Her heart was thudding hard. Was it Brody asking her to stay in the dream? Or Brendan asking her to stay in the room?
Verinus rested his hand on Brendan’s shoulder. “Let her go if she’s of a mind to, Brendan.” His arm was covered in a long-sleeved shirt, full at the wrist and of a rough linen and style that she found she was almost automatically cataloguing for its place in the annals of history.
She straightened up. She had apparently been pouring wine from the pitcher that was in her hands and Brendan had taken the opportunity to kiss her. She let the pitcher hang from one hand. Brendan was watching her anxiously with his black eyes. “Stay,” he repeated and reached for her free hand. “Please.” He cleared his throat. “Stay for me.”
He was aware. She shivered suddenly. Brendan…was Brody and was as aware of the waking dream as she was.
She looked at Verinus. Was the twenty-first century Veris’ mind in Verinus’ body too?
The big man fell back into his corner of the couch, reached for his goblet and held it out for her to fill. “You’d best humor him, lass,” he said. “For he’s been called to Jerusalem by his king once more and he’s of a foul spirit.”
She poured the ruby red liquid into his cup and searched his face. There was no hint of awareness, no knowledge in his eyes. She glanced at Brody. Brendan, she reminded herself. His head moved in a tiny negative motion.
Taylor put the pitcher on the table next to the high-backed couch, an idea occurring to her. “My lord, would you permit me an indelicacy?” she asked Verinus.
His eyes narrowed, even as the corners of his mouth lifted expectantly. “Certainly,” he said.
She lifted the heavy skirts of the gown and kirtle she was wearing and stepped between his knees to bring herself closer and cupped his face. “For a departing warrior,” she murmured and kissed him. She kept her eyes open and saw his close as she poured herself into the kiss. His hands lifted to her hips and pulled her off her feet and hard against him. She could feel the steel rod of his growing erection against her hip as he held her.
She broke the kiss. “Look at me,” she told him.
He opened his eyes but did not look at her. He looked around the room instead. His lips parted. “Florence,” he breathed. “Jesus.” Only then did his gaze come back to her. “Therasia,” he said cautiously.
“Taylor,” she corrected and stood up. She looked around the room. “You lived here? Both of you?”
Veris glanced at Brody. “Brody?”
“We’re all aware this time,” Brody confirmed. “I don’t know why. Taylor just brought you to awareness with that kiss.”
Veris pushed his hand through his hair. “Yes, we lived here,” he told Taylor. “In 1191 Brody answered Richard the First’s call for all men loyal to him to travel to the holy lands and he went to Acre to fight by the Lionheart’s side…and ‘died’ there.” He stood up. “Because he was run through by a Saracen’s sword, he had to die in the eyes of all men. I was called to collect his body and we were forced to leave this place and begin again with new identities.”
Brody looked around. “I liked it here. Florence was beautiful.”
“Still is,” Veris growled.
There was a rattle of metal at one of the internal doors, heralding the arrival of someone new. Before Taylor could more than look up at the door, Veris reacted. He shifted so that he was standing next to her and bent her over his arm. His other hand ripped both her gown and kirtle open so that her breast was revealed and he cupped it in his big hand, covering it. His mouth came down on hers as the door opened and shuffling steps entered the room.
“Excuse me, masters—” The wavering voice halted. There was a clearing of a throat.
“We’re busy. Come back later,” Brody said curtly.
“My apologies.” The shuffling steps sounded again, heading back for the door.
“And keep the door shut!” Brody said, lifting his voice.
Taylor couldn’t help it. She moaned and thrust her hand into Veris hair. His hand on her breast and the sudden, commanding kiss were both affecting her. Her pussy was clenching and her clit throbbing. Bent over like this, she longed for Veris to slide his hand along the length of her stretched and vulnerable body. She ached for it.
Brody’s hands circled her ankles and stroked and she cried out against Veris’ lips.
Veris lifted his lips from hers and smiled. “So, you like the idea of being taken, hmmm?”
She could feel her face flush, even as her body leapt at the idea. His hand was stroking her breasts, his thumb tugging at the nipple, sending weakening waves of pleasure through her. Brody’s hands were sliding up her legs, teasing the sensitive inner flesh of her knees and thighs, bringing the heavy folds of clothing up with them.
Veris brought her back upon her feet and Brody lifted the ruined gown over her head. The two men stripped her bare and Veris snuggled up behind her, his hands on her hips, his fingertips moving in light, gentle, teasing circles, while Brody stood before her.
“It’s my turn to play,” Brody declared.
“Here?” Taylor asked.
“Why not?” He shrugged out of the billowing rough linen shirt he wore, pulling it off over his head and tossed it from him. His wide shoulders gleamed in the low light coming through the open doors, surprisingly tanned and corded with muscle. His gaze was heated as it settled on her again. The front of his leather trousers was strained by his engorged cock. He untied the fastenings and opened it and she could see the blunt end of his cock jutting above the trousers as they curled open. His cock was red and pulsing.
She was on fire. She moaned a little, her thoughts growing hazy and indistinct, except for a strong need—the need to be taken. Veris’ words whispered in her mind.
Taylor rested her head against Veris’ shoulder. “Please…” she murmured helplessly. Her breasts were molten tipped and aching.
Brody pushed up against her, his leather-covered shaft pressing against her mons. The pressure was perfect, scattering her wits even more and making her pussy quiver. Taylor clutched at Brody’s shoulders, feeling flesh and iron muscle beneath. His dark gaze bore into her as he lifted her chin with his long fingers. “Why you, my beautiful one?” His voice was thick with lust.
“You find her pleasing?” Veris asked. His voice rumbled against her back. His hand lifted to her breast and stroked it, as if he were drawing attention to it but Taylor found her eyes were closing as her thoughts further scattered by his touch.
Brody’s black gaze lifted to Veris’ face. “You know I do.”
Veris caught Brody’s face in his hand. It was a gentle touch. The touch of a lover. “Then enjoy,” Veris said softly. “Who are we to question fate, hmmm? After all these years, you should know better, freond.”
Brody nodded, as his gaze shifted back to Taylor and grew heated even as his head lowered and his mouth covered hers. “Forgive me,” he murmured, his lips moving against hers. “Angst comes naturally to me. My family were all poets.” His tongue rimmed her lips, then probed inside, hard and insistent, as his hands held her face steady and his body pressed up against her.
Taylor trembled at the erotic pleasure of being pressed between these two tall, hard males. They had lived so long and seen so much, yet they wanted her. Taylor Yates, of the failed career and little life. She could feel Brody’s hard cock against her hip as he held her. Veris’ pants, pressed against her from behind, were bulging and pushed against her ass in a way that made her want to push back and encourage him to thrust harder.
Between the two of them, there was an overwhelming rush of sensations. Their hands were everywhere on her body and she couldn’t keep track of where they were, as they moved up and down in long sweeping strokes and brushes wherever her flesh was not already covered by their bodies.
Body’s kisses were sweet drugged wine to her. Taylor fought to keep her eyes open, for she did not want this waking dream to end but her lids grew heavy with desire. She clung to him, her legs weak.
“Brody, please,” she whispered when he released her mouth.
“Please what?” His voice was thick and rough. He stepped back from her and Veris lifted her up and kept her on her feet, his big hands around her waist.
She couldn’t put her thoughts together. She ached with need but couldn’t find the words. She lifted her hand out to him. “Please…both of you.”
Veris drew in a heavy breath. She felt his lips on her shoulder and the soft brush of his teeth. “You honor us.” His voice too, was low, hoarse with a sudden longing and instead of his hands holding her, his arms slid around her and held her tight.
“Perhaps that’s why,” Brody said, almost to himself. He stripped off the last of his clothing. He was strong, his body hard and enduring and his cock was sharply erect. He loosened Veris’ arms and brought Taylor against him, his hand against the back of her hip, pressing her pelvis so that their hips met. “I can’t wait,” he muttered. “Veris…”
“Come here, sweet one,” Veris whispered to her and she felt his hands on her thighs, separating them, lifting her. Spreading her. “I will not let you fall,” he told her and she knew that. She felt safer in these men’s arms than she had ever felt in her life, yet they could extinguish her life in a heartbeat and with fewer qualms than a human squashing a bug.
As Veris lifted her, Brody pressed in against her, his hands on her breasts, tasting her with his fingers, unable to let her go. His expression was fevered and hungry. Veris brought her up high enough for Brody to sink his cock into her and he barely hesitated. The blunt tip of his cock slipped into her narrow moist cleft and the thick shaft speared into her with a force that made her thoughts groggy.
As Brody’s hand tangled in her hair at the back of her neck and he pulled his thick cock out of her pussy in a slow, deliberate withdrawal, only to ram it back into her again, she realized she was drunk on pleasure.
Brody’s controlled, hard strokes slowly shortened, became quicker and he pushed up against her.
“More,” she begged. “Please, more.”
His mouth brushed up against her shoulder. She felt the scrape of teeth.
“Brody,” Veris said, his voice low. It was a warning.
Brody halted, his chest rising and falling hard, his face tucked against her neck. Finally, he lifted his head and kissed her lips. His eyes seemed totally black to her. “I think you could be addictive, Taylor Yates.” He gripped her bottom. “Put your legs and your arms around me.”
She wound her legs and arms around him, feeling the movement translated in tiny shifts of his cock still lodged inside her pussy. She found she was gasping as she moved.
“I have you,” Brody assured her, his hands firm underneath her.
It was an erotic sensation. She looked up at him and licked her lips, feeling her pussy clench around him. “I know,” she said, her voice husky.
She could hear Veris behind her, the rustle of cloth and knew he was undressing. Her heart raced. In less than a minute, she felt Veris pressing up against her from behind, his hands on her hips.
“And now you shall have both of us,” he said. “As you wish.”
His hands stroked her ass cheeks, smoothing over Brody’s where they supported her and slipped into her cleft. She bucked at the sensation of Veris’ gentle probing even as Brody was buried inside her. She moaned. Her senses were beginning to reel. “Hurry,” she begged, for she knew what he planned.
His fingers pushed at her anus and they were slick with something. Oil, she suspected. They slipped inside. Sweet pleasure. She felt him work the muscle, stretching it, preparing her. Dark excitement gripped her. She looked up at Brody, as her pussy clenched around him. Her breathing was ragged.
“Quickly,” Brody said, his voice low and harsh.
The tip of Veris’ cock replaced his fingers, pushing at the tiny aperture and Taylor fought not to close her eyes in response to the dizziness whooshing through her. Veris’ cock eased inside her, slippery with the same oily substance. She felt every delightful inch slide in, until he was completely inside her. There was no discomfort. Just the feeling of fullness and of delicate tissues being stretched. A sense of possession.
She could feel her thoughts jangling apart. “Hurry,” she said, her voice husky. “Fuck me.”
“As you command,” Brody murmured.
As one, the two men moved together. Their cocks slid from her body, almost completely, before pushing back in. Veris’ hands were supporting her, too. She could feel them. Their cocks beat into her in concerted rhythm, driving the breath from her, scattering thought and meaning from her mind.
Taylor began to tremble violently, her climax already shuddering through her. “Too late,” she whispered, clutching at Brody’s shoulders desperately, her body clenching around them in spasmodic convulsions as it swept through her.
She felt their mouths on her shoulders, the sensitive skin of her nape. The brush of sharp teeth. Then the prick of fangs and with a silvery rush her orgasm bust upon her like a series of exploding fireworks. She threw her head back and screamed, her whole body tightening up in a column of gripping muscle. Even as she screamed, she felt a tongue—Brody’s—slide up the length of her throat.
Hot cum spilled into her. She felt it. Both of them came as she did and that tripped off another secondary climax in her, a small shock wave of surprise and pleasure as the two cocks jerked and spasmed in her channels. She clung to Brody and leaned against Veris, glad that both of them were there.
She knew before she opened her eyes that they had returned to the hotel room. Something about the air changed and grew smaller, warmer and more closed around them. The kind of air that only ever came with a self-contained room that was never opened to the outdoors.
Taylor opened her eyes, breathing hard, sadness touching her. “We’re back,” she whispered.
“Then you’d better speak English again,” Brody murmured, in English. She could hear the difference. English was harsh, sharp and ugly, but until now, she had never noticed.
They were on the bed where they began and both men were on their knees, cradling her between them. Taylor turned her head to look at Veris. “What were we speaking?” she asked and it was an effort to speak English. She had to concentrate.
“Brody and I used the local language then, as we do wherever we go. Medieval Latin with a Tuscan dialect.” He kissed her brow and gently withdrew from her body, as did Brody. They lowered her to the mattress, so that she was kneeling next to them.
“Will I forget it again?” She bit her lip. “I don’t want to.”
“We don’t know,” Brody told her. “There’s too much about this we don’t know.” He glanced at Veris questioningly.
Veris shook his head. “I don’t know either.” He spoke slowly, as if he were puzzling through ideas as he spoke.
Taylor stifled a yawn.
Instantly, they both turned to her and gathered her in their arms. She was tucked beneath the sheets and their long bodies bracketed hers before she could gather the energy to protest. But she really didn’t want to protest, if tiredness produced this result. She could hardly think of a more comfortable way of falling asleep.
She snuggled against Brody’s chest as he stroked her brow, soothing her into sleep and looked up at Veris. “You’re spoiling me.”
“I hope so,” Veris said, his eyes dancing. “How else can we convince you to stay?”
Sleep was already claiming her, or she was sure his words would have caused more alarm, or at least more surprise. Instead she felt nothing but inevitability.
“Tell me, Taylor,” Veris murmured. “The one thing you wouldn’t share when we spoke last week. Why have you spent seven years on this academic fool’s errand, trying to prove the existence of Inigo Domhnall?”
“You’ll laugh,” she murmured, her eyes slipping shut.
“After all we’ve seen in our lives? Try us,” he coaxed.
She reached back in her mind to the old memories. “So long ago,” she murmured. “My father’s business partner. Twenty years ago. He would come to dinner and tell stories about King Arthur. Stories that I’d never heard before, or heard ever since. He told me they were stories written by a man call Inigo Domhnall, who lived in King Arthur’s castle. I remember those stories as if he’d told them to me yesterday…”
She must have slept a little for she woke up with a small jerk. She was alone in the bed and from beyond the room, she could hear Veris and Brody talking in hot, angry, low voices. From the shadows moving across the doorway, she could see they were gesturing too. Tempers were high.
But sleep was grabbing at her. She was too short on sleep and they had spent centuries resolving differences. Her problems would wait.
A little later she woke again and felt a big male body curled around hers. She didn’t care which. She smiled, pushed back into him so that her ass was against his pelvis. A hand curled over her breast. Long fingers.
Brody.
She sighed. Sleep instantly reclaimed her.
She woke slowly, the third time, to the feel of Brody’s hand on her breast, stroking the nipple erect, his lips nuzzling her neck.
“She’s everything we could have asked for,” Brody whispered. “And then some.” There was a note in his voice than made her heart ache.
“I know, Brody.” Veris’ voice was filled with terrible wisdom. Then, “I think she’s awake.”
“I don’t care.” Brody’s hand shifted and brushed her temple. “Taylor?”
“I am awake,” she confessed and opened her eyes. “What time is it?”
“Eleven in the morning,” Veris told her, his blue eyes drilling into hers.
“Aren’t you going to ask what we’re talking about?” Brody said, sitting up so he could look at her face.
“No, she’s not,” Veris told him, his gaze steady on her face.
She swallowed. “I can hear pain in your voices. Why would I add to it by probing?”
The pair of them exchanged another look.
“I see you two have sorted out your differences,” she said sleepily.
Veris looked startled, then annoyed. “We woke you, last night.”
“Yes.”
“How much did you hear?” The question had an edge to it and made Taylor wake up a little more.
She tried to sit up and Brody helped her. “I deliberately didn’t listen,” she said. “Why? Was it about me?” Her heart lurched.
“Indirectly.” Veris pushed his hand through his hair. “Taylor, we must ask you to do something for us. Something that is rarely done among our kind.”
Taylor gripped her hands together, sensing that this was part of what they had been arguing about, last night. She drew in a breath that seemed thick and hard to swallow. “What do you want me to do?”
“We need you to speak to our queen.”