered himself over Brody, resting on his elbows. There was a shallow furrow between his brows. “This is too pleasurable to last much longer.” He lifted Brody’s thigh and began to ram into him in hard, heavy strokes.
It was exactly what Brody wanted. He grabbed the back of Veris’ head with one hand and his shoulder with the other. His canines had extended again. There was a roaring in his head, growing louder as his climax approached, no longer brought on by Veris’ hand, but by the pressure between the two of them and the rough chaffing of their flesh. It was all he needed, now, to tip over into orgasm.
As it hit, there was an almost overwhelming desire to lift up and bite into Veris’ neck with his fangs. Something like feeding, but not exactly like it. It was connected with his growing feelings for the man above him. Instinct was driving him, but Brody had fought long and hard against his vampire nature and he mistrusted most of the instincts that rose in him until he had explored them thoroughly.
This one, though, was blind and powerful. He fought it, his fangs brushing against Veris’ neck. He realized his fingers were digging into Veris’ shoulder, his hand holding Veris head in a vice grip, just like he would hold a victim steady for feeding, while his fangs brushed and stroked over Veris’ skin.
Brody forced himself to let Veris go. He fell back against the cover, his heart thundering. He forced his canines back. “What was that?” he muttered.
Veris rolled onto his side, leaving a few inches between them. “You were going to bite me. A permanent bonding.” His voice was neutral.
“A…
permanent…
” Brody licked his lips. “I assure you, I had no idea what I was doing just then. I’m not even sure I had any real control. I—”
Veris touched his finger to Brody’s lips. It was enough to make him fall silent.
“You really don’t know enough about your own nature, do you?” Veris said, not unkindly.
Brody rubbed between his brows. “Apparently not.”
Veris settled more comfortably on his side, propping his head on his hand. “You won’t like this analogy much, but it’s the best I can do. You know how—”
“What’s an analogy?”
Veris hesitated. “For now, don’t worry about it. It’s not important. But—”
“Only if you explain it to me later.”
“I will,” Veris said. “I promise.”
“So now tell me about this analogy I won’t like.”
Veris laughed. “Even uneducated, you keep up well enough. You’re going to be dangerous once I’m through with you.”
Brody felt a warm glow at the implications behind his words. “The analogy,” he prompted.
“You know how a wolf marks his territory? So that others won’t try to take it over?”
Brody scowled. “Is an analogy a way of comparing things? Because I didn’t try to urinate on you, which would make it a bad analogy indeed.”
Veris threw his head back and roared with laughter. When he had himself under control, he sighed. “You now understand what an analogy is,” he told Brody. “And you did try to mark me. You did it as instinctively as the wolf does. But something stopped you from actually taking the bite.” His smile faded. “You fought the instinct.”
“Yes,” Brody agreed. “If I
had
bitten you, how seriously does the vampire world take that marking? Would they consider you to be…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word.
“Yours?” Veris finished the sentence for him soberly. “Oh yes, we obey these bondings in utter faith. They’re always instinctive. Not made in haste or consciously, where errors might occur. If you find yourself marking another, it’s because your vampire sense has directed you to make that other your permanent bond partner for reasons beyond logic or question.”
“You would have let me do it?” Brody said in growing wonder.
“You wouldn’t have let me do otherwise,” Veris corrected.
Brody sat up. “That is insanity! How could I know…how could my vampire instincts know such a thing, in such a short space of time?”
“It’s instinctive,” Veris said calmly.
“And you would have accepted that? You?”
Veris sat up. “You didn’t take the bite, Brody. The question doesn’t need to be answered.”
Brody sorted through that sideways answer. “You wouldn’t have liked it,” he concluded. “You wouldn’t have liked having the choice taken from you. You’ve been free too long.”
Veris smiled a little. “No, I wouldn’t have. But I would have accepted it. We must, if that is what happens. And in truth, yours is a bond I think I could wear without chaffing.”
“You
think
.” Brody stared at him. “You’ve never had a real master, have you?”
Veris frowned.
“You’ve always been for hire. Your own man at heart,” Brody concluded.
Veris shifted and faced Brody squarely. He turned his head, so that his neck, thick with muscle and sinew, was bared. “You want to take that bite, Brody? Take it. Now.”
Brody recoiled a little. “No.”
“In cold blood and in full judgment,” Veris insisted. “Take the bite.”
Brody grabbed Veris’ chin and wrenched his head around so he could see into his eyes. “No,” he said flatly. “I will never mark you, not even if my instincts are driving me blind with need to do it. You are your own master. I won’t take that from you. I know what it is like to be without it.”
He got up from the cover and headed back to the mare, picking up his clothes as he went.
“And?” Taylor prompted, when Brody paused.
“And what?” He grimaced. “It’s a story that extends for another six hundred years. How long do you want me to go on?”
“I don’t need huge amounts of detail,” she told him.
“Thank heavens for that,” he muttered.
“Just the basics of what happened. You can’t leave me hanging!”
Brody stared at her. Then he smiled a slow, wicked smile. “I hooked you,” he said. “I hooked you like a fish.”
She laughed a little. “Hell, yeah.” She wriggled on her cushion, trying to find a more comfortable position. “And that’s not all.”
Brody’s eyes narrowed. “I see,” he said, his voice growing thicker, heavier.
“Do you think…” she began, then cleared her throat. “I think you should stop wearing underwear immediately. Just hose and your tunic. I love the idea. I bet Veris would, too. He did the first time.”
She heard his heavy exhalation. “Come here,” he said softly, his voice thick with arousal.
“You should save yourself for Veris.”
“Fuck that. Come here.”
“What language is it you two are speaking?” said another voice entirely, from outside the tent.
Taylor slapped her hand over her mouth as a shriek of shock tried to escape from it.
It was Veris standing at the formal entrance to the tent, just beyond the thin white gauze, staring at them as they sat talking to each other in English.
“It almost sounds like Saxon, but not quite,” Veris continued. “I feel like if I listened long enough, I might actually begin to understand it. Yet there are parts of it so strange I know they can’t possibly be Saxon roots at all.”
“You’re right, they aren’t,” Brody agreed, standing up. He was naked, but he made no move to put on any clothes. Instead, he opened the tent flap and let Veris in. After a moment, Veris stepped through.
Taylor shrugged off the rendered tunic she was wearing and handed it to Brody. He slipped his arms into it but there wasn’t any way to keep it closed permanently, so as he moved the tunic gaped open, giving glimpses of his nude body.
Veris kept his eyes averted most of the time, but Taylor caught him stealing glimpses every now and again as they spoke.
“I could not help but listen to your conversation. It was…” He hesitated, looking from one to the other of them. “Forgive me, but even though the language was strange, some of the words were familiar enough for me to pick up a sense of your subject. You were being…frank.” He glanced at Brody as he said it.
Had Veris heard his own name among the gibberish
? Taylor wondered. Even if he had, he may not have picked it up with their English accents, or even realized they had been referring to him. He didn’t know they knew his real name.
“You were not speaking Saxon, were you?” Veris pressed.
Taylor switched over to Saxon. “We would have sounded like this if we were speaking Saxon.”
Veris’ eyes narrowed as he studied her. “You have an almost perfect accent. You are not Saxon, though, are you?”
“No, neither of us is Saxon. We would not mislead you that way,” Taylor assured him. “Although, clearly, your own roots are Saxon, no?”
Veris nodded. “My family heritage goes back to when the Vikings first arrived in Britain in the mid-fifth century.”
“Are you talking about King Arthur?” Brody asked, resting an arm along the back of the chair. “Camlann?” His pose had the effect of opening up the tunic again. Taylor hid her grin.
Veris whirled to face Brody again. “You know about that?”
“I have heard about it. There was a crazy old man in Gwynedd where I was born who knew all the stories and told them over and over.”
“Who?” Veris demanded.
“What was his name?” Brody pondered. “Domhnall? No, that wasn’t it…” He shook his head. “I don’t really remember, I’m sorry.”
Veris drew in his breath at the mention of Domhnall, for that had been Brody’s father’s name, the official court appointed poet and bard to King Arthur. The Vikings had been particularly certain about making sure all Domhnall’s works had been burned completely, leaving no trace of Arthur to be found.
Veris stared at Brody, with the tunic hanging open, displaying just about all of his body while Brody stared back with an utter lack of self-consciousness.
“Who taught you to speak Saxon?” Veris finally demanded. He was shifting to safer ground…and shifting to the attack.
“You did,” Taylor told him. Which switched the attack back again.
Veris glared at her. “I did,” he repeated angrily.
“About a thousand years from now,” Brody added.
Veris continued to stare at Taylor. After a few seconds he turned and stalked from the tent, throwing the gauze aside with an impatient toss of his hand. He strode into the night without a backward glance.
Brody watched him go, his expression thoughtful.
“We’re not going to be able to tell him about the future,” Taylor concluded. “He’s too much a part of this culture. His mind can’t adapt. You’re just going to have to seduce him the old fashioned way.”
“
We
seduce him,” Brody replied, moving toward her.
“Excuse me?”
“I
have
to succeed, we know this. But he spent just as much time staring at you just then as me. I think he feels the pull of you now, just as much as he does in the twenty-first century, even though he’s mired in eleventh century thinking here. It may be that we must get him to commit to both of us after all.” He let his fingers slide over her collarbone and down over the slope of her breast in the light chemise. “I mean, look at you. What man with a pulse, even an undead, uncertain pulse, could resist?”
* * * * *
Veris rode until Brendan’s camp was far enough behind that the sound of his horse’s hooves would not be heard, then he stopped, slid off the animal and rested his head against the side.
What had happened back there? He had never felt more unsure of himself, more out of his depth and foolish than he had with those two. It was clear their educations far surpassed his and their breadth and depth of knowledge was staggering.
And too, there was their conversation he had accidentally stumbled upon, then shamelessly eavesdropped upon. He had only been able to pick up on the odd word or two. Brendan had sat upon that chair, outrageously nude, and spun his wife a tale that had involved two men. Two lovers.
Veris had been amazed to realize that Brendan was actually telling his wife such a tale. She had sat there in that incendiary, indecent shift, clearly finding the entire story far too much to her taste.