Taylor threw her arms around him the moment Brody was within reach and despite Brody being an absolute rock, he still staggered back a pace. His arms came around her, steadying them both.
“I lost the bet,” she told him. “I
lost
! God, Brody, I’m so stupid! How could I have thought I could play this and win? Just because I’m from the future. Now everything’s completely fucked up and Selkirk—”
“Stop, Taylor, stop,” he said, his hand in her hair. “You did beautifully. Veris came straight to me. I’m the one that fucked up.”
Taylor lifted her head from his chest. “What?” she said, puzzled and afraid.
Brody’s expression was wretched. “Veris came to me,” he repeated. He took a breath and opened his mouth to speak more words, but none came. He shook his head. “I can’t even say it.” He closed his eyes.
Dismay hit her in a hard, cold rush. “Oh, Brody. No.” She stopped herself from saying more by wrapping her arms around him again and just holding on. She could feel his trembling and his arms tightened in response.
She kissed his neck, the only part of him she could reach, tucked so tightly against him. She licked it.
He shuddered.
So Taylor did it again, lengthening the stroke of her lick and making her tongue linger.
Brody’s hand slid up into her hair and lifted her head, bringing her lips to his. He may have meant his kiss to be gentle, but it swiftly grew hot, hard and overwhelmingly demanding. His tongue thrust deep into her mouth, stealing air, space and bits of her soul. Taylor gave them all up gladly.
Brody pushed aside her tunic robe and gathered up the hem of her chemise so that he could slide his hand beneath and cup her ass cheek. Taylor pressed back into his hand and ran her own hand down the front of his tunic. She wasn’t surprised to find him stiff and ready.
He lifted her with the hand under her ass and she quickly wound her legs around his waist.
“Hungry?” she murmured.
“I just fed.”
So he would be ravenous, she interpreted. If Veris had roused him in any way, he would be twice as starved.
He pushed the light tent flap aside and carried her inside, not just to his side, but through to her side of the tent. He lowered her to the ground and stripped off his clothes. Her heart raced as she watched his body emerge. His cock was hard, rising from his thighs like a rigid pole. The rest of him gleamed in the moonlight filtering in through the tent sides.
He removed her belt and tunic, leaving her in her chemise.
“Turn around and put your hands on the panels,” he told her. His voice was thick with lust.
Her heart jumped. There were so many possibilities if she did this… Obediently, she turned and rested her hands on the panels. Brody spread her ankles as wide as the chemise permitted, then swore and hoisted it higher up her thighs and spread her legs wider. She could feel the fine trembling in his hands. He was in a fever of need, but controlling it. Directing it.
She felt Brody pressing up behind her. His cock brushing up against her back. His breath caught a little at the contact. “I had him like this,” he said.
“Veris?” Her body tightened at the idea. “Did you reach around…”
“Like this.” His hand curled around her hip, slid down her thigh and dipped under her chemise. She found her breath stopping as Brody’s fingers curled over her thigh, caressing the inner flesh there. They slid up again, to brush against her clit. She moaned, her hips bucking at the contact.
Brody pushed his fingers farther along her cleft, sliding them into the creamy slick entrance of her vagina. He gathered moisture and brought it back to her clit.
Taylor tried to grip the panel with her fingernails, as her excitement level rose. Brody had placed her in such a way that nearly all her weight was pressing on her hands. She was at his mercy.
Brody pushed her chemise up higher, rucking it up under her arms to free her breasts. He tugged at the nipples, making her groan.
Then his hands lifted away from her altogether. Taylor could feel and hear her heartbeat in her temples and chest and head. Her clit throbbed in time.
“Brody?” she called.
His fingers slid through her cleft, from clit to anus, making her gasp in surprise and pure sensuous delight. She felt the cool touch of slick oil and her excitement spiraled higher.
His fingers toyed with her anus, spreading the oil and slipping inside, making her squirm.
“Hurry,” she begged.
“Why should I?” he wanted to know.
But his cock brushed between her thighs, heavy and hot, then pushed inside her, in slow hard inches, filling her, while Brody held her hips and ass steady, his thumbs stroking her flesh in delicate sweeps as he eased his way into her. When he was buried balls deep, he paused.
“Fuck me,” she begged. “As hard as you can.”
“Stroke yourself,” he said. “Come with me.” He began to thrust in the slow, hard thrusts she liked.
Taylor circled her clit with her fingers, absorbing moisture from her pussy and caressing Brody’s testicles as she did so. He gasped at the contact and she smiled as she began to massage her clit in hard little strokes to match Brody’s thrusts.
His hands slid up to her breasts and cupped them, squeezing her nipples between his fingers. The little pinching sensation sent sparks of pleasure rushing through her and made her nipples even harder and more sensitive.
“You’re so hot around me,” Brody breathed. “So tight.” He gripped the top of the divider with both hands, using it for leverage to drive himself even deeper inside her.
Taylor moaned as his cock pushed into her. Her climax hovered. “Harder,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he agreed. One hand dropped down to cover hers between her thighs. His fingers joined hers against her clit. He thrust into her again, another powerful deep stroke and at the same time, he made her massage her clit in quick hard swipes.
Her climax slammed through her. She gasped. “Brody!” Then she realized that Brody’s control was already disintegrating. His thrusts were speeding up. He was slamming into her. He was coming.
Taylor felt everything clamp around Brody’s cock, milking it, as her pleasure soared in sparkling waves through her.
Brody cried out as he came with a final thrust that buried him deeply inside her and grew still.
She could feel his heart racing, though. It matched her own.
Brody carefully eased the crumpled chemise from her body, supporting her, then lifted her from his own. He carried her to the bed and laid her on it.
Then he surprised her by lying next to her.
Taylor turned to him and held him. “You’re frightening me.”
Brody caressed her face. “I don’t want to.”
“Then you’d better tell me all of it. Quickly.”
* * * * *
Desert dwellers, used to picking out life from across the arid plains, would have seen the shadow that was Veris and moved on. He was motionless as he laid watching Norwich’s tent. He was far enough away that no mortal eye could see him, but he could see what was happening in the tent with perfect clarity.
He had watched everything, from the moment Norwich arrived back at the camp and his wife had greeted him so passionately, to the last tender moment Norwich had laid her to rest in the bed and then shocked Veris by lying beside her and taking her in his arms.
What had happened in between had been full of revelation…and release, too. Veris glanced down at his damp tunic. The release had been involuntary and caught him by surprise. He had never considered himself a
voyeur
. Not the sort who found pleasure in the act, anyway.
So Norwich enjoyed erotic pleasure with his wife that most men practiced together. What of it? Veris frowned, trying to dismiss the rush of pleasure the idea gave him.
But in a tiny corner of his mind, it sat there. A kernel of truth that wouldn’t go away. He faced it squarely because it bothered him.
He liked the idea because it had possibilities. He’d watched Norwich take his wife nearly the same way he’d tried to take him and
that
had been the source of Veris’ pleasure. Watching what might have been. Watching her pleasure. Being taken clearly wasn’t the humiliation he’d thought it would be. She had loved it.
Veris paused in his thoughts and examined the word.
Love
. The troubadour’s word.
That was the emotion that was most fitting for the way these two treated each other. They loved each other.
Veris studied the tent again. They were still talking. She was caressing him. Reassuring him? How a mere human could seek to reassure a male and a vampire Veris had yet to understand. Yet she was clearly the superior in the conversation at that moment and Norwich was accepting her reassurances.
She was making him feel better. Veris could see the change right before his eyes.
How interesting.
Veris got to his feet and dusted off the dry white sand of the desert and headed back for Selkirk’s camp. He had his own problems to unravel and now this intriguing puzzle to solve.
* * * * *
By the time Brody had finished relating how Veris had backed away from him and disappeared into the night, Taylor could understand why his heart rate was high.
She peered at his hand in the low light, looking for damage, but there was none. It had healed clean as usual.
“I’m sorry, Taylor,” Brody said softly. “I tried. You had such utter faith in my hold over him that I started to believe it myself. I think we were wrong. We never held Veris at all. He just chose to stay of his own accord.” He sighed. “I’m still not sure what went wrong.”
Taylor sighed, too. “I think I can shed some light on that. There’s a woman in Veris’ life and I don’t think she’s making him very happy.”
“A
woman?
” Brody sounded winded. “Do you know who?”
“Her name is Davina. I met her tonight. She’s vampire.”
Brody sat up. “Davina,” he said flatly, staring at her. “Oh, my fucking Christ.” He pressed his fingertips to his forehead. “She’s
here?”
“She’s Selkirk’s wife.” Taylor sat up, too, puzzled. “You know her?”
“I know who she is. I mean, I know she’s Selkirk’s. I know she’s vampire. I even know she and Veris were together. But that was over. It was
supposed
to be over.” Brody scrubbed at his hair. “She didn’t come on the crusades the first time.”
“Why not?”
“Veris killed her, in France, the week before the pope called for volunteers.” He blew out his cheeks. “He found his freedom from her shackles that way.”
Taylor took a moment to absorb that. Veris had killed the woman, the vampire, who had been running her hands and tongue all over him tonight. Deliberately? In cold blood? “But why is she still alive now, then?” Taylor asked.
“Something has changed in the past. Farther back than right now,” Brody said. “Something in Veris’ timeline, I’m guessing.”
Taylor kept her mouth shut. She knew what that change was. Not the specifics, but the
when
, at least. She had been there.
“It could be something very small and it has rippled down the timeline enough to reach the point where he didn’t have the…whatever,” Brody mused. “The courage to kill Davina when he did in the original past. Now he’s got her like a slave collar and arm bands, destroying his soul a day at a time.” He sighed. “She’s pure poison, Taylor. There’s no softness about the creature, for all she looks like heaven in a bliaut—when she wears one. She had her hooks so deeply buried in Veris he was bound to her. She was destroying his free will and he knew it. For someone like Veris, it was the equivalent of death. Her death, or his, was his only way out.”
“But now he’s submitting to her?”
“He’s not submitting…yet. But he’s learned he doesn’t like control being taken from him and that’s why he backed away from me tonight.” Brody sighed again, heavily. “Now I see it. If I’d known about Davina… Well, it’s too late now.”
He picked up Taylor’s hand with the one that had been pinned to the wall by Veris’ knife. “Tomorrow I must leave in search of water. A three day quest that will take me as far from Veris as he wants. At least it won’t be a useless search. I found a man tonight, Alexander, a Fatimid Christian, who knows of an oasis about a day and a half from here that he thinks the Muslims missed. It will have water we can bring back. At least no one will die of thirst because of me.”