Lydia wasn't about to show terror. Even when she saw the leg chains and the torture racks.
Maybe he was into kinky sex. She hoped.
Her arms tightened around him, and she shivered, even wrapped in ermine.
"Are you cold?"
"Yes." A lie, but better than the truth. She wasn't about to let him know she was scared.
Torches on the wall cast eerie shadows. It was the stretching rack that terrified her most. She'd seen the movies. She knew how one of those things could pull you apart
"Well, Dorothy, this is not Kansas," she said.
"Dorothy?"
"Just another of my aliases." Her mother always told her she'd make jokes even if she were facing a firing squad.
"If only Mom could see me now."
Dragon prowled the dank depths of his dungeon, apparently trying to decide which torture toy he wanted to try first.
"Eenie, meenie, minie, mo," she said. "Just pick one and get it over with."
"You think I brought you here to torture you?"
"Well, didn't you?"
He set her on a stone bench in the center of his torture chamber, then leaned over her, one foot propped on the bench, elbow on his knee.
"I thought about it when you first came, but I changed my mind."
"Then I'm not going to be food for the fish?"
"No, Lydia, you're not going to be food for the fish." A smile flashed briefly across his face, then disappeared. "As long as you answer my questions truthfully."
"Is that all? Well, shoot, Sherlock"
"Lydia . . ." His brows drew together in warning.
"Just a joke."
"The truth, Lydia, no jokes."
"Okay, scout's honor." She gave him the Brownie Scout salute. "But why down here? I can tell you everything you need to know in the comfort of my own bedroom."
"My bedchamber, my decision."
She saluted. "Yes, boss."
Trent hated her jokes, her lighthearted manner, had claimed that she never took anything seriously, including him. But Dragon was smiling. A different century, a different kind of man.
o0o
Dragon studied the small ermine-wrapped figure on the stone bench. At last the truth would be his. His terrible dilemma was that he didn't want to hear the truth, a truth he already suspected, a truth he was almost certain Lydia would confirm. She was from another century, another time. Lydia was from the future.
What cruel twist of fate was this? He'd spent all his adult years in service to the king in pursuit of truth, believing that the truth brought honor and freedom. At last he understood the double-edged sword Merlin often spoke of: The truth also brought misery and bondage.
The woman sitting in front of him had stolen his heart, and she was on the brink of stealing his body and his soul as well. How could he hold fast a woman who belonged to the future? She would surely vanish as mysteriously as she had come, leaving behind a man with a shredded heart and half a soul.
Even Merlin didn't have the kind of magic that could allow Dragon to transcend centuries.
One question would confirm his fears. One wise question. But he would not, could not ask it, not yet. Instead, he asked a foolish one.
"Who is Sherlock?"
"Sherlock Holmes, a great detective."
"Where does he live?"
"England, but not really. You see, he's not a person, he's a character. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created him in eighteen—"
"Enough." Dragon cut her off with a harsh command. He wasn't ready for numbers, wasn't prepared to hear the awful truth that would forever set them apart.
He retrieved her possessions from their hiding place and reached into the bundle.
"What is this?" He held the strange black box in his hand.
"A disc player."
"What does it do?"
"It makes music."
He would never risk his next move if he still had any idea that she was a witch. But he'd already eliminated that possibility, at least in his own mind. If she were a witch, she would long ago have proved her powers, and she would never submit to questioning in a dungeon.
"Show me," he said.
She unplugged the black wires, punched buttons, and horrible sounds came forth from the box, a cacophony that made his head hurt.
"You call that music?"
"Sorry. The volume is a little high." She punched another button, and the noise she called music got softer, but no less dreadful.
"Van Halen," she said.
Another name he didn't know. And if Van Halen, whoever he was, called that music, Dragon didn't want to know him.
He took the box from her and inspected it. How it made music was still a mystery to him.
"How do you do that?"
She opened the box and took out a flat, shiny circle that made Merlin's crystal ball look dull by comparison. He prepared himself for smoke and fire, but instead Lydia explained how music could get transferred to a disc, then come back out from a small black box. Dragon was fascinated and would have spent another hour on that extraordinary phenomenon, but dawn would come quickly. He had to be finished with his secret business in the dungeon before the servants stirred.
One by one he held out her possessions, and one by one she explained them, the shoes that glowed, the clothes that changed color, the little tube of wax. She demonstrated the tube she called a lipstick, and now she was looking up at him with lips blushed the color of roses. He had a hard time concentrating on the task at hand.
"Is that all?" she said.
"No, that's not all."
Flame-lit, her eyes were as shiny as twin moons, the blue moons Merlin sometimes spoke of, the moons that made miracles happen. Enchanted, he watched as she flicked out her tongue to catch a small bead of sweat that dripped from her upper lip. The dungeon walls were thick, windowless, and the heat from the torches flushed her skin. Damp curls clung to her forehead, and as she tossed her hair, the ermine robe slid from her left shoulder, exposing the top of one rosy breast
A comely wench, by far the most enticing he'd ever met, but Lydia was more than beautiful. The quality that attracted Dragon most was her indomitable spirit
"You really didn't know what all those things were, did you?" she said.
She was extraordinarily appealing. Too appealing.
"Silence!"
She flinched at his shout, and he felt as if knives had been thrust into his heart. The woman was making him soft, a dangerous condition for a knight. He stalked off, hoping a small distance would make a difference, but the sight of her still wrenched his heart.
"I'll ask the questions," he said, moderating his tone.
"Go ahead and ask me, then." She stood up, magnificent in her rage. "Ask me the question you've been dying to ask."
The robe slid farther down her shoulders, and she stood before him, chin out, eyes shooting fire, a nymph in ermine, silky skin glowing in the torchlight, hair like flames.
He tried to quell her with a look, but she would have none of it.
"Ask it," she said, goading him.
"Enough!"
The question he would ask was redundant, the answer held in the palm of his hand.
Suddenly the hunted became the hunter, the slave became the master as she stalked him.
The robe parted to reveal her legs, golden in the firelight, beautifully formed, wondrous to touch. Dragon was torn asunder. Catlike, she came to him, eyes wicked and knowing, lips lush and inviting.
"Ask it," she whispered. "Or are you a coward?"
He captured her with the swiftness of a hawk. Burying his hand in her hair, he forced her head back, exposing her white throat.
"I could kill you with my bare hands." With one hand he traced her slender neck, then circled it with his fingers. "It would be as easy as wringing the neck of a swan."
"Then do it," she said. "Do it now and get it over with."
Killing her would be the easy way out. She would no longer pose a threat to the king, and Dragon would have carried out his sworn duty of protecting the king and the kingdom. But at what price?
He released her throat and loosened his hold on her hair.
"I didn't bring you here to kill you."
"Then why am I here in this cold, damp dungeon?"
"To answer my questions."
"I would have answered them in the relative comfort of my own bedroom." His scowl brought a smart salute from her. "Excuse me, your Dreadful Dragoness, your bedroom."
He didn't know whether to kiss her or turn her over his knee and spank her. What was even worse, he had a hard time squelching his own laughter.
Camelot was not a dreary place. In fact, with Arthur's reign there was laughter and merriment on every corner, but Dragon had never met a woman with such wit and humor, a woman who made laughter as appealing as sex.
Almost, he amended, watching the bead of sweat that slid down her graceful neck and into her rosy cleavage. His loins stirred powerfully, and he slowly ran his fingers through her silky hair. Passion leaped between them, stealing his breath. A blush crept over her skin, and her breasts rose and fell with her agitation.
He wanted her, wanted her more than he'd ever wanted a woman. Taking her would be as easy as piercing a deer with one swift arrow. Mounting her would be as easy as mounting the prancing filly he called Glory. She was his. In the dungeon no one would hear, no one would see, no one would know . . . except him.
Slowly, tenderly he pulled her robe over her shoulders, then held it fast.
"Tell me one last thing, Lydia, and I will let you go.”
"Go where?" she whispered.
"Back to bed ... for now."
"If I answer this one question, you're still not finished with me?"
"No, I'm not finished with you."
She shivered, but didn't take her eyes off his. He pulled the fur closer around her throat, then with his forefinger traced her lush lips. Dangerous lips.
"When?" he whispered.
The tip of her tongue flicked out and touched his fingers. A brief touch. Erotic. Unbearable. Releasing her, he stepped back.
"When were you born?"
"It's all right there for you to see . . . printed on my driver's license." She clutched the robe in a white-knuckled grip. "You don't need to ask that question, Dragon. You already know the answer."
"I have to hear you say the date, Lydia. I have to hear the truth from your lips."
"Nineteen sixty-eight." She drew a deep, shuddering breath. "I was born in the twentieth century."
How had she come to him? And why?
His heart could give answers, but in his mind he knew that the woman of his dreams belonged to another world, another time.
"You will speak of this to no one," he said, and then, gathering her in his arms, he held her close briefly, ever so briefly, before he carried her back up the stairs.